How to Never Feel Middle-Aged, EVER

We will all eventually get old and die but if you are generally healthy I promise you that you will never feel that “middle aged feeling” as others do if you follow these steps (and you don’t get struck down by some random disease, shit happens). Much of what is considered normal middle age is simply a result of not clearing out accumulated toxins over the years and enzyme depletion. Clear toxins out, add enzymes from fresh fruits and vegetables and you turn back time.  Degenerative illness is considered a normal part of aging.  It isn’t. Past 35 or so how you feel and look has everything to do with maintenance. You aren’t actually old so you shouldn’t feel old.  

The following will help prevent cancer.  This is based on a lot of reading from a lot of sources over the years of trying to cure my “incurable” Lyme and help Dad and Lu with their cancers. This is what I gleaned from it all.  Most people will thrive if they can get to step five. It is worth it since half of all men in the US will get cancer, and a third of women. I can tell you from close personal observation  it’s not a good way to go. 

STEP ONE:  ADD DON’T SUBTRACT.

Instead of thinking of healthiness as deprivation, think of all it can add to your life. At this stage you don’t need to cut any dietary items out! Just ADD FRUITS AND VEGETABLES to every meal.  Then after some time add fresh raw fruits and vegetables or freshly made juices to every meal (fruit with breakfast, salads with lunch and dinner).  Then try to make a fresh vegetable juice everyday. It is easy to add freshly squeezed orange juice to breakfast, there is no need to assemble a juicer.  Add essential fatty acids to your diet. And exercise a half hour a day at least five days a week.  It doesn’t have to be strenuous.  Walk.  Stay at this stage until you genuinely feel enthusiastic about the process.  This is easier than you think once you actually start to feel a bit better.

JUICERS: Many people can only afford a centrifugal juicer. Most of the nutrition is thrown away with this method so put the pulp through twice. The Breville is the easiest of all juicers because you don’t have to chop your produce into small pieces. Then comes the Champion. It is much more efficient than the centrifugal. Using this also put the pulp in twice. You can make apple sauces and nut butters and sorbets with this juicer.  They retail at $200.  Then come the masticating or twin-gear juicers (Green Power, Green Star). You can juice greens with this in a one step process. These retail at $500 but there’s always Ebay. Then, by far the most efficient, that is the most nutritional yield for your produce is the Norwalk. Far cheaper is buying a Champion, using the blank plate, and then pressing the pulp with a Juice Press.  These will cost you an extra $300. But if you’re really sick you’ll find a way.

STEP TWO: As your mineral deficiencies decrease your cravings for unhealthy foods will diminish.  When you can feel this process is underway, it is the time to CUT OUT NON-FOODS. Eliminate processed foods and white sugar and flour.  Start to slowly cut down on caffeine, alcohol and salt. Cut down on white rice. Quit smoking. Period. 

HOUSEHOLD and COSMETIC TOXINS and WATER: Before you bother to give up beloved foods, cut down on your exposure to environmental toxins.  Household air tends to be toxic, open the window.  If you can’t afford environmental cleaning products you can dilute rubbing alcohol, or hydrogen peroxide, or use baking soda, or white vinegar.  

Though it is still toxic, I use also bleach and water.  At least it is chemically simple.  Many household products are actually chemical soups.  These chemicals are often tested separately. But even if the combination of chemicals in one product is supposedly safe, what happens when it mixes with others? What happens when it mixes with all of the other contaminants in your body, pesticides, heavy metals etc?  I don’t know about household products but say with our pulp mill here, they have legal limits on each separate toxins.  When these are added with others, you not only end up with quantitively more toxins in the environment and your body, but since chemicals change their structure when combined, you end up with a chemical soup whose impact has never been tested.  You end up with qualitatively different chemicals.


Get the best water filter you can afford. Distillers and Reverse Osmosis with a carbon filter are best.  Get a simpler filter for your shower.  They are pretty cheap. You absorb chlorine, flouride, metals and chemicals through your skin when you bathe.

Do not use US made non-hippie (non-health food store) cosmetics. The EU has stricter controls. Their lipstick doesn’t have lead in it.  If you buy healthier “hippie” cosmetics look at the labels to see if they are really less toxic or just more expensive. You will have to educate yourself on this.  The same goes for hair dyes. The average woman takes seven pounds of chemicals a year into her skin.  And don’t even think about using anti-perspirant (regular deodorant is much better).  It blocks your bodies natural detoxification (sweat) and gives you breast cancer.

At this point you may want to take some DETOXING SHORT CUTS. To detox from diet alone is a long slow process. Honestly, the following strategies save you time. They are done more often by people more advanced on this path but you will really benefit now.  Take saunas (remove toxins through the skin), drink wheatgrasss, take water or coffee enemas, colonics, and occasional juice fasts (if not diabetic or hypoglycemic or in the case of certain cancers). In fact juice fasts are of extra help to those who can’t give up their vices, those who cheat on these dietary rules.  They can undo some of the damage. The purpose of coffee enemas is to open the bile duct and let your liver dump toxins into the intestine. Each enema must be accompanied by three fresh juices to replace mineral loss.  You fill an enema bucket to one quart or liter and try to hold for 15 minutes.  At first you won’t get it all in because you are too stopped up but that will pass.  I am just providing info for those who need it.  I know most of you find the idea gruesome, so do other things.

A note on DETOXING: As you ingest fewer toxins your body will be better able to get rid of toxins from its cells. These toxins will first pass through your bloodstream and you will feel terrible. Nausea, headaches, shaking hands, and unexplainable crying and bitchiness are some of the symptoms. Actually, any symptom the toxin produced on the way in it can produce on the way out.  

STEP THREE: Move towards a diet that is at least 70% fruits and vegetables. Though raw is preferred don’t even worry about that at this point. Eat them in any form you can stomach. After some months on this diet your body will alkalize.  It will return to its normal healthy PH. On a modern diet the body compensates for an acid constitution by stealing alkalizing minerals from your bones and tissues.  It has to, if your blood is not the right PH you die. If your body is not the right PH overall, you are susceptible to illness. Cancer and microbes grow faster in an acid environment. 

Start to eat as many organic foods as you can afford. Go to farmers markets. Join a CSA, Community Supported Agriculture farm, and order boxes of organic produce from them.  Google it to find a farm near you. L.A. farms have boxes 12 months a year. Further north there is no service in winter.  Find the organic discount products at Trader Joe’s and Grocery Outlet. 

Reduce your meat and dairy consumption. These must be organic. The further you go up the food chain the more pesticides are in the cells. Non-organic animal products are vile.  If you switch to chicken instead of red meat this only helps cholesterol and nothing else. You are eating sick animals pumped with antibiotics so they don’t die before being slaughtered.  Many of them would die soon after if you didn’t kill them first. And the days of fish are over. It was a great food. It’s contaminated with heavy metals now. The oceans are over fished. If you must eat it, avoid big fish like tuna. The smaller the fish, the fewer contaminants. 

Increase exercise.

Do not freak out when you break dietary rules. Just get back on track. Don’t feel bad and don’t think just because you break a rule you have messed up the whole process.  It is what you do most of the time that makes a long-term difference.

STEP FOUR: Replace coffee with tea and mate.  It is important these products be organic because they are usually grown in countries with weak pesticide controls, countries where US companies sell the extra chemicals that they have already produced at the time they are banned here. 

You may be able to wean yourself off antidepressants at this stage. If you do the take extra essential fatty acids.

Further cut down on drinking. First cut out hard liquor. Red wine is the healthiest alcohol.  Darker beers are higher in minerals and have a lower glycemic index. If you have a genuine desire to cut down, try a two drink rule, except on major holidays, that means once a season.  If you drink a lot (or have hypoglycemia, diabetes or candida) you must be on a low-glycemic diet. If you have Celtic ancestry taking primrose oil may help.   

And if you drink a lot and want to quit you MUST replace drinking with something else. You MUST find another way to wind down or you will fail.  This can be exercise, meditation, sex, yoga, hot tubs, saunas, steam rooms or even watching a movie.  At parties or moments of extreme anxiety try kava kava.  It is still liver toxic but it isn’t so addictive. And don’t buy it in a wimpy little tincture bottle. Get the powder. I find making Mint-Chocolate nut or soy shakes hide the taste best. At parties non-alcoholic beer and wine can blunt the psychological blow (Klaustaler Amber beer and Ariel Blanc wine were the only drinkable ones I found).  

Seriously cut down or cut out any other remaining vices.  

Cut down on cooked oils. If you must cook an oil make it coconut or palm. Their chemical structure changes less with heat. Rely on cold-pressed olive oil, avocados, nuts, flax and heavy metal free fish oil for fats.  

Increase your consumption of raw foods. They are rich in enzymes. Cooked food has NO enzymes at all.  Raw foods are alive and you will feel alive if you eat them in high quantities. Did you ever make a battery out of a raw potato in science class. You can’t make one out of a cooked potato, it has no electricity. If you want to feel electrified eat it raw. It sounds like hippie bullshit but I say this from personal experience. If I eat only raw I sleep two hours less a day.  A TRICK: If you up the number of fresh juices you drink you can dramatically increase your consumption of raw without having to cut out as many familiar cooked foods.  You will begin to crave more raw foods naturally, just as it has learned to ask for healthier foods as you have progressed on this diet. 

You can retrain your body. Say your body needs a certain mineral that you only eat in a denatured from. In this case you crave the unhealthy thing. If you begin to eat a better source of said nutrient, your body will actually prefer it.  They say that salt cravings come from mineral deficiencies. 

At this point you should be able to wean yourself off any high blood pressure or cholesterol medication

Find out if you have any food allergies or gluten sensitivity. If you can’t afford the tests and suspect either do a rotating elimination diet. If you have digestive problems see if cutting out gluten helps and add acidophilus. Actually, everyone needs acidophilus. 

Keep in mind which foods are higher in sugars and starches and make sure you don’t overeat them.

Believe it or not, this should be a joyous process. As you progress you feel better and by testing your own will power you feel more powerful.  You now have greater control over your life.

If you have reached this point, your cancer risk has been dramatically decreased, and your system is alkaline.  So your middle age will be energetic if you don’t already have a disease and don’t have really bad luck. Most people won’t get past this point and that’s okay.  This is enough.  Be patient, you will notice some positive changes right away but deeper healing can take years. 

For those who stay here and don’t proceed the Woody Harrelson rule can be useful, go totally raw when you have the flu or a cold and you will get over it more quickly. Then return to your normal diet. Some people go raw when they want to cleanse and then go back to normal. 

If you ever get really sick or want to feel even better then proceed further. 

STEP SIX: DRAMATICALLY INCREASE RAW, DECREASE COOKED  

Eventually at least 75% of your should be raw. Move towards this goal slowly so you don’t freak out and go off the wagon completely.  If you move too fast you can end up in front of the TV with a half gallon of ice cream. If you can afford it take digestive enzymes with cooked foods.  Enzyme depletion makes you old. 

Personally, I find eating under 75% raw sad and depressing.  I feel gross.  I would have never thought I could truly adapt to such a diet, but I am finally comfortable around 75-90% raw. I have eaten this way for 20 months altogether, if you add everything up between falling off the wagon several times.  The first time I went raw for six months and then started drinking alcohol and eating random things (though vegan). It happens, just get back on track. Then I tried again and again until I actually got used to it. I have heard stories of many people going raw for a year and then eating pizza and never returning to the diet. It’s better to go slowly and stick with it for the long haul. 

At this point consumption of animal products should be minimal if at all.  Cut out ALL cooked oils.

Eventually, do regular juice fasts. Twice a month for a day, or one weekend a month. Or a few days every season. Think of it as spring cleaning.

The last bit of cooked food is hard to quit for social reasons, and because cooked grains are more appetizing than strange dehydrated crackers.  If you don’t have cancer, this is enough though.  Most people will eventually feel great on this diet.  Presently I am technically 75% raw because I consume such high quantities of juices. I eat a lot of cooked foods for the soft bulk, so I don’t throw up the intense Gerson juices.  It is amazing how much of a margin of error juicing buys you.

STEP SEVEN: For the hard core, and probably years into the process, one becomes 100% organic raw vegan.

Not all raw foods are equal. You can still eat too much salt, (Braggs, Himalayan and Celtic Sea Salt), sugar (agave, high glycemic fruits such as dates, grapes and bananas).  It is always better to add more greens. And of course you need to customize your diet with your particular health problems and constitution. Hybridized foods are bred to be higher in sugars. If it doesn’t have seeds it is hybridized. If it can’t reproduce itself it is deficient. Learn which foods are closer to their original wild version.  

For the even more hard core than that, one eventually juice fasts once a week (except under the conditions I have mentioned), or a week every season. 

If you are seriously ill this is nowhere near enough. Refer to the Ann Wigmore Institute or Hippocrates Institute or the Gerson Institute.  They try to get you to spend a lot of money on their courses but you can figure it out from books.  One similar center in the mid-west sells written copies of their lectures. Hippocrates sells DVDS and CDs  In short, you need massive quantities of greens to get better. Hippocrates does this with wheat grass. Or you can choose the Gerson therapy as I have.  Though this involves a lot of cooked food, but you down far more raw foods than a 100% raw foodists by drinking 10-13 fresh juices a day with a Norwalk-type juicer that is extra efficient in extracting nutrients. (Never combine intense detoxing with chemo, it can kill you.)