Lyme Disease – Holistic Protocol to Completely Rebuild the Immune System

Lyme disease is no longer an obscure malady that can only be caught in Connecticut. In 2013, the year with the latest available data, the CDC predicted an estimated 300,000 actual new cases, though only 30,000 per year were reported and confirmed. Cases have been diagnosed in all 50 states, but as of 2013, 95% of the confirmed cases came from the following states: Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, and Wisconsin.

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What Is Lyme Disease?

Lyme disease is an infection from the Borrelia burgdorferi bacterium. It is not known to be a contagious disease spread from person to person. Its only known transmission is through the bite of an infected tick. (Though there is now argument that other insects, including mosquitoes and fleas, may also be carriers, and that it may be sexually transmitted). Although symptoms can and do vary, the majority of cases adhere to the following pattern:

Phase One – 3 to 30 Days

Also called early localized infection

  • 70-75% develop a rash. A characteristic bull’s eye rash develops, starting at the site of the tick bite. It is not itchy or painful but may be warm to the touch.
  • Flu-like symptoms develop: fever, chills, swollen lymph glands, headaches, muscle pain, joint pain.

Phase Two – Days to Weeks After Bite

Also called early disseminated infection

  • Rash spreads
  • Large joints may become swollen and painful
  • Stiff neck in some cases
  • Meningitis may develop
  • Dizziness
  • Heart palpitations

Phase Three – Later Months to Years

Also called late disseminated infection

Many infectious disease specialists believe that “chronic Lyme disease” does not exist, and that Lyme disease from a tick bite can be cured with a short course of antibiotics. It is possible that those who have undergone antibiotic treatments are suffering from the side effects of antibiotics, but more and more experts are coming around to the idea that Lyme disease can survive and cause long-term autoimmune symptoms when antibiotics don’t work. We all know (or at least, we all should know) that antibiotics do not always work and can cause more problems.

  • Arthritis symptoms – swollen, painful joints (fluid filled joints)
  • Neurological symptoms – numbness, tingling, shooting pains
  • Cognitive symptoms – brain fog, short-term memory deficits, confusion
  • Mood disturbance – depression
  • Fatigue
  • Abnormal heart rhythms and heart failure

Facial paralysis may also occur in this stage or stage two.

History of Lyme Disease

In the 1960s and 1970s, something was very wrong in Connecticut. In a population of 12,000 living in three contiguous towns: Old Lyme, Lyme, and East Haddam, 39 children were diagnosed with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis and 12 adults were diagnosed with arthritis of unknown cause.

In 1975, frustrated by the lack of answers from their medical community, two mothers became patient advocates, gathering information from residents that they passed on to the Connecticut State Department of Health and the Yale School of Medicine.

Researchers were able to identify the disease and recognize its symptoms, but it wasn’t until the early 80s that the actual cause was discovered. Willy Burgdorfer, a scientist who was studying Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, discovered the tick connection along with the bacterium, a spirochete, that caused Lyme. The bacterium, Borrelia burgdorferi, was named after him.

The Lyme Controversy

A quick review of current articles about Lyme reveals a great deal of frustration on the part of both patients and doctors battling the disease. First of all, there are serious problems with diagnostics. Since 25-30% of patients who have been infected with Lyme do not exhibit a rash – the first and most specific symptom is missing. Of those who present with a rash, many do not exhibit the characteristic bull’s eye rash. Blood tests to identify the bacteria produce both false negatives and false positives. Therefore an initial, correct diagnosis may be hard to come by. Lyme disease also imitates other diseases and is therefore regularly misdiagnosed as MS, fibromyalgia, arthritis, ALS, and other illnesses.

There are multiple tests for Lyme. The CDC recommends screening with the ELISA test and confirming with the Western blot test, but during the first 4-6 weeks of infection these tests are unreliable because they measure the patient’s antibody response to the infection, not the bacteria itself.

Lyme disease is notoriously difficult to diagnose using conventional tests. And there’s great variation in the presentation of the disease as well, depending on where you contracted it, and whether or not you have any other coexisting infections. There is a group of seven or eight microbes that are the most common. The worst ones are Babesia microti and the different forms of Bartonella.

It is said that an initial course of antibiotics given in stage one cures the disease most of the time, but why not all the time? Is the course of antibiotics too short? Should more be given? Should they be given long term, especially for those who have stage 3 symptoms? What if blood tests no longer show spirochetes? If the antibiotics don’t work, the patient now has to combat Lyme with a very depleted immune system.” – Dr. Dietrich Klinghardt, MD, PhD

Why Antibiotics May Not Work for Lyme Disease

  • Borrelia burgdorferi, the bacteria that causes Lyme disease, has a corkscrew shape that allows it to bore deep into tissues and cartilage (including the brain and nervous system), safely out of reach of most antibiotics.
  • Borrelia burgdorferi can give up its corkscrew shape and convert to a form that is able to live inside cells (“intracellular”) where again, antibiotics have less reach.
  • Borrelia burgdorferi, along with other similar microbes, can form dormant cysts that are completely resistant to antibiotics; the harder you hit it, the more resistant it becomes.
  • Borrelia burgdorferi is usually accompanied and aided by co-infections of other stealth microbes that also live inside cells.

Antibiotic resistance occurs at a high rate with these types of microbes. An antibiotic is one single chemical substance. Bacteria, such as Borrelia (and also its co-infections), respond slowly to antibiotics and have more time to develop resistance to the antibiotic. In other words, the longer they can hang on, the more likely they are to become completely antibiotic resistant. Using multiple antibiotics at once seems to accelerate this process and alternating antibiotics doesn’t seem to help. Resistant bacteria become even more entrenched.

Antibiotics destroy the normal flora (friendly bacteria) in the gut and skin, causing bacterial imbalance and a host of other symptoms in the body. Most importantly, use of antibiotics suppresses immune function, which may present the greatest hurdle to recovery—you cannot get well without optimal immune function.

Borrelia burgdorferi can exist in biofilms, which are protected colonies of microbes that form on a surface (such as plaque on your teeth), but what role this plays in Lyme disease is controversial. The symptom profile of Lyme disease suggests that it is not a biofilm disease and that biofilms are not a big factor in overcoming Lyme.

Doctors Treating Lyme Disease

…he is treating the patient, not the disease.

Some doctors complain that patients who have never been definitively diagnosed with the disease demand treatment for chronic Lyme disease. Other doctors contend that it is rare for a patient with Lyme disease to only suffer from one singular infection as ticks often carry and can infect us with several pathogens at once. In addition, there is not one “Lyme Disease.” There are five sub species of Borrelia burgdorferi. Of these subspecies, there are more than 100 strains in the U.S. and 300 worldwide. And many of them are now antibiotic resistant. Even the worst infections may not test positive for Borrelia burdorferi. They may not test positive until initial treatment has occurred, a situation called the Lyme Paradox.

Dr. Richard Horowitz, of Hyde Park, New York, is one of the most sought after Lyme specialists. He states that at least half of his patients are infected with babesiosis. Rather than a bacteria, babesiosis is a microscopic parasite that infects red blood cells. Since most of his patients present with multiple infections and an overwhelmed immune system, he focuses on strengthening the immune system, knowing that he is treating the patient, not the disease.

Patients who are not lucky enough to see a doctor as knowledgeable as Dr. Horowitz often get caught in the crossfire that occurs when doctors are faced with limited understanding of a pathogen, a complicated infectious process, and a treatment modality that does not work the same for every patient. Stories abound of doctors accusing Lyme sufferers of being hypochondriacs or malingerers when they are experiencing very real, debilitating, painful symptoms.

On top of all of this, spiders, mosquitoes, fleas, and mites may also be spreading the same or similar bacterial infections.

How to Cure Lyme Disease Naturally

The bacteria that cause Lyme can be found in the skin, heart, joints, and nervous system. On top of that, Lyme disease specialists are finding that what we call Lyme disease may be caused by several different infectious organisms and may even be caused by a combination of different infectious pathogens. Some speculate that Lyme disease is an infection from the bacteria along with an overabundance of fungi (like Candida) or a parasite.

Everyone plays host to countless viruses, infectious bacteria, fungi, toxins, and cancer cells in their body. Many may be carrying Lyme, along with or many other scary diseases, and not know it.

Those with stronger immune systems often pass on infections they didn’t even know they have to others with weakened immunity. Currently, specialists are saying Lyme cannot be passed from person to person. Some are challenging this belief, especially in regards to sexual transmission. Regardless, those infected can carry the disease for years without knowing it.

The good news is that a holistic approach to fixing the body’s immune system and ridding it of infectious agents can cure almost any disease. The approach to Lyme should be similar to the approach to curing HIV, fibromyalgia, chronic strep, lupus, Chlamydia, and many other diseases. The first step is to heal the gut, balance the gut flora, and rebuild the immune system.

Your Gut and Your immune System

Chronic infection is an underlying factor in most chronic illnesses. Our sugar-laden diet, GMO foods that kill beneficial bacteria, antibiotics, other antibacterial products, and many of the chemicals in our food supply deplete our beneficial bacteria, which wreaks havoc on our immune systems. This sets the stage for systemic, chronic fungal infections and parasites to multiply, permeate the gut, enter the body’s bloodstream, and spread infection throughout the body.

The immune system is only as healthy as the gut.

Conventional doctors are very bad at finding and diagnosing parasitical and fungal infections that cannot easily be seen on the surface of the body. The average person is dealing with Candida overgrowth at the very least (the most common fungal infection in our bodies) due to the aforementioned modern diet and lifestyle.

Obviously, to treat a difficult bacterial infection such as Lyme (or whatever combination of bacteria, viruses, and parasites causing Lyme symptoms) the immune system needs to be as strong as possible. The immune system is only as healthy as the gut. The body’s intestinal tract mirrors the body’s health and dictates the power of the immune system. Step one is to balance the gut flora and eliminate most of the harmful pathogens in the body.

Diet

A healthy diet relies on a foundation of on raw, fresh, organic (when possible), whole foods and herbs. Salads are one of the best ways to do this. Not your typical iceberg lettuce salads with a few carrots shreds and some ranch dressing, but a salad with a wide variety of at least 10 different vegetables along with fresh garlic, turmeric, ginger, unrefined sea salt, and healthy fats. It is the best way to get a wide array of the best nutrients that will repair the gut and rebuild the body’s immune system. Don’t underestimate this; a large salad every day, done right, will do more for the body than any supplement regimen, and when followed long enough, the right diet with these kinds of daily salads can completely heal the body from disease, in most cases. But the right supplement protocol can radically speed things up and is often necessary for the very ill.

A perfect diet would not be complete without lots of clean drinking water. For detoxification, cranberry stevia lemonade is very good for rejuvenating the kidneys, cleaning the liver, purifying blood, and flushing out the whole system. For most people, a gallon a day will yield remarkable results, but for smaller people, or those who have rare conditions that make this dangerous, use common sense and don’t ever drink too much water (or any fluid). And for everyone else, a gallon of cranberry lemonade every day will have amazing benefits, second only to salads and cutting out other junk food, but again, use common sense. Drinking that much water in a very short period of time can kill people, believe it or not.

Supplements

When healing the gut, you want to kill fungi and parasites, balance the bacteria, and begin healing the intestinal walls. Undecylenic acid is the best supplement on the market for killing Candida and other fungal pathogens. Wormwood, barberry root, black walnut hull, cape aloe leaf, and garlic are all very powerful, broad-spectrum antimicrobials that kill the bad guys and help reset the balance of gut flora. Many of these also have other healing benefits on the digestive system. Garlic, bentonite clay, and activated charcoal are all powerful toxin removers with a host of other benefits.

A high quality probiotic designed to make it past stomach acid will help restore the balance of the body’s naturally occurring beneficial bacteria by crowding out, and competing with and even feeding off of the harmful flora. The bacteria from these supplements don’t last very long (regardless of what the manufactures tell you), but the idea is that your body’s natural bacteria can proliferate once the probiotics do their job. This is why a prebiotic diet is so important, and raw, fresh, organically grown produce provides the best prebiotics.

Don’t underestimate the power of beneficial bacteria for a properly working, strong immune system. Your beneficial bacteria play a major role in our immune system.

The appendix is a safe house for good bacteria. The body releases these bacteria when the body needs it. If you don’t have an appendix, it behooves you to take probiotics every day for the rest of your life. But take them at the right time. If you take probiotics at the same time you take antimicrobial supplements, the antimicrobials will kill the probiotic bacteria.

When doing a supplement protocol that employs antimicrobials, take the probiotics at night, just before bed, a few hours after taking other supplements that can harm the bacteria. Take the other antimicrobial supplements throughout the day. Or how ever you can work it out to give the probiotics ample time to do their thing before you kill them with antimicrobials.

How to Kill Lyme

Since the bacteria that cause Lyme can be so difficult to kill, a multifaceted approach should be taken with supplements. As mentioned, anyone suffering from Lyme disease is bound to have other issues depleting their immune system as well. The severity of Lyme symptoms will correlate with the overall toxicity in the body. Toxin elimination (which includes toxins released from the Lyme bacteria itself, and all other toxins) is imperative, along with building a healthy gut.

Common Co-Infections Must Be Addressed

Dr. Klinghardt (if you suffer from any disease, check out his research as well) states that common co-infections include, “roundworms, tapeworms, threadworms, toxoplasmosis, giardia and amoebas, clostridia, the herpes virus family, parvovirus B 19, active measles (in the small intestine), leptospirosis, chronic strep infections and their mutations, Babesia, Brucella, Ehrlichiosis, Bartonella, mycoplasma, Rickettsia, Bartonella, and a few others.”

As mentioned previously, fungi including molds, Candida, and other yeast are always part of the picture, and other toxicity issues such as heavy metal contamination are typically a heavy burden on a Lyme infected host as well.

A holistic Lyme protocol has a healthy diet as the foundation, focusing on vegetables, herbs, and whole foods, with the elimination of processed and refined foods, especially those with toxic chemicals added to them. When the diet is dialed in, the supplements have much more effectiveness, and the body is able to purge toxins more easily, and the immune system is radically stronger. Diet is key, and with almost all diseases, the right diet will prevent the disease in the first place, and can usually cure the disease given enough time. But, with today’s toxic loads, supplements are often needed, and even when diet could do the job on its own, again, supplements will radically speed up the process.

Specific Lyme Disease Protocol

This protocol will flush toxins and alleviate the body’s toxic load, replenish nutrition and ensure your body can absorb and assimilate nutrients, strengthen the immune system, and kill pathogens that cause us harm. It will work to rid the body of any infection, including viruses, but the protocol does emphasis effectiveness against difficult bacterial infection, molds and fungal infections, and parasites.

This means that this protocol will be extremely effective against bacterial infections such as syphilis, chlamydia, gonorrhea, and any ailments caused by fungal infections as well.

If a known viral co-infection exists, this protocol is strong enough to eliminate viruses, but you could do so faster by adding St. John’s Wort, Pau d’Arco, colloidal silver, zinc, olive leaf extract, and systemic enzymes. Personally, if it were me, I would just up the systemic enzyme dosage with the following protocol to combat viruses.

Step One – Lyme Disease Diet

It’s time to tighten the diet. Dial it in. Get strict. This doesn’t mean you won’t enjoy food; it means it’s time to learn to enjoy salads! Make a salad every day, using at least ten different vegetables and at least five different herbs and spices. Variety is key, and be sure to mix it up, but always include garlic, turmeric, pepper, healthy fats like avocado, flax, and coconut oil, and get organic, fresh (recently picked from the ground, not frozen or canned) vegetables whenever possible.

Fruit is great to consume with this diet, but every time fruit is eaten, SF722 or another powerful fungal fighter needs to be taken with it.

Juicing is a common problem for us health nuts. Sweet juice is a refined sugar, even fresh squeezed organic orange juice. Beets, carrots, and all fruits (save lemon, lime, granny smith apple, and cranberry), feed fungal infections, bacteria, and promote viruses. Juicing is fine, when done right. Juice regularly, but instead of those sweet juices, try ginger and turmeric shots (see the golden milk recipe below). On the other hand, you’re not likely to have much room for juicing because you will be drinking a lot of cranberry, stevia lemonade.

Every day, make a gallon of cranberry lemonade sweetened with stevia, and a very large salad (at least 6 cups). Obviously your size should be taken into consideration, don’t kill yourself trying to drink a gallon a day if you only weigh 80 pounds, but for most people a gallon of water a day will do them a world of good.

Absolutely no alcohol is allowed on this diet save what little bit is in some of the recommended tinctures.

Recipe links for recipes that don’t feed infection

Other Foods

Beans and rice (when made right, soak and sprout beans, soak rice), quinoa, amaranth, eggs, homemade nut milks (only if nuts are sprouted first, and cashews and pasteurized almonds will not sprout), and organic free-range meats are all okay on this diet.

Review:

  • Eat a big, diverse salad every day (fresh, organic whenever possible, never GMO foods).
  • Consume fresh fruits and vegetables throughout the day.
  • Gallon of cranberry, stevia lemonade with cayenne to taste.
  • Turmeric and ginger juicing regularly, daily is best.
  • No processed, refined, foods. No pasta, no breads, no cereals, no white rice.
  • Prepare your own foods – this is not the time to be going out to eat.
  • No chemically laden foods, fake foods, GMO foods, or even “healthy” junk foods (such as organic chips, organic cereals).

Step Two – Reset the Gut to Heal the Body

Read the article,Best Supplements To Kill Candida and Everything Else You Ever Wanted To Know About Fungal Infections. I know, you’re just getting to the meat of this 5,000+ word article, and I’m asking you to read another beast of an article, but you’ve got Lyme! A supposedly incurable disease means you have plenty of research to do. If you have Lyme, your real problem is a a leaky gut full of fungus that’s overwhelming the immune system.

The aforementioned diet will go a long way to heal the gut, and given time, will typically heal the gut on its own, especially in cases where the body is not dealing with a heavy load or a systemic infection. Since we’re dealing with a systemic infection, the supplements below are highly recommended.

Do not underestimate the importance of this step. This is, in fact, more important than the proceeding steps that specifically address viruses. In fact, most people that find themselves with disease only make it through this step and then feel so much better that they tend to stop the protocol. This is probably fine if you spend the rest of your life eating extremely well, which you should do regardless, but even when the body feels better than it has since you can remember, that doesn’t mean the infection is gone. It means the infection(s) is at bay, but ready to bounce back at the first chance.

The following are supplements that will clean out the gut, help detoxify the body, remove parasites, fungi, and begin the removal of heavy metals and other contaminates.

SF722 is the best supplement I know of for taking care of any kind of fungi (yeast, mold, Candida). You can take a lot of it at once. I’ve taken up to 30 at once with no side effects. For someone with obvious signs of Candida overgrowth I recommend people take 30 a day for the first few days, and then cut back to 10 a day for a few weeks. For cases where someone is unsure of a Candida infection, take 10 a day for a few days and cut back to 5 a day thereafter. Take this supplement whenever consuming foods that may feed Candida (like sweeter fruits such as pineapple), and always have this supplement on hand.

SF722 is very powerful against fungal infections, but it does kill some other bad guys as well, which means it can kill some good guys too, so I recommend taking it with other antimicrobial supplements throughout the day, and replenish beneficial bacteria every night with a probiotic like FloraMend.

Whatever probiotic you choose, be sure it is designed to make it past the stomach acid. Stomach acid kills most of the beneficial bacteria in fermented vegetables and cheaply made probiotic supplements. Bio-K (we don’t have this one at our sister site, Green Lifestyle Market, but most health food stores carry it) is an example of a bacteria specifically designed to make it through stomach acid.

FloraMend is a probiotic with a capsule designed to pass through stomach acid and release in the more alkaline environment of the gut. The benefit of FloraMend it that it stores easily and is tolerant to fairly extreme weather temperatures (up to 110 F). The benefit of Bio-K is that you can add it to your smoothies, feed it to young children and infants, and use it to strengthen the probiotic nature of other yogurts for a treat every now and then (but occasional treats should come after the body burden is substantially lessened, and the host is feeling much better).

Shillington’s products should be taken exactly as directed. His Intestinal Detox has activated charcoal, but I recommend getting more of it on this protocol than the intestinal detox would give by itself, so I added an additional supplement of just the charcoal. I recommend 5-10 a day depending on the body’s burden.

The following supplement regimen should be done for 1-2 weeks, depending on the severity of the flora-imbalance. If most symptoms do not significantly decrease, tighten up the diet and consider adding some more SF722 to the daily protocol.

  • Shillington’s Intestinal Cleanse – Kills parasites, heals the intestinal walls, sets up a hospitable home for healthy flora.
  • Formula SF722 – Undecenoic acid, kills Candida and other fungal functions.
  • Floramend-Prime – A strong probiotic designed to pass through the stomach acid and into the intestinal tract.
  • MicroDefense – Pure Encapsulations
  • Shillington’s Intestinal Detox – This is necessary only for those with seriously damaged intestines, anyone who has recently been vaccinated, or those looking to do a thorough detox. Pulls out heavy metals, positively charged protozoa, and other toxins.
  • Activated Charcoal – Activated Charcoal is highly porous, negatively charged, and attracts and adsorbs unwanted substances, carrying them out of the digestive tract.
  • Blood Detox Formula (tincture) & Blood Detox Tea – This is an absolutely amazing formula for cleaning out the blood, keeping things detoxifying and moving well, and assisting the elimination organs such as the kidneys and liver. I consider this formula to be essential for any detox. Clean blood makes for a clean body. You can use one or the other, but the combination of the tea and tincture is even more powerful. Do not take this formula for more than two weeks, practice two weeks on and one week off. Tip: the instructions on the bottle say to take externally, but it is designed to be taken orally.

Step Three – Kill Lyme, and any other infection

Foundational supplements should be taken for months and could be taken indefinitely. They provide the body with a foundation of the minerals and vitamins and other nutrients needed so that, along with the right diet, the body remains at peak performance, able to fend off new invaders and rid itself of any current infection and toxins.

For those on a tight budget, looking for a stopping point, I recommend completing the first phase of the protocol (above) and then always having on hand the activated charcoal and the SF722. If affordable, add the Total Nutrition Formula and the Fish oil as well, and take every day for a year. A lack of nutrition or an abundance of toxins at any time before the Lyme bacteria is completely eliminated will likely result in resurgence of infection along with renewed symptoms. For most people, a very strict diet and just a few supplements (after balancing the gut flora as previously advised) will eventually rid the body of any and all Lyme.

Foundational Supplements

  • Total Nutrition Formula – This is actual food, perfectly balanced to provide a nice foundation of the most important vitamins and many other essential nutrients. You can also make your own, see below.
  • Liquid Light – The most common minerals Lyme patients tend to be low on include copper, magnesium, manganese and iron. Liquid Light has these and many other minerals the body needs. It’s one of the best mineral supplements on the market.
  • Activated Charcoal – For the same reason mentioned above, this will just continue to pull out toxins as your body heals and fights infection.
  • SF722 – Always keep it on hand. With today’s modern diets and lifestyle, Candida and other fungal infections are an extremely common problem.
  • Systemic Enzymes – These enzymes are designed to pass through the stomach acid and release in the intestinal tract (like the aforementioned FloraMend). While this is one of the least important supplements for specifically killing bacteria, it is a powerful antiviral supplement with an incredible array of other benefits and detoxification capabilities. For more information on this, check out our Vaccine Detox article.
  • Floramend-Prime – For those without an appendix. If you don’t have your appendix then you should be taking a probiotic for the rest of your life.
  • Fish oil with D – Vitamin D is a common vitamin to be low on, even for those eating the healthiest of diets, and the fats are extremely important for building healthy cell structure so that the body’s cells are less susceptible to infection and toxin damage from infectious organisms. For vegans, there are separate vitamin D and fat supplements.

Anti-microbial and Immune Boosting Supplements

The previous list of “foundational supplements” can be taken indefinitely for better health and vitality. They are in fact the supplements that my family, my dog, and I take regularly. This next group of supplements should be taken for two weeks at a time, and then halted for one week. When the body is functioning well, these supplements will eliminate unwanted pathogens, but they also kill our good micro flora, too. Some of the supplements lose their effectiveness after a couple of weeks, and it’s a good idea, after two weeks of these supplements, to build up beneficial bacteria in the body.

One of the reasons this phase of the protocol is so good at eliminating bacteria, even the hard to kill kind, is that we’re attacking it with a wide array of natural chemicals. Many protocols call for three or four different supplements that are known to kill bacterial infections, but do so in the same way with the same chemicals. For instance, Oregon grape, coptis chinensis, and goldenseal are sometimes recommended in the same protocol to kill bacteria, but they use the same naturally occurring chemical called berberine to do so. This regimen utilizes supplements with very different chemical compounds to attack the infection in different ways.

  • Mushroom Complex – This mushroom formula called MycoPhyto Complex uses a mix of six different medicinal mushrooms to improve and maintain the immune system. The phytochemicals in these mushrooms limit the spread of tumors and infections on a microbial level, strengthening the body’s defense system.
  • Oil of Oregano – The beneficial effect of oil of oregano resonates in several of the body’s systems. It’s a powerful antioxidant and a powerful anti-microbial.
  • Berberine – This is the alkaloid known to kill bacteria, viruses, fungi, and parasites that is present in a number of plants including barberry, tree turmeric, Oregon grape, goldenseal, and goldthread.
  • Liposomal Vitamin C – This vitamin C is highly bio-available, and will strengthen the immune system and provide a host of other benefits.
  • Colloidal Silver – Most are familiar with its antimicrobial properties. I’ve never found it to be as effective as other compounds, but combined with other supplements, colloidal silver makes it nearly impossible for infection to flourish.
  • Olive Leaf Extract – This is one that can be taken indefinitely. Olive leaf extract is one of those rare supplements that supports the immune system and kills the infections without harming beneficial microflora.
  • Shillington’s Echinacea Plus – Minimize the severity and duration of a current illness and enhance your immune system – a great addition for anyone detoxifying and looking to keep their immune system strong while the onslaught of toxins works through the elimination organs.

Conclusion

The whole protocol above is overkill. It’s expensive, and it’s more than enough for most. On the other hand, if you have the money and want to knock out chronic disease fast, there’s no better protocol, and all of the recommended supplements have immense benefits to the body for a multitude of reasons. If not, try getting through the first two phases, and then maybe choose just one or two of the supplements for the third phase.

EMF’s should also be limited, and grounding, or Earthing should be done as much as possible. Himalayan salt lamps can be very beneficial for those suffering from Lyme.

Be sure to get enough sleep, and make sure the water you’re drinking is clean, beneficial water.

There are new approaches for diagnosing Lyme in development. They look promising, but you do not have to wait for a proper diagnosis to heal your body and feel vibrant and healthy again. It really doesn’t matter if it’s Lyme or anything else. Healing the body is about restoring the immune system, reducing toxins, and feeding the body right.

Recommended Reading:
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What Causes Chronic Inflammation, and How To Stop It For Good

Almost all diseases or ailments stem from inflammation. This is why inflammation is thought to be the root of disease, but it’s not. This distinction makes sense when you consider the causes of inflammation.

Inflammation is a natural, healthy response to cellular damage or a natural, healthy immune response to a perceived threat. The idea that inflammation can persist without serving a purpose is a misnomer that allows the cause of disease to go unchecked and ignored. A symptom cannot be the root of disease. Chronic inflammation is a symptom.

When any part of the body is inflamed, it is either damaged and healing or damaged and deteriorating. Forget the idea that inflammation is “wrong” or “unnecessary” or that it can even get out of control. It’s not inflammation that is “out of control.” Inflammation is what brings the disease-fighting cells and the extra nutrition needed to heal damage to the site. Without inflammation, we wouldn’t heal.

What causes damage? Damage, in this case, is cell trauma. Cells malfunction due to trauma caused by an external force or from internal trauma caused by toxicity of some kind and (or) a lack of nutrition.

It’s important to note that while nutritional deficiencies are one of the main causes of cell malfunction, diet is not always to blame. Sometimes the problem is a lack of ability to absorb and assimilate nutrition due to damage from toxic foods. For example, many people consume plenty of nutrition while they also ingest way too much sugar.

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Candida Causes Inflammation

Inflammation is not the root of disease; Candida is typically the root of disease.

An overgrowth of Candida causes an imbalanced gut that cannot digest and assimilate nutrition well, and Candida burrows into the gut lining, penetrating the gut wall to allow proteins, sugars, infectious microbes, and other particles into the bloodstream.

Candida Albicans is a very opportunistic parasite. It can normally live in our intestinal tract in harmony with bacteria. “Normally,” in this case, indicates the natural way, but in today’s society, a balanced gut is far from the norm. An imbalance in the gut almost always leads to a massive overgrowth of Candida, which is very good at tearing through the intestinal walls to flood the whole body, opening the door to other infectious agents that should not escape the gut, causing infection and inflammation everywhere.

Candida and other infectious microbes cause inflammation by being properly perceived in the body as an infectious agent (when an immune response is activated) and also due to the toxins they release throughout their lifecycle.

Fungal infections and other parasitical infections cause massive amounts of toxic substances to overwhelm the body, causing cellular damage everywhere. Infection also feeds off of dead and decaying cells, and infection leads to more dead and decaying cells. It’s the epitome of a vicious cycle.

Related: Best Supplements To Kill Candida and Everything Else You Ever Wanted To Know About Fungal Infections

Foods That Cause Inflammation

Candida flourishes when there is not enough beneficial bacteria in the gut. Candida can survive toxic substances more easily than bacteria. Candida spores are almost indestructible. When alcohol is consumed, beneficial bacteria are killed as soon as alcohol enters the gut. Candida bounces back to take over the intestinal tract, and soon invades the whole body when the gut becomes “leaky”. Toxic foods either kill beneficial bacteria due to their toxicity, or they feed Candida and other infectious microbes, which then outnumber the beneficial bacteria.

Foods that feed Candida cause inflammation by feeding Candida, but these and many other foods cause inflammation in other ways, too. Some foods have natural, and naturally beneficial inflammatory properties, like many omega 6 fats. But these fats are not “bad,” they promote the healing process.

Refined Carbohydrates

Sugars feed Candida and almost all other well-known infectious microbes as well. Almost everyone has too much sugar in their diet. In nature, sugar is harder to get. Fruit is seasonal, and in areas where people eat lots of fruits all day, their diets also included strong anti-microbial foods to keep the gut flora in check. Take papaya, for instance, which is high enough in sugar that it could lead to a gut imbalance (especially for those who don’t have the healthiest gut to begin with) if it is eaten too often. In areas of the world were people eat a lot of papaya, they also eat a lot of papaya leaves and seeds, which, among other benefits, have anti-fungal properties that offset the sugars of the fruit.

When healing the gut, it’s important to cut out sweets, including fruit juices (even fresh, slow pressed), honey (even raw), agave, brown rice syrup, and all other sweeteners with the exception of stevia.

Acid Forming Foods (Generally Refined Foods)

When fiber is removed from foods, many of the minerals that alkalinize the body and the beneficial fats are also removed.

It’s imperative to cut out all other refined carbohydrates such as rice, pasta, other refined flours, and any processed starches. They feed Candida as well, but they also are inflammatory and acidic by nature, having lost their anti-inflammatory fatty profile and alkalinity due to the processing that removed fiber. For instance, the brown part of the rice contains the fiber and anti-inflammatory properties.

GMOs and Pesticide Laden Conventional Foods

Pesticides and herbicides are designed to kill pests and microbes, and they do this in our gut as well. GMO foods that are designed to kill the “pest” or the microbe that would otherwise infect the crop will kill the good microbes in the gut, too. Candida will bounce back, along with other infectious microbes, because the gut becomes inhospitable to our naturally beneficial flora as the toxic food keeps coming in.

Factory Farmed Animal Products

Factory farmed animals are raised on genetically modified grains that are already on the inflammatory side of the spectrum, even without being genetically modified. For instance corn, wheat, oats, hay, and certain grasses are inflammatory, especially when they are not balanced with a wider variety of natural foods within the diet.

A cow, for instance, would normally eat many different kinds of grasses and other plants growing from the ground. Now, beef comes from cows that are typically feed toxic grains that they would not normally eat and lots of antibiotics. Even grass fed cows (especially from larger scale farms) are typically only given access to a very limited diet with only one or a few kinds of grasses. This lack of diversity does not meet their nutritional needs for optimum health.

Dairy has the same issues, plus pasteurization and homogenization destroy many nutrients in milk and makes proper digestion more difficult. Homogenization also changes the protein molecules.

If we were making bread the way we did a very long time ago…

Wheat, Bread, Gluten

If we were making bread the way we did a very long time ago, we would be using probiotic and yeast cultures to fully break down the gluten proteins before they are ingested. The flours would be processed by hand and not refined (no nutrition removed). The sugars added to make the bread would be much less refined, and the bacteria would go to work on the sugars like it does with yogurt, leaving an end product many beneficial properties.

Today, due to hybridization, there is a new kind of gluten molecule that we ingest. This gluten molecule in our wheat is more inflammatory than previous varieties. It’s not the only gluten molecule in bread, but it’s prominent, and it’s not found in ancient wheat strands.

Today’s bread is made from wheat sprayed with Round-Up and other chemicals that is then refined and processed with most of the nutrients stripped before being fortified with toxic manufactured vitamins and minerals that the body cannot properly assimilate. Then sugar is added along with other chemical ingredients like preservatives and colorings. The end result is a bread far removed from the kind of food the Bible mentions.

“Bad” Fats

Omega 6s are not all inflammatory fats or “bad” fats. Omega 6s are just as important as omega 3s. Healthy, naturally occurring “inflammatory” omega 6s, in balance with omega 3s, and 9s, help the body properly respond to injury, and consequently, to heal. An imbalance of fats causes an inflammatory response for many different reasons, including but not limited to, the natural inflammatory properties found in some fats.

On the other hand, there are “bad” fats. No, they’re not saturated fats. Most informed people know by now that coconut and avocado and plenty of other fats have tremendous healing properties and do not naturally contribute to obesity. The bad fats are commercial, highly processed fats, rancid fats, trans fats, and otherwise unnatural fats. These fats cause inflammation and contribute to every autoimmune disease.

Other Toxic Ingredients

Soy lecithin, casein, and protein isolates generally have heavy omega 6 profiles and are also very acidifying.

Excitotoxins like MSG, aspartate, and glutamates, excite nerves, damaging the nervous system.

In cells, glutamate and aspartate can be synthesized from each other. The two main food additives that are sources for excitotoxins are MSG (monosodium glutamate) and aspartame (NutraSweet). High levels of glutamate and aspartate are found naturally in protein rich foods, including very high levels in wheat gluten, and milk casein. While these amino acids are necessary for normal brain function, excess amounts of them create a wide range of bodily damage.” – Dr. Amy A. Yasko

We could go on and on about artificial sweeteners, artificial colors, artificial flavors, preservatives, and other food additives, but the body needs whole foods to heal, not processed foods with ingredient labels.

Inflammation and Free Radicals

Inflammation causes free radicals, which damage cells and cause more inflammation.

You can picture free radicals as red-hot particles bouncing around inside a cell burning anything they come into contact with such as your DNA, cell membranes and proteins in the cytoplasm. – Evergreen Nutrition

Free radicals are created by our natural everyday functions, and they play many important roles, including the elimination of the weakest cells in the adjacent area (like infectious microbes). But too much inflammation means way too many free radicals that are overwhelming the body, impeding healing.

Specific Nutrient Deficiencies Known To Cause Inflammation

Any nutrient deficiency can cause inflammation one way or another. Two common nutrition deficiencies well known to directly cause inflammation include:

Vitamin D deficiency

Vitamin D deficiency is linked to depression, pain, increased overall inflammation, an ineffective immune system, inflammatory bowel disease, many different autoimmune diseases, many forms of cancer, and so much more.

Vitamin B deficiencies (especially B6 and B12)

Vitamin B deficiencies can cause, exacerbate, and also be the result of inflammation. When the body’s digestive system isn’t healthy, B vitamin assimilation becomes more difficult, and extra B vitamins often give some almost immediate relief to those suffering from inflammation. This is especially important for anyone dealing with an abundance of stress.

How Excess Weight Causes Inflammation

Most studies that point to obesity as a cause of inflammation rely on the problems associated with obesity to show correlation to inflammation. This is problematic because the cause of the inflammation is not obesity. Inflammation is due to causal factors that leads to obesity. While a fatty liver can lead to inflammation, it’s not obesity that makes a liver fat; it’s a poor diet that makes the entire body overweight.

That said, carrying a lot of fat on the body is stressful to the body, which leads to damage, which requires repair and causes inflammation. But there are some interesting studies showing a direct cause.

We did not know fat cells could instigate the inflammatory response. That’s because for a very long time we thought these cells did little else besides store and release energy. But what we have learned is that adipocytes don’t just rely on local resident immune cells for protection… – A Mechanism by Which Fat Causes Chronic Inflammation

Chronic Anxiety

This is another chicken and egg scenario. Inflammation of the body causes a tremendous amount of stress, both physical and emotional. Chronic pain is stressful! On the other hand, chronic anxiety will leave the body in an inflammatory state as well. The two feed off of each other.

When intense anxiety has been a part of someone’s life for more than a few days, anxiety causes depleted levels of certain nutrients, like B vitamins, which are needed to get over anxiety. A deficiency in B vitamins also leads to anxiety.

Chronic anxiety eventually causes numerous nutritional imbalances, and the whole endocrine system begins to function poorly. Anyone who has been dealing with any kind of chronic stress needs to nourish and heal the thyroid, the adrenals, and the gut before inflammation will subside.

Conclusion

Whole foods, foods that have no need for an ingredients list, heal the body. There are lots of conditions that cause allergic reactions, sensitivities, or other inflammatory responses from otherwise healthy foods. For instance, someone with severe hypothyroidism may worsen with the consumption of cruciferous vegetables. The problem with eliminating whole, healthy foods in the diet is that the nutrient deficiencies that are at the cause of the problem get worse. Remove all unhealthy foods from the diet. Temporarily remove some healthier foods if you must, but add them back in as soon as you are able.

For those who are forced to breathe toxic air regularly, or live under power lines, or have other environmental issues that cause inflammation, it takes much longer to heal the body if the environmental toxins are not removed. For most people, it is doable. The body can handle a very heavy toxic load if the gut is balanced and the diet is good. Also, be sure to read How To Heal Your Gut if you’re suffering from chronic inflammation.

Recommended Supplements:
Further Reading:
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Is Wheat Poison? What’s Behind the Rise of Celiac Disease and Gluten Intolerance

We humans have been hunter-gatherers for more than 99.9% of our history. For millions of years, we subsisted on a diet of fruits, nuts, wild vegetables, bone marrow, seafood, meat, and herbs. Grains such as wheat, corn, barley, oats, and rye were not introduced into the diet until about 10,000 years ago. These grains became staples of our diet due to the introduction of agriculture.

Not everyone fared so well in this new agricultural system. As a matter of fact, the majority of people didn’t. Relying on agriculture for the most of the diet, restricted variety. Archaeologists have discovered that the switch to agriculture resulted in a dramatic decline in health in every culture.

Our bodies are not well adapted to grains, though some tolerate them better than others. Many cannot tolerate grains that contain gluten at all, in any amount. For other sensitive individuals, long-term consumption of gluten destroys their health and may lead to their death.

Contents

History of Celiac Disease

Celiac disease, also known as celiac sprue, non tropical sprue, and gluten sensitive enteropathy, has probably always been with us. The earliest case, known as the “case of Cosa,” is more than 2,000 years old. A young woman’s remains were found southwest of modern day Tuscany, Italy. It is believed that she was between the ages of 18 and 20. We know that she had celiac disease because genetic testing revealed the presence of the HLA-DQ2.5. gene, a definitive genetic marker for the disease. Her skeleton also revealed the typical damage caused by malnutrition that is characteristic of a person with celiac disease who continues to eat gluten throughout their lifetime.

Aretaeus, an ancient Greek physician who was believed to practice in the 1st century AD, was the first to describe one of the most noticeable symptoms of celiac disease. Steatorrhea was the most common symptom, a tendency for fatty stools with poorly digested food. He wrote about a mysterious disease afflicting a number of his patients who he called “koilakos,” which means “suffering in the bowels.” Aretaeus believed the affliction was caused by a lack of heat in the digestive tract. This was a reasonable idea because he found that his patients only partially digested their food. Unfortunately, he did not find the cause or cure. Celiac disease and its debilitating symptoms continued to plague a percentage of the population for centuries, without anyone identifying the source of the problem.

Francis Adams translated Aretaeus’ work from Greek to English at the Sydenham Society of England in 1856. He coined the term coeliacs.

In 1888, Samuel Gee, a British pediatrician, was the first to make the connection between diet and the disease. He said, “If the patient can be cured at all, it must be my means of diet.” Gee experimented with various diets. He showed moderate success by introducing mussels (a gluten free food) into the diet. Eventually though, he put his celiac patients back on a high gluten diet, (no fruit, no sago, no rice, no vegetables) and they got worse, slowing dying a painful death.

Gee primarily fed his patients a diet of thin slices of bread and raw meat. He failed to discover the bread was killing them. Part of the reason was the fact that he was actually treating patients with two different afflictions: celiac disease and tropical sprue, two unique diseases with similar symptoms.

(Tropical sprue is a disease that to this day has an unknown cause, but is believed to be an infection caused by an unknown pathogen. It solely afflicts people in the tropics, and people who have traveled to tropical regions. Damage to the intestines and malnutrition are the typical symptoms.)

Many years later, a Dutch pediatrician, Willem Karel Dicke, discovered a link between celiac disease and wheat. During World War II, food shortages made it impossible for him to feed his patients the standard staples of wheat. Out of necessity, the doctor switched to gluten free alternatives, and his celiac patients thrived under the new diet. When wheat became available again, his patients with celiac disease quickly deteriorated. This lead Dr. Dicke to make the connection between proteins found in wheat and damage to the small intestine. He wrote his thesis on celiac disease and its connection to wheat in 1950.

In the early fifties, Dr. William Holmes Crosby Jr. developed a less invasive technique to biopsy the small intestine. Then in the late fifties, Dr. Cyrus Rubin further refined the intestinal biopsy technique. This refinement lead to a more accurate diagnoses of celiac disease. Dr. Rubin also defined the diagnostic criteria for celiac disease, proving that it afflicts both children and adults.

Then in the 1970s, the right kind of specialist shed more light on the problem. Anne Ferguson, a gastroenterologist, discovered that celiac disease is due to the body’s immune response to gluten in the digestive tract. In 1975, she published a paper in the Lancet, which showed how biopsied tissues from celiac patients react to the proteins found in wheat, while the control biopsies from other individuals did not show this immune response.

Glyphosate and the Rise in Celiac Disease

In 2013, Anthony Samsel and Dr. Stephanie Seneff revealed a correlation between the increasing use of glyphosate in agriculture and the growth of celiac disease in the Western population. (Glyphosate is the active ingredient in Monsanto’s Round Up, and it is used extensively in modern-day agriculture and landscaping.)

Celiac disease can originate from genetics, but you don’t have to be born with it. Like many diseases, environmental toxicity is increasing its numbers. To further explain this interplay between genetics and environment, the following passage is a quote from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences:

Nearly all diseases result from a complex interaction between an individual’s genetic make-up and the environmental agents that he or she is exposed to.

Examples of environmental agents:

  • Mold
  • Ozone
  • Pesticides
  • Air pollution
  • Cleaning solutions
  • Dust mites
  • Some foods and medications

“Subtle differences in genetic factors cause people to respond differently when exposed to the same environmental agent.  As a result, some possess a low risk for developing a disease through an environmental insult, while others are much more vulnerable.

“As scientists learn more about the connection between genetics and environmental factors, and how that connection may influence human disease, they’ll begin to  develop new strategies for the treatment and prevention of many illnesses.” – Gene-Environment Interaction

Anthony Samsel and Dr. Stephanie Seneff have suggested such a strategy. They have urged governments to ban the use of glyphosate in agriculture.

Wheat isn’t grown the way it used to be. Conventional methods of wheat farming have become more toxic. For decades now, farmers have been fertilizing their fields with petroleum based chemical fertilizers and using poisonous insecticides. Recently, wheat farming has grown even more toxic. A common modern farming practice is for many farmers to douse their fields with Round Up right before the harvest. This practice kills weeds that compete with the wheat. It also increases the yield from the wheat crop, which goes to seed more readily as it is dying. Note that no one claims Round Up is good for us; the biotech folks only profess that it isn’t bad for us. Wheat farming has become so toxic, is it any wonder that allergies to wheat and gluten are on the rise?

How We Make Bread

Consider how we make bread in modern times. White bread is manufactured from only one part of the wheat grain – the starch-filled endosperm. This process removes 4/5 of the nutrition. The starch is then ground into a fine powder. This processing is done at high temperatures and more of the nutrients are destroyed. The flour is then gray, so it is bleached with chemicals such as benzoyl peroxide or chlorine gas.

White bread appears to be healthy when one reads the label that lists its fortified vitamins and minerals, but these poor quality, often petroleum based vitamins and minerals are rarely of any nutritional value. All of the good vitamins and minerals were removed during processing.

Unfortunately, there are other added substances that are harmful to sufferers of celiac disease. Yeast, a common leavening agent used in breads, can make the environment in the digestive tract more suitable to an overgrowth of Candida. Those with celiac disease are particularly prone to Candida overgrowth in their digestive tract.

Some amount of Candida in the body is normal, but too much can be very harmful. When Candida multiplies out of control, it kills off good bacteria, releases toxins, and can actually penetrate the intestines by growing through them. This can cause partially digested food particles to enter the bloodstream through the perforated intestines. This is what is referred to as leaky gut syndrome. This often causes an immune system response, which can lead to more food allergies and a variety of autoimmune diseases. Overconsumption of grains, bread, and especially bread that has been highly processed and sweetened with refined sugars, has been linked with Candida overgrowth.

Traditionally, Bread Was Healthier

Breads have been made for more than 8,000 years, but yeast wasn’t introduced in baking until 1668. So what did bakers use before yeast? The traditional cultures used to make dough rise were bacteria, microscopic hard working fermenters that were pulled from the air.

Lactobacilli gives sourdough bread its unique flavor. The same bacteria that bakers have used for centuries to bake bread is closely related to the bacteria used to make yogurt and many cheeses.

This bacteria breaks down gluten and other proteins, making grains with gluten more easily digested. In the past, grains were routinely sprouted before grinding them into flour, another step rarely done today.

Some individuals with celiac disease can tolerate sourdough bread if it is prepared in a precise manner: made with sprouted grains and fermented for an extended period of time.

What is Gluten?

Gluten is a protein that is made up of gliadin and glutenin. It acts as an emulsifier and it helps to bind food together. This is why gluten free foods do not usually have the doughy, elastic consistency of foods containing gluten. Xantham gum is often used in place of gluten as a binder for baked gluten free foods.

Candida, Gluten, and Other Food Allergies

Individuals with celiac disease are commonly allergic to other foods as well. Cow dairy is a very common food allergy for sufferers of celiac disease. Many are sensitive to oats, even when they are gluten free, due to a similar protein. Some are sensitive to other gluten free grains. The reason for this is due to an overabundance of Candida in the intestinal tract. And this is due to sugar.

In modern diets, sugar intake has increased substantially for many years. In other words, along with all of the other changes with how we produce and consume wheat products, we are also seeing a rapid increase in people with an over abundance of Candida due to refined sugars.

Proteins from foods (such as gluten, and many others) enter the blood stream through holes in the intestinal wall due to Candida. Candida, when left unchecked, will actually destroy the protective biofilm and drill holes into the intestinal wall, causing leaky gut syndrome. When foods passes through into the bloodstream undigested, the body sees the proteins as foreign compounds that do not belong, and the body can develop an allergic reaction to the proteins.

Many have reported being able to consume gluten products occasionally after balancing their intestinal flora and healing their gut. It is wise, whenever consuming gluten, to also take a probiotic. Also, we highly recommend not eating any commercial bread. For someone who feels that bread and pasta are too important for them to give up, it’s crucial for them to abstain from wheat products until the intestines are healthy, and then make their own bread and pasta the right way, including soaking, sprouting, and using a strong bacterial culture.

Increased Risk for other Debilitating Diseases

Individuals with celiac disease are more likely to develop several cancers. They are also more likely to have Addison’s disease, anemia, dermatitis, diabetes, thyroid disease, autoimmune thrombocytopenia, sarcoidosis, IgA nephropathy, and Down’s syndrome.

Symptoms

There are over 300 known symptoms of celiac disease. The more common symptoms are listed below.

  • Abdominal bloating and pain
  • ADHD
  • Anemia
  • Arthritis
  • Anxiety
  • Bone pain
  • Bedwetting
  • Chronic fatigue
  • Constipation
  • Delayed growth and puberty
  • Depression
  • Diarrhea
  • Eczema
  • Failure to thrive
  • Infertility
  • Irritability
  • Irregular menstrual periods
  • Joint pain
  • Malnutrition
  • Migraines
  • Miscarriages
  • Osteoporosis
  • Persistent canker sores
  • Rashes
  • Seizures
  • Tingling sensation or numbness in hands or feet
  • Unusually foul-smelling stool, blood or undigested foods in stool
  • Unexplained weight loss
  • Vomiting

Diet Is the Only Known Treatment

The treatment for sufferers of celiac disease is to avoid gluten entirely, to eat a completely gluten free diet. The FDA does not require food manufacturers to list gluten on their labels. Wheat is required to be clearly labeled, but gluten is not. The following foods contain gluten:

  • Wheat
  • Barley
  • Bulgur
  • Couscous
  • Durum
  • Einkorn
  • Emmer
  • Farina
  • Farro
  • Kamut
  • Malt
  • Mir
  • Oats (unless labeled gluten free oats- oats are often contaminated)
  • Rye
  • Seitan
  • Semolina
  • Spelt
  • Triticale

Gluten is commonly found in breads, bread crumbs, baked goods, beer, biscuits, brewer’s yeast, brown rice syrup (often made with barley enzymes), cereals, communion wafers, crepes, croutons, dextrin, flour tortillas, food coloring, food starch, French toast, granola, gravies, herbal teas, malt vinegar, marinades, sauces, pancakes, pastas, roux, salad dressing, soup, soy sauce, starch, stuffing, waffles, and wine. Any processed food made in a facility that also processes foods with gluten may be contaminated.

Other non-food items that may not be gluten free include:

  • Lipbalm, lipgloss, lipstick
  • Supplements
  • Pharmaceuticals
  • Vitamin and mineral pills
  • Over the counter medications
  • Playdough (some kids will eat copious amounts of the stuff when playing with it)

This list is not meant to be comprehensive. Many processed foods contain gluten, and unless the package says certified gluten free it probably isn’t. Many items that one might think are gluten free like corn flakes and rice cereal use malt or barley extract as a sweetener. Restaurants that do not offer gluten free menus cannot guarantee that their food is gluten free. And sadly, many that do offer gluten free choices contaminate the food while preparing it.

Conclusion

Celiac disease is an autoimmune disease, and like all autoimmune diseases, the body’s immune system attacks the body’s tissues. In the case of celiac disease, T cells attack the lining of the small intestine in response to gluten being passed through the digestive tract. This damage to the small intestine makes individuals with celiac disease more prone to cancers of the intestine. When an individual with celiac disease eats gluten, their symptoms can vary drastically in severity. Ingesting gluten can cause severe symptoms on one occurrence and only mild symptoms the next, which can confuse and delay an accurate diagnosis.

Many individuals with celiac disease suffer in silence, living their lives in constant pain and discomfort, because they have yet to be diagnosed.

Like most autoimmune diseases celiac disease affects more women than men. Women are more likely than men to be misdiagnosed as well and more likely to be told that their symptoms are “in their head”. This is one of the reasons why many sufferers of celiac disease are likely to ignore their symptoms until they become unbearable.

Thankfully, celiac disease is not the mysterious death sentence that it used to be in ages past. Now there are gluten free menus, gluten free options at the grocery store, and naturopathic ways to detox from gluten. Even the Catholic Church and the Methodist Church provide gluten free communion wafers upon request.

We know more about this disease and its symptoms than we ever have before. We also understand that gluten destroys the cilia in the intestines, the part of our anatomy that pulls nutrients into the bloodstream. If a person with this disease continues to eat gluten, malnutrition can result because the body is so damaged it is unable to properly metabolize nutrients from food. Individuals with celiac disease are more likely to be diagnosed with other autoimmune diseases such as lupus and Hashimoto’s thyroiditis.

We highly recommend that anyone with any autoimmune disease completely remove gluten from their diet and concentrate on healing the gut. Anyone with a history of gluten intolerance needs to heal their gut and balance their flora. Check out How to Kill Candida and Balance Your Inner Ecosystem.

Recommended Supplements:

Further Reading:
Sources:


Being Diagnosed With Multiple Sclerosis and Refusing To Live With It

I thought I was healthy; I was forty-one years old and in the prime of my life. I worked out regularly, often with my new husband and at times with a trainer. On the weekend, my husband and I would ride 30-40 miles through the vineyards of Germany on our bicycles. I would have classified myself as healthy, maybe even very healthy.

I ate relatively well most of the time, at least compared to other people. I was always conscious of what I ate and usually chose the low sugar, low-fat option if there was one. I didn’t drink regular soda and only drank diet soda when water wasn’t available. As I said, I thought I was healthy.

The first sign that something was wrong came when my husband and I were on vacation in Greece on Valentines Day, 2014. As we walked back to the hotel after a long day of sightseeing, I noticed a slight limp on my right side. I also kept tripping on the sidewalk, and it was hard for me to keep up with my husband. The fourth time I tripped, my husband looked at me and said, “What is wrong with you?” I shrugged my shoulders and laughed. I chalked it up to the uneven sidewalks in Athens and maybe the wine.

I thought I was healthy…

That next week I noticed that with each day my limp got noticeably worse. I thought it must be the long-standing hip problem I’d had since my high school cheerleading days. I saw two different orthopedic doctors and got an MRI of my hip. They told me that eventually I would need a right hip replacement, but I needed to wait longer because I was too young. One orthopedic surgeon even watched as I walked down the hall and commented, “You do have a limp, don’t you?” but he didn’t offer any suggestions or advice.

About a week after the last orthopedic appointment, I realized that my worsening limp was not due to my bad hips. I was getting up an hour earlier than usual because I had become so slow at getting ready for work. I tried to dry my hair, something I’ve done a million times before, but the brush was so heavy in my right hand, I literally couldn’t keep it above my head. When I held the brush up, it would drop onto my head.

That same day, I was trying to sign documents at work. Again, it was something I’ve done a million times, but when my brain told my hand to sign, my hand wasn’t responding. I watched my hand move in slow motion.

If I tried to pick up something with my right hand, it would fall

During that same week, I started bumping into walls. I lost all sense of where my body was in space. I lost my balance while walking around a corner or while walking down the sidewalk. I would have to reach out and grab something to stabilize myself or use my forearms against the wall to prevent myself from falling. I also had to hold onto a dresser or nightstand to brace myself when I got out of bed and when I put my clothes on, or I would fall. By the end of the week, I had bruises up and down my forearms. I worked as a Domestic Violence Victim Advocate, and I was covered with bruises. I kept getting strange looks, and a few people even questioned me about the bruises.

Once I realized that my hand was involved, I immediately suspected MS. Ten years earlier, I was diagnosed with optic neuritis, inflammation of the optic nerve, which is often a precursor to MS. One morning, ten years ago, I noticed the lower left quadrant of my left eye was completely black. I saw a couple doctors and was diagnosed with optic neuritis. After three days of IV steroids, it went away. I followed up with a neurologist who gave me an MRI and told me that I did have brain lesions, but they were small and were not in the right location of the brain to justify an MS diagnosis. He didn’t seem to be worried about it. He told me to watch it. I followed up with him for a few years, and then I stopped. I had actually forgotten about it, until now.

I am right handed but, because of my progressively worsening paralysis, I found myself compensating with my left. This was only three weeks after the first symptoms. I would try to pick up something with my right hand; it would fall. Soon I was brushing my teeth, maneuvering the mouse, and even signing my name with my left hand. My handwriting looked like a third grader’s, no matter which hand I used.

It took me twice as long to do anything: to shower, get dressed, walk to the bathroom, walk to the car. Every time I would lie down, my legs would go into action. Relentless leg spasticity disturbed my sleep all night long. About every 30 seconds my right leg, and sometimes my left as well, would contract intensely, then release. I was exhausted before I even got out of bed in the morning. I didn’t want to go on. I didn’t know who I was anymore. My body had betrayed me.

Immediately after I suspected MS, I went to see my doctor and begged for a neurology consult. I knew that what I was experiencing was neurological, and I was pretty confident it was MS due to my history. I asked for IV steroids immediately. My doctor laughed at me. She didn’t believe me. She said no one was going to give me IV steroids. She called me hysterical and gave me a prescription for Valium, which I willingly took at the time. I responded to this by doing what I had started doing so often; I burst into tears. Finally, I was referred to a neurologist: my appointment was scheduled two weeks from that day.

During the fifth week, I continued to research conventional treatment for MS.  I felt scared and hopeless as I became more and more disabled. I couldn’t walk up or down stairs without using a cane and holding onto the rail. I had already fallen three times. I couldn’t raise my toes on my right foot. This made driving difficult and frankly dangerous. I had to lift my whole foot and put it on the pedals. I was rapidly losing control over my body.

I couldn’t wait two weeks for the appointment. I walked into the neurologist’s office a week before my scheduled appointment, and surprisingly, the doctor agreed to see me. I just couldn’t take it anymore –not knowing what my body was doing, getting worse each day. I was a mess. Through my tears, I explained my history to doctor number four. I pressed for IV steroids because I knew in my heart that this was MS. He scheduled me for two MRI’s for the following week, one of the brain and one of the spine, both with contrast.

During this first appointment with the neurologist, I mentioned that I had been researching MS on the Internet and that I kept seeing stories of women who’s MS symptoms had improved simply by making dietary changes. I asked him what he thought about cutting out meat, processed food, sugar, dairy, and gluten. My doctor told me that there was no evidence that diet had any impact on the course of the disease or the severity of symptoms.

During the next week, I got the two MRI’s and kept the initial appointment with my neurologist, which was now our followup appointment. I was officially diagnosed with MS on March 20, 2014. This was six weeks after the onset of symptoms. MS had hit me fast and hard. I was still working, but I couldn’t concentrate. I couldn’t write. It was hard to type. I could barely walk. Some co-workers were questioning whether I should continue to work. My future was bleak.

When I read about natural remedies for MS I started to regain hope.

I had training for work that had been pre-planned six months previously, and I was scheduled to go to the States in two days. My neurologist told me that we would talk about preventative medication when I returned from my trip in two weeks. I received 1000 mg of IV prednisone that day, 2000 mg the next morning, and oral prednisone to take with me on my trip.

My head was spinning. I didn’t know how I was going to make it through a 12-hour flight let alone concentrate on spouse abuse training. During my trip, an airline escort had to meet me at the gate with a wheelchair and wheel me to the connecting flight. All I could think of was how I was going to continue to deteriorate, and I wondered what my future would look like. I spent the majority of the next two weeks reading about MS.

I returned to Germany two weeks later and started taking Tecfidera, a preventative MS medication, twice daily. I was also taking a muscle relaxer, an anti-anxiety medication, and a pain killer for the severe leg cramps. In addition, I had been taking a twice-daily steroid inhalant for asthma for more than ten years, and I kept a rescue inhaler with me at all times to use as needed. I also suffered from severe migraines since childhood, and I took Imitrex for this as needed.

In my research of conventional treatment for MS, all I read about was how the disease was “incurable” and about how I would need to set up a plan for “progressive disability” and “wheelchairs, home health aides, and Social Security Disability.” For about three days, I was consumed with dark thoughts. I didn’t want my new husband to have to care for me like that. For those three days, I wanted to die. Then I continued my research.

When I read about natural remedies for MS, I started to regain hope. I realized that the conventional medical community didn’t know what caused MS and didn’t believe there was a cure. I kept finding examples of how diet changes not only improved MS symptoms, but also cured it. As I read, I started to believe that I could get healthy, truly healthy. I also started to take action. I maintained the diet changes I had started and learned more about real health every day. I chose to continue to improve my diet; because it was the one thing I had control over in this whole situation.

I then remembered my old friend, Michael Edwards, had a real interest in alternative health care. He asked me to read several articles in his magazine, Organic Lifestyle Magazine. I began to learn more and more about health, real health, and how it is intimately connected to what we put in our mouth. Together Michael and I developed a nutritional and detoxification plan for me.

I noticed improvements right away. Just as I had declined a little bit every day, I noticed that I got a little bit stronger and more stable every day. I soon noticed that my other health ailments were improving, too. I no longer wheezed or suffered from migraines. I learned how to heal my gut from 20 years of Tylenol and Advil abuse. I learned how to feed my body nutrient-dense, anti-inflammatory foods that would aid in my healing. Many people looked at my salads and smoothies and said “You are so disciplined!” I typically replied, “My mobility is a good motivator.”

I stayed on Tecfidera from April until November 2014 and then made the decision to stop it. At first I was scared to make this decision. I had to get past the brainwashing; the belief that I had to take what the doctor prescribed. I had been able to wean myself off all of the other pharmaceuticals I had been taking, including the asthma medicine and migraine pills, which I had taken for more than 30 years. I was able to do this simply by adding organic, raw produce-more vegetables than fruit- to my diet.

I got confirmation that this was what was helping me whenever I would veer off the diet in any way. Once, about 45 days into eating only raw produce (organic when possible) I went to a going away luncheon for a close friend. The menu was abbreviated, so there wasn’t anything on it I could eat. I chose to eat a cheese pizza with whatever raw veggies they could put on top. Even though I only ate the top of the pizza (cheese, onion, and mushrooms), before I left the restaurant my forehead was pounding. I had an immediate, physical reaction to either the  dairy or the gluten.

More recently, I ate couscous for several days, not knowing that it was wheat. This time I didn’t get a headache; I had a full relapse of my MS symptoms. I noticed that my right foot had dropped, and I was tripping. I also had to stabilize myself when I rounded corners like before. I noticed a significant decrease in my energy and decreased ability to go up or down stairs. When I mentioned this to Michael, the first thing he said was, “Tell me exactly what you’ve eaten for the last four days.” When I stopped and thought about it, I realized couscous had been the only change in my diet.

There was another time, right after I finished the first two phases of my detox program (about 30 days of eating raw, organic produce) that I went out to eat with some girlfriends. I did this every Friday, so I knew how to stick to my program at a restaurant. On that day, however, we got to talking about how well I was doing. I shared with them how I was able to get off all of the medications simply by changing what I ate. I told them I was better – walking better, feeling better, and having more energy. I thought, “I’ve been good. I’ve stuck to my program so well I deserve some baklava.” It was delicious, but I couldn’t sleep that night because my stomach was turning in knots, and my legs, which had been peaceful for three weeks,started to spasm again. I told myself, “Baklava doesn’t taste this good. Nothing does.”

The radiologist looked at me and said, “You’re better!”

Four months after being diagnosed, it was time for a repeat MRI. My neurologist had said that the most I could hope for was no new lesions on my brain. Not only were there no new lesions, it showed no evidence of inflammation and the lesions I had previously were significantly reduced. The radiologist looked at me and said, “You’re better!”

Recently, I had a blood test that confirmed that the two indicators that show inflammation in the body were completely normal. These indicators were extremely elevated in March but normal in November. I have no doubt that it is due to the lifestyle changes I’ve made that have contributed to my healing.

It’s now been ten months since my initial diagnosis, and for the first time in my life, I am no longer an asthmatic. I don’t take asthma or migraine medicine or any pharmaceuticals for that matter. I only take natural supplements when needed to supplement my diet.

I use a good, whole food, nutrition supplement (Total Nutrition Formula) in my smoothie every morning and munch on a big salad all throughout the day and into the evening. My salad is full of 10 or more different organic vegetables and 3-4 different types of leafy greens with lots of garlic, onions, and turmeric. After all of that, if I am still hungry (and often I’m not) I’ll have some cooked quinoa mixed with raw garlic and any other raw vegetables. I drink a gallon of pure, living water every day (I also make this cranberry lemonade). To my water, I add either organic apple cider vinegar and organic strap molasses or organic lemon and cranberry juice sweetened with stevia and spiced with cayenne pepper.

As I continue on this healing journey, I continue to learn and make improved health choices. I learned that couscous is wheat, and it will imitate an MS flare up. I learned that nothing is as good as true health, not even baklava.

Note: I owe so much of my success in healing to the following article in Organic Lifestyle Magazine and the following supplements from Green Lifestyle Market. Much love to Michael Edwards, Chief Editor. Thank you!

Further Reading:
Recommended Supplements:


Avoid These Common Mistakes To Optimize Your Health Quickly

For most people, learning about natural health (which, incidentally is the only kind of health there is) includes many of these common pitfalls that impede healing. The average person, especially those under 50, can achieve a high level of health very quickly, but it’s rare. The reason for this is brainwashing. Health is not nearly as complicated as we’re led to believe. Deprograming our brains, getting rid of all of the nonsense, is the challenge that takes people weeks, months, or usually years to achieve in order to restore health.

If you’ve had enough of the aches and pains, disease, doctors pilling on medications, or you just feel it’s time to avoid the fate you see your friends and family fall into, here’s what you can do to radically accelerate your learning curve and achieve a truly wonderful state of natural health and vitality, quickly.

No More Diet Foods

Diet soda, lean microwave dinners, healthy this and low fat that… are almost always garbage! If they reduce the fat, they increase the sugar. When they reduce the sugar, they increase the MSG. If the processed food does not have any fat or sugar, it almost always has artificial chemicals.

Stop Reading Labels

That’s right, I said stop reading labels, for a little while. Now that I’ve got your attention, I mean stop buying packaged foods. It’s important to learn how to read labels, but it’s much more important to shop in a manner that doesn’t require a lot of reading.

Typical self-proclaimed health-nuts love their junk food just as much as the conventional, sugar and caffeine addicted, soda drinking, GMO eating, processed food-buying consumer. The difference is that the health-nut generally buys foods labeled organic, or all natural, or something similar. Under many circumstances these words mean next to nothing. All natural is practically an industry joke played on gullible consumers. The phrase “Made with organic ingredients” is often simply a way to mark up the price. There are exceptions, and there is some junk food that I personally purchase from time to time, but organic junk food is still junk food!

Know What Health Food Really Is

Look at it this way, food has three levels: healthy, neutral, and not healthy. Healthy food heals. Neutral food has lots of benefits, especially when eaten with healthy foods, but it doesn’t really heal the body on its own.

Healthy food is produce. – raw, fresh produce. Foods that are alive are foods that heal and help rebuild the body. The fresher, the better. Enzymes are the key to assimilating nutrition, the key to vitality, the key to health. Very few people get enough enzymes. Enzymes are in raw foods, not in cooked foods. Cooking kills enzymes.

It’s important to understand that every time we eat foods void of enzymes, we’re taxing our bodies and reducing our lifespans, even when those food choices are of the healthier variety like rice and beans.

Brown rice, beans, quinoa, and lentils are examples of good foods to eat that should be considered neutral foods. These foods are wonderful sources of protein, bulk calories, minerals, and some vitamins. While raw food is best, it can be difficult for most, and impossible for some, to get enough minerals, protein, and calories from raw foods alone (for instance, I know plenty of people who have very poor access to fresh produce, or cannot afford it). Obviously, when cooked right, these foods have lots of benefits, but they don’t come close to the amazing health benefits of a salad. On the other hand, brown rice and beans with some raw produce such as avocados, diced tomatoes, chopped onions, crushed garlic, and ground turmeric is an incredibly healing, very beneficial, warm, and truly healthy meal. But, it still doesn’t even compare a big, diverse salad.

Cut Out the Sugar (this includes juicing)

Brown rice syrup, agave nectar, honey, coconut sugar, maple syrup, apple juice, beet juice, and sugar cane juice are much healthier choices than conventional sugar and high fructose corn syrup. They are “healthier” choices, but they are not “healthy” choices. To rid the body of disease and other ailments, cut it all out. Even allergies are a sign of too much sugar; that includes seasonal, pet, dust, and food allergies. Cut out the excess sugar completely for a while.

For a treat every now and then, wait until the body’s health is where it needs to be, and then eat some of those foods occasionally, while paying careful attention to the body. As soon as an allergy, an ache, or some other ailment starts creeping back, cut back your sugar intake.

Sugar is sugar, which is to say sugar weakens the immune system and deteriorates the body in many ways, unless it is within whole foods.

Nutrition Trumps Toxins

Avoid GMOs at all costs. Choose organic first, but when you can’t, avoid the “dirty dozen,” the foods most heavily contaminated with pesticides, especially if your health is in a poor state (see the last source below the article). Otherwise, fresh is best! When choosing between conventional, fresh produce, and organic frozen, canned, or otherwise processed, prepackaged foods, choose fresh. Get the enzymes. Unless someone is extremely sick, when the diet is balanced, the body can detoxify the chemicals and use the nutrients. More often than not, a person with a lack of nutrition and very low toxic load is typically less healthy than a person with a considerable toxic load and an abundance of nutrition. There are exceptions and a lot to learn, but doing research while eating lots of raw fresh produce is better than putting off dietary changes.

No More Vaccines, Prescription Medicines, or Over the Counter Drugs

There are some cases where prescription drugs are absolutely necessary. Most of those cases are for a limited period of time. It’s impossible to be truly healthy when the body is bombarded with chemicals. There is no drug that is healthy. Some drugs can help in some ways, but that doesn’t make them beneficial to your health. It’s not possible to reach the highest state of health and vitality while taking prescription drugs.

This is a question everyone taking drugs should ask themselves if they want to be healthy: “If I were stranded on an island, surrounded by the healthiest food imaginable, would I die without my drugs and/or vaccines?” If the answer is yes, then health will continue to elude you. If the answer is no, it’s time to do research and take control of your health.

There is the hard truth about vaccines that so many are unwilling to hear or understand. Regardless of a vaccine’s efficacy to prevent disease, there are two key problems with them:

  1. Vaccines are toxic – just read the ingredients. It doesn’t take an MD to know that injecting those ingredients into the body can, and will, damage health.
  2. Parasites, infectious disease, all the little critters that harm us go after weakened immune systems. The best defense against anything, from cancer to Ebola, is an incredibly strong immune system!

There’s no excuse for the flu shot. Even if they worked, which they don’t, it will still degrade your health. The real flu fighters are in the foods we eat.

Buy Whole Foods

Unadulterated, unpackaged, unprocessed, unmolested foods are what counts. This includes herbs and spices. The most benefit you can get from turmeric, or ginger, or garlic, or pepper for instance, is from the whole form that you crush, grate, crack, etc. Turmeric is an incredibly beneficial spice, and should be included in any healthy diet, but if the unprocessed root in unavailable, go ahead and get the packaged pre-ground version. But try for the whole food version whenever possible.

Drink Clean Water

Tap water is not good for us. Soda is extremely toxic to us. Milk feeds infection. Fruit, carrot, and beet juice has its place, but they have too much sugar to drink regularly for most people. Drink lots of clean drinking water. Spring water from a good, clean spring, or distilled water are the best choices. Check out the recipe for cranberry stevia lemonade, and try drinking a gallon a day for a powerful detox.

Stop Taking Cheap Supplements

Cheap supplements are ineffective and toxic. Supplements are so much safer than medications, but most of the time they are still a hindrance to good health. Be careful with supplement purchases, and don’t use supplements to replace a good diet. Supplements should “supplement” a healthy diet instead.

Where To Start?

Salads and lots of good water. Try this for two weeks: make a salad every single day with lots of fresh, raw produce. Check out the recipe from the first source below. Only eat salads, huge, diverse, nutrient rich salads, every day. Make the kind of salads that get finished in three sittings, not one. And make a gallon of cranberry lemonade sweetened with stevia. Eat fruits for snacks. Spend these two weeks researching and listening to the body, and slowly add more foods into the diet after ailments subside.

Recommended Supplements:
Further Reading:


8 Easy Steps to Health

We are quickly approaching New Year’s Day and the annual accounting that accompanies it. Did you keep your New Year’s resolutions last year? The year before?

Most of the time, resolutions focus on health issues.

  • I will lose weight.
  • I will get healthy.
  • I will completely change the way I eat.

Within weeks we give up, defeated.

If you’re not healthy, if you continue to say to yourself, “I wish I could eat like that, take care of myself that well,” then do it. If the change is radical, approach it with a project plan – one step at a time.

Step One

One of the reasons change is hard is because it usually starts with taking away something. Instead, start the other way around. Every day, drink a smoothie. It doesn’t matter if you have it for breakfast, lunch, dinner, or a snack. Just drink a nutrient-dense smoothie. There are two important ingredients: a high quality nutrition powder and, depending on the diet, a balanced oil supplement. In a blender, start with fresh or frozen fruit, cover with juice (not always necessary when using fresh fruit), add two tablespoons of nutrition powder, a tablespoon of flaxseed oil or an omega oil blend, and as much kale or spinach or other greens you can handle. See the Powerfully Healing Raspberry Cream Smoothie Recipe.

Step Two

Your enthusiasm for this project will grow as each step makes a significant difference in the way you feel. Step two is to eat a large salad every day. No, I am not talking about a bowl of lettuce, tomatoes, and cucumbers. I am talking about an incredibly nutritious salad filled with lots of raw veggies. Make it with at least 12 different vegetables, and throw in some herbs and seeds as well. Be sure to add fresh garlic, turmeric, and pepper for synergistic health benefits. Make it big and munch on it all day if you can’t finish it in one sitting. You might find it easier to make a bunch of this salad twice a week. See 80% Raw Food Diet (amazing salad and dressing recipe).

Step Three

It’s time to learn how to breathe properly. Breathing should be done deeply, in a manner that expands the abdomen as you inhale. Proper breathing dramatically increases stamina and mental clarity, elevates your mood, and helps the body detoxify more efficiently (more toxins are released through breathing than through the pores, urination, and defecation combined). For more information, check out How To Breathe.

Step Four

Between your daily smoothie and your daily salad, you are going to be feeling so much better. Your body is getting the nutrition it needs to repair damage and to thrive on a cellular level. Now that you are feeling better, are you ready to feel a whole lot better? If it’s time, move on to step four. Clean out your kitchen. Get rid of all the crappy processed food filled with artificial colors, flavors, preservatives, MSG, high fructose corn syrup, GMOs, trans fats, and other disgusting chemicals.

You want to eat whole foods, real foods, organic foods. But while we’re taking something away, let’s add something. One of the most amazing things you can do for your body is to take up drinking a gallon of cranberry stevia lemonade a day. Drink it throughout the day. Check out this recipe.

Step Five

Increase the amount of raw foods you eat. Aim for 80% raw – more vegetables than fruit. Produce heals. Munch on produce all day, and eat the aforementioned big salads.

Step Six

It’s time to detox, and balance the gut’s eco-system (though the aforementioned salads have made a huge difference already). True health is achieved by providing the body with the nutrition it needs and ridding it of the parasites, yeast, heavy metals, chemicals, and other garbage that doesn’t belong.

You have the choice to take each of these steps fast or slow. The point is, be sure each step is ingrained before moving on. Check out Kill Candida and Balance The Gut Quickly. See the previous link for a cheap and easy detox.

Step Seven

Do squats. Start with a few, and do a few more every day. Get up to 100 every day. Take your time, and work your way up.

Be sure to see the first link for more on diet and a great salad recipe.

Can you imagine making such a radical change and how it will impact your life? If you can imagine it, you can do it. Just start with step one.

Step Eight

It’s time to take up running! We are made by nature to run, just like we are made to do squats. Running seriously detoxifies the body, flushes the lymphs glands, produces lots of great hormones, and is incredibly good for you. For optimum health, work up to being able to run long distances but also mix it up, do sprints (sprints are great to jump start a thyroid that’s beginning to heal), do slow jogs, and anything in between. Running long distances with an unhealthy body (or with the wrong shoes) can be very bad for your health and lead to injury and many other issues. On the other hand, when you’re in excellent health, running long distances a couple of times a week is one of the best things you can do for yourself.

If running is too much for you right now, start with speed walking, rebounding, and jumping rope (other great exercises).

This would also be a great time to take up yoga. The more well rounded your fitness regimen is, the better it is for your health. Try not to get stuck on one thing. Check out Yoga, A Beginner’s Guide. Also see, Running Without Knee Pain.

Check out and bookmark this list of “Foundational Articles.” See the top one for a Cheap and Easy Detox recipe for the lemonade recipe and a good detox protocol. For a recipe to make your own nutrition powder filled with vitamins and minerals check Make Your Own Homemade Nutrition Formula.

Recommended Supplements:
Further Reading:


Make Your Immune System Bulletproof with These Natural Remedies

You don’t have to catch the next flu. You can stop the next cold before it gets started. All you need is the right diet and a strong, healthy immune system.

Contents:

Yes, I know. We have all met one or more people who eat crap and still never get sick. Chances are they were born with a good, healthy immune system and their parents fed them right. Now they are tearing down their immune systems. Their luck won’t last forever.

There are also people who don’t get sick because they take such good care of themselves that their body is not a suitable host for infection. Bacteria and viruses can’t get a foothold. When pathogens invade the body, the immune system kills them so quickly that very healthy people aren’t even aware the battle took place.

Then there are people who eat pretty well and usually get enough sleep, but sometimes, every now and then, they still get sick.

With the right combination of supplements, in most cases, you can knock out, or radically lessen the severity of an infection. If an illness is caught early enough, even people who eat a lousy diet can treat it with the right supplements before they feel really sick.

Before we get into infection remedies, let’s be clear that we are talking about viruses, bacteria, fungus, and most of the parasites that make us sick. Believe it or not, candida (a type of fungus) can give us the same symptoms as a bacterial or viral infection, and many times people have multiple infections at once causing flu-like symptoms. The only way to properly prepare your immune system to be as strong as possible is to have a diet and supplement regimen to address not just viruses, but all the other infectious organisms as well. The good news is that there are many different herbs and foods that none of these invaders and pathogens like.

Recommended: How To Heal Your Gut

The Foundation – Foods, Herbs, and Diet for the Immune System

Infection wants an easy host. An easy host does not eat a healthy diet filled with lots of raw, fresh, organic produce, full of enzymes and vitamins. To be healthy, eat a salad every day with raw garlic. If garlic makes your breath stink, it’s time to detox and get yourself healthy. Toxic body = garlic breath. Don’t eat processed foods, sugar, high fructose corn syrup, trans fats, or GMO foods. Don’t eat any food with artificial colors, flavorings, or preservatives or MSG.

Recommended:

If you can’t grow your own ultra healthy produce at home, and you don’t have access to the best nutrient dense produce year around, take a really good whole food multivitamin with lots of easily assimilated vitamin C. It’s not important how much of any one vitamin there is, what matters is that the nutrients can be properly and easily assimilated. Take a separate vitamin D supplement, too.

Check out Make Your Own Nutrition Formula and Homemade Vitamin C.

Also see Total Nutrition Formula, vitamin D, and vitamin C (Total Nutrition Formula is a better source of vitamin C than any pills we know of).

If your throat gets itchy at all, your breath smells stale, or your sinuses feel overly sensitive, sip on apple cider vinegar all day. If you need to speak to anyone up close, stop sipping for ten minutes or so beforehand. The vinegar will make your breath smell like an old shoe, for just a bit.

Drink plenty of fluids. Stevia-sweetened cranberry lemonade with cayenne will help detoxify and flush the system while making the body extremely inhospitable to infection (cayenne, cranberry, and lemonade are all very good at fighting off sickness).

If there is any sign of a cold or infection coming on, don’t use cough drops, or nasal spray, or any over the counter medications. Stay away from anything sweet, even fruit (besides stevia, green apples, berries, and watermelon).

That’s the foundation. With good sleep habits and a nearly perfect diet, there’s no getting sick.

Stepping It Up a Notch With the Real Flu Shots

If you have access to a juice press, the best flu shots in the world are available to you. If you are making sure your immune system is combat ready, it is not time to juice carrots, beets, or apples. They have too much sugar. Juice ginger, turmeric, lemon, wheat grass, and cranberry (if you can’t get fresh cranberries, get organic not-from-concentrate), 2 ounces each. Take them all as individual shots. You could mix them up and chug it all down at once, but my tummy revolted when I tried this. Sometimes I will juice a granny smith apple with these tonics for palatability, but only one apple.

Do these shots in the morning on an empty stomach for a multitude of benefits, including a stronger immune system. Make sure it’s all organic of course. Nothing I know of sets the day off better. Well… okay, almost nothing.

The Big Guns – Bulletproof Your Immune System with the Most Powerful Herbs

Good echinacea, the pure, clean, and potent kind that makes your tongue feel as fuzzy as a shag carpet, will help knock out a viral infection all by itself in some cases. When you combine echinacea with vitamin C and elderberry, flu and colds don’t stand a chance. Echinacea strengthens the entire immune system, but it’s better not to take it for more than a week at a time, as it loses its effectiveness if you take it for more than 7 days straight. Wait at least 5 days before taking it again.

Goldenseal is antiviral and anti-parasitic. It’s also a powerful blood cleanser. Coptis chinensis, also known as goldenthread, is a very powerful aid to detoxification. It helps keep the lymph glands clean and running smoothly, and it’s antibacterial, antiviral, antiparasitic, and antifungal. I get these supplements into my system by taking, Shillington’s Blood Detox, MicroDefense, black cumin seed oil, coptis chinensis, elderberry, and I also recommend Shillington’s Total Tonic formula which you can make it yourself pretty easily. Here’s the recipe for total tonic:

Doc Shillington’s Total Tonic Recipe (or purchase here)

  • 1 handful of garlic cloves
  • 1 handful of chopped onions
  • 1 handful of chopped ginger
  • 1 handful of chopped horseradish
  • 1/2 handful of chopped habanero peppers
  • Raw apple cider vinegar

Throw in a blender and cover with an inch or two of organic raw apple cider vinegar. All ingredients should be organic, but don’t let that stop you from making this great formula (as long as the garlic is not from China). You can use the mash right away or wait two weeks and allow it to turn into a tincture.

Update: We recently started selling Mother Earth Organic Root Cider. I like this much better than Total Tonic. It’s harsh, it’s potent, it’s not my idea of a delicious refreshing drink, but if you sip throughout the day the results are truly amazing. This cider really helps keep the sinuses and throat from getting infected. Here’s my review.

Kill the Bastards

If I feel like I am coming down with something I add oil of oregano and I increase the dosage for Blood Detox and MicroDefense. I also increase my garlic intake substantially and make sure I’m eating a salad like this every day. This will pretty much kill anything we don’t want in our gut (and some stuff we do want), as well as aid in killing any microorganisms anywhere in the body. It pretty much makes the body totally inhospitable to foreign invaders.

And last, but certainly not least, if you have a chronic sinus infection, consider Shillington’s Herbal Snuff. This is the herbal remedy that proves Doc Shillington is a sadist.

Doc Shillington’s Herbal Snuff Recipe (or purchase here)

A part is a measurement by volume (cups, tbsp, etc.)

  • 7 parts goldenseal root powder
  • 7 parts bayberry bark powder
  • 1 part cayenne pepper powder
  • 1 part garlic powder

All the above must be ground up very finely. It is best to use habanero cayenne as it is the hottest. Mix it very well as a clump of cayenne could keep your eyes in tears for an hour. It won’t hurt you, though.

When allergies are starting, or a sinus infection is trying to set in (or both), perfumes and sugary odors can make you nauseated or cause unusually intense cravings. Things that normally wouldn’t bother can smell very stale and overpowering. This is a sign that it’s time for Herbal Snuff. You snort it. Just a tiny bit. Get it up both nostrils quick before you change your mind. It hurts. It sucks. But it clears out the sinuses like nothing else.

When using oil of oregano and garlic to balance the gut, or Herbal Snuff to eliminate sinus infections, the diet needs to be clean and at least some of the aforementioned practices should be utilized. If someone uses herbal snuff to prevent a sinus infection or a sore throat (sore throats are typically caused by sinus infections), while eating food that promotes infection, it is likely that lung infections like pneumonia will set in very quickly. Eating poor quality food can wreak havoc on the intestines of someone that has taken antibiotics, and oil of oregano and garlic are pretty strong, all natural, antibiotics.

If you don’t get sick, are you healthy? Some people have a genetically gifted immune system, and some people may have emotional makeups that help keep them from getting sick (mind over matter is powerful medicine). This doesn’t necessarily mean these people are healthy. Anyone who doesn’t eat extremely well would benefit from regular detoxification, which is something your body does at all times on its own when it’s healthy and is fed a truly healthy diet.

For those who don’t take care of themselves, getting sick is a very good way to detoxify. For someone who doesn’t eat as well as they should, and/or doesn’t get enough sleep, getting sick is a way of taking out the garbage. Parasites, viruses, bacteria, and candida need weak cells to feed off of and to make a home. A poor diet, lack of sleep, and habits like drinking or smoking cause malfunctioning cells to develop. To use the methods that prevent infection, and to do so repeatedly, without taking care of oneself, can lead to serious illness such as cancer, or autoimmune disease.

Disease suppression is dangerous in the long run, even with all natural, perfectly safe remedies. With that in mind, if you need to make it through a stressful situation when the weather is changing and you know you won’t get enough sleep for a while, and the food situation won’t be ideal for periods (this certainly happens to me with business from time to time) without getting sick under any circumstances, then this protocol is what you need. On the other hand, these practices can also be used while detoxifying to strengthen the detox and to lessen the side effects and reduce the likelihood of a weakened immune system and getting sick.

Recommended Products:
Further Reading:
Sources: