The Detrimental Effects of the Fukushima Disaster on United States Public Health
Anthony Gucciardi, November 2, 2011
Despite the assurance of Japanese government officials, radioactive material from the Fukushima disaster has spread far beyond the evacuation zone. In fact, not only has a great deal of Fukushima radiation been detected in Tokyo way beyond the evacuation zone, but United States researchers are now revealing that radioactive cesium has been detected in US soil in levels that indicate a severe threat to human health.
Marco Kaltofen, PE, of the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) in Massachusetts, recently discussed current issues revolving aroundradiation exposure in Japan.
A Registered Professional Engineer investigating Fukushima nuclear material release, Kaltofen stated his findings in a presentation entitled ‘Radiation Exposure to the Population in Japan After the Earthquake’. Presented in Washington D.C. on Monday morning, Kaltofen stated:
The Fukushima nuclear accident dispersed airborne dusts that are contaminated with radioactive particles. When inhaled or ingested, these particles can have negative effects on human health that are different from those caused by exposure to external or uniform radiation fields.
A field sampling effort was undertaken to characterize the form and concentration of radionuclides in the air and in environmental media which can accumulate fallout. Samples included settled dusts, surface wipes, used filter masks, used air filters, dusty footwear, and surface soils.
Isolated US soil samples contained up to 8 nanoCuries per Kg of radiocesium, while control samples showed no detectable radiocesium.
Fukushima disaster affecting United States citizens
Researchers from UC Berkley also released some startling information regarding radioactive cesium. UC Berkley found the highest cesium content in topsoil for each California location sampled was quite consistent:
Sacramento, CA Topsoil on Aug. 16, 2011: Total Cesium @ 2.737 Bq/kg
Oakland, CA Topsoil on Sept. 8, 2011: Total Cesium @ 2.55 Bq/kg
Alameda, CA Topsoil on Apr. 6, 2011: Total Cesium @ 2.52 Bq/kg
San Diego, CA Topsoil on June 29, 2011: Total Cesium @ 2.51 Bq/kg
Sonoma, CA Topsoil on Apr. 27, 2011: Total Cesium @ 2.252 Bq/kg
The levels that Kaltofen reports are in fact much higher. The highest cesium levels of any topsoil measurements by UC Berkley since the beginning of the Fukushima disaster was 2.737 becquerels/kg in Sacramento. This is the equivalent to 73.9 picocuries/kg. (The conversion is: 27 picocuries = 1 becquerel). Kaltofen recorded cesium levels as high as 8 nanoCuries per Kg of radiocesium. This is equal to 8,000 picocuries/kg. (Conversion: 1 nanocurie = 1,000 picocuries).
The highest findings by Kaltofen were 108 times greater than the reports by UC Berkley researchers. You can view the entire ‘Radiation Exposure to the Population in Japan After the Earthquake’ slideshow on the Fairewinds website.
Even more shocking is the fact that hot particles, which are highly radioactive objects, have been found at 2 out of 3 Boston monitoring stations.
In a new video report, nuclear experts detail the coming health epidemic that may result from Fukushima radiation:
Scientist Marco Kaltofen Presents Data Confirming Hot Particles from Fairewinds Associates onVimeo.
The video transcript states:
In the United States, it is a different story. It is a public health issue and not a personal health issue. What that means is that we will never know who is the individual who got cancer from Fukushima. But we can be sure that the radiation did reach here and that there will be an increase in cancers, especially on the West Coast where the Rocky Mountains stopped most of the radiation and deposited it on the ground.
Check out the Radiaton vedio
http://fairewinds.com/content/scientist-marco-kaltofen-presents-data-confirming-hot-particles
Thursday, November 3, 2011
Thursday, October 27, 2011
Message for Jewel,and Barney
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password is - sellmore33
login : members here http://howtobuyandsellyourcars.com/
Sunday, October 16, 2011
Ascites, peritoneal fluid excess
Ascites (/əˈsaɪtiːz/ ə-sy-teez, from Greek askites, "baglike")[1] is a gastroenterological term for an accumulation of fluid in the peritoneal cavity.
The medical condition is also known as peritoneal cavity fluid, peritoneal fluid excess, hydroperitoneum or more archaically as abdominal dropsy. Although most commonly due to cirrhosis and severe liver disease, its presence can portend other significant medical problems.
Diagnosis of the cause is usually with blood tests, an ultrasound scan of the abdomen, and direct removal of the fluid by needle or paracentesis (which may also be therapeutic). Treatment may be with medication (diuretics), paracentesis, or other treatments directed at the cause.
Mild ascites is hard to notice, but severe ascites leads to abdominal distension. Patients with ascites generally will complain of progressive abdominal heaviness and pressure as well as shortness of breath due to mechanical impingement on the diaphragm.
Ascites is detected on physical examination of the abdomen by visible bulging of the flanks in the reclining patient ("flank bulging"), "shifting dullness" (difference in percussion note in the flanks that shifts when the patient is turned on the side) or in massive ascites with a "fluid thrill" or "fluid wave" (tapping or pushing on one side will generate a wave-like effect through the fluid that can be felt in the opposite side of the abdomen).
Other signs of ascites may be present due to its underlying etiology. For instance, in portal hypertension (perhaps due to cirrhosis or fibrosis of the liver) patients may also complain of leg swelling, bruising, gynecomastia, hematemesis, or mental changes due to encephalopathy.
Those with ascites due to cancer (peritoneal carcinomatosis) may complain of chronic fatigue or weight loss. Those with ascites due to heart failure may also complain of shortness of breath as well as wheezing and exercise intolerance.
Ascites exists in three grades:
Grade 1: mild, only visible on ultrasound and CT
Grade 2: detectable with flank bulging and shifting dullness
Grade 3: directly visible, confirmed with fluid thrill
Diagnosis
Routine complete blood count (CBC), basic metabolic profile, liver enzymes, and coagulation should be performed. Most experts recommend a diagnostic paracentesis be performed if the ascites is new or if the patient with ascites is being admitted to the hospital. The fluid is then reviewed for its gross appearance, protein level, albumin, and cell counts (red and white). Additional tests will be performed if indicated such as Gram stain and cytopathology.[3]
The Serum-ascites albumin gradient (SAAG) is probably a better discriminant than older measures (transudate versus exudate) for the causes of ascites.[4] A high gradient (> 1.1 g/dL) indicates the ascites is due to portal hypertension. A low gradient (< 1.1 g/dL) indicates ascites of non-portal hypertensive etiology.
Ultrasound investigation is often performed prior to attempts to remove fluid from the abdomen. This may reveal the size and shape of the abdominal organs, and Doppler studies may show the direction of flow in the portal vein, as well as detecting Budd-Chiari syndrome and portal vein thrombosis. Additionally, the sonographer can make an estimation of the amount of ascitic fluid, and difficult-to-drain ascites may be drained under ultrasound guidance. Abdominal CT scan is a more accurate alternate to reveal abdominal organ structure and morphology.
Causes of high SAAG ("transudate") are:[3]
Cirrhosis - 81% (alcoholic in 65%, viral in 10%, cryptogenic in 6%)
Heart failure - 3%
Hepatic Venous occlusion: Budd-Chiari syndrome or veno-occlusive disease
Constrictive pericarditis
Kwashiorkor
Causes of low SAAG ("exudate") are:
Cancer (primary peritoneal carcinomatosis and metastasis) - 10%
Infection: Tuberculosis - 2% or Spontaneous bacterial peritonitis
Pancreatitis - 1%
Serositis
Nephrotic syndrome or Protein losing enteropathy
Hereditary angioedema[5]
Other Rare causes:
Meigs syndrome
Vasculitis
Hypothyroidism
Renal Dialysis
Peritoneum Mesothelioma
Pathophysiology
Ascitic fluid can accumulate as a transudate or an exudate. Amounts of up to 25 liters are possible.
Roughly, transudates are a result of increased pressure in the portal vein (>8 mmHg, usually around 20 mmHg[6]), e.g. due to cirrhosis, while exudates are actively secreted fluid due to inflammation or malignancy. As a result, exudates are high in protein, high in lactate dehydrogenase, have a low pH (<7.30), a low glucose level, and more white blood cells.
Transudates have low protein (<30g/L), low LDH, high pH, normal glucose, and fewer than 1 white cell per 1000 mm³. Clinically, the most useful measure is the difference between ascitic and serum albumin concentrations. A difference of less than 1 g/dl (10 g/L) implies an exudate.[3]
Portal hypertension plays an important role in the production of ascites by raising capillary hydrostatic pressure within the splanchnic bed.
Regardless of the cause, sequestration of fluid within the abdomen leads to additional fluid retention by the kidneys due to stimulatory effect on blood pressure hormones, notably aldosterone. The sympathetic nervous system is also activated, and renin production is increased due to decreased perfusion of the kidney.
Extreme disruption of the renal blood flow can lead to hepatorenal syndrome. Other complications of ascites include spontaneous bacterial peritonitis (SBP), due to decreased antibacterial factors in the ascitic fluid such as complement.
Treatment
Ascites is generally treated while an underlying etiology is sought, in order to prevent complications, relieve symptoms, and prevent further progression. In patients with mild ascites, therapy is usually as an outpatient. The goal is weight loss of no more than 1.0 kg/day for patients with both ascites and peripheral edema and no more than 0.5 kg/day for patients with ascites alone.[7] In those with severe ascites causing a tense abdomen, hospitalization is generally necessary for paracentesis.[8][9]
High SAAG
Treatments in high SAAG ("transudate") are:
Salt restriction
Salt restriction is the initial treatment, which allows diuresis (production of urine) since the patient now has more fluid than salt concentration. Salt restriction is effective in about 15% of patients.[10]
Diuretics
Since salt restriction is the basic concept in treatment, and aldosterone is one of the hormones that acts to increase salt retention, a medication that counteracts aldosterone should be sought. Spironolactone (or other distal-tubule diuretics such as triamterene or amiloride) is the drug of choice since they block the aldosterone receptor in the collecting tubule.
This choice has been confirmed in a randomized controlled trial.[11] Diuretics for ascites should be dosed once per day.[12] Generally, the starting dose is oral spironolactone 100 mg/day (max 400 mg/day). 40% of patients will respond to spironolactone.[10] For nonresponders, a loop diuretic may also be added and generally, furosemide is added at a dose of 40 mg/day (max 160 mg/day), or alternatively (bumetanide or torasemide). The ratio of 100:40 reduces risks of potassium imbalance.[12] Serum potassium level and renal function should be monitored closely while on these medications.[13]
Monitoring diuresis: Diuresis can be monitored by weighing the patient daily. The goal is weight loss of no more than 1.0 kg/day for patients with both ascites and peripheral edema and no more than 0.5 kg/day for patients with ascites alone.[7] If daily weights cannot be obtained, diuretics can also be guided by the urinary sodium concentration. Dosage is increased until a negative sodium balance occurs.[12] A random urine sodium-to-potassium ratio of > 1 is 90% sensitivity in predicting negative balance (> 78-mmol/day sodium excretion).[14]
Diuretic resistance: Diuretic resistance can be predicted by giving 80 mg intravenous furosemide after 3 days without diuretics and on an 80 mEq sodium/day diet. The urinary sodium excretion over 8 hours < 50 mEq/8 hours predicts resistance.[15]
If a patient exhibits a resistance to or poor response to diuretic therapy, ultrafiltration [disambiguation needed] or aquapheresis may be needed to achieve adequate control of fluid retention and congestion. The use of such mechanical methods of fluid removal can produce meaningful clinical benefits in patients with diuretic resistance and may restore responsiveness to conventional doses of diuretics.[1
The medical condition is also known as peritoneal cavity fluid, peritoneal fluid excess, hydroperitoneum or more archaically as abdominal dropsy. Although most commonly due to cirrhosis and severe liver disease, its presence can portend other significant medical problems.
Diagnosis of the cause is usually with blood tests, an ultrasound scan of the abdomen, and direct removal of the fluid by needle or paracentesis (which may also be therapeutic). Treatment may be with medication (diuretics), paracentesis, or other treatments directed at the cause.
Mild ascites is hard to notice, but severe ascites leads to abdominal distension. Patients with ascites generally will complain of progressive abdominal heaviness and pressure as well as shortness of breath due to mechanical impingement on the diaphragm.
Ascites is detected on physical examination of the abdomen by visible bulging of the flanks in the reclining patient ("flank bulging"), "shifting dullness" (difference in percussion note in the flanks that shifts when the patient is turned on the side) or in massive ascites with a "fluid thrill" or "fluid wave" (tapping or pushing on one side will generate a wave-like effect through the fluid that can be felt in the opposite side of the abdomen).
Other signs of ascites may be present due to its underlying etiology. For instance, in portal hypertension (perhaps due to cirrhosis or fibrosis of the liver) patients may also complain of leg swelling, bruising, gynecomastia, hematemesis, or mental changes due to encephalopathy.
Those with ascites due to cancer (peritoneal carcinomatosis) may complain of chronic fatigue or weight loss. Those with ascites due to heart failure may also complain of shortness of breath as well as wheezing and exercise intolerance.
Ascites exists in three grades:
Grade 1: mild, only visible on ultrasound and CT
Grade 2: detectable with flank bulging and shifting dullness
Grade 3: directly visible, confirmed with fluid thrill
Diagnosis
Routine complete blood count (CBC), basic metabolic profile, liver enzymes, and coagulation should be performed. Most experts recommend a diagnostic paracentesis be performed if the ascites is new or if the patient with ascites is being admitted to the hospital. The fluid is then reviewed for its gross appearance, protein level, albumin, and cell counts (red and white). Additional tests will be performed if indicated such as Gram stain and cytopathology.[3]
The Serum-ascites albumin gradient (SAAG) is probably a better discriminant than older measures (transudate versus exudate) for the causes of ascites.[4] A high gradient (> 1.1 g/dL) indicates the ascites is due to portal hypertension. A low gradient (< 1.1 g/dL) indicates ascites of non-portal hypertensive etiology.
Ultrasound investigation is often performed prior to attempts to remove fluid from the abdomen. This may reveal the size and shape of the abdominal organs, and Doppler studies may show the direction of flow in the portal vein, as well as detecting Budd-Chiari syndrome and portal vein thrombosis. Additionally, the sonographer can make an estimation of the amount of ascitic fluid, and difficult-to-drain ascites may be drained under ultrasound guidance. Abdominal CT scan is a more accurate alternate to reveal abdominal organ structure and morphology.
Causes of high SAAG ("transudate") are:[3]
Cirrhosis - 81% (alcoholic in 65%, viral in 10%, cryptogenic in 6%)
Heart failure - 3%
Hepatic Venous occlusion: Budd-Chiari syndrome or veno-occlusive disease
Constrictive pericarditis
Kwashiorkor
Causes of low SAAG ("exudate") are:
Cancer (primary peritoneal carcinomatosis and metastasis) - 10%
Infection: Tuberculosis - 2% or Spontaneous bacterial peritonitis
Pancreatitis - 1%
Serositis
Nephrotic syndrome or Protein losing enteropathy
Hereditary angioedema[5]
Other Rare causes:
Meigs syndrome
Vasculitis
Hypothyroidism
Renal Dialysis
Peritoneum Mesothelioma
Pathophysiology
Ascitic fluid can accumulate as a transudate or an exudate. Amounts of up to 25 liters are possible.
Roughly, transudates are a result of increased pressure in the portal vein (>8 mmHg, usually around 20 mmHg[6]), e.g. due to cirrhosis, while exudates are actively secreted fluid due to inflammation or malignancy. As a result, exudates are high in protein, high in lactate dehydrogenase, have a low pH (<7.30), a low glucose level, and more white blood cells.
Transudates have low protein (<30g/L), low LDH, high pH, normal glucose, and fewer than 1 white cell per 1000 mm³. Clinically, the most useful measure is the difference between ascitic and serum albumin concentrations. A difference of less than 1 g/dl (10 g/L) implies an exudate.[3]
Portal hypertension plays an important role in the production of ascites by raising capillary hydrostatic pressure within the splanchnic bed.
Regardless of the cause, sequestration of fluid within the abdomen leads to additional fluid retention by the kidneys due to stimulatory effect on blood pressure hormones, notably aldosterone. The sympathetic nervous system is also activated, and renin production is increased due to decreased perfusion of the kidney.
Extreme disruption of the renal blood flow can lead to hepatorenal syndrome. Other complications of ascites include spontaneous bacterial peritonitis (SBP), due to decreased antibacterial factors in the ascitic fluid such as complement.
Treatment
Ascites is generally treated while an underlying etiology is sought, in order to prevent complications, relieve symptoms, and prevent further progression. In patients with mild ascites, therapy is usually as an outpatient. The goal is weight loss of no more than 1.0 kg/day for patients with both ascites and peripheral edema and no more than 0.5 kg/day for patients with ascites alone.[7] In those with severe ascites causing a tense abdomen, hospitalization is generally necessary for paracentesis.[8][9]
High SAAG
Treatments in high SAAG ("transudate") are:
Salt restriction
Salt restriction is the initial treatment, which allows diuresis (production of urine) since the patient now has more fluid than salt concentration. Salt restriction is effective in about 15% of patients.[10]
Diuretics
Since salt restriction is the basic concept in treatment, and aldosterone is one of the hormones that acts to increase salt retention, a medication that counteracts aldosterone should be sought. Spironolactone (or other distal-tubule diuretics such as triamterene or amiloride) is the drug of choice since they block the aldosterone receptor in the collecting tubule.
This choice has been confirmed in a randomized controlled trial.[11] Diuretics for ascites should be dosed once per day.[12] Generally, the starting dose is oral spironolactone 100 mg/day (max 400 mg/day). 40% of patients will respond to spironolactone.[10] For nonresponders, a loop diuretic may also be added and generally, furosemide is added at a dose of 40 mg/day (max 160 mg/day), or alternatively (bumetanide or torasemide). The ratio of 100:40 reduces risks of potassium imbalance.[12] Serum potassium level and renal function should be monitored closely while on these medications.[13]
Monitoring diuresis: Diuresis can be monitored by weighing the patient daily. The goal is weight loss of no more than 1.0 kg/day for patients with both ascites and peripheral edema and no more than 0.5 kg/day for patients with ascites alone.[7] If daily weights cannot be obtained, diuretics can also be guided by the urinary sodium concentration. Dosage is increased until a negative sodium balance occurs.[12] A random urine sodium-to-potassium ratio of > 1 is 90% sensitivity in predicting negative balance (> 78-mmol/day sodium excretion).[14]
Diuretic resistance: Diuretic resistance can be predicted by giving 80 mg intravenous furosemide after 3 days without diuretics and on an 80 mEq sodium/day diet. The urinary sodium excretion over 8 hours < 50 mEq/8 hours predicts resistance.[15]
If a patient exhibits a resistance to or poor response to diuretic therapy, ultrafiltration [disambiguation needed] or aquapheresis may be needed to achieve adequate control of fluid retention and congestion. The use of such mechanical methods of fluid removal can produce meaningful clinical benefits in patients with diuretic resistance and may restore responsiveness to conventional doses of diuretics.[1
Sunday, September 11, 2011
Amazing Healing Through Juice Fasting
JUICE-FASTING:
This is a great article which explains why juice fasting is a better way to detoxify than water fasting.
The powerful healing therapy that no-one ever uses.
Dr. Richard Schulze, N.D., M.H.
"When you don't feel well, stop eating and go to juices."
SCHULZE: The first thing an animal does when it is sick is stop eating. They fast themselves.
Likewise, the first thing we need to do when we don't feel well is: stop food.
There are a lot of reasons for that. Food takes a tremendous amount of energy to digest--and that's blood and energy. Our digestive system, basically the muscles and the tissues, fill with blood. When you stop eating, your digestive system rests, and all that blood and energy can be put somewhere else to heal you.
People have said to me, "What do I do for this particular disease?" Juice fasting. "What do I do for degeneration?" Juice fasting. "What do I do for heart disease?" Juice fasting.
Juice fasting is for the incurables. Juice fasting is the answer, because it allows your body to rest - and it lets your body choose what it wants to heal.
If you just keep cramming food down your mouth, you'll just get more tired. Your body has to digest large amounts of food, and it's the opposite of what you should do when you're not well.
"One of my first patients had lost a tremendous amount of blood from surgery--and doctors wanted to do a transfusion. In 24 hours on juices, I brought her blood levels back up."
What does juice fasting do?
Food has nutrition in it, but it takes a lot to break those nutrients down.
Juices are like a blood transfusion.
A glass of fruit and vegetable juice takes very little digestion, if any. It goes right into your body. We look at juices in the same way a doctor would look at an I.V It's something that can go right into your bloodstream.
One of my first learning experiences was a woman patient who was undergoing a surgery, a female surgery. The doctors nicked an artery, and she had tremendous hemorrhaging and bleeding. By the time they got her patched up, she was in intensive care, and had lost a tremendous amount of blood.
The doctors wanted to do a transfusion. She was scared to do a transfusion and the doctor said, "You're very anemic and your hemoglobin count is at the lowest end for a woman."
She said, "Is there anything you can do?"
And I said, "Sure," and I got the juicer out and juiced some juices. I made some carrot juice and some beet juice. I took it to the hospital and said, "Just let the doctors give you 24 hours. "They did, and, in 24 hours on juices, they said that her hemoglobin count was over the top end of the scale for a man, not even a woman, and men's hemoglobin counts are higher. This was my first realization of the power of what juices can do to build the blood up.
BISER: Wait a minute, you gave her juices. How did she get juices when she went into the hospital for 24 hours?
SCHULZE: Oh, I went to the hospital too. I juiced the juices, put them in quart canning jars. Fresh beet juice, fresh beet greens, fresh carrot juice. I took it right to her hospital room and she drank it.
That's all she had for 24 hours and not only did her blood hemoglobin go up, but it went over the top of the scale for a man. The doctors said they were shocked, they had never seen anything like that.
Man cures his colon cancer by juice-fasting. The cancer came out in the toilet.
SCHULZE: I had a man who had a colon cancer and he basically refused to do anything, but he said he would stop eating and go on juices. This was early on in my practice, too. These were learning experiences.
He started on a multitude of fruit and vegetable juices and, I remember it was about a month later into his long juice fast, he pooped his cancer right out. It was 18" long.
It looked like a rope with figs attached to it. I had seen things like that before in pictures and books - but that was the first time I ever saw one come out.
BISER: A rope?
SCHULZE: Yeah, it was like a rope with sacs on it, they were about the size of figs. And, he actually eliminated his cancer just through juice fasting. He wasn't using any herbs or doing anything else, something I wouldn't recommend. Juice fasting, through my experience and his, is more powerful than just water fasting. Juices not only fill you with nutrition - but they empty you out. If you have any doubt about that, go home and drink a quart of prune juice and you tell me what happens. Juices are flushing and cleansing to organs of the body.
Juices are enzyme therapy.
SCHULZE: Juices contain gigantic amounts of enzymes. And a lot of people nowadays are taking enzymes because of the benefits, but you don't have to, they're in the juices.
Enzymes are heat sensitive, meaning that when you cook food, you destroy all the enzymes. Now, when you eat that food or juice, it's okay. Your body will produce enzymes in order for you to digest that food. But when your body does that - it can't do something else. It only has a limited amount of energy. So, one of the things that juices do, because they are loaded with enzymes, is they give your body a vacation.
Most of us live enzyme-free diets. If all we eat is cooked food, there are no enzymes in it. By supplying your body with high doses of enzymes, it gives many of your organs like your pancreas, your liver, your digestive system a holiday, because they don't have to try to manufacture chemicals that are coming in through your juices.
BISER: So it's an enzyme holiday!
"Thinning the blood is one the most important things you can do when you are sick, and juices do that."
SCHULZE: Yes, an enzyme holiday. And it also thins your blood. This is a major key.
Most of us who are ill are trying to do something to get blood to the area that is sick.
But our body is trying to pump around mud - and it can't get there. Thinning our blood is one the greatest keys to getting healthy. It increases our circulation because the blood becomes more like water than molasses. The bottom line is, juice fasting thins your blood. That allows your circulation to get deeper in your body into the vital areas, into the capillaries that were filled with fat and all clogged-up.
"Juice-fasting allows your body to balance its hormones and replace chemicals it is deficient in."
SCHULZE: Many people are sick because they don't produce enough insulin in their body. Or, they don't produce enough thyrox in their thyroid. Or, they don't produce enough interferon or immunoglobulin for the immune system to be strong. They don't produce enough estrogen or progesterone or testosterone.
Those chemicals are all built from nutrition. One of the things that juice fasting does is, it supplies your body with a tremendous amount of nutrition. So it balances your metabolism, balances your hormones, balances your endocrine system, your thyroid, your pancreas, and your reproductive organs. And it does one other important thing: It allows you to get more work done.
Juice fasting clears the mind.
BISER: How can you get more work done when you're hungry? Because you're not eating solid foods?
SCHULZE: Let me tell you, it's just the opposite of what you think. If you want a gigantic change, stop eating for a couple days. It will feel like the fog is cleared.
You will be amazed at your sense of smell, your sense of taste, your eyesight, your perception, your thoughts.
All through history, from the Greek and Roman writings, to the Egyptians, from Jesus to Shakespeare, people talked about fasting for better mental clarity.
One thing I can guarantee you is that if you have a confusing problem, or a stressful issue that you don't know the answer to, stop eating. It enhances mental clarity.
We are drunk on food. Overeating makes you dull. Your blood, instead of going to your brain, is going to your digestive tract.
You read it in the Bible, Jesus going to the woods for his fasting. Everybody, throughout history, would go out of the city and go onto juices and water, and fast. Fasting clears the mind, and so it is a physical and emotional cleanse, and maybe even a spiritual cleanse when you stop your food from coming in.
Dr. Richard Schulze
"No-one realizes how powerful juice-fasting is- until they do it. Then they will never live without it. "
"Everybody should do this periodically. I guarantee everybody who is reading this, if they just do a fast, for a couple of days, they will be amazed."
BISER: When you worked in Hollywood, you had all those people in the movie industry, did you give them the same advice?
SCHULZE: Yes, in fact many people came to me and they were worried about the first week, or a difficult part of the movie that they were having a problem with, or that they were worried about, "Can I do this?", or, "Is it going to go okay?", and I would suggest the five-day program.
The five day program is 2 days of light eating of fruits and salads only, with 2 days of juice fasting in the middle, and one day of fruits and salads at the end.
They would say to me, "Oh, God, I can't do that, that would even be more stress."
And, I would say, "Yes you can. It will be less stress when your body is using all its blood and energy to help you do what you need to do, and figure it out, and not be loaded down with food."
And those that would do it came back to me and said, "Oh my God, thank you."
I had one woman who hadn't worked in a couple of years, a quite famous actress.
She had to go out for four interviews during the week and these were the most interviews she had been to, in a long time. She said, "What should I do?" and I said "Fast." She said, "That sounds horrible. I need all my strength and energy." I said "Believe me, fast."
She fasted and got all four parts that she went out for. I've always seen it happen with all my clients.
I remember as a kid, I used to eat a big meal, thinking it was going to make me feel stronger. I felt more tired. So, I'd eat more and I felt more tired. And I'd eat more, then I felt more tired.
I've done many fasts - short fasts. I've done two thirty day fasts and one sixty-day juice fast. We can go months without food - - as long as we're getting our nutrients.
BISER: But did your body get run down without it?
SCHULZE: Oh no, in fact, in the last couple days of my thirty-day juice fast, I kick-boxed 17 rounds and I was better than ever before.
No one could come near me and touch me. I had better vision, I had better reflexes, I had better timing. And I had endless amounts of strength. This is something we have to get away from - the idea that fasting weakens you. It's not true.
"When you fast, there are some things you need to be aware of."
SCHULZE: Sometimes when you fast, you have a little less body heat. So take a sweater with you when you go out. Every once in awhile, you may feel a little colder and it's because it is calories from heat units in food that warms up our body.
So, since you are reducing your food and you're on juices only, dress a little warmer and have a little blanket in the car or a sweater with you. That's one thing I tell people.
The other thing is, you have energy lows. And what that is, when you're fasting, is all of sudden, you might feel, especially if you're doing a longer fast, like a week or more, you might feel like, oh my gosh, I have no energy at all.
Don't pay any attention to that--because it will be gone in ten minutes. This is very common as your body is used to a solid fuel and now it's on a liquid fuel. And just like a machine, if you change its fuel, it adjusts a little bit. We have to make adjustments and once we make those adjustments, it's fine. So don't pay any attention to that.
A couple other things I'll throw in here. One thing I always tell people is, you get hunger pains when you're fasting.
Most of the time they're not real. All of a sudden, you have a dream or a vision of a baked potato covered with sour cream and chives. If that's real, you'll still have the urge in three or four hours. So, one of the ways to get by that, is just to ignore it and it will go away.
Most people think a fast means deprivation. I see it differently. A fast is a flush - a flush with liquids. Okay?
You are only going without solid food - but you are getting liquid food that does you more good.
"A fast is a flush and people need to consume a gallon a day of liquids: juices, water, herb tea. Most people make a mistake by not consuming enough - and if you're hungry drink more."
BISER: What juice do you use when you want to detoxify heavily?
SCHULZE: Wheat grass is great. It can detoxify when some people don't get a detoxification any more from anything. Or, when they've used a few herbs and they think they are clean.
I remember my own story. I thought I was very clean. It was after I spent six months at Dr. Jensen's eating only raw food and juice fasting and years after I had healed my heart.
I started drinking wheat grass, an ounce a day, then two ounces a day, then three ounces a day, and then four ounces a day, and I got up to eight ounces one morning and I remember feeling horrible - and I started vomiting.
It was just too strong of a dose, but at that point, wheat grass started creating all sorts of cleansing in my body - of old things I remembered I had. It finally cleaned them out and brought them to the surface.
BISER: What do you mean "old things'?
SCHULZE: Well, when I started cleaning out my bowel years earlier, my hemorrhoids went away and I hadn't noticed any hemorrhoids for years.
Then - in the middle of this wheat grass purge, the hemorrhoids flared up again - and it wasn't because I was having diarrhea or straining or anything.
I think it was because there were small capillaries there that were still blocked, and that wheat grass was cleaning them out.
I started noticing things with my bronchials and my sinuses, and all sorts of problems that I had cleared away. But now they were kind of coming back again.
When you do a really good final cleansing and healing, a lot of your oldest problems come back, but just for a few days - as you clear them out.
So I noticed some tremendous differences in my skin, and to this day I still drink wheat grass. People always come up to me and say, "Your skin looks so great." I get this comment all the time, so I know that it's really done some good work inside me.
How to make wheatgrass juice to detoxify yourself.
BISER: What does a reader have to know to get going on this? It sounds powerful.
SCHULZE: They might have to grow their own wheat grass, and actually purchase a wheat grass juicer, or something they can juice with. If they don't have a wheat grass juicer, just soak the wheat grass in water and blend it up in your blender and drink it, grass and all.
Anybody can grow wheat. You grow wheat and it just grows into grass. You can grow it yourself. It's very easy to grow yourself. You just buy wheat, and you take organic wheat kernels, and you soak them for a few days until they actually sprout.
You can soak them for about 24 hours and then put them into a damp cotton cloth for another two or three days, until the wheat sprouts, and then you can just make them like other sprouts. Rinse them in water two or three times a day until they have tails on them about an inch long, and then you can go ahead and plant them right in the soil.
Some people plant them right away and then just keep the soil damp the first couple of days, and you grow your own wheat grass. Now you have what looks like your front lawn in a tray in your house.
What do you do with it? Well, you can run it through your juicer. A lot of people think you have to have a wheat grass juicer. A wheat grass juicer just gets more juice out of the wheat grass. There are hand-operated ones and there are electric ones. The hand-operated wheat grass juicers are about $70-80, and the electric ones are usually $300, but you could run the wheat grass right through your Champion juicer.
You can just cut it up and even soak it with water and put it in a blender. I've had many patients in areas just take the wheat grass, cut it up and put it in a blender, fill that blender with water and blend it up and you'll get a greenish water.
Or, you can run it through your juicer with other things like carrots, and it gets caught up in your juicer.
So wheat grass is something that everybody should consider as a medicinal cleansing and building juice, very bitter tasting. Start out with a little bit. I suggest people start out with an ounce a day and don't take it on its own. I like an ounce of wheat grass with 16 ounces of fresh carrot juice. It just gives the carrot juice a little greenish tint and it's very palatable.
There is also what I consider the wheat grass cocktail, which is a base of apple juice with, say, about 12 ounces of apple juice, a couple of ounces of lemon juice, a thumb size piece of ginger and an ounce of wheat grass.
One thing that is very interesting, is that lemon and lime tend to cover up the taste of wheat grass, which is good because a lot of people find it very strong to eat or drink, and lemon especially seems to cover up the taste.
The watermelon flush for the kidneys. If you need it, you will be urinating fire.
BISER: What do you do with juices for the kidneys?
SCHULZE: I use two different things, one a vegetable, parsley, and the other, a fruit, watermelon.
I tell my patients to sit down for dinner and instead of dinner, crack open and eat a whole watermelon.
QUESTION: Is this one of those wellness things or does it really cure?
SCHULZE: Oh, my gosh. I was down at Dr. Jensen's and they had some organic watermelon and I said "Okay, I'm just going to have watermelon tonight." I cracked open one, about the size of a basketball, and I ate that really quick, and I thought I want another one, so I ate one of those red-meated ones, and I basically went to bed.
The next morning, I woke up, and when I urinated it was like urinating fire. It burnt my prostate, my pen_s- it was so painful I was moaning in the bathroom.
Watermelon juice, watermelon itself and watermelon seeds are all diuretic and disinfecting. When you're juicing the watermelon, a lot of people just juice the meat, but you want to juice the rind too.
The rind has the minerals. You run it through the Champion juicer. You run the watermelon and the rind right through there, and it is delicious. You can taste the salt, the sodium, in the rind, and the minerals in the rind - very cleansing to the kidneys.
BISER: Why do people eat watermelon and not get any kidney cleansing, or kidney cures?
SCHULZE: I think because they don't juice the rind, and I think that a lot of the watermelons today are seedless. And I would suggest that people do not buy the seedless. Juice the watermelon, seeds and all.
"Make parsley juice - not parsley tea. It's a whole lot more healing."
BISER: I thought parsley was just one of these feel good, wellness herbs. Not for heavy curing.
SCHULZE: No, it's an intense one. The problem is that people only make tea out of it. When you just pour boiling water over dried parsley you're going to get a little bit of the essential oils.
Now, if you use fresh parsley and grind it in a Champion juicer, it's a lot more intense.
It's like the herb plantain. Dr. Christopher talks about plantain for blood poisoning. You can make a little plantain tea, or mash up a plantain leaf. Or, you can take plantain and run it right through the juicer. If you've got blood poisoning, who the heck wants to worry about making plantain teas with a little boiling water over it?
Get it through the juicer and get yourself two or three ounces of plantain juice. I've done that.
Juice radishes to cleanse the liver.
SCHULZE: If you want to add a juice in to stimulate the liver more, all the radishes work real well.
Some people talk about the black radishes, or other kinds, but you can use the red radishes and even use wild radishes you have growing wild in the United States. Remember, where you have mustard growing, you also have wild radish growing.
You can even pick the pods off, or use the radish leaves or sprouts, but radishes of all types stimulate the liver and clean it out. As far as bad digestion, I've seen a lot of people helped in their digestion with celery and cabbage juices.
BISER: You mean cabbage juice doesn't cause gas?
SCHULZE: No. Cabbage is a great cleanser and healer to the digestive tract. I've seen a lot of people with ulcers and digestive problems have great results drinking cabbage and celery juice.
Cabbage juice is excellent and I've had patients drink about 8 ounces of cabbage juice a day in one ounce doses. It can be mixed with other juices too. The celery juice works really nice to cool the system, especially with ulceration conditions.
It's important with vegetables, but especially fruit, if you're not getting organic, you need to wash it. Use a little bit of soap and water, a good natural soap and even a scrub brush, because most of the sprays and things are put right on the fruit them selves.
[Editor: For juice-fasting, you can obtain organic vegetables by mail from: Walnut Acres, Penns Creek, PA (800)433-3998]
Leukemia: A man regenerates his bone marrow with months of juice-fasting.
SCHULZE: I had a man with leukemia. He had fairly severe leukemia. He had undergone a couple different treatments and a couple shots of chemotherapy. He felt so horrible, he said that dying would be better than his experience on the chemotherapy.
He quit the chemotherapy, and came to me right away. He wanted to do something quite radical and I turned him onto juice fasting. He really got into it.
The first month he didn't get any better. In fact, some of his blood counts were even worse. Then, he ate a little bit of raw foods, took a break for about a week. Then he went back onto a juice fast and the second month he was stabilizing and some of his blood counts were coming up. Then he went back on some raw foods and health building.
Then we went into a third month of juice fasting - and that's when we really saw the big changes.
His blood chemistry changed dramatically. He didn't start really showing the cancer changing greatly until the end of the second month and into the third month, but, by the fourth to fifth month he was clean.
BISER: Why do you think in the first month his blood counts got worse in spite of . .
SCHULZE: Well, I think because he was so sick. He had spent 40 years - he was about 55 years old - but he spent about 40 of those years basically trying to kill himself...
BISER: What do you mean, trying to kill himself?
SCHULZE: Well, you know with his food program, no exercise, high cholesterol, family history...
BISER: You mean the numbers had a downward trend and you couldn't stop them, right?
SCHULZE: Yes, and a lot of people expect that, the minute they take three herb capsules and stop eating for a day, their disease is going to start to go away.
BISER: What juices did you use to build his blood?
SCHULZE: When people are thinking about building that blood, I like beets and beet greens. So go to your organic market, but make sure you get your greens.
In some studies, I've seen the beets and beet greens analyzed. They have three times the iron in the beet greens than in a beet root, and sometimes, I've seen it the other way around. But greens are loaded with different minerals than the beets have. Together, they are a perfect food.
The beet and the beet greens, added to the carrot juice, is the one that I use with patients that have had either a lot of blood loss due to surgical trauma, or from cancer, where the body won't build blood any more.
When you start getting that beet and beet greens in, along with the carrot juice, you see a big change. Now if you want to build the blood, the extra juices to remember, the fruit ones, are the dark blue, red and purple - that would be raspberries, blackberries and blueberries or prunes, plums and cherries - these are all the super blood builders.
They are loaded with iron, and you start getting a blue purple juice, and you start drinking that, and now you have the fruit blood builders.
Getting children to drink healthy juices.
BISER: How do you get kids to get on juices for their health?
SCHULZE: The way I got the kids started was making apple juice in the juicer - and just throwing one carrot through.
You start out with about 90 percent apple and 10 percent carrots and the kids will eventually start drinking that like it's perfect. When they really get used to it, then go up to 20 percent of carrot and 80 percent apple and just work that ratio till you get it about 50-50.
A lot of people might say that is a vegetable and a fruit combination, but every juice specialist seems to agree that the one food combining exception with fruits and vegetables is carrot with apple.
Juices help thin people gain weight.
BISER: Wouldn't a juice fast be bad for people who are underweight?
SCHULZE: No - it's how I brought people's weight back, even when they had AIDS.
I had a man come to see me that had a complete turn around and he had a T-cell count which would fluctuate between five and twenty-five, depending on when they took it. That's about as low as it gets.
He had loads of opportunistic AIDS infections. We started him on juice fasting right away.
This is one I want to talk about - because he was quite thin and a lot of people think "I can't juice fast or I'll lose weight." I've had people gain weight on juice fasting and this man was one of them.
He started juice fasting and started gaining weight and people asked, "How is that?" It's very simple. A lot of food that people eat, they can't assimilate. When you are sick, your digestion, your assimilation and elimination doesn't work very well. But, you start putting juices in your body, and you'll see the weight come back. This is why I call juices "the natural healers IV."--it's like a hospital I.V. naturally. Within a couple of weeks, from juices and the other programs I used, the man's T-cell count was over a thousand.
BISER: How much weighs did he gain?
SCHULZE: I think he gained about 15 pounds in the first couple months, and he was mainly on a liquid diet.
BISER: You would think he'd lose twenty-five pounds.
SCHULZE: Absolutely. But now he was getting nutrition that he couldn't get, so I think the main thing I've really come to see is that juice fasting builds blood, and I believe personally that it turns on the bone marrow.
Fresh citrus juices with their rind are great liver cleansers
SCHULZE: The bitter oils in citrus are big time liver cleansers. They disinfect and create more bile flow. And you have to get in the rind, which contains pectin. Run that rind through your juicer or your Vita-Mix.
I look at citrus more as kidney and liver cleaning. It's also very effective for cleaning the blood and joints, like with arthritis.
Removing parasites with fruits.
SCHULZE: I remember my first bowel cleanse, because I didn't know about herbs yet. I drank two quarts of apples, fresh squeezed apple juice, and a quart of fresh made prune juice.
Not only did I have parasites, but I had casing from my colon. I also had all sorts of dark flecks of things of old come out of my bowel. That was my first bowel cleanse.
BlSER: Just from fruit?
SCHULZE: Just from fruit.
BISER: But you took more of it. Most people don't take enough to cause parasites or anything else to come out.
SCHULZE: No, they don't. Take two quarts of apple and a quart of prune as your juice for the day on a juice fast and you will notice a dramatic bowel cleanse.
You can also make fig water by just taking figs and putting them in a blender with water. The problem is that a lot of people eat dried prunes and dried figs. They are constipating.
On a juice fast you should only have the juices that come out of the juicer. You should have no pulp at all. The pulp that's in most fruit is fiber that's not digestible. All it does in a juice fast is it might cause your digestive tract to work a little bit more.
BISER: Okay, so a juicer would be slightly preferable.
SCHULZE: Yes, it would. If you're doing your fast to really shut down your digestive tract and to really put all your body's energy into healing something, yes- avoid the pulp.
However, if you are using a juice fast to clean your bowel out, you're better off with the pulp, because it activates the digestive system, and, of course, this will give you bowel movements
The number one mistake people make on a juice fast.
BISER: Why do so many people fail to get results on juice-fasting?
SCHULZE: It's because they don't cleanse their colon before they do it. Every day, have that bowel flushed out, and a person might want to use herbs for a couple of days and then do it with enemas; see the difference; see what happens and experiment that way.
High enemas are also something to do during a juice fast, to get all the pulp and solid bits out of our system and they work very nice too. But, the main thing is, during a fast you need to have your bowels work every day. They don't have to work necessarily three times a day.
With some people they're bowels will work seven times a day, depending on the person, but those who have a tendency towards slower, sluggish, sleepy bowels, they can go on a fast for a week and not have a bowel movement at all, so they don't want to do that.
Use powdered super foods during a fast.
SCHULZE: Fasting can be even more powerful when people maximize their nutrition. Super nutrition can cause the body to detoxify more by flushing your body with vitamins and minerals, and it can also build your blood faster.
So, I always suggest people add super foods to their juice fast. Some of the best ones are spirulina and chlorella. If someone can't get fresh wheat grass, you can use wheat grass powder, barley grass powder and alfalfa grass powder or alfalfa herb. They're detoxifying, and they have vitamins and minerals. I usually, once a day during a fast, tell people to add some of these particular foods to their fruit smoothie.
Sea weeds are also good. You can get sea weed powders in the health food stores like Dulse or Kelp. I have many patients that have fasted using the nutritional yeast too. I've really seen the results when people have done a juice fast on just juices and a juice fast using super food powders.
BISER: You mean they feel a lot better.
SCHULZE: Well, they have a lot more energy when they do it on super foods - and it can also cause the body to purge and eliminate more. It builds the blood faster.
Heart patients need juice-fasting.
BISER: Some people say a heart patient should never do a fast. It would be a strain on the system.
SCHULZE: That's the first thing a heart patient should Do - a juice-fast. The first thing is stop eating, because 99 percent of the time the heart patient's blood cells are like mud and their coronary arteries are congested. When the circulation is that bad, even becoming a vegetarian won't unclog the blood. You have to do a juice fast to thin the blood back to a healthy state.
BISER: What does it feel like when the blood is thick?
SCHULZE: When you feel very sluggish, you feel - full, bloated, not only in your digestion, but you run two blocks and you're sweating and you just feel full of fat.
You feel it. You feel like blood doesn't even want to pump around your body. You are breathing heavy. Then you stop eating - and it's just the greatest cure for anything, just stop eating. Stop eating food and get the juicer going.
How I helped my heart disease with long fasts.
BISER: I know from your beginnings that you weren't always such a believer in juice fasts?
SCHULZE: Oh no. I took lots of vitamins and mineral pills. I didn't realize that when you thin your blood, you improve your circulation to every capillary in your body.
So, I did my first fast and didn't expect much. But when I finished, I felt so much better, I said, "Wow, this is something that is much more powerful than anyone ever told me."
I remember, I did a fast for about a week. Then one for about ten days. Then I thought, okay, "I'm going to do a thirty-day fast and see what happens."
That was probably the biggest change that I had in my health, and this was early on, when I was living in New York, and I did that thirty-day fast. I think that after the first couple days, I never felt a heart palpitation from that point on. I never felt my heart dysfunctioning. It was like the missing link in my health program that I hadn't seen.
Then, about a year later, I did a two-month fast. That one was really life transforming to me. I have barely had a down day since then.
What I suggest to most of my patients is, two or three days fast in the middle of five days of raw foods, once a season. That's what my five day program is.
"But to anybody who came to me dying - when you're dealing with someone who has a life-threatening situation, stop all food. "
SCHULZE: Many of my patients walked in the door and they had done just about every program under the sun, and sometimes even all at once or almost at once, but they hadn't really fasted.
Many people are afraid to fast. They are afraid of the one treatment that can cure them. We have this old American idea, that we need to have that bacon and eggs breakfast to get us going, and, of course, that's one of the things that gets us dead. I always called that the heart attack plate.
BISER: I thought before I met you that juices were mainly a feel good, wellness kind of thing, but not powerful enough for serious diseases.
SCHULZE: Many people feel that way. I myself thought that way - until I started investigating the classic old healers.
BISER: So, this is the therapy that people never do?
SCHULZE: That's right. Everybody in America, we have this conveyor belt that's going from the health food store or the herb shop into our mouth, and we think, "Well, it's chromium and kola nut."
Or it's goldenseal. Or it's garlic. Or it's cayenne. Or it's a colonic. We're all looking for something more, but very few people actually stop eating. The old herbalists didn't have the juicers. Juicers weren't a common household item back then. But nowadays - everybody should have a juicer.
Food is the foundation of healing.
But doctors are unbelievable. According to them, drugs are the foundation of healing. And according to the health food people, vitamin tablets are. They're all wrong. Food is.
The powerful healing therapy that no-one ever uses.
Dr. Richard Schulze, N.D., M.H.
"When you don't feel well, stop eating and go to juices."
SCHULZE: The first thing an animal does when it is sick is stop eating. They fast themselves.
Likewise, the first thing we need to do when we don't feel well is: stop food.
There are a lot of reasons for that. Food takes a tremendous amount of energy to digest--and that's blood and energy. Our digestive system, basically the muscles and the tissues, fill with blood. When you stop eating, your digestive system rests, and all that blood and energy can be put somewhere else to heal you.
People have said to me, "What do I do for this particular disease?" Juice fasting. "What do I do for degeneration?" Juice fasting. "What do I do for heart disease?" Juice fasting.
Juice fasting is for the incurables. Juice fasting is the answer, because it allows your body to rest - and it lets your body choose what it wants to heal.
If you just keep cramming food down your mouth, you'll just get more tired. Your body has to digest large amounts of food, and it's the opposite of what you should do when you're not well.
"One of my first patients had lost a tremendous amount of blood from surgery--and doctors wanted to do a transfusion. In 24 hours on juices, I brought her blood levels back up."
What does juice fasting do?
Food has nutrition in it, but it takes a lot to break those nutrients down.
Juices are like a blood transfusion.
A glass of fruit and vegetable juice takes very little digestion, if any. It goes right into your body. We look at juices in the same way a doctor would look at an I.V It's something that can go right into your bloodstream.
One of my first learning experiences was a woman patient who was undergoing a surgery, a female surgery. The doctors nicked an artery, and she had tremendous hemorrhaging and bleeding. By the time they got her patched up, she was in intensive care, and had lost a tremendous amount of blood.
The doctors wanted to do a transfusion. She was scared to do a transfusion and the doctor said, "You're very anemic and your hemoglobin count is at the lowest end for a woman."
She said, "Is there anything you can do?"
And I said, "Sure," and I got the juicer out and juiced some juices. I made some carrot juice and some beet juice. I took it to the hospital and said, "Just let the doctors give you 24 hours. "They did, and, in 24 hours on juices, they said that her hemoglobin count was over the top end of the scale for a man, not even a woman, and men's hemoglobin counts are higher. This was my first realization of the power of what juices can do to build the blood up.
BISER: Wait a minute, you gave her juices. How did she get juices when she went into the hospital for 24 hours?
SCHULZE: Oh, I went to the hospital too. I juiced the juices, put them in quart canning jars. Fresh beet juice, fresh beet greens, fresh carrot juice. I took it right to her hospital room and she drank it.
That's all she had for 24 hours and not only did her blood hemoglobin go up, but it went over the top of the scale for a man. The doctors said they were shocked, they had never seen anything like that.
Man cures his colon cancer by juice-fasting. The cancer came out in the toilet.
SCHULZE: I had a man who had a colon cancer and he basically refused to do anything, but he said he would stop eating and go on juices. This was early on in my practice, too. These were learning experiences.
He started on a multitude of fruit and vegetable juices and, I remember it was about a month later into his long juice fast, he pooped his cancer right out. It was 18" long.
It looked like a rope with figs attached to it. I had seen things like that before in pictures and books - but that was the first time I ever saw one come out.
BISER: A rope?
SCHULZE: Yeah, it was like a rope with sacs on it, they were about the size of figs. And, he actually eliminated his cancer just through juice fasting. He wasn't using any herbs or doing anything else, something I wouldn't recommend. Juice fasting, through my experience and his, is more powerful than just water fasting. Juices not only fill you with nutrition - but they empty you out. If you have any doubt about that, go home and drink a quart of prune juice and you tell me what happens. Juices are flushing and cleansing to organs of the body.
Juices are enzyme therapy.
SCHULZE: Juices contain gigantic amounts of enzymes. And a lot of people nowadays are taking enzymes because of the benefits, but you don't have to, they're in the juices.
Enzymes are heat sensitive, meaning that when you cook food, you destroy all the enzymes. Now, when you eat that food or juice, it's okay. Your body will produce enzymes in order for you to digest that food. But when your body does that - it can't do something else. It only has a limited amount of energy. So, one of the things that juices do, because they are loaded with enzymes, is they give your body a vacation.
Most of us live enzyme-free diets. If all we eat is cooked food, there are no enzymes in it. By supplying your body with high doses of enzymes, it gives many of your organs like your pancreas, your liver, your digestive system a holiday, because they don't have to try to manufacture chemicals that are coming in through your juices.
BISER: So it's an enzyme holiday!
"Thinning the blood is one the most important things you can do when you are sick, and juices do that."
SCHULZE: Yes, an enzyme holiday. And it also thins your blood. This is a major key.
Most of us who are ill are trying to do something to get blood to the area that is sick.
But our body is trying to pump around mud - and it can't get there. Thinning our blood is one the greatest keys to getting healthy. It increases our circulation because the blood becomes more like water than molasses. The bottom line is, juice fasting thins your blood. That allows your circulation to get deeper in your body into the vital areas, into the capillaries that were filled with fat and all clogged-up.
"Juice-fasting allows your body to balance its hormones and replace chemicals it is deficient in."
SCHULZE: Many people are sick because they don't produce enough insulin in their body. Or, they don't produce enough thyrox in their thyroid. Or, they don't produce enough interferon or immunoglobulin for the immune system to be strong. They don't produce enough estrogen or progesterone or testosterone.
Those chemicals are all built from nutrition. One of the things that juice fasting does is, it supplies your body with a tremendous amount of nutrition. So it balances your metabolism, balances your hormones, balances your endocrine system, your thyroid, your pancreas, and your reproductive organs. And it does one other important thing: It allows you to get more work done.
Juice fasting clears the mind.
BISER: How can you get more work done when you're hungry? Because you're not eating solid foods?
SCHULZE: Let me tell you, it's just the opposite of what you think. If you want a gigantic change, stop eating for a couple days. It will feel like the fog is cleared.
You will be amazed at your sense of smell, your sense of taste, your eyesight, your perception, your thoughts.
All through history, from the Greek and Roman writings, to the Egyptians, from Jesus to Shakespeare, people talked about fasting for better mental clarity.
One thing I can guarantee you is that if you have a confusing problem, or a stressful issue that you don't know the answer to, stop eating. It enhances mental clarity.
We are drunk on food. Overeating makes you dull. Your blood, instead of going to your brain, is going to your digestive tract.
You read it in the Bible, Jesus going to the woods for his fasting. Everybody, throughout history, would go out of the city and go onto juices and water, and fast. Fasting clears the mind, and so it is a physical and emotional cleanse, and maybe even a spiritual cleanse when you stop your food from coming in.
Dr. Richard Schulze
"No-one realizes how powerful juice-fasting is- until they do it. Then they will never live without it. "
"Everybody should do this periodically. I guarantee everybody who is reading this, if they just do a fast, for a couple of days, they will be amazed."
BISER: When you worked in Hollywood, you had all those people in the movie industry, did you give them the same advice?
SCHULZE: Yes, in fact many people came to me and they were worried about the first week, or a difficult part of the movie that they were having a problem with, or that they were worried about, "Can I do this?", or, "Is it going to go okay?", and I would suggest the five-day program.
The five day program is 2 days of light eating of fruits and salads only, with 2 days of juice fasting in the middle, and one day of fruits and salads at the end.
They would say to me, "Oh, God, I can't do that, that would even be more stress."
And, I would say, "Yes you can. It will be less stress when your body is using all its blood and energy to help you do what you need to do, and figure it out, and not be loaded down with food."
And those that would do it came back to me and said, "Oh my God, thank you."
I had one woman who hadn't worked in a couple of years, a quite famous actress.
She had to go out for four interviews during the week and these were the most interviews she had been to, in a long time. She said, "What should I do?" and I said "Fast." She said, "That sounds horrible. I need all my strength and energy." I said "Believe me, fast."
She fasted and got all four parts that she went out for. I've always seen it happen with all my clients.
I remember as a kid, I used to eat a big meal, thinking it was going to make me feel stronger. I felt more tired. So, I'd eat more and I felt more tired. And I'd eat more, then I felt more tired.
I've done many fasts - short fasts. I've done two thirty day fasts and one sixty-day juice fast. We can go months without food - - as long as we're getting our nutrients.
BISER: But did your body get run down without it?
SCHULZE: Oh no, in fact, in the last couple days of my thirty-day juice fast, I kick-boxed 17 rounds and I was better than ever before.
No one could come near me and touch me. I had better vision, I had better reflexes, I had better timing. And I had endless amounts of strength. This is something we have to get away from - the idea that fasting weakens you. It's not true.
"When you fast, there are some things you need to be aware of."
SCHULZE: Sometimes when you fast, you have a little less body heat. So take a sweater with you when you go out. Every once in awhile, you may feel a little colder and it's because it is calories from heat units in food that warms up our body.
So, since you are reducing your food and you're on juices only, dress a little warmer and have a little blanket in the car or a sweater with you. That's one thing I tell people.
The other thing is, you have energy lows. And what that is, when you're fasting, is all of sudden, you might feel, especially if you're doing a longer fast, like a week or more, you might feel like, oh my gosh, I have no energy at all.
Don't pay any attention to that--because it will be gone in ten minutes. This is very common as your body is used to a solid fuel and now it's on a liquid fuel. And just like a machine, if you change its fuel, it adjusts a little bit. We have to make adjustments and once we make those adjustments, it's fine. So don't pay any attention to that.
A couple other things I'll throw in here. One thing I always tell people is, you get hunger pains when you're fasting.
Most of the time they're not real. All of a sudden, you have a dream or a vision of a baked potato covered with sour cream and chives. If that's real, you'll still have the urge in three or four hours. So, one of the ways to get by that, is just to ignore it and it will go away.
Most people think a fast means deprivation. I see it differently. A fast is a flush - a flush with liquids. Okay?
You are only going without solid food - but you are getting liquid food that does you more good.
"A fast is a flush and people need to consume a gallon a day of liquids: juices, water, herb tea. Most people make a mistake by not consuming enough - and if you're hungry drink more."
BISER: What juice do you use when you want to detoxify heavily?
SCHULZE: Wheat grass is great. It can detoxify when some people don't get a detoxification any more from anything. Or, when they've used a few herbs and they think they are clean.
I remember my own story. I thought I was very clean. It was after I spent six months at Dr. Jensen's eating only raw food and juice fasting and years after I had healed my heart.
I started drinking wheat grass, an ounce a day, then two ounces a day, then three ounces a day, and then four ounces a day, and I got up to eight ounces one morning and I remember feeling horrible - and I started vomiting.
It was just too strong of a dose, but at that point, wheat grass started creating all sorts of cleansing in my body - of old things I remembered I had. It finally cleaned them out and brought them to the surface.
BISER: What do you mean "old things'?
SCHULZE: Well, when I started cleaning out my bowel years earlier, my hemorrhoids went away and I hadn't noticed any hemorrhoids for years.
Then - in the middle of this wheat grass purge, the hemorrhoids flared up again - and it wasn't because I was having diarrhea or straining or anything.
I think it was because there were small capillaries there that were still blocked, and that wheat grass was cleaning them out.
I started noticing things with my bronchials and my sinuses, and all sorts of problems that I had cleared away. But now they were kind of coming back again.
When you do a really good final cleansing and healing, a lot of your oldest problems come back, but just for a few days - as you clear them out.
So I noticed some tremendous differences in my skin, and to this day I still drink wheat grass. People always come up to me and say, "Your skin looks so great." I get this comment all the time, so I know that it's really done some good work inside me.
How to make wheatgrass juice to detoxify yourself.
BISER: What does a reader have to know to get going on this? It sounds powerful.
SCHULZE: They might have to grow their own wheat grass, and actually purchase a wheat grass juicer, or something they can juice with. If they don't have a wheat grass juicer, just soak the wheat grass in water and blend it up in your blender and drink it, grass and all.
Anybody can grow wheat. You grow wheat and it just grows into grass. You can grow it yourself. It's very easy to grow yourself. You just buy wheat, and you take organic wheat kernels, and you soak them for a few days until they actually sprout.
You can soak them for about 24 hours and then put them into a damp cotton cloth for another two or three days, until the wheat sprouts, and then you can just make them like other sprouts. Rinse them in water two or three times a day until they have tails on them about an inch long, and then you can go ahead and plant them right in the soil.
Some people plant them right away and then just keep the soil damp the first couple of days, and you grow your own wheat grass. Now you have what looks like your front lawn in a tray in your house.
What do you do with it? Well, you can run it through your juicer. A lot of people think you have to have a wheat grass juicer. A wheat grass juicer just gets more juice out of the wheat grass. There are hand-operated ones and there are electric ones. The hand-operated wheat grass juicers are about $70-80, and the electric ones are usually $300, but you could run the wheat grass right through your Champion juicer.
You can just cut it up and even soak it with water and put it in a blender. I've had many patients in areas just take the wheat grass, cut it up and put it in a blender, fill that blender with water and blend it up and you'll get a greenish water.
Or, you can run it through your juicer with other things like carrots, and it gets caught up in your juicer.
So wheat grass is something that everybody should consider as a medicinal cleansing and building juice, very bitter tasting. Start out with a little bit. I suggest people start out with an ounce a day and don't take it on its own. I like an ounce of wheat grass with 16 ounces of fresh carrot juice. It just gives the carrot juice a little greenish tint and it's very palatable.
There is also what I consider the wheat grass cocktail, which is a base of apple juice with, say, about 12 ounces of apple juice, a couple of ounces of lemon juice, a thumb size piece of ginger and an ounce of wheat grass.
One thing that is very interesting, is that lemon and lime tend to cover up the taste of wheat grass, which is good because a lot of people find it very strong to eat or drink, and lemon especially seems to cover up the taste.
The watermelon flush for the kidneys. If you need it, you will be urinating fire.
BISER: What do you do with juices for the kidneys?
SCHULZE: I use two different things, one a vegetable, parsley, and the other, a fruit, watermelon.
I tell my patients to sit down for dinner and instead of dinner, crack open and eat a whole watermelon.
QUESTION: Is this one of those wellness things or does it really cure?
SCHULZE: Oh, my gosh. I was down at Dr. Jensen's and they had some organic watermelon and I said "Okay, I'm just going to have watermelon tonight." I cracked open one, about the size of a basketball, and I ate that really quick, and I thought I want another one, so I ate one of those red-meated ones, and I basically went to bed.
The next morning, I woke up, and when I urinated it was like urinating fire. It burnt my prostate, my pen_s- it was so painful I was moaning in the bathroom.
Watermelon juice, watermelon itself and watermelon seeds are all diuretic and disinfecting. When you're juicing the watermelon, a lot of people just juice the meat, but you want to juice the rind too.
The rind has the minerals. You run it through the Champion juicer. You run the watermelon and the rind right through there, and it is delicious. You can taste the salt, the sodium, in the rind, and the minerals in the rind - very cleansing to the kidneys.
BISER: Why do people eat watermelon and not get any kidney cleansing, or kidney cures?
SCHULZE: I think because they don't juice the rind, and I think that a lot of the watermelons today are seedless. And I would suggest that people do not buy the seedless. Juice the watermelon, seeds and all.
"Make parsley juice - not parsley tea. It's a whole lot more healing."
BISER: I thought parsley was just one of these feel good, wellness herbs. Not for heavy curing.
SCHULZE: No, it's an intense one. The problem is that people only make tea out of it. When you just pour boiling water over dried parsley you're going to get a little bit of the essential oils.
Now, if you use fresh parsley and grind it in a Champion juicer, it's a lot more intense.
It's like the herb plantain. Dr. Christopher talks about plantain for blood poisoning. You can make a little plantain tea, or mash up a plantain leaf. Or, you can take plantain and run it right through the juicer. If you've got blood poisoning, who the heck wants to worry about making plantain teas with a little boiling water over it?
Get it through the juicer and get yourself two or three ounces of plantain juice. I've done that.
Juice radishes to cleanse the liver.
SCHULZE: If you want to add a juice in to stimulate the liver more, all the radishes work real well.
Some people talk about the black radishes, or other kinds, but you can use the red radishes and even use wild radishes you have growing wild in the United States. Remember, where you have mustard growing, you also have wild radish growing.
You can even pick the pods off, or use the radish leaves or sprouts, but radishes of all types stimulate the liver and clean it out. As far as bad digestion, I've seen a lot of people helped in their digestion with celery and cabbage juices.
BISER: You mean cabbage juice doesn't cause gas?
SCHULZE: No. Cabbage is a great cleanser and healer to the digestive tract. I've seen a lot of people with ulcers and digestive problems have great results drinking cabbage and celery juice.
Cabbage juice is excellent and I've had patients drink about 8 ounces of cabbage juice a day in one ounce doses. It can be mixed with other juices too. The celery juice works really nice to cool the system, especially with ulceration conditions.
It's important with vegetables, but especially fruit, if you're not getting organic, you need to wash it. Use a little bit of soap and water, a good natural soap and even a scrub brush, because most of the sprays and things are put right on the fruit them selves.
[Editor: For juice-fasting, you can obtain organic vegetables by mail from: Walnut Acres, Penns Creek, PA (800)433-3998]
Leukemia: A man regenerates his bone marrow with months of juice-fasting.
SCHULZE: I had a man with leukemia. He had fairly severe leukemia. He had undergone a couple different treatments and a couple shots of chemotherapy. He felt so horrible, he said that dying would be better than his experience on the chemotherapy.
He quit the chemotherapy, and came to me right away. He wanted to do something quite radical and I turned him onto juice fasting. He really got into it.
The first month he didn't get any better. In fact, some of his blood counts were even worse. Then, he ate a little bit of raw foods, took a break for about a week. Then he went back onto a juice fast and the second month he was stabilizing and some of his blood counts were coming up. Then he went back on some raw foods and health building.
Then we went into a third month of juice fasting - and that's when we really saw the big changes.
His blood chemistry changed dramatically. He didn't start really showing the cancer changing greatly until the end of the second month and into the third month, but, by the fourth to fifth month he was clean.
BISER: Why do you think in the first month his blood counts got worse in spite of . .
SCHULZE: Well, I think because he was so sick. He had spent 40 years - he was about 55 years old - but he spent about 40 of those years basically trying to kill himself...
BISER: What do you mean, trying to kill himself?
SCHULZE: Well, you know with his food program, no exercise, high cholesterol, family history...
BISER: You mean the numbers had a downward trend and you couldn't stop them, right?
SCHULZE: Yes, and a lot of people expect that, the minute they take three herb capsules and stop eating for a day, their disease is going to start to go away.
BISER: What juices did you use to build his blood?
SCHULZE: When people are thinking about building that blood, I like beets and beet greens. So go to your organic market, but make sure you get your greens.
In some studies, I've seen the beets and beet greens analyzed. They have three times the iron in the beet greens than in a beet root, and sometimes, I've seen it the other way around. But greens are loaded with different minerals than the beets have. Together, they are a perfect food.
The beet and the beet greens, added to the carrot juice, is the one that I use with patients that have had either a lot of blood loss due to surgical trauma, or from cancer, where the body won't build blood any more.
When you start getting that beet and beet greens in, along with the carrot juice, you see a big change. Now if you want to build the blood, the extra juices to remember, the fruit ones, are the dark blue, red and purple - that would be raspberries, blackberries and blueberries or prunes, plums and cherries - these are all the super blood builders.
They are loaded with iron, and you start getting a blue purple juice, and you start drinking that, and now you have the fruit blood builders.
Getting children to drink healthy juices.
BISER: How do you get kids to get on juices for their health?
SCHULZE: The way I got the kids started was making apple juice in the juicer - and just throwing one carrot through.
You start out with about 90 percent apple and 10 percent carrots and the kids will eventually start drinking that like it's perfect. When they really get used to it, then go up to 20 percent of carrot and 80 percent apple and just work that ratio till you get it about 50-50.
A lot of people might say that is a vegetable and a fruit combination, but every juice specialist seems to agree that the one food combining exception with fruits and vegetables is carrot with apple.
Juices help thin people gain weight.
BISER: Wouldn't a juice fast be bad for people who are underweight?
SCHULZE: No - it's how I brought people's weight back, even when they had AIDS.
I had a man come to see me that had a complete turn around and he had a T-cell count which would fluctuate between five and twenty-five, depending on when they took it. That's about as low as it gets.
He had loads of opportunistic AIDS infections. We started him on juice fasting right away.
This is one I want to talk about - because he was quite thin and a lot of people think "I can't juice fast or I'll lose weight." I've had people gain weight on juice fasting and this man was one of them.
He started juice fasting and started gaining weight and people asked, "How is that?" It's very simple. A lot of food that people eat, they can't assimilate. When you are sick, your digestion, your assimilation and elimination doesn't work very well. But, you start putting juices in your body, and you'll see the weight come back. This is why I call juices "the natural healers IV."--it's like a hospital I.V. naturally. Within a couple of weeks, from juices and the other programs I used, the man's T-cell count was over a thousand.
BISER: How much weighs did he gain?
SCHULZE: I think he gained about 15 pounds in the first couple months, and he was mainly on a liquid diet.
BISER: You would think he'd lose twenty-five pounds.
SCHULZE: Absolutely. But now he was getting nutrition that he couldn't get, so I think the main thing I've really come to see is that juice fasting builds blood, and I believe personally that it turns on the bone marrow.
Fresh citrus juices with their rind are great liver cleansers
SCHULZE: The bitter oils in citrus are big time liver cleansers. They disinfect and create more bile flow. And you have to get in the rind, which contains pectin. Run that rind through your juicer or your Vita-Mix.
I look at citrus more as kidney and liver cleaning. It's also very effective for cleaning the blood and joints, like with arthritis.
Removing parasites with fruits.
SCHULZE: I remember my first bowel cleanse, because I didn't know about herbs yet. I drank two quarts of apples, fresh squeezed apple juice, and a quart of fresh made prune juice.
Not only did I have parasites, but I had casing from my colon. I also had all sorts of dark flecks of things of old come out of my bowel. That was my first bowel cleanse.
BlSER: Just from fruit?
SCHULZE: Just from fruit.
BISER: But you took more of it. Most people don't take enough to cause parasites or anything else to come out.
SCHULZE: No, they don't. Take two quarts of apple and a quart of prune as your juice for the day on a juice fast and you will notice a dramatic bowel cleanse.
You can also make fig water by just taking figs and putting them in a blender with water. The problem is that a lot of people eat dried prunes and dried figs. They are constipating.
On a juice fast you should only have the juices that come out of the juicer. You should have no pulp at all. The pulp that's in most fruit is fiber that's not digestible. All it does in a juice fast is it might cause your digestive tract to work a little bit more.
BISER: Okay, so a juicer would be slightly preferable.
SCHULZE: Yes, it would. If you're doing your fast to really shut down your digestive tract and to really put all your body's energy into healing something, yes- avoid the pulp.
However, if you are using a juice fast to clean your bowel out, you're better off with the pulp, because it activates the digestive system, and, of course, this will give you bowel movements
The number one mistake people make on a juice fast.
BISER: Why do so many people fail to get results on juice-fasting?
SCHULZE: It's because they don't cleanse their colon before they do it. Every day, have that bowel flushed out, and a person might want to use herbs for a couple of days and then do it with enemas; see the difference; see what happens and experiment that way.
High enemas are also something to do during a juice fast, to get all the pulp and solid bits out of our system and they work very nice too. But, the main thing is, during a fast you need to have your bowels work every day. They don't have to work necessarily three times a day.
With some people they're bowels will work seven times a day, depending on the person, but those who have a tendency towards slower, sluggish, sleepy bowels, they can go on a fast for a week and not have a bowel movement at all, so they don't want to do that.
Use powdered super foods during a fast.
SCHULZE: Fasting can be even more powerful when people maximize their nutrition. Super nutrition can cause the body to detoxify more by flushing your body with vitamins and minerals, and it can also build your blood faster.
So, I always suggest people add super foods to their juice fast. Some of the best ones are spirulina and chlorella. If someone can't get fresh wheat grass, you can use wheat grass powder, barley grass powder and alfalfa grass powder or alfalfa herb. They're detoxifying, and they have vitamins and minerals. I usually, once a day during a fast, tell people to add some of these particular foods to their fruit smoothie.
Sea weeds are also good. You can get sea weed powders in the health food stores like Dulse or Kelp. I have many patients that have fasted using the nutritional yeast too. I've really seen the results when people have done a juice fast on just juices and a juice fast using super food powders.
BISER: You mean they feel a lot better.
SCHULZE: Well, they have a lot more energy when they do it on super foods - and it can also cause the body to purge and eliminate more. It builds the blood faster.
Heart patients need juice-fasting.
BISER: Some people say a heart patient should never do a fast. It would be a strain on the system.
SCHULZE: That's the first thing a heart patient should Do - a juice-fast. The first thing is stop eating, because 99 percent of the time the heart patient's blood cells are like mud and their coronary arteries are congested. When the circulation is that bad, even becoming a vegetarian won't unclog the blood. You have to do a juice fast to thin the blood back to a healthy state.
BISER: What does it feel like when the blood is thick?
SCHULZE: When you feel very sluggish, you feel - full, bloated, not only in your digestion, but you run two blocks and you're sweating and you just feel full of fat.
You feel it. You feel like blood doesn't even want to pump around your body. You are breathing heavy. Then you stop eating - and it's just the greatest cure for anything, just stop eating. Stop eating food and get the juicer going.
How I helped my heart disease with long fasts.
BISER: I know from your beginnings that you weren't always such a believer in juice fasts?
SCHULZE: Oh no. I took lots of vitamins and mineral pills. I didn't realize that when you thin your blood, you improve your circulation to every capillary in your body.
So, I did my first fast and didn't expect much. But when I finished, I felt so much better, I said, "Wow, this is something that is much more powerful than anyone ever told me."
I remember, I did a fast for about a week. Then one for about ten days. Then I thought, okay, "I'm going to do a thirty-day fast and see what happens."
That was probably the biggest change that I had in my health, and this was early on, when I was living in New York, and I did that thirty-day fast. I think that after the first couple days, I never felt a heart palpitation from that point on. I never felt my heart dysfunctioning. It was like the missing link in my health program that I hadn't seen.
Then, about a year later, I did a two-month fast. That one was really life transforming to me. I have barely had a down day since then.
What I suggest to most of my patients is, two or three days fast in the middle of five days of raw foods, once a season. That's what my five day program is.
"But to anybody who came to me dying - when you're dealing with someone who has a life-threatening situation, stop all food. "
SCHULZE: Many of my patients walked in the door and they had done just about every program under the sun, and sometimes even all at once or almost at once, but they hadn't really fasted.
Many people are afraid to fast. They are afraid of the one treatment that can cure them. We have this old American idea, that we need to have that bacon and eggs breakfast to get us going, and, of course, that's one of the things that gets us dead. I always called that the heart attack plate.
BISER: I thought before I met you that juices were mainly a feel good, wellness kind of thing, but not powerful enough for serious diseases.
SCHULZE: Many people feel that way. I myself thought that way - until I started investigating the classic old healers.
BISER: So, this is the therapy that people never do?
SCHULZE: That's right. Everybody in America, we have this conveyor belt that's going from the health food store or the herb shop into our mouth, and we think, "Well, it's chromium and kola nut."
Or it's goldenseal. Or it's garlic. Or it's cayenne. Or it's a colonic. We're all looking for something more, but very few people actually stop eating. The old herbalists didn't have the juicers. Juicers weren't a common household item back then. But nowadays - everybody should have a juicer.
Food is the foundation of healing.
But doctors are unbelievable. According to them, drugs are the foundation of healing. And according to the health food people, vitamin tablets are. They're all wrong. Food is.
Saturday, August 20, 2011
A TECHNIQUE FOR SUCCESSFUL FASTING
"One quarter of what you eat keeps you alive; the other three-quarters keeps your doctor alive."
Americans eat way too much fat, way too much sugar, and way too much protein. In fact, Americans simply eat too much of everything. The way out of this dilemma is so easy that we usually miss it: consider occasionally fasting.
I can almost hear the sound of yet another one of my books being slammed down, being put back on the shelf, or being quietly incinerated. While you are warming your hands from the imaginary glow that these pages would doubtlessly produce, may I continue?
Look: nothing succeeds like success. We could spend all day talking about the value of fasting, but only you can find out for yourself what it can do for you. Experience is your best teacher, and improved health is always the best proof. A fast will cost very little money, and may well be one of the best things you've ever done for yourself.
Yes, you cannot accuse me of being in this just for the money, for not eating is certainly cheap enough. Fasting should be with your doctor's approval, and is not for growing children, and clearly not for anyone pregnant or nursing. People who are taking certain medications and people who have other compelling medical reasons should not fast. This still leaves the majority of us as more-or-less willing candidates.
One of the reasons fasting merits your attention is that anything else is so often ineffective or downright dangerous. One of the really amazing books of our time is Medical Nemesis, by Ivan Illich (Bantam, 1977) Dr. Illich shows, in exhaustive detail, that medical care has become literally sickening. One in five hospital patients is there because a physician's mistake put him or her there. And with that point, the book is just warming up.
Ever since George Washington's doctors killed him with their prescriptions (No kidding: Medical and Physical Journal, London, 1800. Volume 3, page 409), people have been seeking LESS HARMFUL treatments than conventional medicine has offered. A common "scientific" argument against fasting is that it is always unsafe. Truly the pot is calling the kettle black when drug-based medicine criticizes the safety of the therapy that all animals naturally use, namely fasting. First thing a sick animal does is go off its feed.
Fasting has GOT to be safer than, say cocaine or heroin, don't you think? Yet each year, doctor-prescribed drugs kill more Americans than street drugs. Drug Abuse Warning Network statistics indicate less than 10,000 deaths annually from illegal drugs. 130,000 Americans actually die in hospitals each year from prescription medication. (Whitaker, J. in Health and Healing, September 1993 Supplement, Phillips Publishing, page 3)
The following is one approach to safe, comfortable fasting.
21-DAY CYCLE FOR CLEANSING AND GOOD HEALTH
A "cycle" is made up of an eight day juice fast, three days to come off the fast, and then ten days on a three-quarters raw food diet. (8 + 3 + 10 = 21 days.) This really works.
FASTING
First, fast. Eight days may seem like a very long time to go without food. Actually, for the first day or two of a fast, your body uses up the food remaining in your digestive tract from previous meals. For the next couple of days, your body uses stored food reserves from your liver. This means that a fast doesn't really begin until about the fifth day. Now an eight day fast is closer to a three day fast, and attainable by nearly everyone. (Diabetics and persons on medication requiring meals should check with their physician, of course. Fasting is not for children, pregnant women or nursing women. If there is a medical reason why you should not fast, then don't. Check with your doctor first.)
Since "fasting" conjures up visions of starvation, it is important to realize that we are talking about JUICE fasting here. Freshly made vegetable juices, taken in quantity, are not a beverage. They are a raw, highly digestible food. It is ideal to have all the juice you want, without forcing yourself to drink it. The rules: "When you are hungry, drink juice. When you are thirsty, drink juice also."
JUICING
It is generally a good idea to dilute your juice 50/50 with water. If you can afford filtered water, use it. If not, don't worry... the goodness of the juices will carry you. Some people, including me, do not like the taste of diluted juice. An alternative is to drink a glass of water, then drink a glass of juice. This gives the same effect, and tastes better. Be sure to drink the water first, for after the juice you may not want the water as much.
When we say "juice", we generally are referring to vegetable juice, freshly prepared. Fruit juice tends to be too sweet for comfortable fasting. However, there is nothing to stop you from experimenting and coming up with your own best regimen. As long as you get good results, HOW you get them is secondary.
You cannot buy freshly prepared vegetable juice in any store at any price... unless they literally juice the vegetables right in front of your eyes and you drink it down before they make you pay for it! Any juice in a carton, can or bottle has been heat treated and was certainly packaged at least a few hours ago. Even frozen juice is not fresh, then, is it? This means that you will need one essential and somewhat expensive appliance: your own juicer.
WHAT TO JUICE
You can juice almost anything you can eat raw. Vegetables are best, especially carrots, cucumbers, beets, tomatoes, zucchini squash, romaine lettuce, sprouts, celery and cabbage. You may juice fruits also, naturally. Freshly made raw apple, grape, and melon juices are delicious. It is not generally a good idea to juice potatoes, eggplant or Lima beans (not that you'd want to.)
It is wise to peel vegetables that have been sprayed or waxed, such as cucumbers. Sprayed fruits are also good to peel before juicing. Carrots and other underground vegetables often do not need peeling. Instead, give them a good scrubbing with a nylon-bristle vegetable brush while rinsing under tap water. Beets are the exception. Since beet skins are very bitter, it is wise to peel beets before juicing. A hint to save time: dip the beets for about 20 seconds in boiling water and then peel them... it's much easier.
Your juice will taste the best if you drink it right after preparing it. I mean within moments! Fresh juice contains a great amount of raw food enzymes and vitamins, many of which are easily lost as the juice sits. So don't let it sit! Drink it right down, with the thought that this is unbelievably good for you.
HOW MUCH JUICE TO DRINK
Drink as much juice as you wish. Remember that it is a food, not a beverage and that you can have as much as you want. There is little fear of over doing it. It is, after all, hard to hurt yourself with vegetables!
A good rule of thumb is to drink three or four eight-ounce glasses of fresh juice a day (for an adult). The best time is right before a meal, or between meals. Absorption of and benefit from the juice is highest then. You will probably find that you will be urinating more as you drink more juices. That figures, doesn't it? You are taking in more liquid. You may also notice that you have more bowel movements now than you were previously accustomed to. This, too, is to be expected. Your body may well respond to all this nourishment by "cleaning house" a bit. More excretory symptoms would be the result. Ever notice how many trash cans you fill when you clean out the attic, basement or garage? Why, you hardly noticed all the rubbish you had stored in there until you went to clean it out. The same is true, by analogy, with your body.
WHAT JUICES ARE BEST FOR YOU
You may drink those juices that appeal to you the most. To find out your favorites, try each of them!
CARROT juice is tasty and popular, and two glasses of carrot juice per day are highly beneficial. There is no need to peel your carrots if you first scrub them well with a tough brush.
Carrot juice is very high in vitamin A. The vitamin A in carrots is actually "provitamin A" or carotene. Carotene is completely non-toxic, no matter how much you consume. The worst thing that can happen if you drink a huge amount of carrot juice is that you will turn orange. No, really. You see, beta carotene is a natural pigment, a natural coloring. Excess carotene is stored in your skin until your body wants it and then turns it into active vitamin A as needed. An abundance of carotene in your skin makes you look orange. This condition is called "carotenosis" and is harmless. Okay, it looks odd to visit the folks (or the doctor) when you are orange. I know: when my son was little, he LOVED sweet potatoes, carrots and butternut squash to the point of orange skin. The relatives got a bit worried, but the coloration disappeared after we limited his orange veggies for a week or two. So, to get rid of the color, simply back off the carrot juice (and other orange vegetables) for a while and it will go away. If someone thinks you are not well, tell them what you are doing. A doctor who thinks you have jaundice could then understand right away that you don't. Liver function tests would also confirm your good health. Naturally, you don't have to turn orange to enjoy the goodness of carrot juice. You can drink just enough to feel great ...without looking like a pumpkin!
Some folks have tried canned or bottled carrot juice and they didn't like it. No wonder! Fresh juice tastes SO much better that there isn't really any comparison. I have two teenagers who WILL drink freshly-made carrot juice. Could there possibly be any higher recommendation than that?
CELERY juice is very tasty, but a bit high in sodium. Use small amounts of this juice to flavor the others. Juice celery leaves and all for the most benefit.
CUCUMBER juice is remarkably tasty. It tastes rather different than a cucumber itself. Perhaps you will find that the taste reminds you of watermelon. Peel cucumbers before juicing to avoid the waxes applied to their skins to enhance their shelf life in supermarkets.
ROMAINE LETTUCE or BEAN SPROUTS will make an especially nutritious juice with a taste that is well worth acquiring. This "green drink" is loaded with minerals and chlorophyll.
ZUCCHINI SQUASH juiced up tastes better than you'd ever imagine. Peel first, and enjoy. You may well be the first on your block to be a zucchini-juice fan. It also keeps the juicer from clogging on higher-fiber vegetables.
BEET juice is, traditionally, a blood-builder. In days past, herbalists looked at the blood-red beet as a tonic more so because it worked, rather than any color similarity. Beets must be peeled before juicing. Beet skins are very bitter. The beets, on the other hand, are quite sweet and make great juice. They will also permanently stain your juicer, so don't try to remove that color by washing. More important, beet juice will color your bowel movements.
That lovely red color of fresh beets can cause genuine alarm when it is seen in the toilet water. I know someone who had forgotten that he'd had beet juice the day before. He could only figure that he had a terrible case of hemorrhoids when he looked into the toilet and saw that red, red water. It was the beets, of course. When you have beet juice, remember not to be alarmed. Beet juice is widely used in the food industry as a natural coloring agent. You can (literally) see why!
A hint: you will save time if you first carefully dip beets in boiling water before peeling them.
CABBAGE juice was used by Garnett Cheney, M.D. to cure bleeding peptic ulcers back in the 1950's. (Cheney, G. (1952) "Vitamin U therapy of peptic ulcer." California Medicine, 77:4, 248-252) Dr. Cheney's patients drank a quart of cabbage juice a day and were cured in less than half the usual time... with no drugs whatsoever. Since then, cabbage juice has successfully been used for a variety of gastrointestinal illnesses. Colitis, spastic colon, indigestion, chronic constipation, certain forms of rectal bleeding and other conditions seem to respond well to the nutrients in cabbage juice. Dr. Cheney called its healing factor "Vitamin U" (for unknown). More recently, the American Cancer Society has urged people to eat more of the cabbage/broccoli family of vegetables because of their protective effects against cancer. There may be something to this cabbage juice idea. It certainly couldn't hurt to try it.
TOMATOES are easily juiced. Do not juice the leaves, vines, or green tomatoes. Only the red, ripened fruit is good for you. Yes, the tomato is a fruit.
A fruit of a plant is essentially a seed-containing structure that can be picked without killing the plant. Hmm. This means that cucumbers, squash and even green beans are all fruits.
JUICE AT WORK?
Sam writes:
“I was reading a lot about juice fasting and how it might help. You’ve written that it has to be all fresh juice, so what should I do on working days? I cannot possibly carry a juicer and a box of veggies to the office. Any suggestions?”
Sure.
1) Juice at home and carry it in a Thermos. Not ideal for taste, but people have done it. I’d add a little vitamin C (crush up any size tablet) to retard oxidation. Fill the vacuum bottle all the way to the top so when you close it, a little juice overflows. This also helps to reduce oxidation, insuring that there is little or no air inside to spoil the goodness. Of course you can juice as soon as you get home, too.
2) Simply eat your vegetables. Have a salad-bar lunch. Also eat lots of fruit; great snack. (They do let you have lunch and snacks and breaks, don’t they?) Fresh fruit and veggies are as easy to pack for your lunch as they are to put in your kids’ lunches.
A TIMETABLE
At the beginning of this section we were talking about a 21-day "cycle" beginning with eight days just on fresh juices, three days to come off the juice "fast," and then ten days of a 75% raw food diet. This makes a total cycle duration of three weeks (21 days). Now that you have a better idea about the juicing segment, let's take a look at the next steps.
Coming off the juice "fast" is best done by eating lightly for a while. Fruit, fruit salads, vegetable soups, cottage cheese and other light foods are appropriate at this point. A good rule of thumb here is to eat only half as much as you want to at any one time... but eat twice as often. This is for about three days.
For the ten day 75% raw food diet, you can eat all you want as long as three-quarters of it is uncooked. For the uncooked part of the diet, eat fresh, raw vegetables and fruits. Don't forget nuts, too. If they are raw, they count. Begin each meal with a large salad, perhaps a fruit salad for breakfast. Then, when you've finished the salad, have whatever you want within reason. The 25% cooked portion could include whole grain breads and pasta, brown rice, cooked beans, lentils, cooked vegetables including potatoes, sweet potatoes, yams, squash and other foods that you like. Meat is not recommended, nor is chicken or turkey.
When you go out to eat, it's easy to stay right on this program by eating at salad bars. Remember, try to make the other three-quarters of your diet fresh and raw.
All the strongest and longest-lived animals on earth are vegetarians, or close to it.
Fighting Cancer through Fasting
Fasting will break down tumors. For this reason, many have overcome cancer with fasting. Water fasting is a powerful way to fight cancer but it may not be enough. We recommend water fasting combined with days of juice fasting to rebuild the body and supply the nutrients that enable healing
.
Cancer fights for the body's resources. The wasting away seen in cancer is from the cancer consuming the glucose in the blood. To battle cancer with fasting the best choice is a combination of water fasting and juice fasting using 2-5 classes of juice per day, including green leafy vegetable like spinach, chard, or parsley to maintain strength and support the body's immune system. This may require 2-3 fast over 14 days long alternating to a diet high in raw foods. Essiac Tea, Jason Winters Herbal Tea are some of the herbal combination proven in fighting cancer.
The key to battling cancer with juice fasting is small amount of low-calorie nutrition packed juice. Thus you get maximum scouring. Some persistent forms of cancer may take 40 days of fasting. Move into the fast quickly, it is a race against time especially in pancreatic cancer or any aggressive cancer.
You will most likely be without hunger throughout the fast. The absence of hunger can last days or weeks making the fast easy to stay on.
Fasting tip: Dizziness
You may experience dizziness, if you do get down on one knee and the dizziness will stop immediately.
Chemotherapy or Radiation
If you choose to undergo chemotherapy or radiation, juice fasting or make fresh juice daily and eating a raw food diet will support the body in combating the negative effects of chemotherapy.
Most experts agree that in order to achieve health benefits through water fast, you need not to fast longer then 40 - 60 days. Experts disagree on the exact number of days, but many agree that enemas are beneficial during the water fast.
Most experts agree that fasting for longer then 60 days may not be health-wise.
Most experts also agree that you should be meditating during the water fast. You should not be lifting weights, running, biking or swimming. Any harsh physical activity could cost you your life. That is the main difference between water fasting and juice fasting. People on juice fasting or Master Cleanse are consuming a lot of calories and are able to lift weights, run, bike or swim.
Another important thing for water fasting is that you should not be exposed to cold temperature. It is much easier to water fast in India where people don't need much clothes to keep healthy body temperature, then it is to Water Fast on Alaska where in order to keep body temperature, body need to burn large amount of energy.
Long time Water Fasting during the winter months in central and northern Europe or northern America may not be health-wise. Summer (June, July, August ... ) would be the better time.
Another important thing for water fasting is that you should not be exposed to polluted air. It is much better to live far from any large city, then to fast in the city. People can become extremely sensitive to pollutions during the water fast and any pollution may cause sickness.
Quality of water is extremely important.
Sunlight is extremely important during the water fast. You should exposed your skin to morning and evening sun (as long as you feel comfortable), but protect yourself from too strong mid-day sun.
Before going on water fast, you should be fasting on a vegan diet for some time.
When you start the water fast, your large intestine should be empty. Enema or colonics are considered better way of emptying the bowel, then laxative herbs.
When water fasting, you should not be taking any medications. If you are dependent on medications, you can not water fast!
The average person, not familiar with fasting, believes he will certainly die if he misses a meal. When you hear of a person dying after being lost in the woods or at sea for two or three days. It was not lack of food that caused his death, but it was panic and fear that killed him. Most people in fairly good health can go for many days without food but the body must have water.
Before you choose to go on a water fast, you should you should read at least one good book about Water Fasting.
.
Cancer fights for the body's resources. The wasting away seen in cancer is from the cancer consuming the glucose in the blood. To battle cancer with fasting the best choice is a combination of water fasting and juice fasting using 2-5 classes of juice per day, including green leafy vegetable like spinach, chard, or parsley to maintain strength and support the body's immune system. This may require 2-3 fast over 14 days long alternating to a diet high in raw foods. Essiac Tea, Jason Winters Herbal Tea are some of the herbal combination proven in fighting cancer.
The key to battling cancer with juice fasting is small amount of low-calorie nutrition packed juice. Thus you get maximum scouring. Some persistent forms of cancer may take 40 days of fasting. Move into the fast quickly, it is a race against time especially in pancreatic cancer or any aggressive cancer.
You will most likely be without hunger throughout the fast. The absence of hunger can last days or weeks making the fast easy to stay on.
Fasting tip: Dizziness
You may experience dizziness, if you do get down on one knee and the dizziness will stop immediately.
Chemotherapy or Radiation
If you choose to undergo chemotherapy or radiation, juice fasting or make fresh juice daily and eating a raw food diet will support the body in combating the negative effects of chemotherapy.
Most experts agree that in order to achieve health benefits through water fast, you need not to fast longer then 40 - 60 days. Experts disagree on the exact number of days, but many agree that enemas are beneficial during the water fast.
Most experts agree that fasting for longer then 60 days may not be health-wise.
Most experts also agree that you should be meditating during the water fast. You should not be lifting weights, running, biking or swimming. Any harsh physical activity could cost you your life. That is the main difference between water fasting and juice fasting. People on juice fasting or Master Cleanse are consuming a lot of calories and are able to lift weights, run, bike or swim.
Another important thing for water fasting is that you should not be exposed to cold temperature. It is much easier to water fast in India where people don't need much clothes to keep healthy body temperature, then it is to Water Fast on Alaska where in order to keep body temperature, body need to burn large amount of energy.
Long time Water Fasting during the winter months in central and northern Europe or northern America may not be health-wise. Summer (June, July, August ... ) would be the better time.
Another important thing for water fasting is that you should not be exposed to polluted air. It is much better to live far from any large city, then to fast in the city. People can become extremely sensitive to pollutions during the water fast and any pollution may cause sickness.
Quality of water is extremely important.
Sunlight is extremely important during the water fast. You should exposed your skin to morning and evening sun (as long as you feel comfortable), but protect yourself from too strong mid-day sun.
Before going on water fast, you should be fasting on a vegan diet for some time.
When you start the water fast, your large intestine should be empty. Enema or colonics are considered better way of emptying the bowel, then laxative herbs.
When water fasting, you should not be taking any medications. If you are dependent on medications, you can not water fast!
The average person, not familiar with fasting, believes he will certainly die if he misses a meal. When you hear of a person dying after being lost in the woods or at sea for two or three days. It was not lack of food that caused his death, but it was panic and fear that killed him. Most people in fairly good health can go for many days without food but the body must have water.
Before you choose to go on a water fast, you should you should read at least one good book about Water Fasting.
Thursday, August 18, 2011
Big Banks Caught Stealing - NY AG Not Waiting for Fed Govt. To Investigate.
Posted by TRB in on Wednesday May 18, 2011 - 10:05 am (1 week, 1 day ago)
The whole castle is about to come down on our bank boys. Just yesterday, the Huffington Post exposed 5 big banks for allgedly swindling the U.S. government. The banks are Bank of America, Morgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Citigroup and Ally Financial. Further, New York's attorney general, Eric Schneiderman has promised to investigate at least three of NYC's large banks for misinforming investors of the real worth of various financial instruments.
A goverment audit of the five large banks mentioned above showed that they were cheating the taxpayer through various scams centered around government-backed mortgages, It is a practice called "Fraudclosure," and it is more out of hand in the U.S. than in any other nation in the world. The banks, using taxpayers funds have kept families in their homes knowing full well they would throw them out on specific days months later. It was an attempt to squeeze as much cash as they could out of everyone's misery.
There is a corrupt relationship between American banking and government officials and institutions that was given a shot in the arm last year when the current Supreme Court, which lacks credibility in almost every area of judiprudence, decided to give money freedom of speech, or at least to put money in the same constitutional catagory as free speech. That almost criminal ruling meant banks and other corporate entities and even wealthy individuals, could give as much of this paper "free speech" to politicians as they wanted. In other words, they could buy them.
That is when the elected officials in this government stopped representing the people, and began instead to represent the banks and mortgage companies, oil companies, anyone with more money than the average American taxpayer is able to curry favor with Washington for the right amount of money. In this way, the U.S., mostly as a result of a ruling from an inept Suprme Court, has at least temporarily lost its status as a representative democracy in favor of a pay for favors system of government.
There was only one problem with this. Sooner or later someone was going to come along, ignore the bribes and go after the criminals. This man appeared in New York City last week. His name is Eric Schneiderman. Unlike Eric Holder, the federal AG, who is most likely being paid off in some fashion or orher, NYC's new AG is going to turn up the heat.
He has expressed a desire to see first hand how some of the scams in financial instuments - selling nothing for something - works. He is especially interested in looking at the schemes run by the banks, with the government covering for them, that have destroyed pension funds across America and have also created the mortgage crisis. This in turn is responsible for the building and construction slump. Out of that emerged the first true signs of the present unemployment disaster. In truth, the U.S. government has allowed the commercial banking system to steal the silverware.
The banks have crashed the economy, and they have done nothing to fix what they broke. The commercial banks for years follwing the Gresat Depression were not allowed to gamble on Wall Street. This was a hedge against another such Depression. Sure one was possible, but with the commercial banks not allowed to trade in financial instruments and mortgages on Wall Street, our savings, bank investments and mortgaes were seen as safer and less prone to damage by Depression.
But it has happened again. The banks were let back on Wall Street (Congress repealed the Glass-Stengel Act keeping them off) and they almost immediately invented more games to play with money. And they were games. Betting money that such and such a mortgage will fail in its third year?
For example, if you won, you won part of the mortgage payments. If you lost, you had to pay a certain percentage of the mortgage payments. The borrower would still have to pay the mortgage every month. But the bank that won the bet would receive two mortgage payments. One from the "player" on Wall Street and one from the actual owner of the house.
Then they invented a game called "bundling." When you "bundle" you repackages hundreds, sometimes thousands of bad mortgage loans, ones you know are going to fail, and you "securitize" them. By this I mean you lie about them, telling prospective buyers like 401ks and pension funds that your bundle of bad mortgages is really a bundle of good mortgaes. In this way you destory the 401k or pension fund that falls for this scam. Many did.
On the "Fraudclosure" front the banks were given authority by Obama, who already knew they were the source of the foreclosure problem, to run a new multibillion dollar program that was supposed to be designed to help the homeowner. It just made things worse for the homeowner and the bail-out money went to the banks.
In 2008 there were 2.3 million foreclosures in the U.S.
In 2009 there were 2.6 million
In 2010 there were 2.9 million.
In 2011 there are already over three million.
So what do these numbers tell us about the President's so called foreclosure bail out program? First that it didn't work. Second, that he was a fool to allow the banks to run it.
Making matters worse some members of the administration and many members of Congress continue to tell outright lies about the economy that are repeated by the news media as fact, when none are supported by any evidence. In fact, all known evidence points to their being lies. The most blatant three are:
Lie Number One: If we slash spending it will create more jobs. This is what I call an evident lie. So obvious is this lie that someone believing it has to either stop or start taking some medicine. It costs money to make jobs. You do not get there by slashing costs.
Lie Number Two: If we cut spending without raising taxes that will be favorable to the overall tax rate. This is what people who don't want to pay tell you. We can get this done for nothing without raising taxes. That is the bareface lie of the wealthy deadbeat.
Lie Number Three: If we allow the Bush taxcuts to run out, that will destory the economy. On this one you simply have to ask yourself this. If more revenue is created by halting the Bush tax cuts how is that going to be anything but good for the economy?
Tax cuts never create jobs. Never. Demand creates jobs. Small business, large business and new business also doesn't create jobs.
Demand creates jobs. It is the only thing that creates jobs. Consumer demand creates jobs. Americans have to remember that. It is the most basic economic rule. Demand creates jobs.
Where is that demand going to come from in a nation that is in the middle of a long phase of de-industrialization? We don't make anything that someone might demand. And our demand of goods from other nations does not create jobs in this nation.
We have to keep in mind that the the banks are directly responsible for our deficit crisis. They created the housing bubble, they created the phony financial instruments that raided so many 401ks and pension funds, then they were bailed out using tax money from U.S. citizens of average or less than average income.
Taxes were not raised on the super wealthy to help pay for the banks crimes. Instead, the U. S. government, who is in bed with the banks, gave them funds from the less wealthy. Funds generations of us will have to pay back in the form of tax increases.
At the same time the government is looking for even more ways to steal from the average American while continuing a no-tax plan for the super wealthy. Now Congress is arguing about how much money they can take from programs to help feed America's poor children, how to make Medicaid more expensive for the mostly poor elderly, how to cut back on government entitlements for the disabled or injured in battle.
America has to take back control of this government while we still have anything that looks like a democracy - even from a distance. If it cannot create jobs, or an environment where the demand for jobs would exist, what good is it? And if it only represents monied interests, then how can it be called our government?
Eric T. Schneiderman was elected the 65th Attorney General of New York State on November 2, 2010. As Attorney General, Schneiderman is the highest ranking law enforcement officer for the State, responsible for representing New York and its residents in legal matters. Schneiderman has worked to restore the public’s faith in its public and private sector institutions by focusing on areas including public integrity, economic justice, social justice and environmental protection.
In his first weeks in office, Attorney General Schneiderman launched a new "Taxpayer Protection Bureau" to root out fraud and return money illegally stolen from New York taxpayers at no additional cost to the state. He has also bolstered the Attorney General’s Medicaid Fraud Control Unit, which has already recovered tens of millions of dollars for taxpayers on his watch. As part of his effort to crack down on corruption and restore the public’s trust in government, Schneiderman launched a groundbreaking initiative expanding his office’s authority to investigate public corruption involving taxpayer funds by partnering with the state Comptroller. In addition, the Attorney General is appointing public integrity officers in every region of the state to give New Yorkers a place to go to report complaints of government corruption without the fear of local politics influencing the outcome.
Since taking office, Attorney General Schneiderman has repeatedly stood up to powerful interests on behalf of New Yorkers. The Attorney General has taken a leading role in the national fight for a fair mortgage settlement for homeowners that holds banks accountable for their role in the foreclosure crisis; launched a thorough review of AT&T’s proposed acquisition of T-Mobile for potential anti-competitive impacts on consumers and businesses statewide; sued federal regulators to force an environmental impact review of proposed gas drilling in the Delaware River Basin; and challenged the Indian Point nuclear power plant’s practices related to high-level radioactive waste storage, earthquake preparedness and fire safety, among his many early acts.
Attorney General Schneiderman has also kept our streets safe by shutting down the largest heroin operation in Buffalo history – a statewide drug trafficking pipeline from New York City to Western New York; and busting an international auto theft ring that involved car dealership employees forging keys to steal more than $10 million worth of luxury cars.
As the state’s top law enforcement officer, Attorney General Schneiderman brings with him a wealth of experience, in both the public and private sectors. Before becoming Attorney General, Schneiderman was praised as a leading reformer in the State Senate by numerous editorial pages and good government organizations. Among his many legislative accomplishments, Schneiderman passed sweeping ethics reforms, chaired the committee to expel a corrupt senator for the first time in modern history, and passed the toughest law in the nation to root out fraud against taxpayers.
The Attorney General previously spent 15 years in private practice as an attorney, and later as a partner at the firm of Kirkpatrick and Lockhart, where he handled complex litigation. He was also a public interest lawyer for many years, representing taxpayers in historic lawsuits against the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA), tenants trying to evict drug dealers from their buildings, and women seeking access to health clinics.
Attorney General Schneiderman graduated from Amherst College in 1977 and Harvard Law School in 1982. He is the proud father of a daughter, Catherine.
Posted by TRB in on Wednesday May 18, 2011 - 10:05 am (1 week, 1 day ago)
The whole castle is about to come down on our bank boys. Just yesterday, the Huffington Post exposed 5 big banks for allgedly swindling the U.S. government. The banks are Bank of America, Morgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Citigroup and Ally Financial. Further, New York's attorney general, Eric Schneiderman has promised to investigate at least three of NYC's large banks for misinforming investors of the real worth of various financial instruments.
A goverment audit of the five large banks mentioned above showed that they were cheating the taxpayer through various scams centered around government-backed mortgages, It is a practice called "Fraudclosure," and it is more out of hand in the U.S. than in any other nation in the world. The banks, using taxpayers funds have kept families in their homes knowing full well they would throw them out on specific days months later. It was an attempt to squeeze as much cash as they could out of everyone's misery.
There is a corrupt relationship between American banking and government officials and institutions that was given a shot in the arm last year when the current Supreme Court, which lacks credibility in almost every area of judiprudence, decided to give money freedom of speech, or at least to put money in the same constitutional catagory as free speech. That almost criminal ruling meant banks and other corporate entities and even wealthy individuals, could give as much of this paper "free speech" to politicians as they wanted. In other words, they could buy them.
That is when the elected officials in this government stopped representing the people, and began instead to represent the banks and mortgage companies, oil companies, anyone with more money than the average American taxpayer is able to curry favor with Washington for the right amount of money. In this way, the U.S., mostly as a result of a ruling from an inept Suprme Court, has at least temporarily lost its status as a representative democracy in favor of a pay for favors system of government.
There was only one problem with this. Sooner or later someone was going to come along, ignore the bribes and go after the criminals. This man appeared in New York City last week. His name is Eric Schneiderman. Unlike Eric Holder, the federal AG, who is most likely being paid off in some fashion or orher, NYC's new AG is going to turn up the heat.
He has expressed a desire to see first hand how some of the scams in financial instuments - selling nothing for something - works. He is especially interested in looking at the schemes run by the banks, with the government covering for them, that have destroyed pension funds across America and have also created the mortgage crisis. This in turn is responsible for the building and construction slump. Out of that emerged the first true signs of the present unemployment disaster. In truth, the U.S. government has allowed the commercial banking system to steal the silverware.
The banks have crashed the economy, and they have done nothing to fix what they broke. The commercial banks for years follwing the Gresat Depression were not allowed to gamble on Wall Street. This was a hedge against another such Depression. Sure one was possible, but with the commercial banks not allowed to trade in financial instruments and mortgages on Wall Street, our savings, bank investments and mortgaes were seen as safer and less prone to damage by Depression.
But it has happened again. The banks were let back on Wall Street (Congress repealed the Glass-Stengel Act keeping them off) and they almost immediately invented more games to play with money. And they were games. Betting money that such and such a mortgage will fail in its third year?
For example, if you won, you won part of the mortgage payments. If you lost, you had to pay a certain percentage of the mortgage payments. The borrower would still have to pay the mortgage every month. But the bank that won the bet would receive two mortgage payments. One from the "player" on Wall Street and one from the actual owner of the house.
Then they invented a game called "bundling." When you "bundle" you repackages hundreds, sometimes thousands of bad mortgage loans, ones you know are going to fail, and you "securitize" them. By this I mean you lie about them, telling prospective buyers like 401ks and pension funds that your bundle of bad mortgages is really a bundle of good mortgaes. In this way you destory the 401k or pension fund that falls for this scam. Many did.
On the "Fraudclosure" front the banks were given authority by Obama, who already knew they were the source of the foreclosure problem, to run a new multibillion dollar program that was supposed to be designed to help the homeowner. It just made things worse for the homeowner and the bail-out money went to the banks.
In 2008 there were 2.3 million foreclosures in the U.S.
In 2009 there were 2.6 million
In 2010 there were 2.9 million.
In 2011 there are already over three million.
So what do these numbers tell us about the President's so called foreclosure bail out program? First that it didn't work. Second, that he was a fool to allow the banks to run it.
Making matters worse some members of the administration and many members of Congress continue to tell outright lies about the economy that are repeated by the news media as fact, when none are supported by any evidence. In fact, all known evidence points to their being lies. The most blatant three are:
Lie Number One: If we slash spending it will create more jobs. This is what I call an evident lie. So obvious is this lie that someone believing it has to either stop or start taking some medicine. It costs money to make jobs. You do not get there by slashing costs.
Lie Number Two: If we cut spending without raising taxes that will be favorable to the overall tax rate. This is what people who don't want to pay tell you. We can get this done for nothing without raising taxes. That is the bareface lie of the wealthy deadbeat.
Lie Number Three: If we allow the Bush taxcuts to run out, that will destory the economy. On this one you simply have to ask yourself this. If more revenue is created by halting the Bush tax cuts how is that going to be anything but good for the economy?
Tax cuts never create jobs. Never. Demand creates jobs. Small business, large business and new business also doesn't create jobs.
Demand creates jobs. It is the only thing that creates jobs. Consumer demand creates jobs. Americans have to remember that. It is the most basic economic rule. Demand creates jobs.
Where is that demand going to come from in a nation that is in the middle of a long phase of de-industrialization? We don't make anything that someone might demand. And our demand of goods from other nations does not create jobs in this nation.
We have to keep in mind that the the banks are directly responsible for our deficit crisis. They created the housing bubble, they created the phony financial instruments that raided so many 401ks and pension funds, then they were bailed out using tax money from U.S. citizens of average or less than average income.
Taxes were not raised on the super wealthy to help pay for the banks crimes. Instead, the U. S. government, who is in bed with the banks, gave them funds from the less wealthy. Funds generations of us will have to pay back in the form of tax increases.
At the same time the government is looking for even more ways to steal from the average American while continuing a no-tax plan for the super wealthy. Now Congress is arguing about how much money they can take from programs to help feed America's poor children, how to make Medicaid more expensive for the mostly poor elderly, how to cut back on government entitlements for the disabled or injured in battle.
America has to take back control of this government while we still have anything that looks like a democracy - even from a distance. If it cannot create jobs, or an environment where the demand for jobs would exist, what good is it? And if it only represents monied interests, then how can it be called our government?
About the Attorney General
New York State Attorney General
Eric T. Schneiderman
Eric T. Schneiderman
In his first weeks in office, Attorney General Schneiderman launched a new "Taxpayer Protection Bureau" to root out fraud and return money illegally stolen from New York taxpayers at no additional cost to the state. He has also bolstered the Attorney General’s Medicaid Fraud Control Unit, which has already recovered tens of millions of dollars for taxpayers on his watch. As part of his effort to crack down on corruption and restore the public’s trust in government, Schneiderman launched a groundbreaking initiative expanding his office’s authority to investigate public corruption involving taxpayer funds by partnering with the state Comptroller. In addition, the Attorney General is appointing public integrity officers in every region of the state to give New Yorkers a place to go to report complaints of government corruption without the fear of local politics influencing the outcome.
Since taking office, Attorney General Schneiderman has repeatedly stood up to powerful interests on behalf of New Yorkers. The Attorney General has taken a leading role in the national fight for a fair mortgage settlement for homeowners that holds banks accountable for their role in the foreclosure crisis; launched a thorough review of AT&T’s proposed acquisition of T-Mobile for potential anti-competitive impacts on consumers and businesses statewide; sued federal regulators to force an environmental impact review of proposed gas drilling in the Delaware River Basin; and challenged the Indian Point nuclear power plant’s practices related to high-level radioactive waste storage, earthquake preparedness and fire safety, among his many early acts.
Attorney General Schneiderman has also kept our streets safe by shutting down the largest heroin operation in Buffalo history – a statewide drug trafficking pipeline from New York City to Western New York; and busting an international auto theft ring that involved car dealership employees forging keys to steal more than $10 million worth of luxury cars.
As the state’s top law enforcement officer, Attorney General Schneiderman brings with him a wealth of experience, in both the public and private sectors. Before becoming Attorney General, Schneiderman was praised as a leading reformer in the State Senate by numerous editorial pages and good government organizations. Among his many legislative accomplishments, Schneiderman passed sweeping ethics reforms, chaired the committee to expel a corrupt senator for the first time in modern history, and passed the toughest law in the nation to root out fraud against taxpayers.
The Attorney General previously spent 15 years in private practice as an attorney, and later as a partner at the firm of Kirkpatrick and Lockhart, where he handled complex litigation. He was also a public interest lawyer for many years, representing taxpayers in historic lawsuits against the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA), tenants trying to evict drug dealers from their buildings, and women seeking access to health clinics.
Attorney General Schneiderman graduated from Amherst College in 1977 and Harvard Law School in 1982. He is the proud father of a daughter, Catherine.
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