In our family my father was a meat lover, so I got the same food. One was supposed to eat until one feels totally full and have an empty plate at the end of the meal. Such food as greasy pork, cutlets floating in fat with rice or buckwheat garnish, roasted fish were always in. Fruits and vegetables were never taken seriously. Since my childhood I had corresponding dietary habits. For example, I could put 50-100 g butter in a frying pan and roast there 200 g ham having poured two or three eggs on it. Sometimes I ate all this with a bottle of beer.
"Thanks" to this diet 30 years ago I came to such a point that it became hard for me to reach the first floor where I had my office. I had to take a rest between flights of steps to wait until my pulse slows down from 120 hits per minute to a more normal state.
Most natural hygienists would recommend their patients do physical exercises. But how could I think about motion or sport when the ambulance visited me in a day! And just the transition to a raw diet gave me energy to start moving.
There is a saying: "without having sinned one would not repent, without repentance one would not be saved..." For a long time I considered this statement very cynical. But it appeared to be fair, and for this case too. A meat lover has a chance to ruin his health much earlier and if he has the ability, he would think of a way to improve it. However, people act differently. Once I read a story about a smoker who was warned of getting endarteritis which would cause venous congestion and then lead to the leg amputation. But he kept smoking and lost his both legs. However, the absence of legs does not disturb him and he keeps smoking.
Of course, one would not become a raw foodist just in a day after changing the diet. We have to overcome our taste habits using much strength and many tricks. Therefore "carnivores" often complain about the difficulty to abandon the habit of eating meat and get used to the food that has no gastronomical interest for them. Some people miss buns or rye bread, some yearn for herring with onion... I got numbers of such notes during my lectures. And no matter what habits one has, it is still hard to overcome them. Even when it is not sausage or fish. The mechanism of adaptation to a certain kind of food, just like drug addiction, is associated with biochemistry of pleasure. The psychological discomfort disappears very quickly and it is worth waiting for the sake of health. In three or four months the new diet will be tasty and desired. Although, sometimes "old love" does not disappear for a long time: for example, I dreamt of lard with garlic for a couple of years. This is a typical food in Ukraine.
A person on a high raw diet can get tired from the permanent isolation from the society in terms of food. Such a person is aware that he is an inconvenience for the host when invited. Sharing one's bread with someone has become a polite custom. But the raw person brings his own food or needs something special and everyone's attention switches to the unplanned discussion about what and why raw foodists eat. When someone was persuading me saying something like " if you only once eat and drink with us as a normal person it won't spoil you" I defended myself showing the newspaper article where a candidate of science Alexei Katkov wrote about me. And I answered to the invitation that I could not spoil the purity of the experiment watched by scientists.
Some people having reached certain improvements in their health with the help of raw food, think that if the medicine worked they can stop taking it. Soon they realize that it was a mistake. I was on a high raw diet for six years and then I made a decision to follow the rule of Upton Sinclair who wrote that after recovering he never deviated from the raw diet. Let's see what the competent authors say. Norman Walker wrote that from our own experience we learn that if we want to spoil our health again after its improvement on a raw diet we should only return to our old habits of eating dead food. But luckily many people do not want to return to a worse condition of health because they realized that for the sake of health it is worth to give up eating food that is more tasty than nourishing.
The structure of human body clearly indicates that genetically we are programmed to eat raw vegan food which is rich in cellulose, vitamins and various chemical elements in the best-balanced organic form. The diverse raw vegan diet (vegetables, fruits, seeds and nuts) contains sufficient amounts of mentioned elements that are deficient in the diet of civilized people. Therefore this diet is the healthiest one. There are a lot of fruits in the diet of long livers, for example Abkhazians. That proves at least partially that raw foodists are on the right way. One cannot be healthy without a normal intestinal microbial flora, our life literally depends on it. That is why my health formula says: food must fully comply with the needs of intestinal flora. And raw food does.
For sure, people had been following such a diet before Prometheus stole fire from Olympians. Now it is becoming more and more evident that cooked food causes degradation.
Natural diet
The problem of ideal nutrition is surely not so easy. Some tribes that lived isolated in places where there were no vegetables, fruits, seeds and nuts somehow adjusted themselves to the foods that are not typical for humans. Of course, they have lost more than gained. Some body transformations take place already in mother's womb. According to blood composition the fetus feels what kind of food waits for him after his birth - not immediately but when he will get the foods from the regular diet of his family. So the abundance of fatty meat in mother's diet forms in fetus a stronger enzyme system that secures the successful lyposis. Enzyme lipase becomes more active. However, genetic changes, in other words the adjustment to unusual diet, would require millions of years. Human body tries to adjust to the wrong diet, but it has to pay a high price for it. The famous theorist of medicine I.V. Davydovskii believes that many human ailments result from these adjustments.
I'll illustrate this on the example of human "adjustment" to meat. From school books we learn that the life of primitive people was hard and they died in the young age. Old skeletons were almost not found by anthropologists. I dear to suppose that the main cause of it was appendicitis which killed a lot of hunters in prehistoric times. Probably it was taken for "evil spirit" settled in the belly of a dying person. Indeed, the appendix is affected when both protein excess and the lack of cellulose take place, in other words, when the main course in menu is a roasted mammoth without vegetable garnish. Once looking through the post-war edition of Small Medicine Encyclopedia I read that simultaneously with the enlargement of food assortment for Russians the number of removed appendixes more than doubled. The reason is the improvement of people's diet or, in other words, protein excess in nutrition.
The same article reminds us of the fact that the discovery of this reason belongs to a French scientist L. Championnièr. It was published as early as 1920. However the removing of appendixes still goes on at a fast pace. Inflamed appendixes were not the only ailment that came together with diet "improvements". Asthma, that almost disappeared in the years of war and half-hunger, also returned. People live in different climatic zones and different natural conditions. It is obvious that they can adjust to any food at a higher or lower cost. Any, but not cooked! There is nothing cooked in nature and it has never been. All-knowing nutritionists may persuade us that the human body got used to cooked foods, but there is much evidence that it is not true. I believe that there has never been any cooked food in a wild environment, and nature could never anticipate this devilish invention. Human body originally is not adjusted to digest such food completely and get rid of all its consequences.
Despite unhealthiness of such food people survive but at the price of big loss of health, physical and mental activity. Experiments on rats are quite demonstrative. The rats were given a choice to eat raw and boiled eggs. Eventually even such a robust rodent, who in wild nature is able to choose the right food without any laboratory analysis, made a fatal mistake. In the control group the rats, who ate only raw eggs, survived. But when they had a choice they ate only cooked eggs paying no attention to the raw ones. God bless them… they served the science!
Food processing, which makes uneatable food eatable, comes from troglodytes feasting in caves by their fires. And modern industry keeps improving those cave methods conserving and purifying the food depriving it of vitally important elements. Does the science really know all components of the substance, which we put in fire to make it "tasty"? Who knows exactly what we destroy? Although something is known. So, in the morning Russian farmers in Chernigovschina put their food into the oven to eat warmed food in the evening after work. So they didn't have to spend time for additional kitchen work in the evening when everyone is tired. The scientists were perplexed trying to understand the reasons of severe iodine deficiency that resulted in endemic goiter in this region. There is sufficient iodine in soil, it gets into all vegetative and animal products, but people get ill. Nevertheless the reason was found: long-term fire processing turns iodine-containing salts into inassimilable compounds. Here is another example. In a raw apple iron is combined with fructose. Fructose is easily absorbed into the bloodstream from bowels and so delivers iron in blood. It is known that there is more iron in meat but it is better assimilated from apples. Of course, raw apples! It does not refer to apple pie or apple compote. During cooking this complex compound is destroyed and iron absorption becomes problematic. There are hundreds of such examples.
Those who are still ironic about raw food I can remind of the fact that nobody has ever cured the stomach ulcer with cooked potato or cooked cabbage, but raw juices of these plants are successfully used for ulcer healing. Raw food is the basic component of most anti-cancer diets applied by such
naturists as J.Evers, Max Gerson, Ann Wigmore who recovered from cancer thanks to raw diet and became a world famous promoter of "live food", Dutch physician Cornelius Moerman.
Linus Pauling, twice Nobel Prize laureate, supported Dr. Moerman in his confrontation with colleagues, who labeled him as a charlatan. In the preface to the book about Moerman's method he wrote that his opponents were defeated and in January 1987 Ministry of Health in Netherlands finally approved his method. Dr. Moerman's therapy contains large amounts of fruits and vegetables, especially fruit and vegetable juices instead of water and other drinks. Floury products - such as white bread, pies, pasta - refined sugar, meat, and animal fat (except butter) are strictly prohibited. So, the foods that are poor in vitamins and minerals are out of the diet.
The knowledge of Natural Hygiene basics let us understand how to compose a natural diet. However, beginners should be aware that they have to go through healing crises. While the body is not clean raw food eating helps accommodate strengths for acute condition of chronic disease. In two or three weeks of a high raw diet one can get an acute stage of chronic arthritis. After fasting arthritis would disappear for sure, but in some weeks or months there can be the second or even the third crisis. It lasts until all body organs become healthy and all toxins go out. There is a formula: the ailment disappears through the acute conditions. The task of a true naturist is not to suppress these various exacerbations, but using the diet, rest, and short one-day fasting and hygienic procedures, achieve a healing crisis or in other words, acute condition of chronic disease. And only then prescribe fasting - until the complete disappearance of symptoms.
How can we recognize the healing crisis? Actually most of us who got the acute condition of their diseases after the good treatment in sanatorium, are familiar with it. Doctors explained it as "reaction on sanatorium treatment " and treated further using medicine. The usual signs of crisis are high temperature, pulse acceleration, high blood pressure, headache, pain in various parts of the body, diarrhea, vomiting, sweating or skin eruption. As we see in all cases something goes out of the body. If one has an acute stage of the disease and nothing goes out it means that the crisis is small, but it's still effective and useful. In this case it is useful not for the whole body, but for a particular organ.
Microbial infections are one of the greatest gifts of nature which we simply cannot use. However it is well known that many people feel better after experiencing cold. World medicine is looking for a remedy for acute respiratory disease, ARD. But this is the most widespread and typical healing crisis! Should we struggle against it? Would not it be more reasonable to bless this "cold" which gives everybody the ground for several day fasting and becoming healthier after it?
True naturists do not consider these microbial infections something dangerous and do not run to the drug store to buy antibiotics. Eating raw frees from any vitamin or mineral deficit. It gives also a huge amount of energy for vital activity and self-healing or "inner doctor". A "normal" person usually wastes this energy for removing toxins and for other problems caused by unhygienic way of life.
The increase in resistibility to infections thanks to raw diet could make us think of natural antibiotics (phytoncides) that are found in raw food. In fact, in the clean body, which has no toxins, there is no nutrient medium for microbes. Toxins (particles of dead cells, protein mass) serve up a feast for bacteria, and weakened cells - for viruses. Cell resistance is weakened by many factors, even by often intakes of food that weary certain parts of cell genome. The body of a raw foodist is clean and therefore alien microorganisms have no chance to settle and live there. That is why the immune system of a raw person is strong and robust. Flu epidemics pass by. Even if a raw person gets ill, a disease flows in a very light form without any complications and he recovers very quickly. It is a quite short-term invasion of microbes: they do their task of organism cleansing very fast. After that they are immediately removed. Since "competent" raw foodists interpret this infectious indisposition not as a disease but as a natural healing crisis, they always fast in this case. And when there is no opportunity to fast they reject at least protein and starchy foods, eating some fruits or drinking fruit juices.
Although such crises are healing, they are certainly unpleasant and it would be better not to get ill at all. Step by step a person on a raw diet becomes so healthy that his immune system gets strong enough so that infections cannot shake it. However, eating raw is not just a natural diet, it is also a mean of achieving the healing crisis. Of course, when applied consistently!
Bread and grain story
There are a lot of people who call themselves raw foodists but eat daily so much bread and other cereals that this excludes any healing crisis. Raw diet without grains seems to be too risky for them. Paradoxally, these very people act at their own risk because they never reach the crisis. The representatives of true Natural Hygiene surely always fight the patient's habit to eat bread. Grains are digested only partially and can stop the beginning of healing crisis.
The tradition of grain consuming among a lot of nations results in the belief that it is impossible to live without bread. But it is not so everywhere. For example, K. Stanyukovich who traveled in Pamirs and Tien Shan wrote about Tajik's diet who for centuries dried mulberries for winter and ate them. Wheat and barley were brought to Tadjikistan relatively recently.
In Moscow I had a pleasure to meet an eminent scientist physiologist Ilya Arshavskii when he on his 80th birthday read an anniversary lecture in Anohin Institute of Normal Physiology. Later I visited his public lecture in one of Moscow clubs. It was dedicated to the phenomenon of mass birth of defective children... 90 per cent of all newborns. Official statistics which is based on another evaluative criteria, supplies us certainly with different data. I remember Arshavskii saying that among these 10 per cent hardly 3 are still normal...
I. Arshavskii named the reason for it, unexpected for most of the audience. Placenta, which function is to protect the fetus before its birth, for some reasons lets chemical compounds (that in fact should be detained) penetrate together with mother's blood. The increased acidity of internal environment (over-acidity) affects placenta's normal protective function. As a result, it lets substances with a high molecular weight pass through it. It is known that only protein substances with the maximal weight of 12000 are allowed to pass. The rest is detained by the placenta. When the acidity of internal environment is increased, "prohibited" mother's proteins and the high-molecular compounds from chemical industry penetrate to the fetus. As we know, acidity is estimated by alkaline-acid ratio: the interval from pH 7,35 up to 7, 45 is considered to be normal. Increased alkalinity (pH more than 7, 45) is also harmful. But statistically it happens seldom.
I. Arshavskii didn't have time to answer my note, where I asked about the reason of increased acidity. In his lecture he didn't put it clearly. I wanted to know if his opinion was the same as mine - acidity is caused by the abundance of grains (i.e. bread, cereals) in the diet which is normal in Russia. I managed to ask this question when the professor was already in the wardrobe putting his coat on. He answered that it was for sure the first and main reason for increased acidity.
So, the food made out of grains starts damaging our bodies even before our birth. But does it disturb the promoters of fresh baked bread and tasty cereals? In doesn't seem so...
Usually they ask something like "if we cancel the traditional diet what is there to nourish people with?" But one should agree that it is not a scientific approach. It is the matter of economic policy and personal addiction to bread and cereals obtained with mother's (and cow's) milk. It is not required to cancel the traditional diet with governmental acts. What is required is educate people and gradually change the course of agriculture and food industry if we want to have not only tasty food but also healthy people.
Why don't we eat just healthy food, which digests without remains that are hard to remove? Then our body would stop storing the toxins and polluting inner environment. It would even get the opportunity to clean our old Augean stables. When the process runs, from time to time the body accumulates strengths for the next crisis. Exactly during these crises the mentioned cleaning takes place. Naturists talk about two types of constructive (healing) crises. They were described above. And those who don't care about their health experience the destructive crisis which ends tragically
However if you want to "cure yourself with raw food" having learned about this "method" I would not recommend to do it without having thoroughly studied the theory of crises. Nevertheless raw diet is not a remedy. As well as fasting. Certainly one can regard raw diet and fasting as independent curing methods. But this is a very simplified revisionist approach. It is approximately the same as regard any heavy object as a hammer and drive nails with it. A true naturist waits for and approximates the crisis with all possible means. And just this crisis can be considered to be a remedy, invented and used by Nature. Actually this is a normal process which appears and flows in the body under the certain circumstances.
Look before you leap. If the acute condition comes and the patient is not ready for it (he simply doesn't know about healing crisis) it will be interpreted by the patient and by the doctor who is unfamiliar with the theory, that raw food is counter-indicative for this disease and the medicine will be immediately taken. But in this case the acute state may stay for much longer time. Then follows a normal medical treatment which had already took place many times but didn't really help. Healing crises can come also during fasting. They are also often treated negatively, i.e. as counter-indicative. Thus half-knowledge can fully discredit the true Natural Hygiene.
When we hear objections against raw food as a permanent diet those who criticize it almost always talk about more investigated vegetarian diet as of equal one. They don't want to understand that the body of a raw person works differently. The demand for energy and certain nutrient elements decreases drastically. But they decided in advance that those who claim to feed such a big country as Russia with nuts and imported dates are just dreamers! Nevertheless, I'm convinced that the first step in transition to healthy diet is the elimination of grain foods and their substitution with nuts and especially oil seeds. We have them in abundance and could even now feed all Russians with them. It is interesting to know that I.V. Michurin called nuts "bread of the future"!
If you are able to make such a change in your diet you will simultaneously solve the problem of separate nourishment and right combination of foods. To put it simply, there are three variants of food intakes for a raw person: fruits (separately as a fruit breakfast or dinner), vegetables with nuts or seeds and, finally, grains, for those who eat them. They can be also combined with vegetables. Raw foodists have the only irrefutable criteria of food edibility - everything that cannot be eaten separately is not food.
"Bridge" is required
Many think that I'm a promoter of a raw diet. However it's not exactly so. From the very beginning I perceived my role in building a "bridge" between people on a raw diet or fasting (the patients) and the doctors who treat them. I wanted to make doctors understand what these patients do and make them participate in it helping their patients and providing them with competent consultation instead of reproaching for "dangerous experiments". I referred to well-known sources, publications and recent discoveries in physiology. Being observed from naturist's point of view they looked differently and proved the correctness of Natural Hygiene. That is why some were reproaching me of promoting not Natural Hygiene, but "chuprunism". Being aware of the possibility to create my own method and become accepted by a larger audience I always underlined that one cannot move further than true Natural Hygiene. If a true naturist talks about his own method it implies that he uses certain techniques that are more known to him from his practice.
I was often asked about my own diet. In such cases I always think about Romanian proverb - don't do what a priest does, do what he says! 98% of my diet are vegetables, nuts, oil seeds (I prefer pumpkin seeds), fruits, melons and gourds (depending on season). I don't eat any grains. Sometimes when the guests come I eat a little bit honey when we drink tea. I almost never cut vegetable because it results in a massive loss of vitamin C (up to 95%!) Carrot, washed and scrubbed, tomatoes, cabbage, greens are eaten without preparation with nuts and seeds. I don't see much sense in preparing salads.
Occasionally I make a raw soup, about one liter for two persons - me and my mother. I blend tomatoes, dill, parsley and celery in the blender and the soup is ready. The usual breakfast and dinner consist of fruits. During the day I eat vegetables and greens with nuts and seeds. I don't care about the amount of vegetables and fruits I eat. One should only look after protein consumption: not more than 100 g of nuts and seeds per day. Of course, I don't weight them and estimate their amount by eye. And certainly I don't count calories and don't eat according to the schedule. Diverse raw food eaten in right combinations and until satiety is the only principle of my diet. When tired I skip my meal or eat just fruits.
During summer heat I have to drink a little. We have hard water so I prefer boiled water with a little bit of juice in it, conserved but without preservatives (I hope that fanatic raw eaters will forgive me for this deviation!). I have a salt-cellar on the table. Once I decided to see how much salt I eat and weighted 50 g. It was enough for half a year.
My small apiary delivers me pollen. It is better digested when eaten with vegetables. Pollen is not an obligatory food in raw diet but I appreciate it for its natural complex of vitamins and minerals. Those "mystical" 2% of my diet are foods that I have to eat or drink out of politeness when someone treats.
My mother Maria has been my main "patient" for almost thirty years already. Soon she gets 88, she is a simple woman, housewife. When she was in her forties she got the feeling that there is not much time left.. After my father's death she moved to my house and we began debating about nutrition.
She's already been having problems with her leg veins for a long time. Once she got her phlebitis again. She consulted a doctor and came from him with drugs. But I persuaded her not to take them and fast instead of it, explaining that the thrombus would not appear or when it is already there it would resolve while it is still fresh. The first just six-day fasting impressed her greatly. She got rid of big fecal stones, her large bowel cleaned itself from "plaster" and she started literally returning to life.
Of course, there is "no prophet in one's own motherland". My mother once told me angrily: "Don't bother me with your raw diet, I will fast when I need to, but I will eat like I always did!" That is why when I introduce my mother to someone I call her a representative of
reformist approach in Natural Hygiene.
Nevertheless she became a half-raw person. She eats cooked food only for lunch, but starts it with a raw tomato or other raw vegetables. Her breakfast and dinner always consist of fruits or vegetable salads. She had to learn to appreciate them: they overcome her susceptibility to constipation. But she hasn't moved further in her diet. When she catches cold or has toothache she starts fasting without reminding. For the last 27 years she fasted for at least 60 times, and three times during 21 days. Certainly at home. As a result my mother lives separately and is able to take care of herself.
Eating raw is just a part of healthy lifestyle and Natural Hygiene. Nutrition is not the only factor for good health. Motion, breathing, etc. play also an important role in human's health. But it can be said for sure that natural nutrition and even more "affordable" half-raw diet are the most important factors of preventing degenerative ailments.
Raw diet mobilizes inner strengths of human body for fighting diseases. The food not processed with fire is the natural nutrition, which helps feel good without any stimulators. Human body is an intelligent system that has all necessary for preventing and overcoming ailments without medicine.
