We get phone calls and e-mails all the time. Folks asking questions mostly, some making comments, even some readers whose English skills are greater than mine pointing out typos and errors in grammar (I call those errors my literary style)! Most of those who contact us though are asking personal questions. Most of the questions are reasonable, some of them are sad and a few of them are outlandish.

Most of the outlandish ones can be classified into the same out basket: “They Waited Too Long”. Let’s give some examples:

Example #1:
Someone has stage 4 cancer, they trusted the MD’s to do all the poisoning, cutting and burning they do to “fight” the disease. If the chemo did not kill them, (which it does to 60% of chemotherapy patients), they discover after all of the medically induced sickness and suffering that they are still on the road to being dead. After the medicos send them home to die these folks finally decide to turn to natural treatments! If life were a game show, this point is where the buzzer would sound and the player would be eliminated! What is left for natural medicine to work with? These patients have been cut on, they’ve been burned with radiation and grown fibrosis and severe dysfunction in that internal organ from the radiation, they have ZERO immune systems and are so weak from the poisoning of the chemo that they can barely move and they have NO constitution to speak of! What can natural medicine do to both fight the now advanced cancer and at the same time try to restore the wrecked body systems that are essential for the regaining of health? Not much. While I do know of some natural docs who have done miracles with stage 4 patients, there is not a lot left to work with once the burning, cutting and poisoning has been done. What’s gets my goat is who gets the blame when the patient dies! A natural doc gets a stage 4 patient who is a total and complete unsaveable wreck, can’t get them better because the body is so destroyed it just can’t respond and the natural treatment is said to be at fault for the patient dying! Bull shit!

Example #2:
A very elderly person decides it’s time to do some exercise to improve their bone density and get more muscles to ease the performance of their Activities of Daily Living to improve their quality of life. All well and good. These things are very doable and both research and clinical experience have shown that Progressive Resistance Exercise (PRE) can increase bone density better than any drug or supplement all by itself! Twelve to fifteen percent bone increase for the strength exercise vs. two to three percent for the drugs and supplements when they work which they often don’t! PRE can increase muscle mass (most of which is lost by age 60) and make everything from getting out of bed and off the potty to working in the kitchen easier. But when a 70 or 80 year old asks questions like how they can lift their boobs, get shapelier hips or sexy legs, I say you should have thought about that 30 or even 50 years ago when you could have made the changes in your body that would have carried through to now! After 60 a persons connective tissue is shot, (unless they’ve been taking care of themselves and doing strength exercise all along). The skin gets thinner, the fascia holding you together thins and there is not much hope for reshaping and accenting. Yes you can take MSM and help to rebuild some connective tissue but if you think you can get nicer breasts, legs or hips after a certain point forget body sculpting I’ve a bridge in Brooklyn and swamp land in Florida to sell you. Forget the curves and the allure, go for improving your quality of life.

Example # 3:
This one’s a lot like #1 except it involves uterine fibroids. A gal has tried everything the MD’s can think of from birth control pills to Lupron (which kills all hormone production regardless of type), to surgical embolization and her fibroids have still grown to x proportions and such and most times even multiply in number. A date is usually set for a Hysterectomy some weeks hence. The gal then e-mails and want’s to now if the enzymes will eat away her fibroids in the two or three weeks she has left before her surgery. While there has been one case of a woman being free of fibroids in 3 weeks of systemic enzyme use that was a miracle; in most women the process of estrogen control and fibrin lysing is a slow one involving between 6 to 18 months to be successful. Two weeks, not a prayer! Again here is an example of someone who should have gone the natural route before embarking on the drug and cutting routine. Most patients come to natural therapies in reverse order. In most cases of long term and degenerative conditions the natural therapies should be tried first as they do not tear the body down but instead try to build it up and have the body restore health to itself. If the natural way fails then the Allopathic drug, surgery and otherwise can be done to attempt to control the problem. If its done the other way, the MD’s before the ND’s, there might not be enough strength left in the body systems to respond to the natural therapy. (Trauma is the exception to this rule. Notice I’ve been speaking of Long Term Degenerative Conditions. These are the weak points in allopathic knowledge and the strong suit of natural therapies. Trauma on the other hand is the forte of Allopathy, a car wreck patient needs to see an MD in the ER to make sure his brain and insides are ok before going to see his DC for his back)!

Have I given enough examples to get my point across? Start caring for yourself while there is still time, while your “young” enough, while you’re still strong enough and while you’re still healthy enough so that the health, strength, looks and improved constitution you acquire and maintain last you well into old age. Find pictures of Dr. Paul Bragg on the internet. Most of the shots you’ll find will be of him in his 70’s, 80’s and 90’s; in the shots, he still has a full head of hair, all his own teeth, the body of a muscle beach boy and his mind that was fully there and ever sharp. He began working on his health as a sickly teenager with little inborn constitutional strength. If he had not strengthened and maintained his constitution he would have never lived to see middle age much less old age.

We are all getting old. Are we going to put off the work we need to do to be healthy, vigorous and sexually vital until it's too late to make a difference? Are we going to sound like the 60 and 70 year old fools who have said to me “I’m strong, I used to play football in high school”! Health, physical strength and appearance must be constantly worked at, improved and maintained if you are to have it at all. 80% of acquired strength and conditioning is lost in 8 weeks after the cessation of exercise! Eight weeks after Mark Spits got out of the pool for the last time he could not have even qualified for the Olympic team much less won 7 gold medals. Health and strength are life-long endeavors. So take your supplements, connect with God, avoid soy, lower your stress, listen to your children, laugh more, make love much more often and exercise heavily at least 2 to 3 times a week. Don’t get yourself filed in the “Waited Too Long” bin!