The food that we normally eat can slowly kill us or heal us. How?

The devastating effects of improper food combinations (different categories of foods eaten at the same meal) can ruin your health and vitality.Many diseases that will catch up with us in the future can be kept away by understanding the AYURVEDIC principles of "VIRUDDHA AHAR"(Improper food combination).

ASTHMA
Cathy was sent to Dr. Hay by her doctor who frankly admitted that the usual medical therapies could do nothing for her. She was so ill with asthma that she was on the point of giving up her job, her sole source of livelihood. A few weeks after adopting compatible meals, she felt so much better that she not only retained her job but took on a thrice weekly evening job as well.

SKIN DISEASES
After nearly thirty years of applying the principles of natural treatment of diseases, Dr.Hay affirmed that he had seen no case of psoriasis or eczema that did not disappear after a few weeks of or a very few months of the separation of the incompatible foods, even though both conditions failed to improve under the most scientific treatment of many prominent skin specialists.

Treat all skin eruptions as external evidences of internal intoxication, set about correcting all the causes of intoxication at once, and watch the results. These results, being on the outside of the body, can provide an excellent visible demonstration of the effects of proper food combining, and its astonishing efficacy when faithfully carried out.

Much of this internal intoxication arises from the fermentation and putrefaction of incompletely digested carbohydrates, sugar and white flour foods which are the chief trouble makers where skin diseases are concerned.

A ten year old boy had eczema since birth. At the age of ten his eczema was so bad that his classmates shunned any contact with him. Members of his family were being kept awake at night with his moanings and scratching. His arms and legs were a solid weeping mass of eruptions. His mother was instructed by Dr.Hay to cut out all his sugary breakfast cereals, his colas and fizzy pop drinks, sweets,cakes and biscuits, and instead have fresh fruit at his main meal and at other meal time to use whole wheat bread.

Ten days later she phoned to tell that the eczema had vanished, that nothing remained but shadows where the weeping eruptions had been. Dr.Hay was totally astonished at the sped of this boy's recovery in ten days after ten years of misery and the total failure of orthodox treatment.

Beauty conscious women will be delighted to know that compatible eating also ensures a beautiful and flawless complexion.

HEADACHES
A woman of 83 followed compatible eating. To her immense astonishment, within the first week of doing so she lost a continuous and often severe headache that had plagued her every day of her life since she was 15 years old - that is for sixty eight years and she made no other change in her eating habits apart from combining her foods compatibly.

ARTHRITIS
Dr.Hay maintained that arthritis responds to nutritional treatment as surely as do other degenerative diseases. Most cases of arthritis are curable, and permanently so, if the disease has not progressed to such a degree that it has permanently destroyed the function of the affected joint as occurs in ankylosis. Even cases of severe arthritis, when every joint in the body is affected with pain and immobility, recover uniformly when the body is relieved of its excessive debris and feeding is corrected.

APLASTIC ANAEMIA

A woman 65 years wrote to Dr.Hay:

Three years ago I was seriously ill with aplastic anaemia, because my bone marrow was not making the red blood corpuscles I needed. I had no energy , could not walk far or do much, and some of my friends thought that I was going to die. My specialist said that I would need blood transfusions for the rest of my life. I had these transfusions in hospital every five and half weeks, and the outlook seemed bleak.

Within three months of adopting compatible food diet, the time between transfusions gradually lengthened, until I lasted for eighteen weeks. Then I had my twelfth and last transfusion. Fifteen months after starting the diet, my bone marrow began to work again, and my haemoglobin (red cell corpuscle count) gradually began to rise, and two years later is continuing to do so. I am so well that recently I was able to tour The Rockies in Canada without fatigue.

The specialist says that I may have reached the normal count for a woman of my age (sixty five years). Anyway, I feel marvellously well, and it is quite amazing when I think how ill I was three years ago, when the specialist intimated that I had no hope of a cure.

OBESITY
Obesity is an evidence of an imbalance in nutrition. Its cause lies very frequently in the mixture of starch food and proteins or starches with acid fruits, and the consumption of refined carbohydrates.

Compatible eating is especially effective, merely avoiding warring mixtures is sufficient gradually to reduce excessive weight- without even trying to do so and without feeling hungry.

COMMON COLD
Every cold is merely an expression of the body's effort to clean house. If the cold is evidence of body's effort to get rid of objectionable waste material that is hampering its normal functioning, then its prevention lies in the elimination of this hampering waste.

Correct Food Combining
By Dr.Herbert M.Shelton

PROTEIN-STARCH COMBINATIONS
Do not eat meat, (flesh), eggs, cheese, nuts or other protein foods at the same meal with bread, cereals, potatoes, sweet fruits, cakes etc.

The hamburger, egg sandwiches, cheese sandwiches, hot dogs, ham sandwiches and other such protein-starch combinations are similar dietetic abominations. Dr. Tilden used to say that nature never produced a sandwich. How true are his words!

Digestion of carbohydrates (starches and sugars) and of protein is so different, that when they are mixed in the stomach they interfere with the digestion of each other. An acid process (gastric digestion) and an alkaline process(salivary digestion) cannot be carried on at the same time in an ideal way in the stomach. In fact, they cannot proceed together at all for long as the rising acidity of the stomach contents soon completely stops carbohydrate digestion and this is followed by fermentation.

The well-known experiments on dogs by the famous Russian scientist Pavlov showed that minced beef fed to a dog took about four hours to digest; starch by itself took one and half hours or less, (white bread took longer than brown). When meat was mixed wit the starch, this mixture took eight or more hours to leave the stomach.

Beans contain about 25% protein and about 50% carbohydrates or starch. This doubtless accounts for their difficult digestion and the readiness with which they ferment. Beans are a bread and meat combination and each of their two principle constituents requires entirely different processes for digestion. The starch of the bean lies in the stomach while its protein is being digested, and except under the most favourable circumstances, ferments, producing gas and toxins. As a rule, avoid all beans. This does not include green beans which contain little starch.

ACID-STARCH COMBINATIONS
Dr. Hay and Dr.Herbert Shelton advised:

Never eat carbohydrate foods and acid foods at the same time. Do not eat bread, potatoes, or peas or beans or bananas or dates or other carbohydrates with lemons, limes, oranges, grape-fruits, pineapples, tomatoes, berries, sour apples, sour grapes, or other sour fruit. A weak acid will destroy the ptyalin enzyme of the saliva. With the destruction of the ptyalin starch digestion must come to a halt.

Take a tomato sandwich as an example. Tomatoes should never be combined with any starch food. They may be eaten with leafy vegetables and fat foods. The combination of citric, malic and oxalic acids found in tomatoes ( which is released and intensified by cooking) is very antagonistic to the alkaline digestion of starches in the mouth and the stomach. Oxalic acid diluted to 1 part in 10 000 completely arrests the action of ptyalin. There is sufficient acetic acid in one or two teaspoonfuls of vinegar to entirely suspend salivary digestion. The acids of tomatoes, oranges, grapefruits, lemons, pineapples, sour apples and other sour fruits are sufficient to destroy the ptyalin of the saliva and suspend starch digestion.

STARCH-SUGAR COMBINATIONS
Ptyalin has no action upon sugar. When sugar is eaten there is a copious flow of saliva, but it contains no ptyalin. Sugars undergo no digestion in the mouth and stomach. They are digested in the intestine. If taken alone, sugars are not held in the stomach long, but are quickly sent into the intestine. All sugars, commercial sugars, syrups, sweet fruits, honey etc.; have an inhibiting effect upon the secretion of gastric juice and upon the digestive movements of the stomach. When eaten with other foods, either proteins or starches, they are held up in the stomach for a prolonged period, awaiting the digestion of the other foods. This type of eating almost guarantees acid fermentation.

Jellies, jams, fruit pastes, white or brown sugars, honey, molasses, syrups etc.; added to breads, pastries, cereals, potatoes etc.; produce fermentation. Millions of our people eat cereals and sugar for breakfast and suffer with sour stomach, sour eructation and other evidences of indigestion. Sweet fruits with starch also result in fermentation. Breads containing dates, raisins, figs etc are dietetic abominations. If the starch is disguise with sugar, honey syrup, jams jellies etc.; this will prevent the adaptation of the saliva to starch digestion.

Bread and butter taken together cause no unpleasantness, but if sugar or jam or marmalade is added trouble may follow. Mixtures of starch and sugar invite fermentation and its attendant evils.

PROTEIN-PROTEIN COMBINATIONS
The strongest digestive juice will be poured out in the first hour with flesh, in the third hour with bread, in the last hour of digestion with milk.

Eggs receive the strongest secretion at a different time to that received by either flesh or milk. In our eating practices we habitually ignore such facts. Eggs should not be taken with flesh or milk. Recall the harm that was done to tubercular patients by feeding them the abominable combination of eggs and milk. Observe that for centuries orthodox Jews have refrained from taking flesh and milk at the same time.

Such protein combinations as flesh and eggs, flesh and nuts, flesh and cheese, eggs and milk, flesh and milk, eggs and nuts, cheese and nuts, milk and nuts etc., should not be taken. One protein food at a meal will certainly assure greater efficiency in digestion.

ACID-PROTEIN COMBINATION
Do not eat acid fruits with proteins. Oranges, tomatoes, lemons, pineapples, etc. should not be eaten with meat, eggs, cheese or nuts.

SUGAR-PROTEIN COMBINATION
Eat sugars and proteins at separate meals. When combined with other foods, either protein or starches, sugars are held up in the stomach for a prolonged period, awaiting the digestion of the other foods, and they undergo fermentation.

TAKE MILK ALONE
Due to its protein and fat (cream) content, milk combines poorly with most foods. It will combine fairly well with acid fruits.

In feeding milk to young children, a fruit meal may be fed and then half an hour afterwards milk may be given. The milk should not be given with the fruits, except in the case of acid fruits.

MILK AND CEREALS
A dish of boiled oat-meal, to which has been added milk and sugar, is one of the worst abominations that ever slipped down the human throat.

Flaked cereal foods (various types of corn flakes and other such foods) are much in use. Chemical analysis shows them to be possessed of abundant food value, though actually, they are largely charcoal. They are said to be ready-cooked and pre-digested. This is a fallacy that the public must outgrow. They are pressed between rollers at intense heat and are rendered practically valueless as foods. Wheat is the most acid- forming of the cereals. Oats seem to have the worst effect on the teeth.

Denatured cereals with pasteurised milk and white sugar is a predominantly acid forming breakfast, a horrible combination, and plenty of sickness as a result.

BREAD
We know that too much bread, if taken alone, will break down one's health. Made of cereals, largely of denatured cereals, mixed with salt, soda, yeast, lard and often other ingredients and subjected to a high degree of temperature in cooking, and then eaten three or four times a day in considerable quantities, mixed indiscriminately with all classes of foods , and taken in addition to much other starch food, bread is one of our chief sources of woe.

But the combination of bread and meat causes even more trouble. Such a diet, when fed to experimental animals resulted in high blood pressure, Bright's disease and troubles which usually accompany these conditions in man. Neither do the animals grow as they should.

POTATOES
Cereal starches require from eight to twelve times as long to digest as does potato starch. Two full hours are required to digest the starch of wheat, corn and rice, and eighty minutes to digest the starch of oats, whereas the same amount of potato starch digests in ten minutes.

VEGETARIANS
Cereal and farinaceous foods form the basis of the diet of so-called "vegetarians' who are not guided by any direct principle, except that they believe it is wrong to eat animal food. For this reason vegetarians enjoy no better health, and live no longer than those around them. Vegetarians are usually great eaters of cereals. In fact they would receive less harm from moderate amounts of meat.

Never before in history have as much cereals and refined flour been consumed since the perfection of the rolling mill process in 1879.

The continuous struggle with indigestible food mixtures and with the poisonous products of their bacterial decomposition sooner or later wears out the body.

Doris Grant describes in her book 'Food combining for health', how Dr.Hay helped countless patients overcome their diseased conditions by the healing power of the body released through compatible eating.

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