One of the best books ever to have been recommended to me is called Sick and Tired?: Reclaim Your Inner Terrain, by Dr Robert Young (no relationship to the actor) and his wife, Shelly. I recommend this book more than any other we’ve ever touched upon at this web site. And I’ll tell you why as I go along here.

I’ve always had suspicions that, no matter what our research here has uncovered, there was still something missing. All too often we'd come across something that has no historical perspective. Take Roy Rife: his work came, it would seem, from nowhere, and after his research was destroyed, it went nowhere. Then there is Gaston Naessens. We’ve talked about his cure for cancer called 714X, but his work with somatids, again, had no apparent historical perspective. His discovery comes from nowhere, and goes nowhere as medicine refused to accept his theories, even though they are well documented with slides, movies, and even a multimedia show.

With the discovery of Sick and Tired, I finally discovered the missing link. Dr Young shows us a history that has been wiped out of our medical texts and wiped out for a good reason. If we were to acknowledge these lost discoveries, everything we know about medicine today would topple.

It is our intention to display for you objective scientific research that has been ignored, covered up, and abandoned by those who profit from your being ill.

Despite a system that treats symptoms only, kills 3 to 6 thousand people weekly [Dean, Carolyn,  MD, ND, Death By Modern Medicine], cures one thing only to cause another, conventional medicine is still very popular. Why? Because it is based upon religious tenets and not upon science. (See Modern Medicine: The New World Religion) We all know someone who was saved by modern medicine (quickly forgetting those it killed), and modern conventional medicine is popular because it works instantly; you take a pill, and the pain is gone. How much more wonderful could that be? 

The Germ Theory

Everyone has heard of Louis Pasteur. He is considered the father of the Germ Theory of Medicine and he invented the process of pasteurization. Despite the simple fact that the Germ Theory of Medicine was at least a hundred years older than Pasteur, his experiments that supposedly "proved" this theory have established him as a cornerstone in Modern Medical History.

Too bad much of his work was plagiarized and some of it was very unscientific. But, truly, that can be expected of those who were the first to investigate.

His counterparts of that time believed differently than he. They believed that the terrain was more important than the germ, and by terrain, I don't mean the immune system.

As Dr Young points out in Sick and Tired, the immune system’s function of fighting off germs is its secondary job. If you’re immune system is battling off bugs, you’re driving on a "spare tire," according to the good doctor.

The Terrain

What exactly is a healthy terrain?

Dr Young’s book introduced me to Antoine Béchamp. I looked him up on the web and read one of his books published there. Amazing stuff. You won’t find Béchamp’s name in the history of medicine. He and his work have been expurgated. When he died, his accomplishments were all listed in a journal. They took up seven pages. Some of the things we attribute to Pasteur were actually accomplished by Béchamp.

Even though Béchamp was a scientist, his work is very easy to read. Scientists hadn’t yet developed their Latin/Greek lingo that would keep the average person on the sidelines looking in.

The first thing I read by him was a study on cats. One group was fed cooked foods and the other was fed raw foods. The raw foods group were much healthier than the group fed cooked foods. By the third generation, the young of the cooked foods group (also getting cooked foods) did not survive into adulthood.

Is there any wonder why the Cancer Diet is 70% live foods?

Now Béchamp was a critic of Pasteur’s. Pasteur hated Béchamp, mainly because Béchamp was constantly finding fault in Pasteur’s work. For instance, Pasteur’s experiments that "proved" his germ theory were less than scientific, according to Béchamp. Pasteur had injected healthy animals with the blood of a sick animal. The healthy animals got sick. [Pearson, RB. The Dream and Lie of Louis Pasteur, Collingwood, Australia; Sumeria Press, 1994 (This book is online at our website; click to find it and read it, but note that the above is a newer title. The version we have is called Pasteur: Plagiarist, Imposter. This is a two book link; the second book is called Béchamp or Pasteur? A Lost Chapter in the History of Biology by Ethel Douglas Hume)]

First off do I need to point out that we do not catch germs in this fashion? I mean, if I had to get an injection to catch a cold, I’d never catch one.

Secondly, there are too many variables in a syringe full of a sick animal’s blood to "prove" that the germs in the blood are making the experimental animal sick. Béchamp made the obvious observation that Pasteur was poisoning the blood of the experimental animal.

Claude Bernard was also a contemporary of Pasteur’s. Bernard is considered the Father of Experimental medicine today. He was a physiologist. However, his greatest achievements are entirely overlooked today. Let me give you one example of this man’s assertions.

Amidst a group of physicians and scientists, Claude Bernard made the statement: "The terrain is everything; the germ is nothing," and then drank down a glass of water filled with cholera.

There are not many scientists who are willing to risk their lives on a theory. This we know. Claude Bernard has few equals in the history of medicine.

Germs Do Not Cause Disease

The most telling "concept" that has ever crossed my desk is the quotation Dr Young uses right at the beginning of his book, Sick and Tired:

If I could live my life over again, I would devote it to proving that germs seek their natural habitat—diseased tissue—rather than being the cause of the diseased tissue; e.g., mosquitoes seek the stagnant water, but do not cause the pool to become stagnant.

Rudolph Virchow (Father of Pathology)

Do you understand the importance of this? When I read this quotation for the first time, it hit me like a brick. I’ve always known the terrain was the key, but I had always thought of the terrain as the immune system. I had had no idea that the proper terrain alone was, by itself, enough for perfect health. Nor had it ever occurred to me that the immune system was merely a backup system that took over when the terrain failed. 

So, Béchamp was, in effect, telling Pasteur that his experiments proved nothing because it poisoned the experimental animal’s terrain, hence allowing the germs to attack the diseased tissues caused by the poisoning.

Germs cause disease in unhealthy terrains.

Before we go any further, we need to know this…

Take a banana and place it on a counter next to a piece of cheese. Place a glass over the cheese so it doesn't dry out too quickly. Now watch them both over the over the next few days. What do you think will happen? The banana starts to turn black and the cheese begins to mold. They go bad. They rot. 

Now slice open the cheese. Inside, no mold. Slice open the banana. It's rotten inside. Smell the banana and you'll smell a hint of alcohol. It's fermenting.

Something that perhaps only a few of you already knew is: The cheese molds from the outside in, but the banana rots from the inside out.

The banana was alive. The cheese is not alive. 

Every living thing comes equipped with it’s own janitorial service that goes to work when it dies. They are programmed to clean up the mess our dead bodies leave behind.

This is a VERY important concept for us to know and remember, always.

Healthy Terrain

So what is healthy terrain? Béchamp began to describe it nearly two hundred years ago, but Claude Bernard finally put it this way. It consists of two internal factors:

1. Alkalinity

2. Negative Electrical Charge

Contributing to a healthy terrain are two factors, according to Bernard:

1. Nutrition

2. Toxins

One must have proper nutrition and be free of toxins to maintain a healthy terrain. More recent studies add one more factor contributing to a healthy terrain: Emotions/Mental Health.

In one of our newsletters we touched upon psychoneuroimmunology with a small test that you can take on your own (Click Here to see it). The higher the score, the greater your chances of getting sick. Why? Well, the higher the score, the greater your acidity/the less your alkalinity. There is an emotional side to our terrain. You can do everything the books tell you to keep your body alkaline, but if you have unchecked emotional issues, you will still be acidic and your electrical charge will change. This is the body/mind connection, or as someone put it: emotional toxicity. 

We live in a toxic society. Our food, water, air is poisoned. Additionally, we are poisoning ourselves with drugs, alcohol, smoke, and even the way we cook our foods (barbecuing, microwaving).

Nearly every drug your doctor gives you causes your body to become acidic. Every can of pop, every cup of coffee, every teaspoon of sugar, every piece of chicken, steak, or fish you consume causes your body to become acidic.

Now please note: the pH of our blood fluctuates from 7.35 to 7.45 only. Anything lower is acidosis and you'll need a doctor, and anything higher is also unhealthy (deadly).

By maintaining alkalinity we mean not stressing out the body so that it has to work hard to maintain these numbers (above). Eating only acidic foods creates inflammation and the body has to rebalance.

One more thing early scientists never considered is the "biome" we all live within. There are 37.2 trillion cells in our bodies (approximately). There are ten times that in bacteria, fungus, viruses, yeast, and other microscopic creatures living in and around our bodies at all times. In other words, 90% of our DNA isn't really ours. [Those Little Guys Are Everywhere]

None of them, not Bernard, Pasteur, Virchow, or Béchamp knew about this biome and none of them realized the concept of good bacteria (probiotics) living in our guts. Yet, their dietary recommendations would have actually promoted an environment that was conducive to raising hosts of good bacteria.

Even today there are scientists who are beginning to see disease as not so much an infection caused by pathogens as it is an imbalance in our biome. (One could easily say that our bad bacteria outnumber our good bacteria but this concept is not that cut and dry. Our biome is a very complex community of thousands of different families living together under one roof.)

The Clean-Up Crew Within

Béchamp theorized that there was a particle of life in us, the smallest living thing on the planet, called a microzyma. It is a plant. Scientists previous to Béchamp had seen these little "molecular granulations" but had no idea what they were. Gaston Naessens discovered somatids. Are they the same thing? Perhaps so. Many think so. The newer powerful dark field microscopes allow doctors and scientists to view living tissues.

The microzymas are part of the clean-up crew that lives within all of us.

Now, one place where modern medicine is completely off track is in our standard blood tests. They take blood, stain it, freeze it, and examine it.

Blood is alive. It is not a liquid, but a mobile tissue (Béchamp was the first to describe blood thus). The things in our blood are alive. And one thing modern medicine does not accept is that something like a bacterium can change into a yeast that can turn into a fungus that can turn into a mold. We’ve talked about this elsewhere (and have been labeled "quacks"); it is called pleomorphism. Pleo meaning many and morph meaning form or body.

Gaston Naessens has thoroughly documented the life cycle of his somatids. As we've published in our cancer section, Naessens discovered that his somatids are nearly indestructible. They resisted blasts of radiation, temperatures up to 392 degrees, and laughed at the strongest acids. Naessens mapped the somatid's (or microzyma's) pleomorphic life cycle. Others, especially Royal Rife, have documented the pleomorphic changes in bacteria, viruses, yeasts, molds and fungi.  

Dr Young, the author of Sick and Tired has watched these tiny creatures change from one to another under a dark field microscope. He has even seen a red blood cell turn into a bacterium and then back into a red blood cell. Yet it might take 100 more years for medical science recognize this fact. You will see why shortly.

The True Definition of Disease

When does disease begin? In our culture, disease begins at the onset of symptoms. In Chinese medicine, disease begins much earlier. However, with the theories of Béchamp followed by the scientific and verifiable research of Professor Gunter Enderlein (who basically proved/tested all the theories of Béchamp), we now have a new definition of disease.

Disease begins when our alkaline tissues turn acidic causing inflammation, our negative energy charge turns positive, and when our biome gets out of balance.

This is the beginning of disease.

Perhaps we should be quoting Dr Arthur C Guyton MD who wrote the Textbook of Medical Physiology (once used in most medical schools):

The first steps in maintaining health is to alkalize the body ( pH or acid/alkaline balance). This is one of the most important aspects of homeostasis. Changes in pH alter virtually all body functions.

The cells of a healthy body are alkaline while the cells of a diseased body are below a pH of 7.0. The more acidic the cell, the sicker we become. If the body cannot alkalize the cells they will become acidic and thus, disease sets in. Our bodies produce acid as a by product of normal metabolism. Since our bodies do not manufacture alkalinity, we must supply the alkalinity from an outside source to keep us from becoming acidic and dying.

An Important Note

The human body maintains its pH by homeostasis. The livable span of blood pH is quite thin: 7.35 - 7.45. A body with a pH of 7.0 will lead to a coma, and possibly, very possibly, death. Additionally, different organs have different pHs. In the above where a pH of 7.0 or below is described, you should know that the body will borrow from the calcium stores (your bones) enough calcium to act as a buffer and raise the pH.

The problem with an acidic terrain is that the body must work hard to bring up your pH and is susceptible to bacterial/viral infections during this time. Maintaining an alkaline pH just gives your body a break so it can do what it does best rather than constantly make up for your unhealthy lifestyle.

A Little Chemistry

Water is one oxygen molecule connected to two hydrogen molecules. If you break the water molecule apart, you have one hydrogen on one side and an oxygen and hydrogen on the other.

The singular hydrogen is acidic with a positive charge. The hydroxyl (OH) is alkaline with a negative charge. Together they are neutral.

A pH of 2 is extremely acidic. A pH of 11 is very alkaline. It's just a number; don't let it confuse you. I do like to refer to pH as Potential for Hydrogen. Dunno why, it's how I learned it. But I have also learned that the more hydrogen in a solution the more acidic that solution, and the more oxygen the more alkaline. 

Alkalinity means oxygen. We need oxygen to survive. We need oxygen to maintain an alkaline environment. Life is oxygen. Oxygen is life. 

In the past we have mentioned that bacteria, yeast, cancer, and viruses (just to name a few) survive without oxygen. They are said to have an anaerobic (without oxygen) existence. They metabolize without oxygen, just like fermentation. Fermentation produces alcohol (as one of its waste products) and many more wastes known as mycotoxins (that further corrupt our environment).

Remember the smell of the banana? 

When we become acidic, our systems attempt to bring us back into order and balance, or homeostasis. Our immune system is, first, a clean-up crew, and second a juggling artist on a tightrope focused only on balance.

Our immune system's first job is to clean up the dead cells we slough off. Billions are lost daily. In just seven years, our entire body has been replaced with new cells. This is the immune system's first and foremost job.

If we get out of balance, then our juggling artist on a tightrope becomes a part of all systems trying to bring up our pH ─ all the while trying to fend off bacteria and viruses. This is our immune system's secondary job. However, if we are really, really sick and begin to get attacked by outside invaders, then this overworked immune system will most likely fail while still going into overdrive. This is our immune system’s backup job. As Dr Young points out, when this happens, we’re riding on one of those tiny spare tires found in our trunks.

Disease begins when our bodies accumulate acidic waste and our charge turns positive.

Now, it is important to note that acid means lack of oxygen and that bacteria and germs and fungus all survive without oxygen. Because I’m about to tell you something that will knock your sox off.

Remember that clean-up crew we're all born with inside? The clean-up crew that ate the banana from the inside out?

When we have accumulated too much acidic waste (lessoning our oxygen and reversing our negative charge), the clean-up crew goes to work, BECAUSE IT THINKS WE ARE DEAD.

This is where the first symptoms of illness show up, but you have to be looking for them. The Chinese use smell and taste, and the shapes of fingernails, and all sorts of things to discover what’s going on here. Westerners need live blood analysis.

Candida is part of the cleanup crew. As this yeast turns into a fungus, it spreads its thin mycelia throughout our bodies attacking other organs. The clean-up crew produces wastes called mycotoxins. One of the wastes is uric acid, another is alcohol, and yet another is aflatoxin, one of the most potent carcinogens known.

Our liver starts producing more cholesterol to help clean up these mycotoxins. Take Lipitor™ and all you’ll do is allow the mycotoxins to create more and more damage to organs and blood vessels.

Now you know why modern medicine has ignored years of research and scientific findings.

Drugs cannot heal a sick terrain.

Only nutrition and detoxication programs can heal our terrain.

Do we need modern medicine? You bet we do! Our bodies are so far out of alignment that all too often we need something to save our lives.

The problem is, after having our life saved, we continue on our way as if we are totally healed when all we’ve been given is a short (very short) reprieve. The body is still acidic. We are still sick. 

Secondary Illness

Remember Rudolf Virchow’s quotation? Once our system is acidic, and once the clean-up crew kicks in, we start to get diseased tissues. Once we have diseased tissues, outside germs can find a favorable environment in which to grow. They produce the secondary illnesses we, in this modern culture, call illness or disease. As amazing as it can seem, germs are attracted to the diseased tissues, they are not the primary cause of it. 

But what about cancer? How does cancer fit into this picture?

First off, Dr Young points to a study from the University of Minnesota Medical School that every cancer patient ever tested has been found to have candida in their blood stream. They also noted, almost as an aside, that candida wasn’t responsive to drug therapy.

I can assure you that long before a person has cancer, that person has a systemic yeast problem. It just hasn’t surfaced. The mycotoxins released by a yeast/fungal infection cause the body to become even more acidic (with even less oxygen).

Otto Warburg won the Nobel Prize for describing how cancer metabolizes. He said that cells once thriving on oxygen suddenly become anaerobic.

If you were a cell, and you were deprived of oxygen (by an acidic environment) how would you survive? Wouldn’t you try to change your method of metabolism to one that did not require oxygen?

Cancer could very well be our bodies trying to survive the conditions we’ve allowed them to deteriorate to. Perhaps a better way of putting this is: Cancer is the result of your cells trying to survive a condition that you won't. 

Symptoms of Acidosis

Since the first step in the disease process occurs when our alkaline terrain turns acidic, it follows that acidosis is the number one disease in human beings. If so, then why don't our medical community test for it? 

Again, why test for something that pharmaceuticals or surgery cannot repair? 

There are three stages of acidosis. 

The symptoms of the first stage of acidosis are so common that most people simply take a pain killer or some over the counter medication to mask the symptoms: headaches, food allergies, bloating, acne, panic attacks, lack of energy, lack of sex drive, cold hands and feet, agitation, hard to sleep, hard to get up, sinus headaches, and an increased susceptibility to colds and flu and whatever's going around.

The symptoms in phase two might bring you to a doctor, but still, some just self-medicate: cold sores, hives, depression, migraines, asthma, urinary tract infections, fungal infections, yeast infections, swelling, colitis, tingling, excessive falling hair, osteoarthritis, and atherosclerosis.

If you have toenail fungus, then take note that this fungal infection goes much further than just under your toenails. It is all over your body. And no drug (diflucan) will end it, though it might clear up symptoms for a while.

The final stages of acidosis are chronic, debilitating diseases: Crohn's disease, multiple sclerosis, leukemia, all cancers, Hodgkin's disease, schizophrenia, lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, and tuberculosis just to name a few. 

Heart Disease and Alkalinity 

From a lecture by Scientist/Nutritionist Dr Fred Kaufman we get the following quotation:

"Why is it just the arteries around the heart that get clogged and not the other veins and capillaries? Because wherever there is a muscle producing energy there’s always a by-product of lactic acid or waste....as you know any kind of acid can burn.....this lactic acid burns holes in the arteries and the liver uses cholesterol to patch those holes. Because heart is a muscle that continually produces lactic Acid. The more acidic your blood is the more clogged your arteries are."

This is why our omega-3 Essential Fatty Acids are so important to heart health. They cut the production of lactic acid. As Johanna Budwig discovered, these oils are highly charged (negatively) and if bio-available, they keep our bodies negatively charged and alkaline. (See the article Johanna Budwig Revisited, at the bottom, for information on our favorite product, Omegasentials.)

Keep in mind that our blood is "highly" regulated and maintained to keep a consistent pH within those limits (7.35 - 7.45). The problem of lactic acid is eventually cleared up, the problem is, it does a lot of damage before it is cleared up. This is where we benefit from drinking alkaline water. It helps the blood return even faster to a normal pH before doing all that damage.

Drinking alkaline water will not raise your pH all that much. The benefits are mainly in helping your body maintain homeostasis and not have to borrow from your calcium stores.

There are two products I use that do that. One is AquaLyte sachets in water. You can get them here: http://www.mnwp.org/aqua/index.htm. Another is an Electrolysed Water Machine, and I personally like my Balwell, which is powerful and relatively inexpensive. Go here to check them out: www.bawellwaterionizers.com

Summary   

There you have it. Our medical and scientific communities have sold out to the profiteers and have erased one huge chunk of science (scientific fact) from our history. You stay sick; they stay rich. And sadly, they’re in this too. They too are sick for having overlooked this bit of information. Is there anyone who doesn't now understand why we, Americans, pay more for medical care than any other people on the planet yet our health care system is ranked 24th (figures as of 2005)? 

I highly recommend Dr Young’s book. It is an eye opener. He also has a wonderful web site (http://www.beaphmiracle.com/index.html). 

There are things that I found in Dr Young’s book that I disagree with. Mainly a few of his nutritional beliefs. They seemed a little off the mark, at least from our nutritional research. I was also reading another book at the same time called Alkalize or Die by Dr Theodore A Baroody. The nutritional advice in this other book seems to be more realistic. But then again, even some of the things he says in Alkalize or Die. concerning heart disease don't jive with our findings on heart disease. This is to be expected. What we know today in the sciences is still very little compared to what we will know ten, twenty, thirty years from now. Learning is an endless, but joyful journey.

So now, let us focus on returning our bodies to their alkaline and negatively charged state.

Further Reading

How to Alkalize

The History of Electrolyzed Water

Benefits of Drinking Electrolyzed Water