How and When to Be Your Own Doctor by Moser and Solomon (best classic books to read .TXT) 📖

On this type of case there are inevitably severe problems connected with close friends, relatives and business associates. The sick person inevitably blames the friends, relatives and business associates and takes no responsibility. The problems seem unresolvable. When I probe deeply enough into these problems, I begin to discover the real infection below. The sick person, so fond of complaining about all the terrible things done to them by the people they have or have had problems with, or sometimes, so proud of not complaining about all the terrible things done to them. Actually, almost inevitably this person has committed a huge mass of secret crimes, viciousness and betrayals, rarely indictable felonious acts, but crimes none the less, disreputable deeds that must be kept secret.

These deeds are always completely justified; the sick person always claims to have been right for having done them and it is next to impossible for me as a therapist to get them to take responsibility for their sins. But at the deep, center of almost all people is an honest, decent soul that knows what it has really done and feels guilty and judges itself. That is why it says in the Bible, ‘judge not, lest you be judged’. It is not the judgment of the Deity we have so much to fear; we are own worst judge, jury, and executioner, and eventually extract from ourselves full payment with compound interest for all harmful acts.

People frequently punish themselves with severe, incapacitating illness or even death. A spiritual illness will not respond very well to physical treatment until the spiritual malaise’s is resolved. This case has to find enough courage to become honest with themselves, to admit their deeds in all their disgusting detail and then to make amends, or if amends are not possible, to at least cease and desist. They have to take personal responsibly for what they really are being and what they have really done and most importantly, accept that they are responsible for creating their own illness. It is not a virus, a cancer cell or something that just fell out of the universe and struck them, innocent victims that they are. They have made their illness and only they can uncreate it.

Unfortunately, few people who have spent a lifetime indulging themselves in this degree of irresponsibility have the integrity to change. This is a tough case. Especially so because they think they are physically ill, they did not come to me to be defined as a “mental” case and tend to reject such approaches.

There is no shortage of additional degenerative conditions that I could describe. There are eating disorders, shingles, skin problems, kidney disease, Alzheimer’s, senility, mental illness, addictions, chronic fatigue syndrome, aids. There’s macular degeneration, carpal tunnel syndrome, chronic ear infections (especially in children), tonsillitis, bronchitis, pancreatitis, cystitis, urethritis, prostatitis, colitis, sinusitis, osteomyelitis and a dozen other itises, including appendicitis. There’s algias (itises of the nerves): neuralgia, fibromyalgia. There’s ism’s (really itises of the muscles). There are ‘onias like pneumonia; omas like carcinoma, melanoma and lymphoma.

I could (but won’t) write a page or two on every one of these conditions and turn this book into an encyclopedia. After twenty five years of practice, there is little I have not seen. Or helped a body repair. Generally, everyone of those following pages I’m not going to bother to write would repeat the same message. That the medical profession has little understanding of the real causes or cures of disease; that the world is full of unnecessary suffering; that there are simple, painless, effective, harmless approaches to eliminating most of the ailments of mankind except the ultimate ailment, old age, the thing that takes us all eventually; that essentially all the diseases resolve from the same approach.

But I have already explained the theoretical basis of natural hygiene, the key role of toxemia, enervation, constipation, the essentials of good diet, fasting and colon cleansing, the importance of regular exercise, and the rational for vitamin supplementation. I have revealed a lot of the secrets in my bag of tricks, like my favorite herbs, poultices and wheat grass.

What concerns me most about medicine today is that there seems to be ever fewer hygienists practicing. The young holistic practitioner is overwhelmed with confusing data and approaches and is increasingly less able to discern what is really important and what is distraction, and is increasingly intimidated by the AMA, made fearful of accepting people with serious conditions. Too many young practitioners become ideologues, clinging to the rightness of a single rigid discipline, missing the truths that exist in other approaches and worse, missing the limitations that exist in their own personal healing methods.

The current concern about the cost of medical care and resorting to government-run insurance programs and regulations will do little or nothing to reverse the trend to more and more sickness that costs more and more to treat. The root causes of our current crisis are two fold. One, our food, just as it comes off the farm, is getting ever worse. This is not even recognized as a problem. After we process it for an industrial food distribution system, much nutrition is lost too. This is barely recognized as a problem. Until we are better nourished, we will be ever sicker and each generation will become a degeneration. Secondly, our society is suffering from all the evils of monopoly medicine. This is barely recognized. The AMA has a stranglehold on the sick. There is no effective competition for its methods. Alternatives are suppressed. In my version of a better world, if anyone that wanted to could hang out a shingle and offer to diagnose, treat and cure disease, a few quacks would really hurt a few people. But many genuine therapies would appear and the public would be exposed to workable alternatives. If anyone that wanted to market it could put a label on a bottle of pills, power or tincture that said its contents would heal or cure disease, yes, a few people would be poisoned. And a few would die needlessly by failing to get the right treatment. But on the positive side, all this liberty would result in countless new therapies being rediscovered and many new uses for existing substances would appear.

Fundamentally, this is the issue of liberty. I believe it is better to allow choice and options, to permit the dangers that go with liberty to exist. And to allow unfortunate outcomes to occur without intervention into individual lack of intelligence and irresponsibilities. The opposite is our current path—an attempt to regulate and control away all dangers. But this overcontrol results in institutionalized violence and cruelty, inefficiency that is not checked or exposed by the bright light of a better way. As Churchill said, ‘democracy is the worst form of government there is—except for all the others.’ What he meant is that we must accept that this is an imperfect world. The best this planet can be is when it is at its freest, when restrictions are minimized and when people are allowed to make their own choices, be responsible for their own outcomes and experience the consequences of their own stupidities.

Appendix

Pulse Testing For Allergies

Coca’s Pulse Tests are extraordinarily useful and simple tools for at-home allergy detection. My clients have succeeded at using this approach without supervision. Coca’s test works on this simple principle: pulse elevations are caused by any allergic reaction. If you know what your normal range of pulse rates are, you can isolate an offending food or substance and eliminate it. Success with Coca’s Pulse Test requires only motivation and a little perseverance, because in order to test for food allergies, the diet must be restricted for a few days and your pulse must be accurately taken at specific intervals during the testing period.

The test is based on measurement of the resting pulse rate, something most people have no difficulty learning how to do. The resting rate is how fast the heart beats after a person has been sitting still, comfortably relaxing for three to five minutes. When a person is active the heart beats faster than the resting rate. One measure of aerobic fitness is how quickly the heart is able to return to its resting rate. Well-trained athletes’ hearts can adjust from working very hard to a resting rate in only a minute or so; those who are deconditioned can take three to five minutes for their heart to slow from even mild exertion to its stable, resting pace.

Those who cannot readily find their own pulse on their wrist or throat can inexpensively purchase a digital watch that gives a pulse reading; this kind of watch is used by athletes to make sure their training pulse is in an acceptable range.

Preparatory to doing Coca’s Pulse Test it is necessary to as much as possible eliminate allergic food reactions. This requires the application of discipline for a few days before testing begins.

Allergic reactions can go on for several days after a food has been eaten and if you are having a reaction to something eaten many hours or several days previously, it may obscure a reaction to a food just eaten.

1. Stop smoking entirely for at least five days before you do a cigarette test; allergies to cigarettes can take five days to clear.

Besides, you shouldn’t smoke, anyway!

2. For the first three days, count your resting pulse immediately after awakening in the morning (for one entire minute), and record the reading.

3. During the first three days, take your resting pulse half an hour and again one hour after each meal. It if has elevated more than 12

beats above the resting rate you found upon arising that morning, you may assume that some food at the meal you just ate was an allergen. Temporarily, eliminate from your diet all the foods eaten at the previous meal until you can check them one-by-one a few days later. At the end of these first three days you may not have many foods left that you can eat. That is okay and to be expected; it is time to begin adding foods back to the diet.

4. Most people who are allergic to foods are allergic to one or more of the following: corn, wheat, milk and cheese, yogurt, meat, alcohol, tobacco. It would be very wise to eliminate these foods too for the first three days, until they are tested.

After three days on this regimen, you can assume that many of your usual allergic food reactions have ceased or at least diminished significantly and that you probably can get reasonably accurate testing results on individual foods. A good indicator of having problems with food allergies in general can also show up during these initial days. If you have eliminated a large number of foods and your resting pulse upon awakening has slowed down by several beats, you can assume you are allergic to foods you were eating.

I would not be at all surprised that by the end of the third day you were only eating a very few fruits and vegetables and had eliminated everything else. A more effective variant of the testing procedure calls for a three or four day water fast to clear all allergies with absolute certainty, and then to introduce foods one at a time as described below.

On the fourth and subsequent few days, take your resting pulse upon arising and then eat a modest quantity of a single food: for example, eat a slice of bread, or a medium sized glass of milk, or an orange, or two tablespoons sugar in dissolved in water, or a few dried prunes, or a peach, or an egg, or a medium-sized potato, or a cup of black coffee without sweetener, or a few ounces of meat, or a stick of celery, or half a cup of raw cabbage, or an