Understanding Health and Disease

The ideas presented in this book are centuries old, yet are increasingly
supported by new research on human nutrition. It should not be forgotten that
today's discoveries and ideas were founded on a long history of scientific effort
by physicians who considered nutrition the most critical part of their practice.

As early as 400 B.C. the Greek physician Hippocrates used nutrition as his
chief therapy. His favorite healing foods were barley mush, apples, and dates.
He paid strict attention to the dietary needs of his patients and stated,
―Whoever gives these things [food] no consideration, and is ignorant of them,
how can he understand the diseases of man?‖

Today the health of our society is poor, specifically because today's
physicians know little of human nutrition and the power of optimal nutrition in
restoring health. In fact, some of the most respected physicians in history who
are remembered because of their success in the treatment of the ill have been
all but ignored by the conventional medical community, which bases its practice
on giving drugs to the sick.

Isaac Jennings, M.D. (1788-1874),
1 spent 20 years adhering to the regular
drugging and bleeding practices of the time, but gradually lost confidence in
those procedures and methods. He noticed that he was not helping his patients
and found that they did better with fewer drugs. He decided to change his
methods. Instead of furnishing his patients with drugs, he gave them
placebos, pills and liquids he concocted out of bits of food and water. At the
same time, he gave them advice on diet and rest. He often instructed his
patients to use the ―medicine‖ for the first week with water and no food. He
told them the medicine would not be effective if they did not follow his
instructions. He usually continued the plan for a few more days after their next
visit. Diseases vanished, and his fame spread. People thought his ―medicines‖
were magical and he became known as the greatest healer of his day.

Early in this century, John Tilden, M.D. (1851–1940), built on the work of
other pioneering physicians such as Jennings and devoted his life to teaching
the public how to maintain health. He stated,
Nature returns to normal when enervating habits are given up. There
are no ―cures‖ in the sense generally understood. If one has a
tobacco heart, what is the remedy? Stop the tobacco of course . . .
What will cure? Drugs? No! Removing the cause. Every so called
disease is built within the mind and body by enervating habits. A fast,
rest in bed and the giving up of enervating habits, mental and
physical, will allow nature to eliminate the accumulated toxin; then, if
enervating habits are given up, and rational living habits adopted,
health will come back to stay . . . The medical world has been looking
for a remedy to cure disease, notwithstanding the obvious fact that
nature needs no remedy—she only needs an opportunity to exercise
her own prerogative of selfhealing.


Herbert Shelton, D.C., N.D. (1895-1985), built on the works of these early
medical doctors and wrote prolifically from the 1920s on, in his own selfpublished
magazines and through his publication of 12 books on the subject of
health and healing. Dr. Shelton's Health School in San Antonio, Texas,
improved and restored the health of more than thirty thousand people through
fasting and natural food diets. Both my father, who twice fasted 21 days, and I
(who fasted 46 days), were among those thirty thousand patients who fasted
at Dr. Shelton's Health School.

To this day, the mainstream of modern medicine and the alternative healthcare
movement, both fueled by a remedy mentality that dominates our society
combined with the financial incentive to make profits selling cures and drugs,
has generally ignored this minimalist school of healing. Until recently, little
scientific research has been done in this field.

In the last ten years, however, there has been a significant upswing in
research on the causes of various diseases. The knowledge gained from these
studies, when applied to chronic ailments, will have a major impact on future
medical care. It has also lent credence to those ―medical heretics‖ of the past
who championed natural food diets and fasting as a means of preventing and
treating disease.

The body can heal itself when the proper environment for healing is
established and all obstacles to healing, or stressors, are removed. When
people live in harmony with their physiological needs, health is the inevitable
result. By supplying the organism with its basic requirements—natural
unadulterated food, clean water, and appropriate physical, mental, and
emotional activities—while simultaneously eliminating all harmful factors and
influences, the self-constructing, self-regulating, self-repairing qualities of the
body are given full rein. The same innate wisdom that constructed our bodies
from two cells at conception is always there to restore the body to health if we
let it.

Understanding why we have a health care crisis in this country involves more
than looking at political and economic concerns. The primary reason we spend
a large proportion of our income on health care is that our population is
chronically ill and growing sicker. The ―Band-Aid‖ approach offered by the
conventional physician can do. little to stop this epidemic of sick people from
needing medical care. Unfortunately, legislation will never be able to curtail the
runaway medical costs because ―disease care,‖ as it should be called, does not
lead to a healthier society with fewer medical needs.

Our bodies were designed to function from birth to an uneventful natural
death. But our chance of living in our modern society and then dying from the
natural aging process is close to zero. Disease is so much a part of the
American way of life that it is considered normal. People do not develop chronic
degenerative illnesses through bad luck. Disease develops through years and
years of nutritional and other stresses on the human system. When these
causes are sufficiently removed, people can get well, throw away their
medications, and avoid unnecessary, expensive, and invasive medical care. It
is not aging that makes us sick; it is the stresses we place on ourselves that
continue their insidious work over the years and eventually cause damage to
the body.

Just because you are ignorant of the harmful stresses that you are placing on
your system doesn't make them less injurious. If you drink 6 cups of coffee a
day, snort cocaine, and eat fast foods and sweets, it is ludicrous to expect
health to evolve from the addition of more drugs in an attempt to lessen the
symptoms that arise from the daily abuses that are placed on the body. If the
poisoning stops, however, the body has the ability to heal itself and restore
normalcy. Clearly, consuming coffee, cocaine, and junk food are examples of
practices recognized as obvious stresses to many people, but hundreds of other
stressful life-style and dietary practices that are also injurious are generally not
recognized as so.

Degenerative or chronic disease is earned. Our bodies follow strict biological
laws of causation. If we feed ourselves the wrong fuel, or are exposed to toxic
substances, if we do not get sufficient rest and sleep, are chronically unhappy
or under chronic emotional stress, our bodies will inevitably express some
malfunction called disease.

These avoidable chronic illnesses encompass almost every condition that a
doctor sees every day. They include acne and other skin diseases, allergies,
asthma, arthritis, diabetes, headaches, heartburn, fatigue, indigestion,
psoriasis, high blood pressure, recurrent viral infections, and more.
Unfortunately, all patients get when they seek help is more poisons in the form
of drugs to consume. These drugs only add to the toxic insults the body must
bear, thus further contributing to ill health. Neither the medical community nor
the public has understood the simple concept that the body will not function
normally if injurious substances are consumed.

It is rare that even years of self-abuse and destruction of the body due to the
disease process will cause irreversible damage. When the cause of disease is
removed, the rejuvenating effects of the human system are astounding.