A Beginner's Guide to Medical Medium
What's making us sick and how to start healing
It was incredibly exciting in the beginning for me. My mom had ordered the first book after seeing the reviews on Amazon. We were desperate for answers - I’d been sick for many years and had tried almost everything that came my way, seeing specialist after specialist for lyme, adrenal fatigue, mold illness, POTS, heavy metal toxicity, parasites, and more to try to get to the bottom of my chronic fatigue and other debilitating neurological symptoms.
I was skeptical when I first saw it - medical medium? - and let the book sit on the kitchen counter for a few weeks. But when I finally did begin reading, I couldn’t stop. I finished it in a few days.
Something about it all just rang so true to me. I’ve heard many others say the same thing since, that it touched on and lit up some deep and unmistakable inner knowing in us.
But those early days were also overwhelming - there is just so much information, and so much to change. I made a lot of mistakes that cost me in time, money, and my wellbeing. I’m writing this so you can avoid them, and get started with healing as easily and quickly as possible.
The first place to start is to talk about what is making us sick - the true factors behind our growing epidemic of chronic illness: viruses, heavy metals, DDT, and radiation.
The Unforgiving Four
#1: Viruses
Viruses are the primary culprit behind our epidemic of chronic disease.
There are many families and strains of viruses, some known to medical research like Epstein Barr or shingles, but many are unknown and yet to be discovered. Each family has many strains, some far more aggressive than others. These viruses and their inflammatory byproducts are what is really behind so many of the increasingly prevalent conditions that conventional medicine has no real answers for - illnesses like Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis, chronic fatigue syndrome, Lyme disease, eczema, psoriasis, PCOS and more.
Hundreds of years ago, the viruses in our body used to be mostly docile and symbiotic, like good bacteria. But through directed lab tampering as well as the increasing toxicity of our world and bodies resulting from the industrial revolution, we now have many strains of viruses that live in us and work against our health rather than support it.
With each generation, these viruses are getting more aggressive. In the 40s and 50s, people generally had viruses that would take many decades to progress through their stages in the body to create symptoms like hot flashes, night sweats, heart palpitations, and fatigue. But as more aggressive strains have mutated and spread, people who are younger and younger are showing up in doctor’s offices with mysterious chronic symptoms. If you have a particularly aggressive virus, you can even develop cancer as a young person.
Medical science and research are mostly in the dark about this reality. You’ll see a lot of people with chronic illness be labelled with “post viral syndrome” and often these people will have had mono in the past. But doctors and researchers don’t yet understand that the virus is still present, continuing to wreak havoc on people’s health and wellbeing. That’s because these viruses go through stages as they progress through the body, and medicine can only detect them in stage two, the blood infection phase known as mono. After the blood infection phase, they move into organs like the liver and thyroid where current scientific methods can’t detect them. Doctors see the IgG antibodies and think the viruses are in the past, but really they’ve just moved to the next stage.
Medical research more recently has connected some diseases to viruses, like multiple sclerosis:
But they still have no idea how far the viral explosion goes and how much damage these bugs are responsible for. The factors and forces preventing them from making these connections run deep and will be saved for another post.
It wasn’t true a few decades ago, but now everyone has these viruses living in them. Many factors determine when people develop symptoms, including how aggressive their viruses are, how many metals and other toxins they have in their system, what their diet and nutrient reserves are like, how many immune-draining triggers like mold or emotional hardship they face, and more.
Part of why is because viruses eat, and some things really fuel them.
#2: Heavy Metals
We are exposed to heavy metals like mercury, aluminum, cadmium, nickel and others constantly and from a wide variety of sources. Some include industrial chemical disposal into our atmosphere, pharmaceuticals and certain medical treatments, and the pesticides we get on our foods and which drift from farms, golf courses, and parks into our neighborhoods. We even get metals from our cookware: look at the bottom of a well-used stainless steel pan; those scratches are metals coming off and ending up in your food.
Metals have their own ill effects on our bodies (Alzheimer’s, dementia, and autism are all caused by metals in the brain, as are many cases of depression), but they are also a favored fuel for viruses.
After viruses eat these metals, they excrete an even more toxic version of them in the form of a neurotoxin or dermatoxin depending on the metal. For instance, when a virus feeds on mercury, it can create neurotoxins that irritate the central nervous system and result in fatigue and brain fog; and when it feeds on copper, it can create dermatoxins that rise to the skin and create conditions like eczema and psoriasis.
#3: DDT (and other pest- herb- and fungicides)
DDT used to be used ubiquitously, considered so safe that it was sprayed in thick clouds in lunchrooms while children ate.
It’s banned in most places now, but it’s still in our soils and there’s drift from other countries where it continues to be used. But more than that, toxins like DDT are passed down through family lines; we inherit them from our parents. This is much of why conditions like depression, often caused by heavy metals in the brain, tend to run in families. Viruses can be passed down as well, which is part of why cancers and other viral conditions tend to run in families too. It’s not our genes and never was.
#4: Radiation
Radiation is also ubiquitous and hangs around for centuries. Air travel is a significant source: besides the radiation you absorb as the plane moves through the upper atmosphere, what people don’t realize is that when you put your luggage in the scanner, it is loaded up with radiation which is then absorbed by anything that comes near it. Other sources of radiation include medical scans like x-rays, as well as all of the less potent electromagnetic radiation we are exposed to from microwaves and cell phones and power lines. It is also passed down through family lines from parent to child, and in our recent history radiation was used incredibly carelessly (read about shoe-fitting fluoroscopes - it’s insane).
Radiation drains our cells of their vitality and accelerates the aging process. It also lowers the immune system, helping viruses to proliferate. See more here.
Honorable Mentions
Adrenaline
Adrenaline is a vital and lifesaving hormone. It’s not actually just one thing either - our adrenals produce 56 different blends of adrenaline tailored for all of our various activities as we go through life. It’s involved in everything we do, from eating to exercising, crying, driving, and sleeping. The problem is when we produce too much.
Part of what drives us to produce too much is that we are under constant stress. Rather than the short bursts to outrun a predator that our ancestors needed in the past, in modern times people face a non-stop barrage of demands and stimulation that pushes our adrenals to be constantly pumping, and without any of the long periods of rest to recover afterwards that we used to have.
That’s the other thing that drives too much adrenaline: when so much demand is put on our adrenals, they start to fatigue and weaken, and this is when they can start to behave erratically, as if having a nervous breakdown. This erratic behavior translates to under-production and over-production of adrenaline; our adrenals stop being able to respond carefully and precisely, and instead will produce way too much or way too little for the task at hand.
Adrenaline is an inherently corrosive substance, and when too much is coursing through our system, it burns out our immune cells and neurotransmitters. It also puts a burden on the liver to soak up and contain all of it to protect our other organs from its negative effects. And on top of that, viruses can also feed on it - particularly its toxic forms released during negative experiences - and it is one of their favorite fuels*. Because of this, it’s critical to minimize adrenaline and stress as much as you can when healing from chronic illness.
(* shingles viruses in particular were raised to thrive on adrenaline)
Deficiencies
Modern diets tend to be full of junk and filler foods like cheap oils, high fructose corn syrup, and processed grain products; people eat much too little nutritious food to begin with. But compounding the problem is that even the nutrient rich foods people do eat are less nutritious than they were in the past. This is well established, though not often talked about:
Part of the problem is industrial agriculture - chemical pesticides, synthetic fertilizers, and monocropping all contribute to soil depletion and less nutritious food. We are also cultivating varieties of food that are less nutritious than others - varieties chosen for the advantages they provide to the grower and seller rather than for nutrition.
But on top of that, our crops are receiving less and less sunlight due to the increasing pollution in our atmosphere. This pollution also contaminates our rainwater, which used to be incredibly nutritious and live-giving for plants but is now diminished in its power.
The result is that we are growing increasingly deficient in the whole spectrum of nutrients: vitamins and minerals but also all kinds of undiscovered trace minerals and phytochemical compounds our bodies need to maintain our health. Zinc in particular has become almost non-existent in our soils because of heavy DDT use, and nearly everyone today is lacking*.
Adding to this challenge is that our bodies are under toxic loads like they have never been before, and these vital nutrients are expended and used up more rapidly than in the past as our bodies work to protect us against these exposures. Zinc for instance is responsible for all of the liver’s 2000+ chemical functions, and a deficit can leave you vulnerable for a virus to really proliferate.
As with toxins, we also inherit nutrient stores from our parents. and organs like the liver have an extraordinarily deep intelligence around properly allocating them depending on what we’re up against individually. But even with these incredible capacities, we are still becoming deficient, and it is more important than ever to do what we can to give our bodies what they need and keep up our nutrient stores - more on that below.
(* A quick way to gauge your zinc levels is to look at your half moons - if your half moons or lunulae are barely visible, there’s a good chance you are deficient in zinc.)
Strep
Medical communities know about streptococcus A and B, but aren’t aware that there are actually more than 50 groups of strep bacteria, and that they are responsible for a whole host of symptoms and conditions like UTIs, SIBO, acid reflux, chronic sinusitis, acne, fatigue, and confusion.
Strep tends to be a co-factor to viruses because it proliferates when the immune system is distracted and knocked down. Lowering any viral load you may have is the most impactful thing you could do to start ridding yourself of strep. See more on strep here.
What to do about it
Okay, so if the above seemed overwhelming, rest assured - there’s actually a lot that we can do to support our bodies and restore or maintain good health.
These are the main components to getting and staying healthy:
Lower viral load
Lower toxin load
Eat an abundance of what the body needs to heal itself
Here’s how:
The Holy Four
The Holy Four of fruits, vegetables, herbs + spices, and wild foods are the antidotes to the Unforgiving Four. These God-given foods provide us with the discovered and undiscovered vitamins, minerals, and phytochemicals that our bodies need to fight off pathogens and detoxify poisons, as well as to strengthen and heal our organs, nerves, and body systems.
In particular:
Celery Juice
MM says that if people can only do one thing, do celery juice. Celery juice helps with just about everything: restoring our adrenals, breaking down pathogens like EBV and strep, deactivating metals and other toxins and flushing them out of the liver, restoring our hydrochloric acid and bile production so we can digest better, and the list goes on. MM says it is like liquid gold.
Here are some details on how to start with celery juice as well as FAQs.
Fruit
There’s a lot of concern around eating fruit today - one of the biggest health trends right now, the keto diet, almost completely eschews it, except maybe for a handful of berries and other low glycemic fruits. The fear comes from concerns about sugar, which is bad in its industrial, processed forms. Through processing, industrial sugars are isolated and denatured, stripped of the health promoting vitamins, minerals, and cofactor compounds that you find in abundance in whole sources of sugar like fruits.
But this isolated, processed sugar isn’t even that bad for us - not nearly as bad as the other common troublemaker foods and additives discussed below. It’s the other ingredients in processed foods like gluten, corn, industrial oils, and dairy that are the real contributors to our skyrocketing rates of chronic disease. Sugar is just the convenient scapegoat - for many reasons, including getting people off fruit.
The truth is that the body runs on carbs - Critical Clean Carbohydrates - and fruits are one of the best sources of them. You can read more about fruit fear here.
HMDS
The absolute best way to rid your body of toxic heavy metals and repair the damage they’ve caused is to consume the following five key ingredients every day: fresh cilantro, spirulina, barley grass juice powder (BGJP), wild blueberries, and atlantic dulse.
These ingredients work together to bind to free floating and deeply rooted metals and hold onto them, picking them up and escorting them all the way out of your body. These compounds are gentle: they do not rip metals out that your body is not prepared to release. And importantly, when they do extract metals, these compounds simultaneously leave nutrients and healing phytochemicals in their place that help to repair tissue. If you’ve ever heard about bad experiences with chelators like EDTA, it’s because they do not have these properties.
If you want to remove metals from your brain, it is ideal to have these five ingredients together, but they will work together effectively to clear metals from the rest of your body if you consume them within a 24 hour period of each other. The recommended recipe combining them is the HMDS - Heavy Metal Detox Smoothie. See the recipe and FAQs here.
Some symptoms can improve quickly, but it takes time to begin to cleanse the body of its deeper metal deposits that are surrounded by oxidative runoff as it takes time for these to surface. It’s critical to consume the HMDS regularly - ideally every day. Try to make the HMDS with all five ingredients, but if you don’t have all of them, make it with what you can - a smoothie with only a few of the five will still do you a great deal of good.
Note:
The HMDS will also help to clear all kinds of other toxins and pollutants, like solvents, pesticides, and radiation.
Another tool to clear heavy metals in addition to the HMDS is the Extractor Smoothie. The Extractor Smoothie helps to clear the way and set the conditions for the HMDS to work even more effectively. It’s ideal to have the HMDS in the morning and the Extractor Smoothie in the afternoon.
If cilantro has a harsh taste to you, like soap, it’s a sign that you really need it. It is the result of a higher oxidative rate of metals in your body, which means more corroded runoff in your lymph and saliva that binds with the cilantro in your mouth as you eat it to produce the foul taste. It is not genetic, and can change over time as you clear the metals and the runoff. Start with what you can, even just a sprig, and slowly work your way up to the full serving.
Herbs and Supplements
Herbs and supplements can be critical for recovering from chronic illness. Some people may not be too sick yet and can get better just by changing their diet. But others will need to take advantage of anti-viral and immune-supporting herbs and supplements in order to give their bodies enough of what they need to conquer their illnesses.
There are a handful of foundational supplements that are recommended for everyone. These help to provide some of the most critical nutrients that many are lacking, as well as to help our bodies detoxify, keep pathogens at bay, and keep our immune systems strong. You can see these baseline recommendations here.
It is good to get as much nutrition as you can from food, but supplements are a good idea on top of that. We are up against a lot, and many of us are very deficient.
Incorporate any supplements one at a time, starting at a low dose and working your way up depending on how you feel, slowing down or paring back if you experience too many symptoms. I would start with the baseline supplements and then progress to the books in order to see what other supplements are listed for your particular conditions. Be sure to read the chapters on supplement guidelines.
It is important to get high quality supplements - see the Resources section below for his directory listing good options. Avoid any tinctures containing alcohol.
Lowering Fat
Even ordinary diets are very high in fat without people knowing it, but believers in trendy diets like keto or carnivore advocate for even more. The beliefs are that the body gets energy more efficiently from fat, that carbs are bad for you, that fats and foods high in them tend to be the most nutrient dense, and that the brain runs on fat. But this couldn’t be further from the truth.
The reality is that the body needs very little fat (or protein for that matter, which tends to come with a lot of fat), and the highest quality sources of the fats you do need are from fruits, vegetables, and leafy greens (which are all about 5-10% fat).
Additionally, too much fat in the diet has many negative effects. In the past, foods high in fats could be amazing survival foods when calories were hard to come by and there weren’t many toxins in the environment. But we are in a very different situation now: our bodies are up against toxic loads like never before in human history.
A few reasons why too much fat works against our health:
Caring for your liver: Our livers process all the fat we eat, so when it has to deal with a lot of fat, it means it can’t deal with anything else, and our detoxification process will be stopped and set aside as it struggles to keep up.
Thick blood: Fats also thicken and clog up your blood stream, making it harder both for toxins to be cleared as well as for nutrients to be delivered into cells.
Pathogens: Too much fat in the bloodstream lowers oxygen levels, which enables pathogens like viruses or strep to thrive. Fats are acidic as well, and pathogens prefer an acidic environment to an alkaline one.
Adrenaline: Foods high in fat also require adrenaline in the process of digestion*, and so eating a lot of them puts a significant burden on your adrenals and body because of the adrenaline that needs to be released.
Less room on your plate: On top of all of that, having significant amounts of fat in the diet crowds out much more healing foods.
It’s ideal to aim for 15% or less of calories in your diet to come from healthy fats like coconut, avocado, and nuts or seeds like sesame or pumpkin seed. It’s best to avoid mixing fats and carbs, especially with grains, as the fats interfere with glucose absorption and insulin action. Some oils like olive or coconut are okay, but it’s best to limit them and stick to whole food sources of fat.
Fats are ideal to have with vegetables and leafy greens, like a tahini dressing over salad, or vegetable crudités with guacamole. Try to limit fats to dinner if you do have them to allow your body to cleanse during the day. And to really assist your body and liver in cleansing and recovering, eliminate radical fats - foods where the majority of calories are from fat, like oils, nuts, meat, dairy, eggs, olives, coconut, and avocado - completely.
(* avocado is the exception and its fats do not require adrenaline in this way)
Note: some people can feel better and experience positive results on high fat diets like keto because they are often cleaner than their old way of eating. For instance, a diet high in fat from whole foods is better than a diet high in fat from processed foods, and that difference can be enough to give people some positive changes if their livers aren’t too overburdened. High fat diets also lead to a lot of adrenaline coursing through the body, and this continually-stoked adrenaline high can cover up a lot of symptoms - until the eventual crash, anyway.
Troublemaker Foods
Certain foods and food additives work against our health. This can be because they’re toxic themselves, or because they feed pathogens*. Here are some of the top troublemakers to avoid:
Eggs, dairy, gluten, and canola oil in particular are critical to avoid if you have any kind of viral or pathogen-related condition because they are especially favored foods for viruses as well as bacteria like strep.
Some that aren’t on this list to also avoid: alcohol, vinegar**, aspartame, caffeine, tuna, industrial food oils, kombucha, nutritional yeast, bone broth, problematic fish and seafood (see below for the best choices), lamb, salt (even high-quality versions), and fermented foods. Each of these is detailed in depth in the Brain Saver Protocols book.
There are also many troublemaker supplements listed in Brain Saver Protocols - for now, for the sake of brevity, if you haven’t seen it recommended by him in one of the books or online materials, assume it is not good. Be careful about quality and sneaky additives in supplements - see Resources below for further guidance.
Certain foods are not particularly harmful, but they will not help you nearly as much as the Holy Four foods and so are called filler foods. These include gluten-free grains like rice and millet (millet is the best choice of grain), beans including black beans and chickpeas, as well as nuts, seeds, and certain meats. Meat is high in fat so is ideal to reduce, but it will not feed pathogens like eggs or gluten will***, and so can be an okay filler food. Avoid meats that come from factory farms as they are particularly high in toxins. The best options for meat are grass fed beef; free-range, organic chicken; free-range, organic turkey; or wild game. The best choices for fish are wild haddock, wild halibut, wild mackerel, wild salmon, wild sardines, and wild trout. Choose cuts that have lesser amounts of fat if you can.
However, it is important to avoid organ meats like liver. Advocates are correct for instance that liver is packed with nutrients, but what they don’t realize is that these nutrients are processed and stored for the animal, and are not usable by the human body. And worse, an animal’s liver contains high levels of the toxins that the animal was exposed to throughout its life. Though it can seem wasteful, you are much better off avoiding these meats. There is more information on this here.
(* for example, many prevalent strains of viruses were raised on eggs in labs, and they are highly adapted to them)
(** apple cider vinegar is the best choice among vinegars, but it’s still very harsh on the liver)
(*** this is why people can see some results with very restrictive elimination diets like the carnivore diet)
Hydration
Though they may not realize it or feel particularly thirsty, most people today live in a state of chronic dehydration. It’s not just a matter of not drinking enough water each day - there’s also a lot that we don’t realize we have to make up for.
One problem is that many popular beverages and substances like coffee are actually dehydrating. The high-fat and high-protein diets most of us grew up on are also very dehydrating. And on top of all that, the toxins and pathogens we have inside of us are dehydrating as well.
But it even goes beyond what’s happened in our lifetimes. In addition to the toxins and nutrients we can inherit, we also inherit the hydration status of our lineage. There’s a lot that we have to make up for.
The best way to get hydrated is to drink plenty of living, structured water. This bioactive water is more easily assimilated into our cells, and travels deeper into our tissues as it carries the nutrients and compounds our bodies need. The best sources of this living water are fresh, raw fruits and vegetables, especially when made into a juice like cucumber juice or celery juice.
Another top way to get living water is to make lemon water. Adding the living water from the lemon activates the rest of the water as it remembers its innate structure. It is important to be sure the water you use does not have chlorine, as even small amounts can render the water dehydrating. A water filter is important and you can see the recommended options on the directory linked in the Resources section.
Though they have great benefits, neither cooked foods nor herbal teas are hydrating - once water has been heated, it loses its structure and bioactivity. For an alternative to hot tea, you can steep fresh herbs in room temperature water for six hours or more on the countertop to have a hydrating tea that still has the benefits of its heated counterpart.
Because they do not have hydrating water, I find it can be important to pair cooked foods with some raw foods so that they do not have to pull too much water from other parts of your body in the process of digestion. (Note: it is not recommended to drink liquids shortly before, during, or after eating, as these will excessively dilute your stomach acids and lead to poor digestion.)
Chronic dehydration leads to many ill health effects, including thicker blood. Thicker blood makes it harder to remove toxins, and it also becomes lower in oxygen content, enabling pathogens to thrive.
Becoming more hydrated is especially important for anyone suffering from a neurological condition or who has been under intense stress to be able to recover and heal.
Avoiding New Exposures
Our world is full of toxins. Some are beyond our control, but many are possible to limit or avoid entirely, and doing what you reasonably can to limit your exposures will help speed up the healing process. Some common sources:
Fragrances: avoid using cleaning or personal products that contain fragrances such as dryer sheets, scented candles, or perfumes. These are synthetic, petrochemical-derived substances that last an incredibly long time, and are extremely harsh on the body. MM says that fragrances are vaporized metals, and that breathing them in from a plug-in air freshener for many hours a day is worse for you than smoking cigarettes. Products with pure essential oils are okay, but if you diffuse essential oils, be sure to do so sparingly and in small amounts - using too much can encourage mold growth as they do not dissipate themselves and will begin to create a film on whatever surfaces they end up on.
Drugs: both pharmaceutical and recreational drugs contain significant levels of heavy metals and other toxic substances. Work with your doctor to see about possibilities for reducing medications as you heal the underlying issues, and avoid using recreational drugs. Marijuana in particular is extremely high in heavy metals - this is the reason it causes schizophrenia. Avoid psychedelic drugs as well, even the natural ones like psychedelic mushrooms or ayahuasca. Though people can sometimes find positive psychological effects and insights from their experiences with them, the altered states these drugs produce owe to the reality that they are damaging the brain. Some experience these negative health effects immediately and are debilitated after their first or second trip, but for most these effects will take time to manifest. We will look back at the current resurgence in popularity of psychedelics as a horrible turn for human health and well-being.
Fumes: off-gassing VOCs and fumes from solvents and other chemicals are extremely toxic - avoid them and similar as much as you can. This includes things like paint, gasoline, and lighter fluid as well as things like conventional carpet cleaning and dry cleaning chemicals.
Pesticides, herbicides, and fungicides: people know that it’s best to buy organic when you can to reduce the amount of pesticides and herbicides they ingest, but other sources may surprise you. For instance, new clothes are loaded with fungicides in order to prevent mold growth as the clothes are shipped and stored, and so it’s important to be sure they’ve been washed before wearing them. There is also aerial insecticide spraying late at night (if you’ve ever smelled a strong odor late at night, even if it’s pleasant like a wood-fired BBQ, this is likely what it was), and because of this it’s important to sleep with your windows closed. One more thing to be aware of is that areas like golf courses tend to be heavily sprayed on a regular basis, and so it is best to wear pants and closed-toe shoes in order to limit exposure. If pregnant, avoid golf courses entirely.
Radiation: Limit air travel and discard luggage that has been through the TSA scanners multiple times (3 times max for the carry on scanners; 6 for the baggage claim scanners). To the extent that you reasonably can, keep distance from luggage that has been through scanners - this is especially important for young children. You can even pick up radiation from people who have been through medical scanners recently, like an X-ray or CT scan. WiFi, microwaves, and cell phones are other sources of EMF radiation to minimize as much as you can as well. Try as much as you can to avoid holding your phone and instead use a stand while you do use it, and keep it on speaker so that you don’t have to put it near your head.
Pathogens: we can pick up bugs from so many sources - grocery stores, public restrooms, restaurants, new sexual partners and more. Even packages tend to be covered in pathogens that they pick up en route from the many hands that touch them. It is important to avoid these bugs, as fighting them puts a big strain on your immune system and distracts it from fighting everything else it is up against. Practice good hygiene and wash your hands frequently, especially after touching surfaces that many others have touched, and avoid touching your face when your hands might not be clean. I keep a small bottle of hydrogen peroxide spray in my car to clean my hands after getting groceries as well as latex gloves to use at the gas pump.
Grazing
About an hour and a half to two hours after eating, our blood sugar drops and our adrenals have to fill in with adrenaline to keep our bodies working. This adrenaline is harmful when you’re dealing with a chronic condition, and so it is best to minimize it to the extent you can. A good way is by eating something every hour and a half to two hours, a practice called grazing. Your meal should at least include some glucose, and ideally would include glucose, potassium, and sodium as a way to keep your body balanced. See more about adrenal snacks here.
Depleting Practices to Minimize When Healing
Frequent ejaculation - depletes zinc and vital trace minerals
Excessive stimulation (scary movies, adrenaline sports, pornography, etc - all produce too much adrenaline)
Adrenalizing practices (cold showers, intense breathwork, etc)
So where to start?
Okay, that was a lot – but you don’t have to do it all overnight.
Switching over to this lifestyle can sometimes feel overwhelming and restrictive. We have an emotional connection to many of the foods and practices we grew up with, and our dietary patterns are very enmeshed with the rest of our lives, especially our social lives. It can be hard to change, and it’s important to give yourself some credit for that and cut yourself as much slack as you need.
The thing that matters is sustainable change over time. If that happens over a few months or even years, that’s okay. Work with yourself, and do only as much as feels comfortable and right to you for your situation and needs. And, too, look for ways you can find joy in these new routines and traditions.
I’d recommend starting small and building your way up rather than trying to change a lot all at once. One good place to start might be the morning cleanse, as people tend to have more time and energy in the mornings. Or if that feels like too much, pick one or two healing tools that seem very doable to you, like lemon water, celery juice, or fruit breakfasts, and start with those, otherwise keeping the rest of your routine as is. Once that routine begins to feel easy and you want to take on more, try adding in another thing, like the HMDS or an adrenal snack. Some days you may want to do more, but you always have the option to just keep with the basic routine you are building up if things start to feel challenging.
Another thing that can help in the beginning is to think of adding health promoting foods in rather than cutting unproductive ones out. I often see people try to avoid all of the unproductive foods right out of the gate completely, and go hungry because they have no idea what to eat.
The goal is to over time phase out the unproductive foods and fill your diet instead with an abundance of Holy Four healing foods. Low in fat, high in fruits, vegetables, and leafy greens, with lots and lots of fluids like lemon water, celery juice, and cucumber juice.
Beyond diet, some lifestyle swaps are relatively easy and very impactful and so can be good things to begin with. Work on switching out household chemicals like scented laundry or personal care products for safer alternatives like unscented wool dryer balls. Many great safe alternatives are listed at the link under the Resources section below.
Some Practical Tips and Advice
A good practice I’ve found for myself is to aim to try a new recipe every week. This helps me to keep developing skills in the kitchen and also to create some more variety and fun in my cooking. I’d recommend only trying out involved recipes when you have a lot of energy, and otherwise would stick to simpler, tried-and-true meals. I generally only make a more complicated recipe once or twice a week, and otherwise just have smoothies, fruit, juices, raw soups. and (my favorite lately) salads of red leaf lettuce, tomatoes, and onion with steamed potatoes, cayenne, honey, and lime.
Another important point: most people who struggle on this diet do so because they don’t eat enough. The diets most of us are coming from are much higher in calorie dense foods, and so we can end up eating far too few calories if we still follow the same eating patterns. You need to eat more frequently and in much larger portions than you’re used to. Make sure to bring in some of the more calorie dense foods like bananas, potatoes, sweet potatoes, and dates. You can have four or more bananas in a smoothie to really up the calories. And try to always have something in front of you to eat - I make a big plate of apples, dates, and celery to have at my desk throughout the day in between meals.
Resources
MM preferred products directory: this lists foods, supplements, as well as home and personal care products that are the highest quality and safest available. Sometimes brands will be dropped because of a changed practice, so it is good to check periodically. Some supplements are expensive and it can seem economical to get a cheaper version, but note that MM has said that even smaller amounts of a higher quality supplement will do much more good for you than larger amounts of a low quality supplement.
Similarly, here is his amazon page.
There are many great online communities focused around MM. One is the Reddit community. There is also a great community on Instagram - a few accounts I love are from Amber, Nev, Uma, Laura, and Amanda (who has amazing and incredibly creative recipes).
Another great resource that compiles a ton of great information and promotes many community efforts and events is the MMFriendly newsletter and website.
Underdog Warriors may be a helpful resource to those in difficult financial situations. The MM Friendly website also has a great compilation of resources for how to heal on a budget - see here under the Shopping section.
Further Tips:
If pregnant, be sure to be very careful about what you consume as some things are not okay to take while pregnant. Cat’s claw and goldenseal are two that come to mind that pregnant women should avoid, but there are more.
Certain conditions take less time to heal than others. In general, skin issues are the quickest to resolve, while neurological symptoms take the longest to heal. Issues relating to the organs, like adrenal fatigue or liver issues, tend to be somewhere in between. You should see noticeable improvement in at least some of your symptoms within the first few months. Working with a knowledgeable MM practitioner can also be a great support, and many will offer free introductory calls.
There are many spiritual meditations and emotional techniques as well. These include the collecting stones meditation, the full moon meditation, and others. There is also much information about the angels that are here to help humanity and watch over us.
Even seven years into this, I am still finding it very important and helpful to refer back to the information. There is so much knowledge, and you always pick up new things as you read and re-read. I’d try to make a habit of reading a blog article or chapter from the books every day or as often as you can.
Some people are very sensitive. If you think you might be, start very small with things like celery juice, the HMDS, and supplements, and work your way up. If you do not think you are sensitive, I would still start with half of the recommended dosage to see how your body responds and work your way up.
For people with very difficult gut issues that put challenging limits on what they can eat, the Mono Cleanse can be very helpful.
Some common conditions and their causes:
Acne: caused by strep bacteria. This can get worse when you kill strep off, as much of the dead bacteria will saturate the lymph and surface through the skin. If this happens, keep going - it will get better.
Alzheimer’s and Dementia: caused by heavy metal deposits in the brain which oxidize over time, saturating and damaging surrounding tissue.
Anemia: almost every case is due to a low grade viral infection feeding on the iron in hemoglobin. Because of this, it is important to avoid iron supplements that are not plant based as these will continue to feed the infection. Opt instead for whole food sources of iron that are rich in compounds that also repel viruses, like spinach or spirulina.
Brain Fog: caused by neurotoxins and heavy metal deposits inflaming nerves and shorting out neurotransmitters.
Dandruff: caused by a sluggish and stagnant liver.
Type II Diabetes: caused by excess fat in the blood and body creating insulin resistance.
Eczema: caused by viral dermatoxins released by a virus feeding on a metal like copper.
Excess weight: caused by an overburdened liver that is falling behind on its duty of storing and processing fat cells and toxins, which then spill over and collect in various parts of the body.
Eye floaters: these are caused by viral neurotoxins and toxic heavy metals saturating eye tissue.
Gut Issues: usually caused by strep bacteria, but sometimes can be another bacteria like h. pylori or e. coli, or a viral strain such as shingles causing colitis.
Heart palpitations: this is sometimes neurological, the result of neurotoxins inflaming the brain and vagus nerve, but can also be due to the liver becoming saturated with a jelly-like viral byproduct to the point of spilling over into blood. The palpitations occur when globs of the jelly break off and momentarily clog heart valves.
High cholesterol: this is caused by an overburdened liver that is falling behind on its duties to process bad (LDL) cholesterol. (Low good (HDL) cholesterol is also caused by an overburdened liver, as the liver is responsible for producing it.)
Neurological problems: caused by viruses, viral neurotoxins, and/or heavy metal deposits inflaming the brain and nervous system.
For more, google “Medical Medium <condition>” and see if a blog post shows up.
There’s more information but those are the essentials to get started. I hope you find this helpful as you begin.
Good luck - I wish you healing.
Jamie
So well written, great man!
Thank you for putting this together!💕