Nine: What to Expect from a Change in Diet
WITHDRAWAL SYMPTOMS It goes without saying that a positive change in diet should make us feel better. Perhaps not one hundred percent, but there should be a discernible change toward healing. The healing process itself often becomes manifest in certain general physical withdrawal symptoms. Because these can sometimes be mistaken for symptoms of illness, it is important to know of them in advance. The information that follows is based on the systems model of the body we’ ve been working with, on my experiences and observations over the past twentyfive years, and on the concepts of healing advanced by most natural-health theorists regardless of the details of their respective dietary proposals, including, among others Michio Kushi, Samuel Hahnemann, Paavo Airola, and Herbert Shelton.( It is unfortunate that the irritating rhetoric and ill-chosen expressions of several authors of natural-healing theories have prevented their ideas from reaching a wider audience, for many of the ideas are indeed valuable.) Let’ s keep in mind our model of the body as a system where, between the input and the output, a lot of activity takes place. This activity consists of building up, breaking down, transforming, transporting, synthesizing, holding, expelling, and otherwise manipulating matter and energy. It often happens that the output cannot keep up with the input:
The organs of elimination( bowels, kidneys, lungs, skin) may be sluggish, inefficient, or blocked. As a result there is a backup of matter, and the body starts accumulating debris in the form of fat and calcium deposits, plaque( in arteries, on teeth), mucus, hardened stool, tumors, cysts, stones, even water. Most of us, perhaps all, walk around with some kind of old accumulation somewhere in the body.( It is important to note that even so we function amazingly well, all things considered.) It is impossible to have a totally clean body at all times. Even if we were able to rid ourselves of every scrap of metabolic waste, we would stay that way only a few minutes. New waste material would be formed almost immediately by the normal activities of our cells. Some natural-healing philosophies are overridingly concerned with continuous“ cleansing.” This kind of obsession can be paralyzing and destructive. *
What we can hope for, however, is a well-functioning body that moves waste matter along smoothly and disposes of it promptly and efficiently, before it has had time to harden, putrefy, or turn toxic. Nature does most of the work for us. In the world outside our bodies, whenever there is a pileup of garbage, insects and scavengers come to break it down and convert it into something useful, such as humus( black soil) or compost. So it is inside our bodies: If there is a pileup of waste matter accumulating, the immune system decides it’ s time to clean up. It then provokes, say, a cold, or some other mucous discharge to flush out the obstruction, calling in an army of bacteria to help dispose of the stuff. It is unfortunate that we have come to misread these minor cleanup reactions as illnesses and thus undesirable. According to the medical model, the infection( or disease) is caused by the bacteria. The immune system is charged with the task of clearing up the infection, and antibiotics are used to kill the bacteria. This model offers no cogent explanation for either natural or acquired immunities. It would be more useful to see these cleanup reactions as what they really are: adjustments by the body to keep itself whole and functioning. Major infections such as meningitis or pneumonia occur most frequently in the wake of minor infections, precisely because the minor infection’ s task has been incompletely fulfilled. Antibiotics and other medications are designed to arrest infections, regardless of whether or not the infection has done what it“ set out to do.” A change of diet from the S. A. D. to any of the healing modes( fasting, vegetarianism, macrobiotics) will lighten the input load automatically and make it much easier for nature to take its course. Usually less food is taken in, less protein, less fat; in short, the healing diets utilize fewer buildup foods and more breakdown foods. They give the body a vacation, as it were, time off so that it can take care of the laundry and the mail and the cleaning out of closets. And invariably it will do so. Michio Kushi has classified signs of such“ housecleaning” by the body into ten precise categories of symptoms: 1. General fatigue 2. Pains and aches 3. Fever, chills, and coughs 4. Abnormal sweating and frequent urination 5. Skin discharges and unusual body odors 6. Diarrhea or constipation 7. Temporary decrease in sexual desire and vitality 8. Temporary cessation of menstruation 9. Mental irritability 10. Other minor transitory symptoms: restless dreams, minor hair loss, feeling of coldness