Last week I was visiting my friend Jackie and one of her hobbies is she rummages through book sales looking for possibly interesting health books on sale. Every time I visit her to buy organic supplies she would show me her new books and ask for a quick book review. This time it was a small pocketbook named “Food is your Best Medicine” by Henry Bieler M.D. written way back in 1965. I gladly read the introduction and the table of contents and found that it may be interesting.
At home I found the book very interesting. I could not put it down. Here was a doctor who at the time of writing in 1965 had practiced medicine for 50 years. And here he was writing and lamenting about the drug industry and his colleagues who prescribe endless drugs to nowhere and it is as if nothing has changed from 1965 to today’s 2008.
Dr. Bieler first lays out his credentials. The many number of people he has cured and even the famous ones for those who are impressed with famous people cured. What impressed me the most was that In the past 3 years of my internet enhanced studying… which is an accelerated form of studying health and healing… and me trying to piece everything together… Here I stumble into a man of great wisdom and experience who sums up many concepts I know today in 2008 and he has written them all down way back in 1965! What I’m trying to say is, if I’m going to teach my friends and relatives summarizing the things that I know from the various resources I have read, self experimented and given advice on… I would rather just gift them this book. It is very short and it is very easy to read.
On the other hand, if I had read this book earlier, I would have been spoon fed with this information and I would not have spent so much time trying to synthesize and analyze and piece together the puzzle about health and healing.
On the other hand, if I had read this book much earlier, I may not have appreciated the power and the wisdom of the teachings Henry Bieler wrote because I would not have understood the concepts I know now.
Dr. Bieler wrote good things about vegetables needing heat to crack open the nutrients… that raw animal food would have been preferrable for organic sodium… but that many people are not culturally accepting of raw animal food… so he resorts to teaching Bieler’s broth… with zucchini as the star organic sodium source.
Dr. Bieler summarized toxemia, the function of the kidneys, the adrenals, the liver the appendix. He has a powerful explanation of bad cholesterol in his experience and analysis, the worst is cooking fats and starches together. Take that, you fried rice and french fries fans!
I was impressed by his explanation of childhood diseases. That many mothers in the 20th century were already so toxic, their children had to spend the first 3 years detoxing! Which explains why children are not born equal. Why some people are born with diseases.
Dr. Bieler explains raw protein and raw animal foods. That which we raw paleolithic dieters (we eat raw fruits, raw vegs and raw animal foods) already know is that raw protein is best, that the body knows what to do with raw protein… it is cooked protein that causes overdoses, toxemia, disease. So do not complain that red meat causes illness… it is your idiotic insistence on eating cooked condimented meat that is YOUR PROBLEM. You eat raw fruits… you learned to eat raw vegs… now learn to eat raw animal foods… every time… all the time.
But of course Dr. Bieler recognizes the futility of converting people to raw foodists or just the futility of insisting on a “best or ideal diet”. What Dr. Bieler explains is that the best diet for you right now depends on many things like your overall state of health which he analyzes and finally suggests a course of action. He does not want everyone to be fixated on a diet. He wants an individualized diet for every case.
What Dr. Bieler is saying is that food is your best medicine, not drugs. That it is inexperienced, young, just out of college, know nothing yet doctors who prescribe so many drugs… and that as the doctor ages, gains experience and knowledge do they prescribe less and less and ultimately hardly any drugs. Many times, it is patients who are the problem as they shop around for doctors who will prescribe to them ultimately injurious and sometimes fatal drugs. Patients beware, be informed. Learn the basics of health and healing in this book. “They” do not teach this in medical school.