Cleaning Out the Plumbing
Author Phillip Day examines how we can give
our innards that much-needed but simple pipe-cleaning

Digestion is the single most strenuous activity our bodies undergo, which is why, after one of our cultural 'heart-attack-on-a-plate' breakfasts, we feel like we are walking on the surface of Jupiter and beg God to take us from the knee down. Excessive cooked meat consumption, coupled with bad food combining of processed, devitalised proteins and starches, can be hauled into the dock and charged with man's mass murder. We're the only creature on Earth that takes decomposing animal carcasses out of the freezer, cremates them in the kitchen, buries the corpses in our body and then process the passing of the resultant putrefactive morass using medication (antacids). Other creatures do not cook, barbecue, fry or sauté their foods, neither do they mis-combine them. As Harvey Diamond, author of Fit For Life, wryly remarks, you almost never see a lion eating a zebra and having a baked potato with it.

But pick up any menu in a Western restaurant today, and you will see that the majority of items on offer in the starter and main-course sections consist mostly of improperly combined proteins and carbohydrates - and mostly cooked to destroy the enzyme content. Steak and fries, chicken and pasta, eggs on toast… the list of woes is as endless as the problems these combinations cause. Because the body produces acids to digest proteins and alkalis for carbohydrates, the two types of juices neutralise each other, eventually producing a rotting mass, parts of which in some cases can still be putrefying inside us up to 70 hours later. This digestive gridlock produces toxic by-products that get filed around the body and will stay in our systems until we detoxify - which again we almost never do as this is culturally not practised in our society today. On the other hand, proper food combining avoids this build-up and assists in detoxifying our systems from food abuse.

With only one-fifth of the hydrochloric stomach acid of a carnivore, a far longer digestive tract for squeezing and processing vegetation, and an inability properly to neutralise high levels of uric acid which excessive meat-eating produces, humans are having a terrible time with meat and milk, especially the processed kind. A man will be obstinate and not believe the extent to which the western diet is contributing to his early demise but, as Dr Dorothea Snook comments, his next of kin certainly will if they are allowed to view his autopsy.

The full science of Natural Hygiene is a fascinating and satisfying study for each of us to make. I wrote Health Wars to address the main points of it. For the purposes of our study on cancer however, we will see that it is vital for a cancer patient to modify their diet to avoid flesh foods, and indeed all cooked foods, in order to allow the body to clean itself through.

Getting in the raw
Raw fruits and veggies. Raw fruits and veggies.

Sounds restrictive, doesn't it? And yet, as I tour and stay in endless hotels, I sometimes wish I could have a crowd of you gathered around the breakfast and lunchtime spreads in some of these establishments, so I could show you how expansive and varied the choices can be if you only take a little time and trouble to prepare. Raw, unfired, natural whole foods were the foods people ate in the days when cancer was an extreme rarity. Yes, there was meat, milk and cooking too, but not to the extent we are seeing today.

Full of nature's goodness, raw fruits, vegetables, pulses, nuts and legumes provide a complete spectrum of nutrients, including carbohydrates, proteins and fats in their proper forms , which the body needs for continued sustenance. Remember, proteins are formed from amino acid chains, and what are these natural foods bursting with? Amino acids… and those enzymes too.

The body likes to clean itself out in the morning hours, although the process continues to a lesser extent throughout the day. Raw food is excellent to assist this, not only because of the enzymes and other nutrients it provides, but also because it is a superb source of that wall-scraping fibre that pipe-cleans your plumbing as it passes through.

It has been scientifically determined that the body's elimination (detoxification) cycle runs from approximately 4am to 12 noon in a normal, clock-adjusted body. This is the reason why we awaken with 'fur' on our tongues, bear's breath on the sheets and a desire to go to the bathroom that won't quit. This is our body's time for shedding unwanted weight, ridding the system of toxic by-products and getting the human re-booted for the coming day.

Fruit and vegetables, eaten in small but regular amounts, are an ideal way to detoxify the gunk in our systems during the morning elimination cycle. Ignore your fat grannies when they tell you not to eat too much fruit or the world will fall out of your tail-pipe. Your fat grannies are telling you this because their fat mommas told them the same thing. A fat person is simply someone who has not allowed his or her body to detoxify. Yes, overweight and obesity generally arise as a result of what we have put into our bodies, but our continued overweight and unhealthy condition exists because we are not allowing our system to take out the garbage because we jam up our bodies further with our cultural peccadilloes, like the big breakfast.

Ideally fruit should always be consumed ALONE ON AN EMPTY STOMACH. Ideally too, the only thing you should consume from the time you arise to lunch-time should be fruit. Try an experiment for ten days and toss out those big breakfasts and lunches in favour of eating nothing but pieces of fruit in the morning and raw veggies (salads), pulses, nuts and legumes for the rest of the day. Small meals, six times a day.

The panic clouding your features at this moment at the thought of having to go without the usual breakfast bulk will be off-set with the pleasurable knowledge that your hunger pangs will soon depart once your blood sugar levels regulate your cravings. If it helps, promise yourself the usual heart-attack-on-a-plate if you do not feel satisfied thirty minutes after eating all the fruit you wish to eat. Pineapple, grapes, peaches, oranges, apples, pears (of course, eat the seeds too where appropriate) are all the best kit to get into the kitchen for this great little experiment.

Then when you get to lunch, have lunch! But combine proteins with high water-content vegetables or salad, not with pasta, potatoes, or similar carbohydrates. There's nothing wrong with carbohydrates in their proper complex, whole-food forms, just don't combine them with proteins in the same meal. CUT WAY DOWN ON THE PROTEINS. Vegetables and salad should be enjoyed raw and unadulterated. Organic produce is best.

Three things will start to happen almost immediately you commence this regimen: firstly, the world will fall out of your tail-pipe. This is your body finally beginning to send the garbage packing. It's all a bit of a mess, but it's leaving - and that's the good news. Loose stools produced from this eating regimen are by no means unhealthy and should be encouraged with as much fruit (on an empty stomach in the morning) and high water-content raw veggies (later in the day) as you can manage. Secondly, you will begin to experience a satisfying return of energy and well-being. Thirdly, you will experience a rapid and steady weight-loss as you proceed with eating your food the way the body likes to process it.

Ten days of this and tell me you don't feel leaner, tauter and more energetic than you've felt for years! And if you like the way you feel, why not continue the regimen?

Intestinal transit time (ITT)
Most cancer patients are constipated, and so one of the first things to do is to get the elimination apparatus working properly, so the body can flush out the junk. If you are reading this and have cancer, review the regularity or otherwise of your stool-passing and ask yourself honestly whether you have a problem eliminating or not. What we're gunning for here is what is known as Intestinal Transit Time (ITT); in other words, how long does a meal take to go through you?

Just because you have one bowel movement a day, doesn't mean you are regular if what you are passing is the omelette and chips you ate last week. Studies of primitive cultures have determined that their ITT is between 12-24 hours, with two to three bowel movements a day, if their diets are predominantly vegetarian and high-fibre. In the West, ITT is generally double this, with some folks only having one bowel movement a week with an ITT in excess of 70 hours.

Once you eat your food, most nutrient extraction and absorption occurs within 12 hours, which of course means that the longer food waste remains in your system, the more the proteins rot, the fats go rancid and the carbohydrates ferment. Toxins that develop from prolonged processes such as these in the body can filter through the bowel membrane into the blood and then get taken anywhere throughout the body. You can now clearly see the problems a cancer patient will have with an oxygen-poor, bacteria-ridden, dehydrated, non-exercised, putrefaction-laden body that has been stuffed for years with garbage it cannot get rid of. In more than a few cases, this mess was the start of cancer in the first place.

So what's the first order of the day? Changing the diet, as we've already discussed, but also, as with all plumbing, everything will no doubt benefit from a bit of a blow-through first. And one of the most effective tools to accomplish this is magnesium oxide.

The benefits of magnesium oxide
Most diseases have their origins in the digestive tract. Dr Bernard Jensen, an American naturopath of some distinction, worked with over 350,000 patients over a 50-year period and found not one of them free from some kind of digestive disorder. By cleaning our sewer system through, wouldn't it follow that we will reap enormous benefits from getting everything on the move again? Many nagging health problems often disappear on their own after a cleanse. Overgrowths of candida albicans, a normally beneficial yeast found in our digestive system, almost always proliferate in a toxic, internal environment. The waste products of candida play havoc with cancer patients, causing the fuelling of the fermentation process upon which cancer depends.

Yet if the bowel is cleared of impacted detritus, old meals and other toxins, there is less chance of a bacterial imbalance in the gut, and, for the cancer patient, the chance to allow the body to rid itself of harmful toxins and restore itself to health. Magnesium oxide is often used to liquefy, cleanse and clear mucoid plaque deposits from the digestive tract in a simple program which is combined with a healthy intake of clean, fresh water and a change in diet. Magnesium oxide, when dissolved in juice or water, promotes rapid hydration in the gut and a bowel movement can be expected from 30 minutes to three hours after consumption. Unlike other laxatives, magnesium oxide is gentle and natural, and increases the percentage of stool water, stool volume and stool magnesium.

The results of the cleansing program can be, er, dramatic, but I recommend this great intestinal cleanse to anyone. Don't shrink from it. You've probably dedicated years to gumming yourself up on the inside, so resolve to fix the problem before it fixes you, and go for it. If you have cancer, it is best to do this program under guidance of a physician familiar with the nutritional protocols described in my books.

CTM COMMENT: Phillip Day's Health Wars is ideal for a fuller treatment on the great subject of Natural Hygiene. Health Wars also has a companion recipe book you can get called Food For Thought. These books come with a whole wealth of research and well-grounded common sense for detoxifying your system and getting back to eating basics. Books at www.credence.org.

For more information on magnesium oxide, e-mail Credence on info@credence.freeserve.co.uk