The importance and value of enzymes for our continuing long term health.

From time to time the body experiences detoxification crises also called purification or healing crises. This happens when toxins are released through the skin or dumped in your bloodstream for elimination by the liver, kidneys, and other organs. The symptoms may include headaches, fever, nausea, vomiting, colds, bronchitis, sinusitis, pneumonia, and diarrhoea.

The immune system, having to handle the massive daily invasions of toxins and toxic by-products, eventually becomes overwhelmed and weakened. A key factor in the aging process.

The wastes, toxins, mutagens, and carcinogens that build up within cells, as well as the daily onslaught of excess free radicals eventually cause some cells to become cancerous - killing an estimated 30% of Americans.

In general, the natural aging process is accelerated by cooked food. People who switch to raw food often become biologically and visibly younger.

After eating a cooked meal there is a general increase in the white blood cells in the blood and a change in the relative proportions of different blood cells occurs. This phenomenon is called "digestive leukocytosis".

Leukocytosis and Cooked Food

In 1930, research was conducted at the Institute of Clinical Chemistry in Lausanne, Switzerland, under the direction of Dr. Paul Kouchakoff. The effect of food (cooked/processed vs. raw/natural) on the immune system was tested and documented.

Dr. Kouchakoff's discovery concerned the leukocytes, the white blood cells.

It was found that after a person eats cooked food, his/her blood responds immediately by increasing the number of white blood cells. This is a well-known phenomena called "digestive leukocytosis", which means that there is a rise in the number of leukocytes, or white blood cells, after eating.

Since digestive leukocytosis was always observed after eating, it was considered to be a normal physiological response to eating. No one knew why the number of white cells would rise after eating, since this appeared to be a stress response, as if the body was reacting to something harmful, such as infection, trauma, or exposure to toxic chemicals.

Back in 1930, Swiss researchers of the institute of Chemical Chemistry studied the influence of food on human blood and made a remarkable discovery. They found that eating unaltered, raw food or food heated at low temperatures did not cause a reaction in the blood.

In addition, if a food had been heated beyond a certain temperature (unique to each food), or if the food was processed (refined, added chemicals, etc.), this always caused a rise in the number of white cells in the blood.

The researchers renamed this reaction "pathological leukocytosis", since the body was reacting to highly altered food. They tested many different kinds of foods and found that if the foods were not overheated or refined, they caused no reaction. The body saw them as "friendly foods".

However, these same foods, if heated at too high a temperature, caused a negative reaction in the blood, a reaction that is found only when the body is invaded by a dangerous pathogen or trauma.

The worst offenders of all, whether heated or not, were processed foods that had been refined (such as white flour or white rice), or homogenized (a process in which the fat in milk is subjected to artificial suspension), or pasteurized (also seen in milk, flash-heated to high temperatures to kill bacteria), or preserved (chemicals added to food to retard spoilage or to enhance taste or texture).

 In other words, foods that were changed from their original God-given state. Good examples of these harmful foods are: pasteurized milk, chocolate, margarine, sugar, candy, white flour, and regular salt.

The researchers found that if these altered, chemical foods were chewed very thoroughly, the harm to the blood could be lessened. In addition, another amazing finding was that if some of the same food in its raw state was eaten with the cooked counterpart, the pathological reaction in the blood was minimized.

However, avoid these unnatural, processed foods; replace them with delicious whole foods for optimal health.

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More and more I am coming to realize that the bulk of the food that we eat should not be cooked. That is one of the main reasons why drinking one quart of vegetable juice  is so important to obtaining and maintaining your health.

I would encourage you to obtain at least 50% of your food as uncooked. The vegetable juicing and a salad at lunch will easily put you over that volume.

The raw egg yolks in the juice are an important part of the raw food approach. If you are healthy and have large amounts of vegetables, the salmonella is not going to be an issue for you, especially if the eggs are free range and organic.

In some cases daily juicing might cause some loose stools, which are easily resolved with some good bacteria.

I am still in the process of increasing my percentage of raw food eaten to over 90% of my total daily food intake. My nutritionist, Jim Marlow, recently encouraged me to start eating raw ostrich meat and I have found that to be quite enjoyable and not really much different than the way I would normally prepare my meat at medium rare.