How and When To Be Your Own Doctor
by Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon
Table of Contents
Forward
Tis a gift to be simple
Tis a gift to be free,
Tis a gift to come down
Where we ought to be.
And when we find ourselves
In a place just right,
It will be in the valley
Of love and delight.
Old Shaker Hymn
Favorite of Dr. Isabelle Moser
I was a physically tough,
happy-go-lucky fellow until I reached my late thirties. Then I began to experience
more and more off days when I did not feel quite right. I thought I possessed an
iron constitution. Although I grew a big food garden and ate mostly "vegetablitarian"
I thought I could eat anything with impunity. I had been fond of drinking beer with
my friends while nibbling on salty snacks or heavy foods late into the night. And
until my health began to weaken I could still get up the next morning after several
homebrewed beers, feeling good, and would put in a solid day's work.
When my health began to slip I went looking for a cure. Up
to that time the only use I'd had for doctors was to fix a few traumatic injuries.
The only preventative health care I concerned myself with was to take a multivitamin
pill during those rare spells when I felt a bit run down and to eat lots of vegetables.
So I'd not learned much about alternative health care.
Naturally, my first stop was a local general practitioner/MD.
He gave me his usual half-hour get-acquainted checkout and opined that there almost
certainly was nothing wrong with me. I suspect I had the good fortune to encounter
an honest doctor, because he also said if it were my wish he could send me around
for numerous tests but most likely these would not reveal anything either. More than
likely, all that was wrong was that I was approaching 40; with the onset of middle
age I would naturally have more aches and pains. 'Take some aspirin and get used
to it,' was his advice. 'It'll only get worse.'
Not satisfied with his dismal prognosis I asked an energetic
old guy I knew named Paul, an '80-something homesteader who was renowned for his
organic garden and his good health. Paul referred me to his doctor, Isabelle Moser,
who at that time was running the Great Oaks School of Health, a residential and out-patient
spa nearby at Creswell, Oregon.
Dr. Moser had very different methods of analysis than the
medicos, was warmly personal and seemed very safe to talk to. She looked me over,
did some strange magical thing she called muscle testing and concluded that I still
had a very strong constitution. If I would eliminate certain "bad" foods
from my diet, eliminate some generally healthful foods that, unfortunately, I was
allergic to, if I would reduce my alcohol intake greatly and take some food supplements,
then gradually my symptoms would abate. With the persistent application of a little
self-discipline over several months, maybe six months, I could feel really well again
almost all the time and would probably continue that way for many years to come.
This was good news, though the need to apply personal responsibility toward the solution
of my problem seemed a little sobering.
But I could also see that Dr. Moser was obviously not telling
me something. So I gently pressed her for the rest. A little shyly, reluctantly,
as though she were used to being rebuffed for making such suggestions, Isabelle asked
me if I had ever heard of fasting? 'Yes,' I said. "I had. Once when I was about
twenty and staying at a farm in Missouri, during a bad flu I actually did fast, mainly
because I was too sick to take anything but water for nearly one week.'
"Why do you ask?" I demanded.
"If you would fast, you will start feeling really good
as soon as the fast is over." she said.
"Fast? How long?"
"Some have fasted for a month or even longer,"
she said. Then she observed my crestfallen expression and added, "Even a couple
of weeks would make an enormous difference."
It just so happened that I was in between set-up stages for
a new mail-order business I was starting and right then I did have a couple of weeks
when I was virtually free of responsibility. I could also face the idea of not eating
for a couple of weeks. "Okay!" I said somewhat impulsively. "I could
fast for two weeks. If I start right now maybe even three weeks, depending on how
my schedule works out."
So in short order I was given several small books about fasting
to read at home and was mentally preparing myself for several weeks of severe privation,
my only sustenance to be water and herb tea without sweetener. And then came the
clinker.
"Have you ever heard of colonics?" she asked sweetly.
"Yes. Weird practice, akin to anal sex or something?"
"Not at all," she responded. "Colonics are
essential during fasting or you will have spells when you'll feel terrible. Only
colonics make water fasting comfortable and safe."
Then followed some explanation about bowel cleansing (and
another little book to take home) and soon I was agreeing to get my body over to
her place for a colonic every two or three days during the fasting period, the first
colonic scheduled for the next afternoon. I'll spare you a detailed description of
my first fast with colonics; you'll read about others shortly. In the end I withstood
the boredom of water fasting for 17 days. During the fast I had about 7 colonics.
I ended up feeling great, much trimmer, with an enormous rebirth of energy. And when
I resumed eating it turned out to be slightly easier to control my dietary habits
and appetites.
Thus began my practice of an annual health-building water
fast. Once a year, at whatever season it seemed propitious, I'd set aside a couple
of weeks to heal my body. While fasting I'd slowly drive myself over to Great Oaks
School for colonics every other day. By the end of my third annual fast in 1981,
Isabelle and I had become great friends. About this same time Isabelle's relationship
with her first husband, Douglas Moser, had disintegrated. Some months later, Isabelle
and I became partners. And then we married.
My regular fasts continued through 1984, by which time I
had recovered my fundamental organic vigor and had retrained my dietary habits. About
1983 Isabelle and I also began using Life Extension megavitamins as a therapy against
the aging process. Feeling so much better I began to find the incredibly boring weeks
of prophylactic fasting too difficult to motivate myself to do, and I stopped. Since
that time I fast only when acutely ill. Generally less than one week on water handles
any non-optimum health condition I've had since '84. I am only 54 years old as I
write these words, so I hope it will be many, many years before I find myself in
the position where I have to fast for an extended period to deal with a serious or
life-threatening condition.
I am a kind of person the Spanish call autodidactico,
meaning that I prefer to teach myself. I had already learned the fine art of self-employment
and general small-business practice that way, as well as radio and electronic theory,
typography and graphic design, the garden seed business, horticulture, and agronomy.
When Isabelle moved in with me she also brought most of Great Oak's extensive library,
including very hard to obtain copies of the works of the early hygienic doctors.
Naturally I studied her books intensely.
Isabelle also brought her medical practice into our house.
At first it was only a few loyal local clients who continued to consult with her
on an out-patient basis, but after a few years, the demands for residential care
from people who were seriously and sometimes life-threateningly sick grew irresistibly,
and I found myself sharing our family house with a parade of really sick people.
True, I was not their doctor, but because her residential clients became temporary
parts of our family, I helped support and encourage our residents through their fasting
process. I'm a natural teacher (and how-to-do-it writer), so I found myself explaining
many aspects of hygienic medicine to Isabelle's clients, while having a first-hand
opportunity to observe for myself the healing process at work. Thus it was that I
became the doctor's assistant and came to practice second-hand hygienic medicine.
In 1994, when Isabelle had reached the age of 54, she began
to think about passing on her life's accumulation of healing wisdom by writing a
book. She had no experience at writing for the popular market, her only major writing
being a Ph.D. dissertation. I on the other hand had published seven books about vegetable
gardening. And I grasped the essentials of her wisdom as well as any non-practitioner
could. So we took a summer off and rented a house in rural Costa Rica, where I helped
Isabelle put down her thoughts on a cheap word-processing typewriter. When we returned
to the States, I fired-up my "big-mac" and composed this manuscript into
a rough book format that was given to some of her clients to get what is trendily
called these days, "feedback."
But before we could completely finish her book, Isabelle
became dangerously ill and after a long, painful struggle with abdominal cancer,
she died. After I resurfaced from the worst of my grief and loss, I decided to finish
her book. Fortunately, the manuscript needed little more than polishing. I am telling
the reader these things because many ghost-written books end up having little direct
connection with the originator of the thoughts. Not so in this case. And unlike many
ghost writers, I had a long and loving apprenticeship with the author. At every step
of our colaboration on this book I have made every effort to communicate Isabelle's
viewpoints in the way she would speak, not my own. Dr. Isabelle Moser was for many
years my dearest friend. I have worked on this book to help her pass her understanding
on.
Many people consider death to be a complete invalidation
of a healing arts practitioner. I don't. Coping with her own dicey health had been
a major motivator for Isabelle's interest in healing others. She will tell you more
about it in the chapters to come. Isabelle had been fending off cancer since its
first blow up when she was 26 years old. I view that 30 plus years of defeating Death
as a great success rather than consider her ultimate defeat as a failure.
Isabelle Moser was born in 1940 and died in 1996. I think
the greatest accomplishment of her 56 years was to meld virtually all available knowledge
about health and healing into a workable and most importantly, a simple model that
allowed her to have amazing success. Her "system" is simple enough that
even a generally well-educated non-medico like me can grasp it. And use it without
consulting a doctor every time a symptom appears.
Finally, I should mention that over the years since this
book was written I have discovered contains some significant errors of anatomical
or psysiological detail. Most of these happened because the book was written "off
the top of Isabelle's head," without any reference materials at hand, not even
an anatomy text. I have not fixed these goofs as I am not even qualified to find
them all. Thus, when the reader reads such as 'the pancreas secreates enzymes into
the stomach,' (actually and correctly, the duodenum) I hope they will understand
and not invalidate the entire book.
Chapter One
How I Became a Hygienist
From The Hygienic Dictionary
Doctors. [1] In the matter of disease and healing, the people
have been treated as serfs. The doctor is a dictator who knows it all, and the people
are stupid, dumb, driven cattle, fit for nothing except to be herded together, bucked
and gagged when necessary to force medical opinion down their throats or under their
skins. I found that professional dignity was more often pomposity, sordid bigotry
and gilded ignorance. The average physician is a fear-monger, if he is anything.
He goes about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may scare to death. Dr. John.
H. Tilden, Impaired Health: Its Cause and Cure, Vol. 1, 1921. [2] Today we are
not only in the Nuclear Age but also the Antibiotic Age. Unhappily, too, this is
the Dark Age of Medicine--an age in which many of my colleagues, when confronted
with a patient, consult a volume which rivals the Manhattan telephone directory in
size. This book contains the names of thousands upon thousands of drugs used to alleviate
the distressing symptoms of a host of diseased states of the body. The doctor then
decides which pink or purple or baby-blue pill to prescribe for the patient. This
is not, in my opinion, the practice of medicine. Far too many of these new "miracle"
drugs are introduced with fanfare and then reveled as lethal in character, to be
silently discarded for newer and more powerful drugs. Dr. Henry Bieler: Food is
Your Best Medicine; 1965.
I have two reasons for writing this book. One, to help educate
the general public about the virtues of natural medicine. The second, to encourage
the next generation of natural healers. Especially the second because it is not easy
to become a natural hygienist; there is no school or college or licensing board.
Most AMA-affiliated physicians follow predictable career
paths, straight well-marked roads, climbing through apprenticeships in established
institutions to high financial rewards and social status. Practitioners of natural
medicine are not awarded equally high status, rarely do we become wealthy, and often,
naturopaths arrive at their profession rather late in life after following the tangled
web of their own inner light. So I think it is worth a few pages to explain how I
came to practice a dangerous profession and why I have accepted the daily risks of
police prosecution and civil liability without possibility of insurance.
Sometimes it seems to me that I began this lifetime powerfully
predisposed to heal others. So, just for childhood warm-ups I was born into a family
that would be much in need of my help. As I've always disliked an easy win, to make
rendering that help even more difficult, I decided to be the youngest child, with
two older brothers.
A pair of big, capable brothers might have guided and shielded
me. But my life did not work out that way. The younger of my two brothers, three
years ahead of me, was born with many health problems. He was weak, small, always
ill, and in need of protection from other children, who are generally rough and cruel.
My father abandoned our family shortly after I was born; it fell to my mother to
work to help support us. Before I was adolescent my older brother left home to pursue
a career in the Canadian Air Force.
Though I was the youngest, I was by far the healthiest. Consequently,
I had to pretty much raise myself while my single mother struggled to earn a living
in rural western Canada. This circumstance probably reinforced my constitutional
predilection for independent thought and action. Early on I started to protect my
"little" brother, making sure the local bullies didn't take advantage of
him. I learned to fight big boys and win. I also helped him acquire simple skills,
ones that most kids grasp without difficulty, such as swimming, bike riding, tree
climbing, etc.
And though not yet adolescent, I had to function as a responsible
adult in our household. Stressed by anger over her situation and the difficulties
of earning our living as a country school teacher (usually in remote one-room schools),
my mother's health deteriorated rapidly. As she steadily lost energy and became less
able to take care of the home, I took over more and more of the cleaning, cooking,
and learned how to manage her--a person who feels terrible but must work to survive.
During school hours my mother was able to present a positive
attitude, and was truly a gifted teacher. However, she had a personality quirk. She
obstinately preferred to help the most able students become even more able, but she
had little desire to help those with marginal mentalities. This predilection got
her into no end of trouble with local school boards; inevitably it seemed the District
Chairman would have a stupid, badly-behaved child that my mother refused to cater
to. Several times we had to move in the middle of the school year when she was dismissed
without notice for "insubordination." This would inevitably happen on the
frigid Canadian Prairies during mid-winter.
At night, exhausted by the day's efforts, my mother's positiveness
dissipated and she allowed her mind to drift into negative thoughts, complaining
endlessly about my irresponsible father and about how much she disliked him for treating
her so badly. These emotions and their irresponsible expression were very difficult
for me to deal with as a child, but it taught me to work on diverting someone's negative
thoughts, and to avoid getting dragged into them myself, skills I had to use continually
much later on when I began to manage mentally and physically ill clients on a residential
basis.
My own personal health problems had their genesis long before
my own birth. Our diet was awful, with very little fresh fruit or vegetables. We
normally had canned, evaporated milk, though there were a few rare times when raw
milk and free-range fertile farm eggs were available from neighbors. Most of my foods
were heavily salted or sugared, and we ate a great deal of fat in the form of lard.
My mother had little money but she had no idea that some of the most nutritious foods
are also the least expensive.
It is no surprise to me that considering her nutrient-poor,
fat-laden diet and stressful life, my mother eventually developed severe gall bladder
problems. Her degeneration caused progressively more and more severe pain until she
had a cholecystectomy. The gallbladder's profound deterioration had damaged her liver
as well, seeming to her surgeon to require the removal of half her liver. After this
surgical insult she had to stop working and never regained her health. Fortunately,
by this time all her children were independent.
I had still more to overcome. My eldest brother had a nervous
breakdown while working on the DEW Line (he was posted on the Arctic Circle watching
radar screens for a possible incoming attack from Russia). I believe his collapse
actually began with our childhood nutrition. While in the Arctic all his foods came
from cans. He also was working long hours in extremely cramped quarters with no leave
for months in a row, never going outside because of the cold, or having the benefit
of natural daylight.
When he was still in the acute stage of his illness (I was
still a teenager myself) I went to the hospital where my bother was being held, and
talked the attending psychiatrist into immediately discharging him into my care.
The physician also agreed to refrain from giving him electroshock therapy, a commonly
used treatment for mental conditions in Canadian hospitals at that time. Somehow
I knew the treatment they were using was wrong.
I brought my brother home still on heavy doses of thorazine.
The side effects of this drug were so severe he could barely exist: blurred vision,
clenched jaw, trembling hands, and restless feet that could not be kept still. These
are common problems with the older generation of psycho tropic medications, generally
controlled to some extent with still other drugs like cogentin (which he was taking
too).
My brother steadily reduced his tranquilizers until he was
able to think and do a few things. On his own he started taking a lot of B vitamins
and eating whole grains. I do not know exactly why he did this, but I believe he
was following his intuition. (I personally did not know enough to suggest a natural
approach at that time.) In any case after three months on vitamins and an improved
diet he no long needed any medication, and was delighted to be free of their side
effects. He remained somewhat emotionally fragile for a few more months but he soon
returned to work, and has had no mental trouble from that time to this day. This
was the beginning of my interest in mental illness, and my first exposure to the
limitations of 'modern' psychiatry.
I always preferred self-discipline to being directed by others.
So I took every advantage of having a teacher for a mother and studied at home instead
of being bored silly in a classroom. In Canada of that era you didn't have to go
to high school to enter university, you only had to pass the written government entrance
exams. At age 16, never having spent a single day in high school, I passed the university
entrance exams with a grade of 97 percent. At that point in my life I really wanted
to go to medical school and become a doctor, but I didn't have the financial backing
to embark on such a long and costly course of study, so I settled on a four year
nursing course at the University of Alberta, with all my expenses paid in exchange
for work at the university teaching hospital.
At the start of my nurses training I was intensely curious
about everything in the hospital: birth, death, surgery, illness, etc. I found most
births to be joyful, at least when everything came out all right. Most people died
very alone in the hospital, terrified if they were conscious, and all seemed totally
unprepared for death, emotionally or spiritually. None of the hospital staff wanted
to be with a dying person except me; most hospital staff were unable to confront
death any more bravely than those who were dying. So I made it a point of being at
the death bed. The doctors and nurses found it extremely unpleasant to have to deal
with the preparation of the dead body for the morgue; this chore usually fell to
me also. I did not mind dead bodies. They certainly did not mind me!
I had the most difficulty accepting surgery. There were times
when surgery was clearly a life saving intervention, particularly when the person
had incurred a traumatic injury, but there were many other cases when, though the
knife was the treatment of choice, the results were disastrous.
Whenever I think of surgery, my recollections always go to
a man with cancer of the larynx. At that time the University of Alberta had the most
respected surgeons and cancer specialists in the country. To treat cancer they invariably
did surgery, plus radiation and chemotherapy to eradicate all traces of cancerous
tissue in the body, but they seemed to forget there also was a human being residing
in that very same cancerous body. This particularly unfortunate man came into our
hospital as a whole human being, though sick with cancer. He could still speak, eat,
swallow, and looked normal. But after surgery he had no larynx, nor esophagus, nor
tongue, and no lower jaw.
The head surgeon, who, by the way, was considered to be a
virtual god amongst gods, came back from the operating room smiling from ear to ear,
announcing proudly that he had 'got all the cancer'. But when I saw the result I
thought he'd done a butcher's job. The victim couldn't speak at all, nor eat except
through a tube, and he looked grotesque. Worst, he had lost all will to live. I thought
the man would have been much better off to keep his body parts as long as he could,
and die a whole person able to speak, eating if he felt like it, being with friends
and family without inspiring a gasp of horror.
I was sure there must be better ways of dealing with degenerative
conditions such as cancer, but I had no idea what they might be or how to find out.
There was no literature on medical alternatives in the university library, and no
one in the medical school ever hinted at the possibility except when the doctors
took jabs at chiropractors. Since no one else viewed the situation as I did I started
to think I might be in the wrong profession.
It also bothered me that patients were not respected, were
not people; they were considered a "case" or a "condition." I
was frequently reprimanded for wasting time talking to patients, trying to get acquainted.
The only place in the hospital where human contact was acceptable was the psychiatric
ward. So I enjoyed the rotation to psychiatry for that reason, and decided that I
would like to make psychiatry or psychology my specialty.
By the time I finished nursing school, it was clear that
the hospital was not for me. I especially didn't like its rigid hierarchical system,
where all bowed down to the doctors. The very first week in school we were taught
that when entering a elevator, make sure that the doctor entered first, then the
intern, then the charge nurse. Followed by, in declining order of status: graduate
nurses, third year nurses, second year nurses, first year nurses, then nursing aids,
then orderlies, then ward clerks, and only then, the cleaning staff. No matter what
the doctor said, the nurse was supposed to do it immediately without question--a
very military sort of organization.
Nursing school wasn't all bad. I learned how to take care
of all kinds of people with every variety of illness. I demonstrated for myself that
simple nursing care could support a struggling body through its natural healing process.
But the doctor-gods tended to belittle and denigrate nurses. No wonder--so much of
nursing care consists of unpleasant chores like bed baths, giving enemas and dealing
with other bodily functions.
I also studied the state-of-the-art science concerning every
conceivable medical condition, its symptoms, and treatment. At the university hospital
nurses were required to take the same pre-med courses as the doctors--including anatomy,
physiology, biochemistry, and pharmacology. Consequently, I think it is essential
for holistic healers to first ground themselves in the basic sciences of the body's
physiological systems. There is also much valuable data in standard medical texts
about the digestion, assimilation, and elimination. To really understand illness,
the alternative practitioner must be fully aware of the proper functioning of the
cardiovascular/pulmonary system, the autonomic and voluntary nervous system, the
endocrine system, plus the mechanics and detailed nomenclature of the skeleton, muscles,
tendons and ligaments. Also it is helpful to know the conventional medical models
for treating various disorders, because they do appear to work well for some people,
and should not be totally invalidated simply on the basis of one's philosophical
or religious viewpoints.
Many otherwise well-meaning holistic practitioners, lacking
an honest grounding in science, sometimes express their understanding of the human
body in non-scientific, metaphysical terms that can seem absurd to the well-instructed.
I am not denying here that there is a spiritual aspect to health and illness; I believe
there are energy flows in and around the body that can effect physiological functioning.
I am only suggesting that to discuss illness without hard science is like calling
oneself a abstract artist because the painter has no ability to even do a simple,
accurate representational drawing of a human figure.
Though hospital life had already become distasteful to me
I was young and poor when I graduated. So after nursing school I buckled down and
worked just long enough to save enough money to obtain a masters degree in Clinical
Psychology from the University of British Columbia. Then I started working at Riverview
Hospital in Vancouver, B.C., doing diagnostic testing, and group therapy, mostly
with psychotic people. At Riverview I had a three-year-long opportunity to observe
the results of conventional psychiatric treatment.
The first thing I noticed was the 'revolving door' phenomena.
That is, people go out, and then they're back in, over and over again, demonstrating
that standard treatment--drugs, electroshock and group therapy--had been ineffective.
Worse, the treatments given at Riverside were dangerous, often with long term side
effects that were more damaging than the disease being treated. It felt like nursing
school all over again; in the core of my being I somehow knew there was a better
way, a more effective way of helping people to regain their mental health. Feeling
like an outsider, I started investigating the hospital's nooks and crannies. Much
to my surprise, in a back ward, one not open to the public, I noticed a number of
people with bright purple skins.
I asked the staff about this and every one of the psychiatrists
denied these patients existed. This outright and widely-agreed-upon lie really raised
my curiosity. Finally after pouring through the journals in the hospital library
I found an article describing psycho tropic-drug-induced disruptions of melanin (the
dark skin pigment). Thorazine, a commonly used psychiatric drug, when taken in high
doses over a long period of time would do this. Excess melanin eventually was deposited
in vital organs such as the heart and the liver, causing death.
I found it especially upsetting to see patients receive electroshock
treatments. These violent, physician-induced traumas did seem to disrupt dysfunctional
thought patterns such as an impulse to commit suicide, but afterwards the victim
couldn't remember huge parts of their life or even recall who they were. Like many
other dangerous medical treatments, electroshock can save life but it can also take
life away by obliterating identity.
According the Hippocratic Oath, the first criteria of a treatment
is that it should do no harm. Once again I found myself trapped in a system that
made me feel severe protest. Yet none of these specialists or university professors,
or academic libraries had any information about alternatives. Worse, none of these
mind-doctor-gods were even looking for better treatments.
Though unpleasant and profoundly disappointing, my experience
as a mental hospital psychologist was, like being in nursing school, also very valuable.
Not only did I learn how to diagnose, and evaluate the severity of mental illness
and assess the dangerousness of the mentally ill, I learned to understand them, to
feel comfortable with them, and found that I was never afraid of them. Fearlessness
is a huge advantage. The mentally ill seem to have a heightened ability to spot fear
in others. If they sense that you are afraid they frequently enjoy terrorizing you.
When psychotic people know you feel comfortable with them, and probably understand
a great deal of what they are experiencing, when they know that you can and intend
to control them, they experience a huge sense of relief. I could always get mentally
ill people to tell me what was really going on in their heads when no one else could
get them to communicate.
A few years later I married an American and became the Mental
Health Coordinator for Whatcom County, the northwestern corner of Washington State.
I handled all the legal proceedings in the county for mentally ill people. After
treatment in the state mental hospital I supervised their reentry into the community,
and attempted to provide some follow up. This work further confirmed my conclusions
that in most cases the mentally ill weren't helped by conventional treatment. Most
of them rapidly became social problems after discharge. It seemed the mental hospital's
only ethically defensible function was incarceration--providing temporary relief
for the family and community from the mentally ill person's destructiveness.
I did see a few people recover in the mental health system.
Inevitably these were young, and had not yet become institutionalized, a term describing
someone who comes to like being in the hospital because confinement feels safe. Hospitalization
can mean three square meals and a bed. It frequently means an opportunity to have
a sex life (many female inmates are highly promiscuous). Many psychotics are also
criminal; the hospital seems far better to them than jail. Many chronically mentally
ill are also experts at manipulating the system. When homeless, they deliberately
get hospitalized for some outrageous deed just before winter. They then "recover"
when the fine weather of spring returns.
After a year as Mental Health Co-ordinator, I had enough
of the "system" and decided that it was as good a time as any to return
to school for a Ph.D., this time at University. of Oregon where I studied clinical
and counseling psychology and gerontology. While in graduate school I became pregnant
and had my first child. Not surprisingly, this experience profoundly changed my consciousness.
I realized that it had perhaps been all right for me to be somewhat irresponsible
about my own nutrition and health, but that it was not okay to inflict poor nutrition
on my unborn child. At that time I was addicted to salty, deep-fat fried corn chips
and a diet pop. I thought I had to have these so-called foods every day. I tended
to eat for taste, in other words, what I liked, not necessarily what would give me
the best nutrition. I was also eating a lot of what most people would consider healthy
food: meat, cheese, milk, whole grains, nuts, vegetables, and fruits.
My constitution had seemed strong and vital enough through
my twenties to allow this level of dietary irresponsibility. During my early 20s
I had even recovered from a breast cancer by sheer will power. (I will discuss this
later.) So before my pregnancy I had not questioned my eating habits.
As my body changed and adapted itself to it's new purpose
I began visiting the libraries and voraciously read everything obtainable under the
topic of nutrition--all the texts, current magazines, nutritional journals, and health
newsletters. My childhood habit of self-directed study paid off. I discovered alternative
health magazines like Let's Live, Prevention, Organic Gardening, and Best Ways, and
promptly obtained every back issue since they were first published. Along the way
I ran into articles by Linus Pauling on vitamin C, and sent away for all of his books,
one of these was co-authored with David Hawkins, called The Orthomolecular Approach
to Mental Disorders.
This book had a profound effect on me. I instantly recognized
that it was Truth with a capital "T", although the orthomolecular approach
was clearly in opposition to the established medical model and contradicted everything
I had ever learned as a student or professional. Here at last was the exciting alternative
approach to treating mental disorders I had so long sought. I filed this information
away, waiting for an opportunity to use it. And I began to study all the references
in The Orthomolecular Approach to Mental Disorders dealing with correcting the perceptual
functioning of psychotic people using natural substances.
In the course of delving through libraries and book stores,
I also came across the Mokelumne Hill Publishing Company (now defunct). This obscure
publisher reprinted many unusual and generally crudely reproduced out-of-print books
about raw foods diets, hygienic medicine, fruitarianism, fasting, breathairianism,
plus some works discussing spiritual aspects of living that were far more esoteric
than I had ever thought existed. I decided that weird or not, I might as well find
out everything potentially useful. So I spent a lot of money ordering their books.
Some of Mokelumne Hill's material really expanded my thoughts. Though much of it
seemed totally outrageous, in every book there usually was one line, one paragraph,
or if I was lucky one whole chapter that rang true for me.
Recognizing capital "T" Truth when one sees it
is one of the most important abilities a person can have. Unfortunately, every aspect
of our mass educational system attempts to invalidate this skill. Students are repeatedly
told that derivation from recognized authority and/or the scientific method are the
only valid means to assess the validity of data. But there is another parallel method
to determine the truth or falsehood of information: Knowing. We Know by the simple
method of looking at something and recognizing its correctness. It is a spiritual
ability. I believe we all have it. But in my case, I never lost the ability to Know
because I almost never attended school.
Thus it is that I am absolutely certain How and When to Be
Your Own Doctor will be recognized as Truth by some of my readers and rejected as
unscientific, unsubstantiated, or anecdotal information by others. I accept this
limitation on my ability to teach. If what you read in the following pages seems
True for you, great! If it doesn't, there is little or nothing I could do to further
convince.
I return now to the time of my first pregnancy. In the face
of all these new Truths I was discovering concerning health and nutrition, I made
immediate changes in my diet. I severely reduced my animal protein intake and limited
cooked food in general. I began taking vitamin and mineral supplements. I also choose
a highly atypical Ph.D. dissertation topic, "The Orthomolecular Treatment of
Mental Disorders." This fifty cent word, orthomolecular, basically means readjusting
the body chemistry by providing unusually large amounts of specific nutrient substances
normally found in the human body (vitamins and minerals). Orthomolecular therapy
for mental disorders is supported by good diet, by removal of allergy-producing substances,
by control of hypoglycemia, plus counseling, and provision of a therapeutic environment.
My proposed dissertation topic met with nothing but opposition.
The professors on my doctoral committee had never heard of the word orthomolecular,
and all of them were certain it wasn't an accepted, traditional area of research.
Research in academia is supposed to be based on the works of a previous researchers
who arrived at hypothesis based on data obtained by strictly following scientific
methodology. "Scientific" data requires control groups, matched populations,
statistical analysis, etc. In my case there was no previous work my dissertation
committee would accept, because the available data did not originate from a medical
school or psychology department they recognized.