How I Moved The Sun (or was it a mountain?)

I live in a beautiful mountain valley, and as the sun rises to the east, shadows race across the valley floor.

Most people in Utah live in valleys like mine, with soaring mountains immediately to the east. It's because the oldest communities were established at the base of these mountains, to take advantage of streams that run down and irrigate crops.

This morning as I ran, I chased the shadow of the mountain. It was moving because of the rising sun, and I had to run fast to catch the shadow. It really did appear I moved the sun behind the mountain. 

Or maybe it's just moving the mountain in front of the sun.

Either way, moving mountain or sun, it feels powerful. Even though it's really just a change of location, a change of perspective.

But it reminds me of how powerful it feels to understand the truth about excellent health through nutritarian eating.

It's really just a change of perspective, a shift in my understanding, an adjustment of my attitude and actions based on truth.

The difference in my eating, based on Dr. Fuhrman's teaching, gives me true power, real control over my health.

So is that not a mountain I've moved?

Or maybe it's the sun.

Either way, being in control of my health is a  mountain of an accomplishment. Running fast is proof.

In fact, I've experienced a shift in my entire universe.

Thanks, Dr. Fuhrman.

A Second Heart Attack & Becoming A Nutritarian: The Irritation of Truth

I wasn't worried during my second heart attack. I missed experiencing the first one, having gone immediately unconscious (and scaring my wonderful wife to pieces).

Honestly, I knew I'd survived worse things. I was glad to be in a learning experience, and pretty confident we'd figure something out.

But I was more than glad, I was thrilled when I read Eat To Live, and when I became a nutritarian myself.

Yes, I have to admit, I'm a nutritarian. I didn't think I'd like that title, and it's not the most important thing in the world to me.

Honestly, my family comes first. But the pursuit of truth and goodness in my life is most important only after that. Being a nutritarian furthers both goals, in fact keeps me alive.

The title of this blog, The End Of Disease, probably sounds overly optimistic. Even crazy.

It refers to my most positive hopes and dreams., for myself, my family and the world, based on what I've learned is possible. The truth, as a TV show used to say, is out there.

But thousand lies compete for everyone's attention. And we live in a world where lies are common and popular. But where lies have speed, truth has endurance.

Truth is an irritation because it calls on us to change. And most of us don't change until it's abundantly clear we have to. So I am also hugely grateful to:

• The ER docs who insisted I go for surgery against my will, which I thought was thoughtless and unnecessary but turned out to be just ineffective,
  
• My wife who was persuaded by them, and who threatened me with arrest if I tried to drive myself anywhere, and
  
• The team of doctors at the University of Utah medical center who tried and failed to surgically treat my heart disease, and then made it clear if I was going to get better, I'd have to find my own answers from that point.
  

Now I know the value of what they were trying to do, but at the time I was really, really irritated. I thought "with friends like these who needs enemies?" (But I needed 'em regardless, and I could tell they cared, though at the time I was an ornery patient).

I'm also grateful for my friend Chris Daines. The origins of this blog, and my introduction to nutritarian eating, come from walking with him as he cared enough after my heart attack to get me into the daily walking habit.

On those walks we resolved the problems of the world, for a half hour every morning. He recommended and loaned me the book Eat To Live, and we agreed that if it was true it was precious, and worth living. It was also obvious that if it worked, it needed to spread.

And so we talked about creating a blog about nutritarian eating, where I'd recount my experience of being a nutritarian so a few others could benefit.

If Dr. Fuhrman's claims are true, those that would benefit include everybody we know. Every single man, woman, child of every shape, age and size. And I think Dr. Furhman thinks so, as expressed by the title of his book that's been out a couple of years now, Super Immunity.

Bold stuff for such an awkward word as nutritarian! The first time I read it I was offended. What is this? I thought when I first came across the word.

Who is making this word up? Who needs it! Certainly not me. I’d never describe myself that way. I’m already labeled by too many awkward things already. I’m so much more than any of these.

Harrumph.

Then I read the book Eat to Live. I was blown away. And overcome with joy.

It gave me hope.

Nutritarian describes a plan of eating that makes sense. It combines best nutritional truths I knew about somewhat, but amplified my understanding ten times. It has the power to promote health, vitality, long life.

It's an essential ingredient that can cure the disabling and killing diseases around me, including those affecting so many people I know and love – and miss because they’re no longer around.

It has the power to cure me.

And when I saw it, what I consider the heart of the book, I was ecstatic. Finally I understood what to do. I understood how to do it. Everything I had done, read, studied and hoped for physical health-wise was embodied in a couple of pages of text. A list rating foods. A principle of truth. It is, it seems to me, a form of Truth.

Many of my friends and relatives think this already. Yes, I am nuts. I’m nutty about truth, head over heels excited about it. Especially great, healing truth.

There’s plenty of if out there. It’s not popular. But it’s powerful, it’s effective, it works every time, and it heals everyone and everything it touches, the sooner the more powerfully.

The title of this blog, The End Of Disease, is what I believe is possible because I'm a nutritarian. It's what I believe is true. What being a nutritarian means is not final for me, it's underdevelopment, in my life and even by its author, Dr. Fuhrman.

But it's far enough along to have proved itself in my eyes, and in my life.

If you think I'm nuts to be such a big fan, I have to admit, "Yes, I'm nutty about the truth."

So if you pronounce it "nut"-ritarian, then thanks.

The Power of Truth

In his exquisite book People of the Lie, M. Scott Peck describes the relationship between evil, lies and death. He identifies evil as a direct cause and inseparable from lies and death.

This is powerful reality, but I find it best to focus my attention in the other direction. Truth, goodness and life also run in a pack, reinforcing and causing each other.

I love to reflect on these associations as I contemplate the effects of nutritarian eating. These effects are strong indications the nutritarian diet is based on truth. Truth supports life, and nutritarian eating promotes better health, longer life and more sure recovery.

It appears to me to be more effective than medications in both preventing and healing disease. But it also can be used as an adjunct to all medication, making them more effective. It therefore ought to be a first line defense of every family hoping to raise truly healthy children.

It should be the first thing anyone confronted with any illness should be taught and supported in. It should form the foundation of any and all medical treatment, as it supports and makes more certain all medication and medical technology is intended to accomplish.

The healing power of good nutrition is much more powerful than what is currently taught in medical schools.

The reality is, it’s all but ignored. This is, it appears to me, a direct result of the rat pack from the first paragraph.

Part of the lie is good nutrition is all about making a few changes to your diet. The reality is, our normal American diet, also called the Standard American Diet or SAD diet (for good reasons), is, literally, a killer.

Even a lot of changes, but keeping the same basic diet, does not make much difference.

Real healing and real prevention takes a total paradigm shift.

The nutritarian path is the most complete and well founded eating paradigm shift I’ve ever seen.

Here’s an example we experienced (in more detail).

In late 2007 my wife was diagnosed as firmly diabetic, referred to a local hospital diabetes education program, given a blood sugar monitor and told to prepare for a lifetime program certainly leading to insulin. Maybe, just maybe she wouldn’t die early, if she learned and followed the American Diabetes Association diet and recommendations.

This was bunk, a form of lies. Not deliberate lies, not lies from individual diabetes educators, doctors or the hospital, but major, culturally based, research reinforced, medically supported lies.

Those lies would have led to her death. Maybe not by now, but certainly over time, they would have shortened her life.

We attacked her diabetes, not with the full nutritarian plan, but with a few ideas based on The China Study, and a brief reference in the main Wikipedia article on diabetes. It told about a low-fat, vegan, low glycemic approach to dealing with diabetes, based on research by Dr Neal Barnard (we knew nothing about his books or anything else about him until later).

Three months later, her blood sugar was normal. When we told what she’d done, her doctor said, ”I’ve heard of people doing this but I’ve never actually seen it.”

A year after that, her doctor declared “You haven’t had any symptoms in over a year – I’m taking the diagnosis off your chart.”

We call her cured. Cured from a dread disease kills lots of people.
We were told it was incurable and always leads to insulin use. We were prepped to become steady consumers of diabetic testing supplies, insulin, the whole gamut of normal diabetes progression.

Instead, she was cured by nutritarian principles before we ever knew what they were.

A few years later, Larry H. Miller, a local multimillionaire business owner, died a miserable, hacked off (literally) early death from diabetes. He went through one amputation and hospitalization at a time though it was, perhaps mercifully, a relatively short time. He could afford any kind of treatment, any kind of advice, anything at all that would have made a difference.

He was never a nutritarian.

I didn’t know him personally, but it's unlikely he was ever given a real chance or medical advice to become one.

It can be, it really is, lies/death vs. life/truth.

And the reference in the Wikipedia article on diabetes to Dr. Barnard's research has been removed, by the way.