Become Younger
Tune Your Mind and Body, by Dr. Norman Walker, D.Sc., Prescott, AZ: Norwalk Press, 1949/1978/1995.
Page Contents
Review
Sample Chapter
Quotes
Review
This book about digestion and metabolism is invaluable for everybody, but perhaps even more invaluable for a vegetarian or vegan who wants to learn more about the functioning of the various organs of the body and how food can either do good to it or wreak havoc with it. A wealth of medical information is packed into this book, but wrapped in a language that you and me can understand.
It is no minor feat that this book was reprinted from 1949 to 1995, each and every year. I do not know any other book that has done so, except the Bible.
I pondered long which chapter to display here as the sample chapter, as there is so much important information in all of them, but finally I decided to take a matter that is problematic for many people in our modern culture, and was for me as a child when very badly fed in a home, neglected, beaten, abused virtually every day. The pain I suffered from constipation was as cruel as the beatings or being locked up in the cold cellar for hours without end.
Since I am a vegetarian, from 1989, I have had not a single incidence of constipation. And since I am juicing vegetables and fruits, from 2014, I have no more diarrhea, which was such a frequent ailment since 2004, the year I moved to Cambodia.
There is definitely a wisdom in Dr. Walker’s books that is hardly anywhere else to find. For example, did you know that vinegar and pepper are very harmful to the body, and that you can easily replace vinegar by lemon juice for your salad dressings — and otherwise can drop the ingestion of pepper altogether? I will elucidate all those points in the Quotes section.
Sample Chapter
Chapter 20: Constipation
The pace of modern living is responsible for the most prolific ailment of the present day, namely: premature old age.
Constipation is undoubtedly the most important contributing factor in the premature aging of men and women.
There are two crimes against nature which present day civilization indulges in as a daily routine, which beget this, the most common and popular of our ailments, constipation. One is neglecting to nourish the organs responsible for the evacuation or elimination of waste matter. The other is neglecting to stop everything we are doing when the urge to evacuate the bowels should drive us headlong into the bathroom.
Very few people understand what takes place after the food has gone through the stomach and small intestines, and reaches the lower intestine or the colon. Parent are negligent when they fail, from their own lack of knowledge, to teach children why their prompt attention to bowel evacuation is extremely important. (…)
One of the thousands of x-rays of the colons of different people, men, women, and children, the only ones I have ever seen that approach the lines of a normal colon have been those of children born of women who practiced our program of diet and cleanings before the children were born, and continued the practice with the children while they were growing up.
You can collect a vast amount of information and facts over a period of 40 or 50 years, if you pursue a research with diligence and perseverance. I have collected more x-rays of colons than would like the walls and ceilings of a sizable house. The recurrent outlines of various parts of the colon in relative ailments has been one of the most amazing of my studies.
I have made a sketch of what would be considered a more or less normal outline of a truly healthy colon. I would like to have you study this very carefully. Note particularly the names of the various parts of the anatomy, of the glands and of ailments, with arrows pointing to the general location with which these are related.
If a person has eaten mostly cooked foods, living on the type of food that is served in most homes and restaurants, his colon cannot possibly be efficient, even though he may have a bowel movement 2 or 3 times a day. Instead of furnishing nourishment to the nerves and muscles, cells and tissues of the walls of the colon, cooked foods actually cause starvation to the colon. A starved colon may let a lot of fecal matter pass through it, but it is unable to carry on the last of the digestive and nourishing processes and functions intended for it.
The fiber which is so essential for the proper and complete digestion of our food is needed in the colon just as much as in the small intestine. Such fiber, however, must be composed of the fibers or roughage of the raw foods. When these fibers pass through the intestines they become, figuratively speaking, highly magnetized and in this condition are very helpful in the peristaltic, or wave-like motions of the intestines, as well as in the processes and functions involved in the various parts of the intestines.
When food is cooked, however, these fibers become completely demagnetized and in this state pass through the system with little or no benefit. Eventually, experience has proved, these foods leave a coating on the inner walls of the colon like plaster on the wall. In the course of time this coating may gradually increase its thickness until there is only small hole through the center. When this occurs, the victim may be totally unaware of it, and go happily having many passages of feces, one, two, or three times a day. He does not know that he is actually chronically constipated, as a matter so evacuated may contain much undigested food from which he derives little or no benefit. Sooner or later this collapse is virtually certain, and he may die happily in the illusion that his elimination was ‘regular,’ not realizing that the contributing factor to his demise was actually chronic constipation.
The better known constipation is that which manifests as the slowing down or completely stoppage of bowel movements. This particular type is so common that billions of dollars’ worth of laxatives and cathartics are advertised in print and on the air every day of our lives. Only the other day a chain drug store ran at a tremendous expense a full-page advertisement in the Los Angeles papers advertising a laxative under the heading: How to Learn to Live Again!
Undoubtedly this colossal expense was incurred in many other cities, because people who are constipated usually do not want to do any thinking for themselves and will flit from one remedy to the next with the fervent hope they will not have to resort to dynamite or some other explosive in the end.
The laxative and analogous trades have skillfully spread propaganda to the effect that enemas and colonic irrigations are harmful for some fantastic reason or another, and that they are habit forming. This as a matter of proven fact is absolutely false. On the other hand we have found without exception that the use of laxatives and cathartics is not only habit forming, but decidedly destructive to the membrane of the intestines.
If waste matter has accumulated in the colon, and the bowel does not expel it in a natural manner, it means one of two things: the passage is thoroughly clogged up, or the membrane or walls are so flaccid, feeble, and impotent that loops may have formed or the channel may have doubled upon itself, preventing the free passage of the feces.
What happens when a laxative appears in the colon? It does not cause a resumption of the peristalsis. It irritates the nerves and muscles in the colon. These are lashed into a convulsion which attempts to expel the irritant and in doing so of course some of the feces is expelled with it. If the peristaltic function is missing, failing or dormant, only an irritant would cause such a convulsion in the colon. There I would not expect to find any laxative which is not an irritant, any claims to the contrary nonwithstanding.
If I had seen only a few colonic irrigations give successful results, I would have justified in withholding my judgment in regard to their efficacy. Having seen literally thousands of them, all giving results which no laxative or cathartic could give, I must admit that I am dumbfounded whenever anyone questions their value or efficacy. As a matter of fact long ago I arrived at the conclusion that no treatment of any ailment, sickness or disease could be effective unless and until the waste matter had been washed out of the colon by means of colonic irrigations, if available, or enemas if they were not available.
Of course there is a great difference between colonic systems and their operation. The operator should be a person trained in anatomy and particularly in the irregularities likely to be encountered in the infinite varieties of colons. I have found that no inorganic material whatever should be placed in the water. If anything were needed I would use the strained juice of lemons, for example, which helps to neutralize the excessive acidity likely to be present in the fecal impactions of the colon.
There is a difference between the excessive acidity of the contents of the colon and the acid-alkaline ration throughout the system. Dr. D.C. Jarvis, M.D., has done invaluable research on this subject which, in conjunction with fresh raw vegetable juices, I have found to be of inestimable value in gaining and maintaining a maximum of health and energy. He recommends, and I have found very beneficial, the daily use of a combination of 2 tablespoonfuls of apple cider vinegar and 2 teaspoonfuls of honey in a glass of water. Get Dr. Jarvis’ book ‘Arthritis and Folk Medicine’ and study particularly this subject on pages 78 and 79 (Edition 1960).
It takes an average of from three quarters of an hour to a whole hour to give a good colonic. Almost any machine will do the work well enough, always provided of course that the operator is efficient. I have found that an x-ray of the colon is an invaluable aid to the operator. With it one can work intelligently, as it gives the key to the kind and type of treatment which will be most effective. Furthermore, having studied the x-ray and compared it to the ‘normal’ colon which I have sketched in this chapter, you can yourself figure out what the most important dysfunctions are which have to be corrected.
In studying your x-ray you may find it to contain some fantastic contortions. Don’t become alarmed by them. Pretty nearly everybody has them. Just study them from the point of view that it has taken all these years for it to get into that shape and condition. You cannot therefore expect to correct it in 24 hours, or even in a year. Realize that you intent to become younger, that you have to work long and hard to achieve that goal, and that the straightening out and correcting the condition of your colon will help you every bit as much as going on the right diet and drinking your vegetable juices.
It would take volumes to go completely into the subject of constipation, its cause and how to remedy it. I do not have the space here at my disposal to do complete justice to this vital and extremely important subject. However there are many angles that must be covered, even though I may do no more than touch the high spots.
One can never be sure that one is not constipated, even when one seems to have several bowel movements daily. I would like to give you the record which I have here before me, of a young woman in her late 20s. She had suffered epileptic seizures regularly every month, since her menstrual periods began when she was about 13 years old. No orthodox treatment helped, and no hospital or therapeutic clinic gave the slightest relief. Her family brought her to meet me and I advised taking her to a Nature Doctor for a series of colonic irrigations. It was suggested that she take a colonic every day, 6 days a week, for 5 or 6 weeks. Her family objected, at first, on the ground that the young lady was not constipated but on the contrary was exceedingly regular in her evacuations. When an x-ray of the colon was made, however, for the first time in her life, I could see many disturbances, not the least of which was every indication that there were worms present. She began taking colonics. Each day there appeared through the colonic glass indicator tube little more than some feces and some strings of mucus, until, after the second or the third week her father and the rest of the family began to suspect there was nothing to this system except the money he was paying out. I convinced him that the colonics should continue for the agreed period and he consented. One day, during the 5th week, the young woman sat suddenly upright on the table and in a minute or two passed a mass of worms as large as my fist. During the next few days a few more worms passed out and she began to feel — as she put it — that she had been lifted ‘out of the depths.’ The daily colonics were then discontinued, but she took one every week thereafter for several weeks.
Her epileptic seizures vanished completely with the expulsion of the worms, and when I saw her again a year or two ago, 10 or 12 years since I first met her, there had been no recurrence of her trouble, and she looked not one day older than the first time I saw her. Naturally, throughout all that time, she had followed my program of a raw diet and vegetable juices.
Another instance is that of a young man who was discharged from the army. Before induction his bowels moved regularly and he had more strength and energy than he knew what to do with. After the injections and inoculations he received under the army medical regulations, his bowel movement became very irregular and he gradually lost energy and ambition. He lost weight, notwithstanding the fact that he developed a voracious, gluttonous appetite which he seemed unable to satisfy. He took a series of colonic irrigations, after the x-ray of his colon was explained to him. He took one daily, and at the end of 3 weeks he passed a huge tape-worm and a mass of smaller ones. For about a week thereafter he was very much nauseated, but the judicious use of vegetable and fruit juices soon bought back his appetite, and with it he regained much strength and energy.
One of the dangers of letting waste matter accumulate in the colon is the absorption, principally while we sleep, of poisons which are generated as a result of putrefaction. Carbolic acid is one and indol is another. These two are probably the most serious, as they result in headaches and lassitude, to begin with, and may eventually develop into biliousness, paralysis or the intestines and peritonitis. A deficiency of hydrochloric acid secretion in the digestive system is also a condition resulting from the presence of indol. You can readily understand why these conditions respond so readily to colonic irrigations as part of the treatment to remedy them.
The function of the colon is not merely to expel waste from the system. The first part, or ascending colon, must absorb all the liquid and the elements which the small intestine failed or was unable to collect. For this purpose it mulches the material which passes into it through its walls into the blood stream. By the time the residue reaches the hepatic flexure, or the uppermost part of the ascending colon, it becomes somewhat more dense, and passes into the transverse colon. With a little more similar treatment here it finally becomes feces and is ready for evacuation through the descending colon.
Once the walls of the ascending colon become coated, they obviously cannot carry on the final processing of the food we eat. The consequent result is a starvation of which we are not conscious but which causes old age to race towards us with the throttle wide open.
An impacted ascending colon is therefore a definite cause of constipation. But it can also and at the same time become the cause of chronic diarrhea. This sounds like a contradiction in terms, but let me give you just one of several instances which have come under my direct notice.
It is the case of a woman who had been afflicted with very severe diarrhea for 6 or 7 years, without any relief. She was also troubled with inability to urinate. Much too frequently she would have the urge to urinate, but could discharge no more than a few drops at a time. She submitted to drugs, medicines, and injections any time she was told she could obtain relief but to no avail. She had been given enough ‘shots’ to kill a rhinoceros, and every one made her more sick than ever.
She consulted a doctor friend of mine who asked me to give him my opinion. I thought, by her looks, that she must be about 55 to 60 years old, but her ‘case card’ gave her age as 42. As soon as I a saw her I told my friend that if I were in his place I would immediately start giving her colonic irrigations. Both he and his patient laughed at the very thought of such a procedure. However, we took an x-ray, which confirmed my suspicion, and he finally agreed to try some colonics, although still declaring that a colonic was intended for a stoppage of the bowel and not for such a copious running-off.
In less than 6 colonics she expelled some 15 points of stale fecal matter. Her diarrhea then gradually ceased and the removal of the fecal impactions which were crowding the colon against the bladder enabled the passage of the urine become normal.
Needless to say most of the strain which made her face look so old, disappeared, and before long she was looking more like a 42 year old.
I never lose an opportunity to emphasize the fact that unless we know definitely what the condition of our colon is, as indicated in the outline of two or more x-rays, we cannot afford to deceive ourselves into ‘thinking’ that it is alright. Several bowel movements a day are not a sufficient indication that all is well, if we are eating foods that are cooked or processed. Even on a rigid program such a mine, we cannot afford to overlook the possibility that elimination of waste may not be perfect. We are living at too fast a tempo to gamble on wishful thinking. The very speed of present day existence, with all the concomitant civilized programs, conspires to age us prematurely. We must therefore constantly watch ourselves, if we would become younger.
Not the least of our troubles in connection with the condition of our colon is the generation of gas. Here again we are hemmed in by conventions and proprieties which cause us to retain and reabsorb toxic gases which should be expelled the moment we have the urge to do so. Of course when people around around us this is neither possible nor gracious. However, the use of enemas has been very helpful to reduce the development of gas.
By observation we can often learn which foods create more gas than others and by avoiding them for a while gas can often be reduced to a minimum.
You may be interested in the case of a little lady whose age I would judge to be around 50, although she may not have been any older than 40. I never asked her age, but she had a son who was 18 years old. She was having a great deal of trouble in the abdominal region. She would bloat until it would seem that the skin would break. The doctors she went to wanted to ‘tap’ her to remove what they thought was water. She had one movement of the bowel regularly — every other day. No one had every told her to take enemas or colonic irrigations. She was extremely nervous and was constantly on the border of hysteria. Urged to take daily colonics for a week or two, she passed pint after pint of solid, hard, foul smelling feces which gave every indication of having been stored in her system 20 years or more. I examined some of these particles under the microscope and counted millions of gas forming bacteria. During the two first weeks of her colonics she expelled vast volumes of gas in addition to more than 2 gallons of this hard, stale fecal matter.
I am thoroughly convinced that the greatest friend of a constipated colon is starchy food. Starches are the most prolific media for the propagation of gas forming bacteria. If I wanted to generate great volumes of gas in my system I would start with some toast (white, whole wheat, soy or any other kind) or hot cakes for breakfast, donuts and coffee for lunch, and noodles, spaghetti, cake etc., for dinner. I know I would also become beautifully constipated on such food. Furthermore, I know perfectly well that on such food I would never to expect to become younger.
At one of my lectures a little old lady heard me hold forth against starches, toast and everything of that kind. During the question period she stood up and proudly said: ‘I toast my bread in the oven until it is thoroughly dry and hard. Isn’t that much better?’ I answered: ‘My dear lady, neither one is good for you; however if you make toast out of your bread, when you throw it out of your window it will go much farther than the slice of bread would.’
Bread is already a dead, lifeless food. To toast it, ever so thoroughly, just helps to make it still more dead. To speed up the approach of old age, use dead, lifeless food.
To become younger, however, eat food that is raw, vital and nourishing.
There is quite an important difference between an enema and a colonic irrigation. It is virtually impossible to wash out the colon completely by means of an enema. A colonic on the other hand is administered while the patient is lying more or less relaxed on a table or cabinet while the operator does all the work. The average individual enema uses about 2 quarts of water. When this has been injected and expelled, of course one can refill it as often as wanted or needed. This involves getting up, sitting down and moving around, all of which under the circumstances is quite beneficial. A colonic enables the operator to inject as much water at a time as is necessary to wash out each part of the colon in turn, letting the water be expelled and more injected without any effort on the part of the patient. In this manner the operator can use many gallons of water, injecting of course only a few ounces at one time, in one continuous treatment for three quarters of an hour to one whole hour.
In the enema, the temperature of the water is unchanged during each fill or refill of the container, whereas in the colonic the operator can control the temperature at will for any part of the treatment, thus obtaining results which only a change in the temperature of the water can give.
However, I consider an enema outfit even more important than a tooth brush, whether at home or while traveling. Also there are many times when a colonic is neither practical nor possible to obtain, and an enema will help at all times. If you wish to form in your mind an idea of the value of enemas, just look at or listen to the advertising of remedies for headache, fatigue, backache and instead of the fizzy product, tablet or pill advertised for the purpose, substitute enemas. You will have a natural remedy to help the situation, instead of something that is guaranteed to dull, numb or deaden the nerves temporarily, with subsequent troubles not mentioned.
In extreme cases any remedial substance may be better than a period of agony, but even in such circumstances I have found enemas invaluable.
The difference between a plan enema and a colonic irrigation is the type of equipment that is used and how it works.
Enema equipment consists of: 1 water bottle; 1 adapter; 1 long tubing; 1 shut-off clamp; and 1 enema pipe. For enema use: fill the bottle with warm water, attach the adapter to the bottle, then side on the rubber tubing with the shut-off clamp on it. Slip the enema pipe onto the other end of the tubing. Apply lubricating jelly to enema pipe and suspend the bag less than 3 feet above the hips. (Be sure to release the clamp to expel air in the tubing before inserting the enema pipe). When in position, insert the lubricated enema into the rectum and open the shut-off clamp to permit water to flow. By doing this several times, or until the water expelled by the colon is clear, takes approximately an hour to wash out the first 18" of colon.
If we begin to feel any discomfort, cramps, or a feeling of fullness after the water has been flowing in, it is best to stop the flow of the water, withdraw the tube, and expel the water, etc., in the toilet bowl, even though we have not used all or much of the water in the bag or can. When we feel that we have evacuated all that is ready to be expelled, we can get up and refill the bag or can by adding plain water at the desired temperature, lubricating the tube once more, and taking an enema all over again.
A little practice by taking a few enemas as and when needed or desired will soon teach us the most satisfactory procedure for our individual case. I consider the use of enemas extremely important in our efforts to ward off old age and in our program to become younger.
It is a good practice to remember to clean both the bag and the tube with warm water and soap, and thoroughly rinse them with cold water before putting them away.
However, a colon irrigation is usually done by a licensed colonic therapist trained especially to do colonic irrigations. Using a stainless steel instrument which attaches to two surgical latex hoses (one is small in size and is attached to a larger container filled with filtered water for best results, and one which is larger in size and goes directly into the waste drain). The client lays on their left side with their knees drawn up and the therapist inserts the instrument to the rectum. Then the therapist allows the water to start flowing, entering and exiting the colon. By administering small amounts of water at a time, the therapist can gradually increase the amount of water until the entire colon is washed. The client is initially placed on their left side, and then turns onto their back and a gentle massage of the abdomen is done to help facilitate the removal of feces. The client is then returned to their left side for removal of the instrument and to use the bathroom. The irrigation lasts approximately 30 minutes.
Colonic irrigations are more widely used today than ever before. It takes approximately 15 enemas to do what one properly administered colonic will do.
