I Went From a "Positive" Test to a "Negative" Test, In Just Two Days, Naturally

 

I've been as careful about COVID as can be for three years now: washing hands, masking, not hugging my friends.  But then the old wall that holds the creek behind my house fell early one morning.  This happened, blessedly, between storms, so our soil profile did not wash away.  The city had built the wall and they stepped up to fix it, since it fell behind two other houses as well, and its absence threatened to undermine the nearby boulevard.  This resulted in crews of workmen coming and going with engineers and firemen and building inspectors all gathering in and parading through my backyard.  Some of them I needed to catch up with and let them know some particular or another before they disappeared.

I think that is when it happened, because two or three times I found myself out there, speaking with a small group, having dashed out without my mask.  Just four weeks before this, a friend had come round for a birthday visit on the patio.  He had come down with COVID the next day and we had been exposed.  Fortunately, I had recently remembered how effective overheating baths can be at stopping nasty viruses, (I had read that this had happened with the AIDS epidemic.)  So, I took an overheating bath and dodged a bullet that time.  (You can read more about that experience in my March 2023 blog titled "Exposed and the Overheating Bath.") 

My husband, Frank, has a good friend who comes round most mornings with his little French Bulldog who loves to play with our dog, on the front lawn.  The two men stand at a good distance from each other and talk about the repairs and various projects they are working on while the dogs dance around together, racing back and forth.  Two weeks ago, our friend showed up with a cold.  Not COVID, just a cold.  And Frank caught it.  Our friend later said he "thought that they weren't that close."  Very funny.  But air borne microbes can be like that, and as we all now know, quite contagious.

For some reason, I knew that I wouldn't catch Frank's cold.  It's amazing how you just know.  Though we took a few slight precautions I really wasn't worried about it.  Then, four days later I woke in the night, quite surprised and a little pissed, to find that I had a sore throat.  I reached for my ever handy arsenal of cold remedies: Dr. Schulze's Super-C Plus, Healthy Trinity by Natren and Equinacea Supreme by Gaia Herbs.  That backed the sore throat down quite successfully, but by morning, my sinuses, normally always free, were slightly congested and I groused at Frank about it.  By afternoon, I was feeling slightly headachy, and somewhat fatigued, with the start of a drippy nose.  I took my temperature and found it was at 99.5 degrees.  

I accused Frank of having had the dry scratchy throat proceeding his cold and said that he had just not remembered having one.  He was denying that anything was off at the onset of his cold, as he always does.  Having a full work week ahead I really didn't want to come down with what felt like a mild viral infection.  And I wasn't supposed to anyway, so I jumped into an overheating bath, which is always very effective at fighting viruses.

Frank said he had read up on the difference between a cold and a flu earlier that day, in Linda Page's book, Healthy Healing, (the same edition I referred to in my last blog with the instructions on how to properly do an overheating bath.)  I asked him to read the difference between the two again, to me, while I was in the tub.  While he was reading, he kept noting the onset of a "cold" for himself, and I kept noting the onset of a "flu" for myself.  That was when it dawned on me that maybe we had two different bugs.  And that maybe I hadn't caught this from Frank after all.

Anyway, that night, after my therapeutic hot bath, I slept in a pool of sweat and had to change the sheets and start washing everything in the morning.  I took a shower to clean the gunk off of my skin and then it occurred to me, "wait a minute, wait a minute,": sore throat, slight fever, headache, sinus congestion, fatigue.  It finally ran a bell.  And so there, on the morning of day two, I took a COVID test, and to my surprise found the faint pink line, indicating that I had the presence of the proteins in my mucus that reveal the presence of the COVID virus.  Blessedly, Frank did not.  And that hot bath, from the day before, had done me a world of good.  Apart from a slightly drippy nose, and a tendency toward chills and sweats, I felt pretty good.

That afternoon, I decided to do another overheating bath.  I took my temperature before hand and to my surprise found I was already at a hefty 102 degrees.  The day before, with my previous overheating bath, rising up from 99.5 degrees to 103 degrees had been a bit of a struggle and I definitely needed my assistant, Frank, to hand me the thermometers and hold my cup of hot tea, with a drinking straw, for me.  

Killing and then moving all of those viruses out is a lot of work for the body.  It can leave one feeling very weak.  And holding a manufactured fever of 103 degrees for fifteen minutes can be quite daunting.  So, a therapy like this is not for everyone.  Our ninety year old friend, Einar, mentioned that he had to do overheating treatments as a child for serious illnesses.  But, as he said, the only problem was that sometimes they'd "loose one" due to the rigors of the therapy.  So, this method is not something to be taken lightly.  And a capable assistant is essential.  

For me, with my second bath, going from 102 degrees up to 103 degrees was easy, I barely noticed it.  I even spiked briefly up to 104 degrees a couple of times.  It is generally not advisable for adults to go over 102 degrees for more than two full days at a time, but briefly spiking fevers of a slightly higher range are generally considered acceptable by many natural method healers who are familiar with overheating therapies. 

Fevers in the body are important.  They happen for a reason.  They burn out pathogens and then throw them off through sweating.  They also deactivate virus replication.  Lots of liquids need to be taken to stay hydrated, and the skin needs to be kept clean to avoid having toxins being partially reabsorbed by the body.  Sometimes a persistent high fever can be a sign of a more serious problem, but typically a fever, with a cold or flu, will help someone get better faster.

I do my overheating bath differently from the more measured and safer method that Linda Page, N.D., Ph.D. describes in her ninth edition of Healthy Healing.  She suggests not eating for several hours beforehand, emptying the bladder and colon before beginning, having a nice big tub and using two thermometers constantly, one for the bath water and one for the body temperature, both in use, for the entire duration of the treatment.  

For her version of the bath, the patient should be completely submerged, with only the eyes, nose and mouth above water.  She suggests starting the bath water at skin temperature, then raising the temperature of the water to 100 degrees fifteen minutes later, and then up to 103 degrees fifteen minutes after that, holding it at 103 degrees for a final fifteen minutes.  Since the person is completely covered, no body heat can escape and the body temperature will rise to match the water temperature.  The bath takes about an hour and constant supervision is required. 

She also suggests an alternative way to use overheating therapy which is a sauna.  The heat of a sauna will also inhibit the replication of pathogens, speed up metabolism and stimulate all of the glands and vital organs into increased activity.  This supports the immune system and accelerates healing functions.  Detoxification then occurs through the sweating process.  The sauna can then be finished with a cool shower and a rubdown to eliminate the toxins that have been removed from the body via the skin.

She notes that though induced fevers can be natural and effective healing modalities, advice and supervision from expert practitioners is advised.  She also notes that general vitality and heart health check-ups are also advisable and that it is necessary to determine in advance that the patient has the ability to perspire, which sometimes is absent in folks who are seriously ill.

The overheating bath that Linda Page gives is a great and quite safe technique.  But I go about mine a little more simply.  I know my body pretty well and feel comfortable doing my overheating bath this way.  And I am certainly not suggesting this method for anyone else.  But basically what I do, for me, is this, I get the tub really hot and I jump in and I stay there.   

More specifically, before I begin, I plug the overflow valve of the tub with duct tape so I can fill it right up to the top, nice and deep.  I set at least four clean towels on the floor, a quart of liquid to drink while in the tub, my two thermometers, a box of tissues and an empty quart sized plastic cup, all in close reach.  Then I put at least one cup of various mineral salts (see my previous blog for details,) in the tub and fill it right up.  

I generally empty the hot water heater into the tub with the water at or slightly higher than 115 degrees.  I plop myself in there and start to cook with one thermometer in my mouth, shaking it down periodically and retaking readings to keep track of my body temperature.  I also use a quick reacting candy thermometer to keep track of the water temperature.  If the bath gets too cold, below 112 degrees, Frank carefully pours in more hot.  Periodically using an oximeter, (the little finger gizmo that most doctors have for reading blood oxygen levels,) I keep track of my pulse.  Mine usually stays around 90 but may rise up to 105 when I'm really cooking with my body temperature at or above 103 degrees.  

Once the fifteen minutes at or a little above 103 degrees has been accomplished, I start adding in a little cold water to cool the bath gradually.  I usually soak for a good long time at these lower bath water temperatures anywhere from 105 degrees, (the average hot tub temp,) to 110 degrees.  After drinking all of my liquids and having a good long soak and sweat, to finish off the bath, I cool it a little more and linger a little longer.  Then I drain the tub and using the quart sized plastic cup, I rinse the mineral salts off my skin.  Then I carefully climb out of the tub, using all four, arms and legs.

Once I do get out, I'll often lay on and cover up with the towels on the floor to recover for a while before getting up and walking into the bedroom, where I have the heater on and piles of blankets on the bed.  I also tuck a few beach towels in between the sheets to absorb some of the sweat and I have more, at the ready, in case I want to change them in the night.  Then, using my skin as the amazing eliminative organ that it is, I sweat all of those dead viruses and other toxins out of me all night long.

I did this overheating therapy three days in a row.  The first bath, the one before I realized it was COVID, starting with a low grade fever was the challenging one.  The second one, when my natural healing body fever had kicked in and let me start the process already at 102 degrees, was a snap.  Easy.  For the third, my fever had dropped down to 99 degrees again, and it was easy too.  This morning, the third day, when most COVID cases start to really ramp up, and just two days after I tested positive for COVID, I have now tested negative and guess what?  I feel fine.  Absolutely fine.  No fever.  No brain fog.  No loss of taste or smell.  No decline in memory or cognitive faculties.  No cough.  No shortness of breath.  Isn't that amazing!

I'm still going to self isolate, with Frank, and take care of my self.  My house is full of the virus and I wouldn't want to relapse.  So, I'll stay inside, keep warm, take the recommended COVID supplements: Vitamin C, Vitamin D3, Zinc, Usena barbato extract, Bee Propolis, Goldenseal root, and Echinacea root extract.  And I'll test again in a few more days and over the next two weeks.  But I'm so happy to say, I went from a positive COVID test, with all of the initial symptomatology, to a negative test result in just two days.  And I credit that to an age old natural healing remedy, the overheating bath.  

Wishing all, good health and a very happy spring.

Update:  It has been nearly two weeks now and I still feel absolutely fine.  I did a third COVID test and remained negative.  For the first week, I was very gentle with myself and didn't push myself physically.  Now, nearing the end of the second week, I'm back to my full vigor and enjoying life immensely.  Though there can  occasionally be a false positive COVID test result, it is very rare.  And, I feel that my positive test was accurate and that I did contract the virus.  I experienced the typical initial symptomatology: the headache, the sore throat, the fatigue, the minor fever and chills.  And now, all of those symptoms are long gone.  And, I feel so very blessed.

As a Clairvoyant Healer, Spiritual Counselor and Intuition Instructor, I share many tips for leading a healthy and fulfilling life.  Please be advised that I am not a doctor. Nor am I licensed in any healing modality. However, I have had years of experience in alternative and complementary health and healing. All healing programs, including standard western medical protocols in addition to natural therapies, can cause harm rather than the benefit that you may be searching for. After all some people can have a strong reaction to something as seemingly innocent as peanuts or strawberries. Therefore, anything that I may recommend in these blogs and videos could be dangerous for you to try. So, it is important that you Ask Your Doctor First before trying any natural healing protocol. However, most medical doctors have little experience regarding natural healing programs and herbal medicine. So please understand if your doctor is unfamiliar with these ideas.

Fantastic Water Fasting

 

 

My mother used to say, "Starve a cold, feed a fever."  But I like to say, "Starve Everything!"  Whenever I am feeling punky or out of sorts, I find that the quickest way for me to turn a situation around is water fasting.  I've had friends ask, "Wait a minute, Josephine, do you mean that you don't drink any water?!," because fasting usually means abstaining from something.  But, no, on the contrary, it means drinking a ton of water and abstaining from all foods, ideally, not one single calorie.  Instead, I try to get at least one gallon of water down a day.  

When it comes to healing and detoxifying my body, whenever I do cleanses, I prefer to use distilled water, as it can really pull the junk out.  Unfortunately, my first distiller turned out to be all aluminum on the inside.  Not wanting to risk alzheimer's in my later years, I quickly ditched that one and blessedly found an H2O Labs distiller instead, which is very well made.  The water only touches either stainless steel or glass and it will give me a full gallon, or 128 ounces, in one night, drop by drop.  I am always amazed by the stench and the scum that I find in the bottom of my water distiller when I go to clean it, with a little white vinegar, which I do in the mornings, after I have run it.  

Water quality is important.  For our drinking water, years ago I found out that the 5 gallon plastic water bottles, that I had been putting on top of my ceramic water cooler in the kitchen, were made from a poor grade of plastic.  The days are now long gone since those bottles used to be made of glass, and all plastic water bottles hold the potential for releasing toxins into our drinking water.  Not wanting to risk potentially toxic exposures, we now have a charcoal based water filter to use for our drinking water, which we originally get from the kitchen sink.

As Mary Oliver, the beautiful poet has said, one of the greatest crimes of her lifetime was losing the ability to drink water freely from the wild springs, streams and ponds she encountered while venturing forth into the natural world.  And this is truly a crime, sadly world wide.  But, at least, and thank goodness, in most of the western world, our water from the tap is potable, and safe enough to drink.  Many people around the world do not have that blessing these days.  And though I prefer distilled for my water fasts and cleanses, due to it's lovely clear flavorless taste and it's ability to pull toxins from my body, any pure or filtered water will do for a water fast.

When we give our bodies a break from all of the hard work of digestion, they can put that energy into the task of healing.  Water fasting also engages an activity know as autophagy or self-eating.  That may sound a little scary, but actually it is a tremendous benefit because it is like an internal house cleaning.  Children naturally have a high level of autophagy going on in their bodies because of the constant creation of new cells associated with growth.  Our bodies have a deep wells of incredible wisdom and are always trying to find or maintain the balance of health and this includes getting rid of old cells and toxins.  And when we do a water fast, that is exactly what can happen.  

The thing about water fasting is that it is extremely important how you break the fast.  Of course, we already do a little fasting during the night, while we sleep, and in the morning we usually break-the-fast with breakfast, often the lightest meal of the day, typically something like toast and tea.  But for a real water fast, say one or two or three days long, it is especially vital to be mindful about how you break the fast.  It is also best to prepare for the fast in a similar way.  So, if I am planning on doing a one day fast, I plan on three days: the pre-fast day, the fasting day and the post-fast day.  If I am going for a three day fast, I try to plan on nine days: three pre-fast days, three fasting days and three post-fast days.

In the days before a fast, I gradually move from solid and more dense foods toward liquids.  I'll stop eating heavier foods like concentrated proteins, beans, nuts or eggs, and move to foods like soft cooked vegetables or fruits and then to liquids like blended soups, juices or smoothies.  After the fast, I do the same, only in reverse.  I start with a liquid diet, move to well cooked veggies or fruits and then later onto the proteins.  The reason for this is that your digestive tract shuts down during fasting and it is best to awaken it slowly and gently.  Otherwise, you can do more harm than good.  No one wants to do their heaviest lifting without first warming up.  Cars like to be idled for a little while before driving off.

During my fasting days, as I mentioned, I drink a lot of water, at least 128 ounces a day to really help my body flush and clean itself out.  Water is good for cleaning everything, and this is where distilled water is especially helpful as it is so empty and free of dissolved substances.  This lets the fasting water pick up and carry out more toxic materials than regular water can.  And, if ever I find myself feeling a little hungry or head-achy, I just drink more water and those feelings will quickly pass.

Here is my typical routine.  I have 16 ounces by my bedside that I may drink if I wake during the night and I have an additional 16 ounces that I get down before I start my day.  That's 32.  Then I might have a cup of herbal tea.  I like Throat Coat by Traditional Medicinals.  Another 8 ounces.  Mid morning I do another 16 and may take a multi-vitamin or mineral supplement with that water, just so long as the supplement doesn't have any added calories.  That's now 56 ounces.  Around mid-day, I might enjoy a quart of water with two tablespoons of nice Bragg's Raw Apple Cider Vinegar and perhaps a drop or two of stevia extract or a little splash of vanilla or orange essence.  That brings me up to 88 ounces, and I'm well on the way to 128.  In the afternoon another cup or two of herbal tea, brings me now up to 104 ounces.  And a nice 16 more ounces in the evening gets me up to 120, and that leaves just one more glass before bed to reach 128 ounces in the day's total. 

Generally, if I decide to do a longer fast, say longer than 5-7 days, I add some calories to the additional days.  Perhaps I'll include a clear vegetable potassium broth, (to see the recipe I use scroll to the bottom,) or lemon/lime water, (after drinking, always rinsing my mouth with clear water so as to preserve the enamel on my teeth,) and perhaps a half of an avocado, capping my daily caloric intake at around 200 calories total.  Though autophagy best happens with zero calories, once activated, I personally feel that it continues with minimal calories.  

In addition, I also stop the distilled water and switch to filtered water, for my longer water fasts, as distilled water can lower one's pH, thus inhibiting nutritional uptake, if used on a regular daily basis.  And while fasting, distilled water can also result in a rapid loss of electrolytes, like sodium or potassium, and it can deplete our trace minerals as well.  But it is great for a shorter termed fast or for any short term detoxification program because it so actively absorbs toxic substances from our bodies, helping to eliminate them.  And I do always use distilled water when I make my potassium broth, as it really pulls the minerals from those vegetables, making them available for me to absorb when I drink my broth.

As Peace Pilgrim, who was a big water faster, once said, "Water fasting makes one feel preternaturally clear."  I couldn't agree more.  When we fast, little cells in our brains, called appropriately "janitor cells," get active and gobble up all of the old, dead, or toxic materials that are lying around.  They only do this when digestion is not taking place, typically at night.  But while we water fast, they really get an opportunity to dust away all of the cobwebs and we wind up thinking much more clearly.  After a water fast, I also notice that all of my joints move more easily, I have tons of energy and I feel much lighter, because I am lighter.   

We now know that almost all diseases, including cancers, are caused by or worsened by high levels of inflammation.  Water fasting drops inflammation down quick as a flash.  A water fast lasting just two to four days in length, also reactivates a tired immune system, generating new white blood cells by reactivating our stem cells.  And the good news is, if I do a fine water fast for just three days, I may loose 3-5 pounds.  And, if I do my post-fasting exactly according to plan, it says off, especially if I take care to not go crazy with the calories in the weeks that follow.  This is just one more benefit to the beauty of water fasting, permanent weight loss.

But, don't take my word for it.  I recently discovered a gem of a little book, and a really quick read, titled, Water Fasting, by Kate McCarthy.  Her subtitle is, How to Lose Weight Fast, Increase Mental Clarity, Heal Your Body and Activate Autophagy with Water Fasting.  Her book is packed full of beautiful instruction and truly convincing studies showing just how effective water fasting can be for preventing, reversing or stopping potential disease conditions like: high blood pressure, high cholesterol, hormonal imbalances, obesity, blood sugar problems, cognitive decline and many other health concerns.  And she answers all of the questions one might have.  So, read Kate's book.  It's great.  

I have periodically enjoyed water fasting, my whole life long.  It has certainly helped me to get out of some tricky situations.  And is often one of the first things I turn to when I find myself in trouble or have a little problem developing with my health.  It is surprising to discover how easy water fasting can be, once you make your mind up to give it a try.  It always really helps me to increase my level of health, and I'm sure it will be able to help you do so too.  Enjoy.

 

 

Potassium Broth

In one or two large stainless steel or glass cooking pots add:
the peelings of 5 potatoes,
the peelings of 5 carrots,
one whole head of celery, chopped into small chunks,
three whole beets, chopped into small chunks,
half a head of dino kale, loosely chopped,
half a bunch of parsley, loosely chopped,
two onions, peeled and chopped into small chunks,
five cloves of garlic, minced and aired for 5 minutes before adding,
all of the nice beet greens that came with the beets, loosely chopped,
one tablespoon of Celtic Sea Salt, which contains over 84 different minerals.

Cover the ingredients with distilled water and cook for four hours.
Take the lids off of the pots for the last hour and turn the heat down to sim, to reduce the liquid a little.  This concentrates the flavors and makes a lovely broth.
Strain and store in glass jars.  This broth can be frozen, to use after your water fast.

I put my cooked vegetables in a nut milk bag and first hang them to drain and then squeeze the veggies into a separate bowl, to get more broth before placing them in my compost.  The squeezed veggies have more chance of bacterial involvement from my hands, so I keep that broth separate and consume it first. 

As a Clairvoyant Healer, Spiritual Counselor and Intuition Instructor, I share many tips for leading a healthy and fulfilling life.  Please be advised that I am not a doctor. Nor am I licensed in any healing modality. However, I have had years of experience in alternative and complementary health and healing. All healing programs, including standard western medical protocols in addition to natural therapies, can cause harm rather than the benefit that you may be searching for. After all some people can have a strong reaction to something as seemingly innocent as peanuts or strawberries. Therefore, anything that I may recommend in these blogs and videos could be dangerous for you to try. So, it is important that you Ask Your Doctor First before trying any natural healing protocol. However, most medical doctors have little experience regarding natural healing programs and herbal medicine. So please understand if your doctor is unfamiliar with these ideas.

Detoxify With Green Juice

In this short five minute video, I give my tips for procuring, storing and creating a healthful and nutritious green juice which will help you to detoxify your body while it boosts your energy and vitality.

© Josephine Laing 2016


As a Clairvoyant Healer, Spiritual Counselor and Intuition Instructor, I share many tips for leading a healthy and fulfilling life.  Please be advised that I am not a doctor. Nor am I licensed in any healing modality. However, I have had years of experience in alternative and complementary health and healing. All healing programs, including standard western medical protocols in addition to natural therapies, can cause harm rather than the benefit that you may be searching for. After all some people can have a strong reaction to something as seemingly innocent as peanuts or strawberries. Therefore, anything that I may recommend in these blogs and videos could be dangerous for you to try. So, it is important that you Ask Your Doctor First before trying any natural healing protocol. However, most medical doctors have little experience regarding natural healing programs and herbal medicine. So please understand if your doctor is unfamiliar with these ideas.

Juice Feasting Through the Holidays

In pre-agricultural times, when we humans lived in small migratory bands, there would often be lean times as we would move from one place of abundance to another.  These times of scarcity would occur periodically and often would grow more profound while in the depths of winter.  It is felt by many, myself included, that these times of intermittent fasting and occasional longer times of fasting would allow our bodies to do a deep self cleaning.

Many of our contemporary health practitioners advocate the benefits of intermittent fasting or times of significantly reduced caloric intake for our health.  And the benefits of longer term fasting regimes, like water fasting have long been known within a variety of spiritual communities for the ability to bring exceptional clarity and insight to the practitioner.

I have done extensive fasting in the past, both for reasons of health and for clarity, and have found these experiences to be most profound, leaving me with a feeling of being 'preternaturally clear.'   However, in recent years, I have discovered juice fasting, or 'juice feasting,' as it is fondly called by those who have enjoyed it.

A common adage in natural healing advises that we rebuild while we detoxify.  And this is what occurs while we juice feast.  Here, the reduced caloric intake lets our bodies remove toxins while the large servings of fresh, raw, organic, vegetable juices flood our bodies with the nutrition needed for healthy metabolism and the rebuilding of damaged or worn out body tissues.

Frank and I have long enjoyed adding a pint of fresh, raw, organic, vegetable juices into our daily meal plans.  We prefer the juice without the pulp because we can consume so much more nutrition that way: lots and lots of enzymes, minerals, flavonoids, vitamins, and other beneficial phyto-chemicals.   The difference is between consuming the equivalent of two stalks of celery and one cucumber versus a whole bunch of celery and several cucumbers along with any number of other leafy greens, all of which would be impossible to eat in a single sitting.  Plus the juice is loaded with soluble fiber, which is what our body really needs and we get plenty of other fibrous materials with which to sweep our colons clean in our other foods.  So, most mornings, it is our fresh, raw, organic, vegetable juice that we enjoy for breakfast because it gives us such a great nutritional and energy packed start to our day.

This year as the onslaught of holiday foods began to loom ahead, we decided, in early November, to take a different tact in regards to holiday feasting.  Instead of risking ill health and distended organs, we made the choice to do what nature has long encouraged us humans to do and began a time of reduced caloric intake.  Only this time, in addition, we decided to add the benefit of health building nutrition with juice feasting. 

I must tell you, it has been great.  We are feeling fantastic.  All of the little aches and pains and other signs of inflammation have simply melted away.  And, please pardon me for boasting, but I must share that my vision, which has always been good, has progressed to crystal clear.  I've been jokingly saying that I can see a mosquito on the arm of a hiker on the mountain, which isn't quite true, but it gives you an idea of the increased level of health that our time of juice feasting is blessing us with.

Of course our loved ones are missing us at the holiday feasts, but our doors are always open to them for a nice cup of herbal tea.  And we are delighting in using this time of celebration for detoxification and the rebuilding of our beautiful health.


© Josephine Laing, 2015





As a Clairvoyant Healer, Spiritual Counselor and Intuition Instructor, I share many tips for leading a healthy and fulfilling life.  Please be advised that I am not a doctor. Nor am I licensed in any healing modality. However, I have had years of experience in alternative and complementary health and healing. All healing programs, including standard western medical protocols in addition to natural therapies, can cause harm rather than the benefit that you may be searching for. After all some people can have a strong reaction to something as seemingly innocent as peanuts or strawberries. Therefore, anything that I may recommend in these blogs and videos could be dangerous for you to try. So, it is important that you Ask Your Doctor First before trying any natural healing protocol. However, most medical doctors have little experience regarding natural healing programs and herbal medicine. So please understand if your doctor is unfamiliar with these ideas. 

♡ Cleaning Up Our Act ♡

Cleaning up your act is a lifelong task, isn't it?  Frank and I got started with this in our twenties.  After a fine rebellious rising up in our late teens and early college years, we discovered, as most do, the toll that the fast life can reap.  Dehydration and hangovers make poor test results both in the classroom and in life.  So, we started back then, finding the more moderate road.

Our thirties brought on some serious work and striving as we sought to meet our life goals.  This begged an even cleaner home base from which to draw our strength.  So, out went most of the toxins, found in commercial products: shampoos, cleansers, cosmetics, plastics and processed foods.  We also realized that natural fibers and home cooking gave us a sturdier base to launch and land from.

Our forties began the years of deep cleaning, to edge out the sludge of a lifetime's accumulation, not only mentally, by seriously rethinking who we are and how we wanted to be in the world, but also physically, regularly cleansing the internal organs through fasting and juicing, along with taking sabbaticals for inner renewal.

Then came our fifties, the decade that determines how the quality of your later life will be.  It's easy to drop the joys of physical exercise at this age and trade them in for a more restful and relaxing way of being, but it is so critical to step it up instead.  Dancing, gardening, swimming, biking, walking, whatever it is, our activities keeps us flexible and alive.  Enjoying regular movement holds that eventual downward pull toward the compost pile at bay for a few more decades.

Now that we are in our sixties, we see that slippery slope beginning to claim our peers.  The "Standard American Diet" (S.A.D.) of processed "food," lots of sweets and too many animal products along with sedentary days has been collecting it's toll.  So we are conscientiously upping the ante with exercise classes and time spent with friends recreating.  We've also gone nutritarian to compliment our periods of detoxification.  It's not servings, it's pounds of vegetables, fresh and raw along with berries and seeds for clean sugars and proteins each day. 

Recently we invested in a new super fast juicer.  Frank calls it, "The Kitchen Chipper," because it can juice and entire head of celery in about two seconds.  It only takes us five minutes to make our quart of breakfast juice and five minutes to clean and dry the machine.  So now, it is no big deal for us to make our green juice and consume our pounds of veggies every day.    

Chia seeds, sunflower seeds, a few almonds and walnuts go into our berry and herbal tea smoothies at lunchtime, so we have more than enough protein without burdening our kidneys and livers.  These delicious fresh drinks also provide tons of micro nutrients and complex combinations of bioflavonoids at a lower cost and with way more abundant bio-availability than stuff that comes in a bottle or a jar.

With this and some nice raw sauerkrauts, kimchis and other fermented foods, we hope to round the bend into our last three or four decades with the glow of our own "health care" rather than being subjected to prescribed disease management.  Wish us luck, as we continue to do our best and clean up our act year by year, decade by decade with love for our selves and for all.

© Josephine Laing, 2015

No Food Cravings... Wow!

Frank an I are turning sixty this year, so we've stepped up the self care accordingly.  Several of our good friends have noticed that they feel different at this age, not quite as resilient.  The commitment to stay positive and get adequate exercise is a little harder.  Small routine injuries seem to take longer to heal.  And the results of over indulgences and bouts with junk food linger and cause more lasting trouble. 

So, we have looked to the greats to see how they aged gracefully and maintained their strength and stamina well into advanced age.  Bernard Jensen, Dr. John Christopher, Paul Bragg, John H. Tobe, Harry Hoxsey,N.D., Dr. Ernst T. Krebs,Jr., and Max Gerson were among the most noted natural healers of the past century.  They all spent their lives helping others which is a great way to keep your life vital and alive.  They also ate clean whole foods fresh from the garden, mostly raw and in season.  So their diets varied and were rich in vitamins and enzymes, both of which are killed when foods are cooked or exposed to temperatures above 120 degrees.  These masters of good health regularly detoxified their bodies either by juice feasting or by using lots of cleansing herbs or hydrotherapy with hot and cold water or enemas or all of the above.  They also ate super nutrient dense foods and got their rest and their exercise. 

As Frank and I have studied these masters, we've come to see the importance of adequate enzymes and probiotics in the diet.  These two vital nutrients alone have turned around serious health conditions, as was the case for Bernard Jensen in his later years.  He nearly died and was on his death bed when, with the help of mega doses of probiotics and enzymes, he fully recovered and lived to serve another decade.  So, we decided to enrich our own diets with these two healthy helpers: probiotics and enzymes. 

With this in mind, we took several classes and have revolutionized our good health with several little changes in our diet style, including probiotic sodas and kim chi.  We make these on the weekends following simple recipes.  The sodas take literally one minute to make and the kim chi about half an hour.  Then we enjoy them and share them with our friends all week long.  We skip the sugar and use fruit juice to start our sodas and we like a sweeter kim chi, so we skip the vinegar and use tasty root vegetables like yams and carrots instead of onions and radishes.  For adequate enzymes, the skins are key, especially the ginger skin and so is a little bit of fresh dried raw chili powder.  Then nature does it's thing, at room temperature in a cool dark place.  The result is vastly more potent than any probiotic supplement you may buy in capsules at the healthy food store.

We also decided to cut the inflammation in our bodies by increasing the green vegetables in our diets morning, noon and night.  So, we started making Beiler Broth every week and enjoying that as a fast food, quick meal or snack.  Plus we always enjoy a fresh salad from the garden every day.  Then a miracle happened.  All of a sudden it dawned on us that we no longer had any food cravings!  We could walk past the pizzas on display or the pasta salad or even the home made ice cream at the potluck Without Even Noticing Them.  As is the case with all perfect health, it was beneath our radar.  Isn't that amazing?!?  when our bodies become well nourished, we no longer are hungry.  May the same become true for you.

© Josephine Laing, 2015