G. Bieler - Food Is Your Best Medicine

FOOD IS YOUR BEST MEDICINE

Dr. Bieler taught me in 1927 that your body is the direct result of what you eat as well as what you dont eat. Every day I live merely reinforces his lessons.

GLORIA SWANSON

Having known Dr. Bieler for some years, I am sure that his book, FOOD IS YOUR BEST MEDICINE, will be a great help for many people in their fight against disease.

GRETA GARBO

A Ballantine Book
Published by The Random House Publishing Group

Originally published by Random House, Inc., in February 1966.
Copyright 1965 Henry G. Bieler

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

B ALLANTINE and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

eISBN: 978-0-307-77502-3

www.ballantinebooks.com

v3.1

This book is dedicated to Frederick N. Gilbert, lawyer, humanitarian and seeker after the truth.

To The Reader

As a practicing physician for over fifty years, I have reached three basic conclusions as to the cause and cure of disease. This book is about those conclusions.

The first is that the primary cause of disease is not germs. Rather, I believe that disease is caused by a toxemia which results in cellular impairment and breakdown, thus paving the way for the multiplication and onslaught of germs.

My second conclusion is that in almost all cases the use of drugs in treating patients is harmful. Drugs often cause serious side effects, and sometimes even create new diseases. The dubious benefits they afford the patient are at best temporary. Yet the number of drugs on the market increases geometrically every year as each chemical firm develops its own variation of the compounds. The physician is indeed rare who can be completely aware of the potential danger from the side effects of all of these drugs.

My third conclusion is that disease can be cured through the proper use of correa foods. This statement may sound deceptively simple, but I have arrived at it only after intensive study of a highly complex subject: colloid and endocrine chemistry.

My conclusions are based on experimental and observational results, gathered through years of successfully treating patients. Occasionally I have resorted to the use of drugs in emergency situations, but those times have been rare. Instead, I have sought to prescribe for my patients illnesses antidotes which Nature has placed at their disposal.

This book deals with what I consider to be the best food and the best medicine.

First thanks for help on this book must go to Elizabeth, who worked joyfully with me through the years.

I am also indebted to Maxine Block for her invaluable help in arranging the material and simplifying some of the professional language. She is truly remarkable, and it was a pleasure to have her editorial assistance.

Thanks should go as well to little Alana Blumer, whose criticism was always helpful.

Finally, I am deeply grateful to Robert Specht, who drew together all of our efforts.

Contents

Introduction

When I was a medical school student in the early days of the century, the study of nutrition was very sketchy; even today most doctors are painfully ignorant of the real advances in nutritional science. I began to suspect the close relationship between health and proper eating habits when, early in my career as an overworked young doctor, my own health broke down. I have always been a man of great curiosity and as I investigated deeply the chemistry of food along new lines, I came to the conclusion that I, personally, must give up the use of drugs and henceforth rely solely on food as my medicine. It wasnt long until (after repeated verified results) I discarded drugs in treating my patients.

My colleagues, at the time, thought I had lost my mind. But time has only strengthened my belief.

Today we are not only in the Nuclear Age but also the Antibiotic Age. Unhappily, too, this is the Dark Age of Medicinean age in which many of my colleagues, when confronted with a patient, consult a volume which rivals the Manhattan telephone directory in size. This book contains the names of thousands upon thousands of drugs used to alleviate the distressing symptoms of a host of diseased states of the body. The doctor then decides which pink or purple or baby-blue pill to prescribe for the patient.

This is not, in my opinion, the practice of medicine.

Far too many of these new miracle drugs are introduced with fanfare and then revealed as lethal in character, to be silently discarded for newer and more powerful drugs, which allegedly cure all the ills to which the flesh is heir.

I discarded drugs partly because I began to re-examine an old, old medical truismthat nature does the real healing, utilizing the natural defenses of the body. Under the proper conditions nature, if given the opportunity, is always the greatest healer. It is the physicians role to assist in this healingto co-operate with natures forces; to play a supporting role instead of star of the show. Nature does not follow Madison Avenues Feel Better Faster but takes her time, slowly, as a tree grows, a little more each day. Nature never rushes to get a sick man or beast on his feet; she also demands a slow and steady convalescence. Sick animals rest or sleep and refuse all food until nature has healed them.

Isnt it proper, then, to expect that nature can do the same thing for the sick human if only she is given the opportunity?

Because I believe this so deeply, I have been in disagreement with doctors who sauff the sick, exhausted man with powerful toxic drugs and then are forced to use other drugs to remedy the remedy, as it were. Instead I fast the patient on simple vegetable broths or diluted fruit juices in order to give the exhausred body organs an opportunity to discharge their waste products and heal themselves.

Call me controversial if you will; I have taken the revered Louis Pasteur off his pedestal. Years of laboratory observation and experimentation have taught me that germs do not cause disease. Germs are merely a concomitant of disease, present in every sick individual but able to multiply in a sick person because of disturbed function.

Every new concept developed in medical science points the way to a new area awaiting further exploration. Discarding both the use of drugs and the germ theory of disease opened the way for me to explore new methods of eliminating the stagnating waste products from the body. Briefly stated, my position is: improper foods cause disease; proper foods cure disease. In upholding this thesis, I have been in disagreement, at times sharp, with organized orthodox medicine.