YOU CAN BE YOUR OWN DOCTOR .....1984 INTERVIEW WITH DR.SAUL

[Guest guest]

THE PLOWBOY INTERVIEW

ANDREW SAUL:

YOU CAN BE YOUR OWN DOCTOR

 

 

 

http://www.motherearthnews.com/printable/1984_January_February/The_Plo

wboy_Interview

 

" If we learn more than the doctor in areas of value to our health, it

is our duty to apply this knowledge to the betterment of ourselves

and our families. We need total health more than medically approved

health. "

So says 28-year-old Andrew Saul in the opening chapter of his manual

Doctor Yourself. Saul is, it seems, engaged in a struggle to expand

the frontiers of the medical self-care movement . . . taking the

radical view—even in the eyes of some longtime self-help advocates—

that a person who lives a truly healthful life should almost never

need the services of medical professionals. In the process of

spreading his message, Dr. Saul (he's not an AL D., but rather a

doctor of naturopathy, a title recognized in several states and

widely accepted in Europe) managed to become the first person

certified by New York State to teach naturopathic healing and health-

maintaining techniques . . . established the Ashwins Health Institute

in Hamlin, New York . . . set up a charity vitamin dispensary for the

poor in nearby Rochester. . . and published a shopper's guide to

healthful supermarket foods, a how-to manual aimed at helping people

through their first body-cleansing fast, arid the book Doctor

Yourself. Along with all that, he has still found time to teach

classes at the State University of New York at Brockport, bombard

local newspapers with alternative medical information and generally

make every effort to bring his message of natural health care to as

many people as he possibly can.

 

In fact, Andrew Saul first came to MOM's attention while he was

teaching a series of courses at last summer's Community of

Homesteaders' Good Life Get-Together in Naples, New York. Once the

MOTHER staffer who visited the festival saw that Dr. Saul's

presentations were progressively better attended as the days went on,

he sat in on one himself . . . and quickly became convinced that the

outspoken naturopath's ideas merited sharing with our readers.

 

So MOTHER sent Bruce Woods to visit Dr. Saul at the Ashwins Health

Institute for an in-depth discussion. Mind you, by presenting their

conversation (in edited form), we are not necessarily endorsing Dr.

Sauls ideas, and—more important—we're certainly not trying to

convince anyone to avoid traditional medical care. However, we did

indeed find Sauls words to be a stimulating challenge to our own

ideas of self-health responsibility. And by sharing his thoughts and

providing access information on pertinent books and medical studies,

we hope to help you, our readers, to be better able to make wise

decisions on questions pertaining to your own health and that of your

families. After all, there are not many other situations in which

finding the right answer can be so vital.

PLOWBOY: Dr. Saul, you've made a name for yourself in the field of

alternative medicine at a fairly tender age. That leads me to believe

that your interest in medical alternatives goes back a goodly number

of years.

 

SAUL: Well, in essence, I was drawn into natural healing because I

found that regular healing didn't work. And I suppose the seeds of

that realization were sown when I was a child. Like everybody else, I

had the usual injections, and then I went overseas and had more

shots, and I ate meals based on the so-called four basic food groups

(again like everybody else), and I got sick like everybody else. Not

all the time, of course, but often enough.

 

Now, my " conversion " , if you can call it that, was a very slow

process . . . I more or less backed into the alternative health

field. You see, I was still intending to go into traditional medicine

when naturopathic healing was introduced to me by Professor John

Mosher at SUNY at Brockport, where I was enrolled in a premed

program. Dr. Mosher challenged me on one simple point. He said, " If

you really want to help people, why don't you at least investigate

the natural healing techniques as well as those of conventional

medicine. Let the merits of each system tell you which is best. " So I

began looking into the subject, and the book that turned me around

was Aubrey Westlake's The Pattern of Health. It's a rather

unspectacular-looking paperback, but it's probably the most important

volume I've read in the last 12 years. Westlake was an experienced

English M.D. who had also backed into natural healing, so I could

easily relate to what he had experienced. Briefly, he felt that,

after 40 years as a physician, he'd spent too much of his time just

bailing out leaking boats. He was frustrated by his inability to get

down to causes . . . to promote self-help and to effect practical,

deep-down cures. The Pattern of Health is the story of his discovery

of alternative healing techniques. That book inspired me to read more

on the subject, and one thing led to another. I soon started using

basic naturopathic methods myself—such as fasting, switching to a

vegetarian diet, and taking vitamin supplements—and I actually

started feeling better.

 

PLOWBOY: Were there any other experiences that contributed to your

disillusionment with standard medicine?

 

SAUL: Well, when I observed my first surgeries, I found that I wasn't

particularly enamored with the idea of cutting out someone's adrenal

glands, or otherwise " invading " the person's body, in the hopes of

achieving a desired end, one that often wouldn't come about. But the

conflict between my medical career and my " sideline " research into

alternatives really became intense while I was studying in Boston.

 

PLOWBOY: Was that at Brigham Hospital?

 

SAUL: The Peter Bent Brigham Hospital, yes. Now don't get me wrong:

That institution's staff members are very good at crisis medicine.

But as far as knowing what kind of diet will help a person back to

health . . . well, let's just say that I was amazed to see people who

had diverticulitis or who'd just had a colostomy getting white bread,

soda pop, overcooked vegetables, tiny little salads, slabs of

overcooked meat, and no vitamin supplements at all. These were

individuals who had been through grueling surgery—sometimes people

who were dying—and this lack of nutritional care nailed home the

point that orthodox medicine is sometimes wrong. Those who practice

it often don't know what they are doing.

 

However, I also had to begin to ask myself whether I really knew what

I hoped to be doing. And that concern led me to a great source of

information. I started reading reprints produced by the Lee

Foundation for Nutritional Research and found it to be an excellent

outlet for good, hard medical and nutritional information. Better

still, these reprinted articles are right out of the mainline medical

journals . . . including Clinical Physiology, the Journal of Applied

Nutrition, the Journal of the American Medical Association, and the

rest. The foundation has simply reprinted features that describe

instances in which drugs do not work, and others that demonstrate how

vitamins and foods can cure real diseases.

 

And that was what I needed to see . . . reports by doctors who'd

worked with medical alternatives. At that point there was no turning

back for me, because I was faced with overwhelming evidence . . .

data provided by medical doctors, by researchers, by Ph.D.'s, and by

leaders in their fields. I'd discovered a tremendous amount of

material and I'd begun to see that nature cure was not just a

questionable method of treating the common cold, but that it could

also be used for cancer, encephalitis, meningitis, pneumonia, polio,

diverticulitis, and other terrifying diseases.

 

PLOWBOY: Yet although you received your doctorate in naturopathy in

1976, you weren't able to actually use it until 1980.

 

SAUL: Yes, I was able to open the Ashwins Health Institute only after

an uphill battle. Professor Mosher, an accountant named Keith Taylor,

and I began the process by filing for nonprofit corporate status. To

do so, we had to obtain the approval of the state attorney general.

And, as you probably know, natural healing is not yet considered

legitimate medicine in New York State (but it is accepted in some

others . . . including Oregon, Washington, and California).

 

At any rate, the attorney general approved us without question, and

our next step was to approach the New York State Education

Department, which actually licenses physicians in New York. We

assured that organization that we weren't going to practice medicine

or grant M.D. diplomas. So the Education Department approved us in

short order, at which point we had to get an OK from the county

supreme court. Once that was obtained, the state granted us, after

some months, our nonprofit status. Then we asked the Internal Revenue

Service to verify and underline what the state had done, and to grant

us a tax exemption so that our donors' contributions would not have

to be split with the government and could be applied, in total, to

the services that we hoped w provide . . . tile charitable vitamin

dispensary that we now run, for instance.

 

This application turned into yet another round of forms and letters.

Eventually, however, the IRS granted us tax-exempt status. I do

believe that the whole process was worthwhile, though, because when a

client or student comes to see me, he or she wants to be assured of

dealing with a recognized and reputable professional. I'm always

careful to point out that I'm certified by the state of New York to

teach what I'm teaching.

 

" A person really can choose to get well or to stay sick . . . and

it's shocking to me that many people choose illness. "

 

PLOWBOY: This would probably be a good time to give a working

definition of naturopathy.

 

SAUL: Well, first of all, naturopathy could also be called nature

cure, natural healing, or even natural therapeutics. Nature cure is

very different from standard—or allopathic—medicine, because a

naturopath does not use drugs and doesn't perform surgery.

 

Now the first question one might ask upon hearing that is " Well,

then, what on earth do you do? "

 

To answer that, I have to admit that there are a number of

naturopathic approaches. Natural healing is a highly diverse field.

However, rather than limit myself to any one of these schools of

thought, I believe in using sort of a team approach . . . that is,

employing many such methods in concert. I'm interested in results

rather than " pet " theories. All I want to see is people getting

better, and any technique that they can use to get results is fine

with me.

 

Furthermore, nature cure almost always is safer than allopathic

medicine. After all, a healthful diet is probably the keystone to

ally form of naturopathic therapy. And there are no unpleasant side

effects of eating right.

 

PLOWBOY: It would seem that you're saying the patient bears the

responsibility for his or her own health, then.

 

SAUL: Exactly. A person really can choose to get well or to stay

sick . . . and it's shocking to me that many people choose illness. I

often tell folks that everybody has the right to be sick. And I'm not

being flippant when I say that! If a person really wants to get well,

he or she won't mind making a change of lifestyle . . . or taking

whatever course of action will help him or her get better.

 

If an individual wants to get well enough, or perhaps I should say if

a person wants to get well, enough . . . he or she will be willing to

take such steps. In fact, my most successful students often tend to

be just a bit desperate and discouraged . . . and that combination

can sometimes yield remarkable results. Many people do their best

work when their backs are against the wall.

 

PLOWBOY: Why is it that nature cure has such a limited acceptance in

this country? Isn't it far more generally recognized overseas?

 

SAUL: Naturopathy is downright mainstream in many other countries. In

Germany, for example, naturopathic healers are abundant. Furthermore,

there was a time when nature cure practitioners were far more common

in the U.S. In Florida, for instance, two sister bills were passed in

1927: the Naturopathic Practice Act and the Medical Practice Act. In

those days, naturopaths and medical doctors often worked side by

side. But by 1959, the nature cure practitioners were no longer being

licensed, while, of course, the M.D.'s are to this day.

 

The official reason for such " precautionary " restrictions is to

protect people from quack therapies. And many individuals have been

taken in by treatments that are statistically invalid. Unfortunately,

orthodox medicine leads the league in the use of statistically

invalid approaches to human illness. One has only to read Ivan

Illich's Medical Nemesis to verify that medicine not only is without

statistical significance in many cases, but also is sometimes

definitely harmful. One out of five people admitted to a typical

research hospital today will acquire an iatrogenic—or doctor caused—

disease!

 

PLOWBOY: Can you cite some well-documented clinical evidence of the

effectiveness of nature cure?

 

SAUL: Yes, a great deal of it. You have only to go to the journal of

Applied Nutrition, to the Journal of the Franklin Institute, to

Clinical Physiology, to The Lancet, or to any of the many excellent

British and German journals to find that such techniques are well

established. For instance, in 1950 Dr. Benjamin P. Sandler, a United

States Navy physician, then at the Mayo Clinic, treated tuberculosis—

and did so more effectively than anyone else at that clinic at the

time-using nothing but a high-protein, low—carbohydrate diet.

 

Then too, Dr. William J. McCormick of Toronto, Canada has—since 1946,

at least—been using high doses of vitamin C (ascorbic acid) to treat

herniated or ruptured disks, as well as a variety of infectious

childhood illnesses. Or how about Dr. Frederick Robert Klenner of

Reidsville, North Carolina? For 45 years he's been using vitamin C as

an antibiotic, an antitoxin, and an antihistamine. He's employed it,

with success, against polio, meningitis, tetanus, encephalitis, and a

number of other serious diseases. This man is giving injections of

vitamin C, and reported—in A Physician's Handbook on Orthomolecular

Medicine—that vitamin C is the most useful therapeutic substance

available to the doctor.

 

Klenner suggests that when an M.D. admits a patient to the hospital,

the first thing he or she should do is to administer vitamin C while

deciding what other course of action to take. In many cases, the

physician won't have to do anything else . . . because the vitamin

therapy will cure the condition. Why, high doses of vitamin C can

even be a beautiful treatment for infected cows. I worked on a dairy

farm for a while before I started practicing, and helped inject doses

of a million or more units of antibiotics to cows with mastitis. Yet

if farmers would give their milking stock 20,000 to 30,000 milligrams

of vitamin C and eight ounces of cider vinegar a day, the animals

wouldn't have mastitis problems.

 

Colds, cancer, bronchitis, pneumonia, herpes, meningitis,

encephalitis . . . how, people ask, can one vitamin cure so many

different illnesses? The answer is that the lack of one vitamin can

cause many different illnesses.

 

PLOWBOY: Hold on there. Are you saying that you know of people who've

achieved a complete and total remission of genital herpes as a result

of vitamin therapy?

 

SAUL: Yes, that's the proper term for it . . . complete and total

remission. The specific form of vitamin C used was calcium ascorbate,

in conjunction with sizable doses of L-lysine, a magnesium

supplement, and a vegetarian diet. The amount of calcium ascorbate

may exceed 40,000 milligrams daily. And yet, proportionate to body

weight, that's no more vitamin C than a sick rat would manufacture!

 

PLOWBOY: Right. Rats, goats, and many other animals produce vitamin C

in their bodies, and the amount varies with the creature's health.

 

SAUL: Yes, a healthy rat may manufacture the equivalent of a human

dose of 6 grams a day. A sick rat—or goat—will manufacture a good

deal more.

 

Vitamin C is inexpensive . . . has broad-spectrum utility . . . is

effective . . . and is safe. Yet it gets absolutely no significant

attention from the medical community. Perhaps that's because

physicians don't believe that anything cheap, safe, and generic could

work.

 

PLOWBOY: And, of course, it's also available without a prescription.

 

 

SAUL: That's precisely why vitamin C appeals to me, because I'm

trying to promote radical wellness self-reliance. By that I don't

mean that people should just learn when to go to the doctor or how to

avoid mixing their medicines. Such concepts are little more than

grade school—level medical self-reliance. I want people not only to

know what type of—approach might help them, but also to be able to

take the appropriate action and get results, totally on their own.

People no longer have to suffer.

 

PLOWBOY: And it was to spread the word about such health care that

you came out with your self-published book, Doctor Yourself . . .

which I believe you've called a " health homesteader's handbook " .

 

SAUL: The purpose of Doctor Yourself is to describe—in simple,

practical, immediately useful terms—12 ways people can improve their

own health.

 

PLOWBOY: But how do you convince them that they have the capability

of managing their own health?

 

SAUL: The book addresses that fear right off. The first chapter

explains that it's easy—and safe—to be your own doctor . . . if you

know how. The absence of knowledge is what should be feared.

 

PLOWBOY: Well, how can a person obtain the necessary knowledge? What

sorts of materials are available to the public?

 

SAUL: Doctor Yourself lists about 140 readily available books and

articles, and that's by no means intended to be a complete

bibliography. However, the Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research

should be the first source a person investigates. [EDITOR'S NOTE: See

tire access list accompanying this interview.] I'd even go so far as

to suggest that anyone interested in self-care get one copy of every

reprint and book the foundation publishes. These would prove to the

person, as much as anything can be proved by written material,

that " real " doctors do cure diseases with nutrition . . . with

fasting . . . with vitamins . . . and with minerals.

 

Then again, people can simply go to their local libraries, and even

to medical libraries—no one's going to throw them out—and research

any disease that they'd like to understand. I'd also suggest visiting

a pharmacy, borrowing the establishment's copy of the Physician's

Desk Reference for Prescription Drugs, and reading enough of it to

appreciate how dangerous many drugs are and how little is known about

the majority of them. Yet another valuable source of information is

the Merck Manual. It's a 2,400-page medical text, and it sells for

about $12. That's almost like getting four years of medical education

for $12!

 

PLOWBOY: It sounds like quite a bargain.

 

SAUL: Yes. This is a book that practically every physician has on his

or her desk, and one that every health homesteader should have, too.

Now, you might well ask, do I really believe people are going to go

through this volume and learn everything they need to know? Certainly

not. In fact, I think much of the information in the Merck Manual

concerns ways of approaching illness that I'd disagree with. But the

book does at least correctly describe symptoms and conventional

treatments. It will let a reader know what the medical approach to a

specific problem would be.

 

I also highly recommend Dr. Schuessler's Biochemistry by J.B.

Chapman, M.D. The 168-page book lists the 12 Schuessler cell salts

and tells exactly how to use them . . . it's doubly cross-

referenced . . . and it's probably the most valuable single medical

book for the home I've ever seen. [EDITOR'S NOTE: The 12 Schuessler

cell salts were categorized, in 1873 by the German biochemist whose

name they bear. Many naturopaths believe they can be used to relieve

disease by restoring the minerals missing in the affected tissue.]

 

The next book that belongs in the health homesteader's library is

Boericke's Materia Medica, ninth edition, by William Boericke. This

1,000-page volume, a detailed presentation of homeopathic theory and

treatment, will set you back about $20.

 

The possible additions to this list are, of course, about as numerous

as the world's diseases. But it's safe to say that you could make a

good " tool kit " with six or seven books . . . six or eight

herbs . . . a very big bottle of vitamin C . . . some good multiple

vitamins (everyone should, I think, take a high-potency natural

multiple vitamin a day) . . . and a few other basics.

 

PLOWBOY: So the tools and the information needed for medical self-

care are probably more accessible than most people believe. But

aren't there some legal implications of doing one's own doctoring?

 

SAUL: First of all, it's completely lawful to doctor yourself. The

Constitution provides for that. You may also treat your immediate

family if you—and they—wish. Should you start prescribing for a

friend or a neighbor, though, you'd be venturing into legal

corridors. And, if you charge for treating a neighbor or friend, you

are definitely asking for trouble.

 

Then again, though, I don't treat anybody. And I don't diagnose,0

prescribe, or operate. Instead, I teach people how to diagnose and

how to treat themselves to get specific results. They may use that

education or not . . . it's up to them.

 

PLOWBOY: I've read that you're opposed to vaccination.

 

SAUL: Slow down a second. I do counsel people frequently on the pros

and cons of vaccination. But I never tell anyone not to get shots or

to get shots. I simply point out the alternatives that are available.

Our four-year-old daughter has never had an injection, and our son is

no longer getting them, vet both youngsters—lifelong vegetarians—are

at least as healthy as the other children in the neighborhood.

 

PLOWBOY: Even though they're exposed to the many contagious illnesses

children encounter in school?

 

SAUL: Yes. And if you're initially put of by this idea, remember that

the unvaccinated child poses absolutely no threat at all to the other

children, because the others have had their shots. So the only

possible complaint can be one of neglect, with the argument that

says, " If you don't allow vaccinations, you're injuring that child. "

But that just isn't necessarily a true statement. The fact of the

matter is that many injections—including the diphtheria, pertussis,

and tetanus shots—are not without risks of their own. What's more,

many vaccines may not be all they're cracked up to be. For instance,

there was a medical doctor up in Canada who treated polio with iodine

supplements in the 1950's. The method is called iodine prophylaxis,

and the effectiveness of his treatments suggests that the

popularization of iodized salt has had more to do with the

elimination of polio in America than the polio vaccine!

 

Now I am not saying that there's no statistical significance to

results with the Salk vaccine. But I also believe that, on a scale of

1 to 10, it definitely ranks below 2. Whereas I think vitamin C, a

vegetarian diet, and iodine will actually prevent polio more

effectively. Once again, all of the evidence supporting this theory

can be found in articles available from the Lee Foundation.

 

PLOWBOY: Let's say an individual who's reading this interview

decides, " Well, this Dr. Saul seems to make some sense, and I know I

haven't been taking care of myself as well as I could. " 'then . . .

 

SAUL: What should he or she do?

 

 

PLOWBOY: Yes. And—to be more explicit—if someone isn't ready to jump

into a major lifestyle change with both feet, what initial steps

might give him or her enough immediate results to provide

encouragement?

 

 

SAUL: Well, the very first thing I recommend is that people stop

eating meat.

 

PLOWBOY: Whoops!

 

SAUL: I know, I lose a lot of people on this point. But I'm not out

to make friends . . . I'm out to tell people what I believe is the

truth.

 

Unfortunately, a lot of my students kind of run into a brick wall

right there. They are just not willing to give up the hot dogs and

hamburgers in order to get rid of—say—their arthritis. Well, if

they're not ready to drop meat, they should no longer look at

themselves as victims of this demon arthritis, but rather as victims

of their own stubbornness. This is why motivation is so important.

Natural healing works . . . but only if you do.

 

You know, I was in a class once, and I mentioned that rats make their

own vitamin C, and someone asked, " Does that mean rats are a good

source of vitamin C? " I replied, " Sure, if you eat your rats raw.

Once you cook the meat, the vitamin C content is almost nil. "

 

I think that's why traditional Eskimos tend to be healthy . . .

because they eat raw meat. If they tried to subsist on cooked meat,

they'd all be seriously vitamin-deficient. People who do eat meat,

then, probably should do so the way that true carnivorous or

omnivorous creatures do: Eat the whole animal . . . skin, bones,

blood, intestines, brains, eyes . . . everything.

 

" . . . the popularization of iodized salt [may have] had more to do

with the elimination of polio in America than the polio vaccine! "

 

PLOWBOY: Would that actually provide a balanced . . .

 

SAUL: It'd be a perfect diet. If you completely consume a raw,

freshly killed animal, you'll get everything you need . . . all the

vitamins, all the minerals, everything. But that's repugnant to us,

because, you see, we're not meat eaters by nature.

 

However, to return to my subject, people who do stop eating meat

typically find that—for instance—their hay fever isn't as bad, their

allergies aren't as severe, or their skin doesn't break out as much.

This is due, in part, to the fact that these " new " vegetarians are

avoiding all of the chemicals that find their way into meat: the

hormones, the antibiotic residues, the colorings, and the

preservatives.

 

On top of all that, when people stop eating meat, they spend less on

food. I save $20 a week simply as a result of being a vegetarian. Now

that's $80 a month tax free . . . without having to go out and earn

it. I'm all for that!

 

PLOWBOY: There are, of course, any number of arguments as to whether

humans are, by nature, omnivorous or vegetarian . . . and there are

also any number of people who'll give you very convincing evidence

pointing one way or the other. However, I suspect that the key here

is the quality of the meat that people can get nowadays.

 

SAUL: Look, I'm not telling people that they have to stop eating

meat. I'm saying that if I were they, I'd stop eating meat right

away. If they do so, regardless of the validity of one or another of

the arguments about mankind's nature, I believe they'll get results.

They'll feel better, they'll have fewer illnesses. That's my real

reason for not eating meat, because a vegetarian diet works.

 

That should hardly come as a surprise. After all, when you buy a cut

of beef; for example, you're getting the dead muscle tissue of an

animal that's been raised in a highly confined environment and on a

very limited diet.

 

PLOWBOY: That environment was probably quite stressful, too.

 

SAUL: The meat could contain lead if the animal was grazed near an

interstate highway, or be doped with antibiotics or other chemical

residues. And, on humanitarian grounds, some farming conditions are

deplorable . . . those typical of many veal-raising operations, for

instance.

 

PLOWBOY: We recently did an interview with Dr. Michael Fox of the

Humane Society of the U.S., and he touched on that. [EDITOR'S NOTE:

See MOTHER NO. 79.] In fact, he cited evidence that human diseases

are developing resistance to antibiotics as a result of the huge

quantities of these substances that are given to animals.

 

SAUL: Worse yet, we're actually starting to see humans contracting

diseases as a consequence of eating animals that have been

fed " killfloor scraps " , or—as they're commonly called— " meat by-

products " . Think of it this way: A steer goes to market, and the

muscle meats by no means make up the whole animal . . . there's also

a lot of waste that is processed into meat by-products. And these

substances sometimes include the entire bodies of animals that are

cancerous or have other diseases that make them unfit for human food.

Well, according to a report by Dr. P.F. McGargle—a veterinary surgeon

who did meat inspection—published in Preventive Medicine Forum,

countries in which these ground-up animal byproducts are used in

livestock food have an unusually high incidence of human cancer.

Childhood cancer, in particular, is much higher in countries that use

kill-floor scraps when producing feed for hogs, chickens, and

turkeys.

 

Now if you organically raise your own livestock, or if you're a

hunter and you get wild game . . . surely that animal had a better

chance to get a balanced diet rich in minerals and vitamins—and lived

a better life-than did a steer confined to an intensive feedlot. Even

so, I still think we should eat the whole animal—raw—if we're going

to call ourselves omnivorous.

 

PLOWBOY: What actions other than adopting a vegetarian diet would you

recommend?

 

SAUL: If a person is not on insulin or any medication that requires

eating, I'd suggest a short fast (four to six days) to rid the body

of the toxins accumulated over years of unhealthful living. Fasting,

by the way, is also a commonly used naturopathic treatment for

certain illnesses.

 

PLOWBOY: Do you have any tips that might help a first-timer get

through a fast? A lot of people are really intimidated by that idea.

 

SAUL: We have a little brochure called " Techniques for Successful

Fasting " that many individuals have found helpful. Basically, it

makes the following recommendations: [1] Go into the fast with a

positive attitude. Some folks think they're surely going to die if

they stop eating. Of course, that's not true, unless they have a

health problem such as diabetes and can't fast. [2] They should

attempt a 50/50 juice/water fast . . . consuming half fruit juice and

half water, either mixed together or in alternation.

 

PLOWBOY: In any amounts that they feel comfortable with?

 

SAUL: Yes . . . any amounts. [3] They should continue their vitamin

supplements while fasting. Now some naturopaths say you don't need

these " boosters " while fasting—or, indeed, at all, if you're eating a

healthful diet—but my feeling is that in real life, with its stresses

of jobs and kids and traffic jams, you'll find it worthwhile to take

vitamins every day.

 

[4] The next tip is to have a nightly enema during the fast-on any

day that you don't have a bowel movement naturally—to rinse out the

wastes that accumulate in the bowel and are not being eliminated.

Otherwise, toxins will remain in your body when your fast is over.

Now I lose a lot of individuals when I recommend that nightly enema,

but, again, I'm not out to win buddies.

 

[5] And the last piece of advice is to come of the fast slowly and

gradually. If you fast for four days, take a day or two to come of

it. If you fast for six days, take at least two days.

 

PLOWBOY: Just how does one come of a fast gradually?

 

SAUL: Stick to fruit salads, vegetable broths, and such . . . and eat

half of what you want but do so twice as often as you normally would.

If you try all these steps, you'll almost certainly succeed. Most

people who have fasted and hated it were on a water fast with no

vitamins and no enema.

 

PLOWBOY: If people do manage to give up eating meat and make their

way through the first fast, what should they then consume on a day-to-

day basis? What do you feel would be healthful?

 

SAUL: A two-thirds raw food diet. Or what I prefer to call a two-

thirds salad diet. I recommend, for example, an all-fruit breakfast,

with some cheese or yogurt, and an all-salad lunch. Try to use

sprouts instead of lettuce . . . sprouts are a complete protein while

lettuce is not. Then, for supper, eat any meatless menu that you

like . . . going very light on sweeteners and very light on eggs. I

also recommend drinking three glasses of raw fruit or vegetable juice

a day . . . preferably before meals.

 

PLOWBOY: What about breads?

 

SAUL: Whole grain breads can be a very valuable part of any diet.

There are other ways to get your grains, though. Sprouting your

wheat, for instance, is a superb way of getting complete protein.

 

And this brings us to an opportunity to exercise some real dietary

economy. If people want to save money and still feel that they're

getting enough protein, they should be sure to have a cereal bowl

full of sprouted grain or beans a day. You can grow a whole jarful of

sprouts for pennies. In fact, you could live on an all-sprout diet

for less than $3.50 a week!

 

" If you completely consume a raw, freshly killed animal, you'll get

everything you need . . . all the vitamins, all the minerals,

everything. "

 

There are people right now who are starving to death in America—many

of them are elderly—because they can't live on the $10$12 a week that

they can spend on food. If these people were to eat, say, a diet

consisting of half sprouted wheat and half sprouted alfalfa, lentils,

mung beans, sunflower seeds, or chick-peas, they would get all of the

protein they need . . . all of the vitamins . . . and all of the

minerals. Then, if a person had just a little additional money, he or

she could supplement that all-sprout diet with a daily eggnog . . .

the latter being simply a glass of raw milk and a raw egg yolk only,

with maybe a little sweetener added. That would provide an excellent

poverty-level diet. Now I am not suggesting that we should all eat

that way. I'm saying if I had only $4.00 a week, I could be very

healthy on that amount of money.

 

PLOWBOY: And very bored, perhaps.

 

SAUL: Very bored, but also very alive. You know, it doesn't cost much

to get good nutrition, but we neglect our need for it. I wonder how

many nursing homes even give a high-potency natural multiple vitamin

every day?

 

And simple, easily available vitamins can actually fight drug

addiction! I've written to Nancy Reagan and expressed my support for

her fight against drug abuse in children. And I told her that our

work at the Ashwins Health Institute—in particular our vitamin

dispensary that serves the poor in Rochester—has shown us that

substance abuse trails off when individuals get adequate vitamin

supplements . . . especially B vitamins and vitamin C in substantial

quantities. I suggested to Mrs. Reagan that she help develop a

national vitamin supplementation program. Unfortunately, all I got in

reply was a polite letter from her press secretary.

 

Yet I've talked to people at St. Joseph's House of Hospitality in

Rochester who often seemed to be so drunk they couldn't stand up

without my holding them. We get such alcoholics on vitamin C and B

complex, though, and those individuals can get off the booze. And

that means a lot.

 

More amazing still, in Scotland it's been discovered that people who—

in the course of treatment for cancer—were given morphine, or even

heroin, can be injected intravenously with ten grams of vitamin C a

day, and break the addiction in less than ten days . . . with no

withdrawal symptoms, maintenance drugs, or side effects!

 

PLOWBOY: Hasn't it been said that almost 90070 of all North Americans

don't get enough vitamin C?

 

SAUL: Yes. William J. McCormick, the Toronto, Canada M.D. I mentioned

before, did tests on several thousand individuals. He did find that

9007o of them were vitamin C—deficient.

 

That may sound like a shocking statistic, but look at our nearest

animal cousin, the gorilla. It's a vegetarian animal . . . one that's

anatomically very similar to human beings and one which gets over six

thousand milligrams of vitamin C a day in its normal diet. Yet the

government's telling us that we need (according to the RDA) about one

one-hundredth of that amount. Now somebody's wrong, and I'll side

with the gorilla and against the government.

 

Of course, that common human deficiency's very likely why we find

that people simply get better when they take vitamin C. Statistics

and controlled experiments aside, it all comes down to what the

individual is willing to do. If any reader of this interview wants to

conduct a safe experiment, all the person has to do is start taking

the amount of vitamin C that I recommend and see if he or she feels

better after a few weeks. [EDITOR'S NOTE: See the accompanying

chart.] The proof is in the pudding. You can't argue with that, any

more than you should ignore Ivan Illich's disclosure that survival

rates for the most common types of cancer—those that make up 90010 of

all cases—have remained virtually unchanged for the past 25 years.

 

PLOWBOY: Are you saying that all of our new chemotherapeutic drugs

have made no progress in treating these cancers?

 

SAUL: Very little. Let me point out—as Linus Pauling has noted that

the medical establishment has double standards when it comes to

vitamins and medicines. A drug may not work all the time, and may

even have dangerous side effects, but still be considered a

worthwhile risk for a possible success. Whereas if a vitamin doesn't

work all the time, but is totally safe, most physicians won't even

try it.

 

PLOWBOY: Are there any other easy self-help courses of action that

you'd recommend?

 

SAUL: Well, for one, there's the " spontaneous release by positioning "

technique (as developed by Lawrence Hugh Jones, D.O.), which is a

method—a first aid technique—for adjusting a person's spine.

[EDITOR'S NOTE: We'll describe this method in detail in our next

issue.]

 

PLOWBOY: You seem to be sowing a number of self-help seeds, Dr. Saul.

What do you hope will result from such work?

 

SAUL: Most of all, I'd like to see people stop living with their

illnesses and start living without them. I dream of a nationwide

system of neighborhood health cooperatives, which will make

individuals so self-reliant that they can simply bypass the

professionals. And I mean bypass the naturopath as well as the

medical doctor. Now if someone has a broken leg or is bitten by a

rabid dog, for heaven's sake, they'd still have to seek medical help.

The secret is not to never go to a doctor . . . the secret is to

rarely need to go.

 

PLOWBOY: So you believe that every illness is a result of unhealthful

living.

 

SAUL: Basically, yes.

 

PLOWBOY: How does naturopathic theory explain the existence of

contagious diseases?

 

SAUL: I could probably fill your magazine responding to that

question, but I'll try to be brief. First of all, there is no

absolute proof that germs are the primary cause of any illness. Yes,

germs are found at the scene of illness. But then, detectives are

found at the scene of a crime, and that fact doesn't mean that they

committed it.

 

PLOWBOY: OK.

 

SAUL: In fact, many medical doctors have, during the last 150 years,

gone on record as saying that they believe the germ theory isn't

valid. It certainly doesn't seem to explain cancer very well . . . or

heart disease . . . or mental illness . . . or diabetes. At least 20

billion dollars' worth of cancer research hasn't been able to defeat

malignancy, or we'd all be vaccinated for it, you can be sure of

that.

 

That's the first basic point. The second is that if we go back to

Robert Koch , who formulated Koch's postulates—upon which the germ

theory is based—we find that there's a logical flaw in that argument.

The first postulate says that you can isolate the germ in a sick

animal. The second postulate says you can culture that germ and then—

here's the third postulate-inject that cultured germ into a healthy

animal and produce the symptoms characteristic of the illness. The

fourth postulate states you can then remove the germ from the newly

sick animal . . . and it will be the same germ, thus proving that the

microorganisms caused the disease.

 

Now that sounds ironclad. But—as Andrew Weil, M.D. points out in his

book The Natural Mind—there's a flaw in postulate three. How is the

germ presented to the animal? By bypassing all of the body's defense

systems, since it's injected directly into the bloodstream!

 

The naturopath claims that disease resistance is the main story! It

allows germs to become a factor.

 

PLOWBOY: Are you saying, then, that someone who leads a healthful

life would be less likely to contract a contagious disease?

 

SAUL: Absolutely. They'd be less likely to catch it, and if they did,

it would be less severe. Here's a simple example. Our children had

been playing with the neighbor's kids just before those children's

chicken pox became visible, at the most contagious stage of that

disease. A few days later, the other kids had chicken pox. But our

youngsters developed only five or six spots apiece. We upped their

vitamin C and that was the end of that.

 

PLOWBOY: That sounds analogous to the increased disease and bug-

attack resistance shown by healthy, organically grown plants.

 

SAUL: Certainly. And you can apply that same line of comparison when

considering the laboratory animals used in medical research. Think

about the white rats—generation after generation after generation of

them—that are fed only commercial rat food. That diet can't possibly

contain every natural factor . . . it can only contain what we humans

think rats need for a healthy life. OK?

 

So all of these rats get the same diet . . . one that quite possibly

is deficient, and certainly is given in excess. We introduce germs to

these animals and they drop dead. When I was in Australia, I studied

with Professor S.A. Barnett of the Australian National University in

Canberra. He asserted that if those same experiments were conducted

with London sewer rats, the results would be quite different, because

those rodents wouldn't be so quick to die. Not only do London sewer

rats have a more broadly based diet . . . they're also, of course,

constantly exposed to germs. There simply wouldn't be any rodents if

the population wasn't able to resist illness. Again, resistance is

the question . . . not germs.

 

And people can build resistance by getting plenty of rest . . .

plenty of exercise . . . and the right kind of diet. We also need

vitamin supplements, especially vitamin C. If folks follow these

simple rules, though, germs will really become more or less

irrelevant. This sort of natural disease prevention is always to be

preferred to medical inoculation and such. If it's a toss-up, go with

nature. Nature has had thousands of years to work out the

enzyme/vitamin/elimination/nutrition structures of the body. Nature

has had a lot of experience.

 

The medical establishment, for all its good intentions, has had

considerably less experience.

 

You know, when the signers of the Declaration of Independence were

sitting down at the table, one of the gentlemen present was Dr.

Benjamin Rush, surgeon general of the Continental army. When they sat

down to sign the Declaration—to more or less create this country—Dr.

Rush said the following: " The Constitution of this republic should

make special provision for medical freedom, as well as religious

freedom. To restrict the art of healing to one class of men, and to

deny equal privileges to others, will constitute the bastille of

medical science. All such laws are un-American and despotic. "

 

And this, of course, is the real crux. Medicine is not a

science . . . it's an art. And that's why people should be encouraged

to be their own doctors . . . because it's an art form, for which you

need no degree, and which generally requires no training that you

can't pick up on your own.

 

Just remember this basic point: Our internal environment is the

primary influence on our health! We're talking about inner-space

ecology. We're talking about interior homesteading. And the rewards

of naturopathic living can be enormous. To sit down to a simple,

healthful meal with healthy children and to be able to know that your

basic bodily equipment is functioning as well as possible, should, I

think, be a more important aspect of self-reliance than solar

heating!

 

PLOWBOY: One of the first rules of a self-reliant lifestyle is that

you must take care of your tools . . . and you're talking about the

most precious tool we have.

 

SAUL: Exactly. This body is the only one we're going to get, so we

owe it to ourselves to be careful with it. And I think that we can

get better health care by doing the job ourselves than we can by

contracting it out.

 

Of course, if you are going to doctor yourself; it's vitally

important that you take the time, do the reading, and put enough

energy into it to do a good job. I don't want people going out half-

baked . . . reading one book and thinking they're experts.

 

But make no mistake, naturopathic remedies do work. If a dedicated

person goes into the field to prove nature cure wrong, he or she will

wind up proving it right. The truth will stand on its own. The folks

with real problems are those who can't be bothered to look into

natural healing at all. The people who are indiferent. The people who

don't care.

 

Our hospitals and nursing homes are filled to capacity with those

people!