The power of live foods for healing is being more and more supported by traditional research. On the basis of recent journal articles, a calorie-restricted diet and upgraded gene expression (which come automatically with live foods) have become keys to understanding the clinical effectiveness of live foods.

The essence of understanding living foods is “if it isn’t broken, don’t fix it.” Living foods, or raw foods, are those that have not been cooked, processed, “pesticided” or “herbicided,” microwaved, irradiated, or genetically engineered. They represent an unbroken wholeness that is the original creation and nutritional gift of the divine. The understanding that the food we eat is an energetic whole greater than the sum of the parts reflects a quantum physics view of nutrition.

Research by Dr. Brekhman of the former Soviet Union illustrates a foundational truth about the power of live foods. When he gave whole, live foods to animals, their endurance was two to three times greater than if he gave them the same caloric value of food after it had been cooked. Brekhman’s results can be explained, however, if we understand the effect of cooking on the whole food. Cooking not only destroys the ecological balance of the food, it makes 50 percent of the protein unavailable, destroys 60 to 70 percent of the vitamins, up to 96 percent of the B12, and 100 percent of phytonutrients such as gibberellins, anthrocyans, polyphenols, nobelitin, and tangeretin, which boost the immune system and other bodily functions. Cooking foods also disrupts the bioelectrical structure, the bioelectricity transfer power, and the bioluminescence. All these factors are important for building and maintaining our life force energy and health.

The famous European physician Dr. Bircher-Brenner, who started the first modern live food clinic in 1897, felt that eating raw foods was a way of restoring the diseased body and the mind’s ability to heal itself. Many healers have gotten fantastic results using living foods with their clients: Dr. Gerson, who healed Dr. Albert Schweitzer of diabetes and Schweitzer’s wife of tuberculosis, healed hundreds of documented cancer cases with live foods and published a book about it in 1958 called A Cancer Therapy: Results of Fifty Cases; Dr. Szekeley saw over 133,000 clients at his live food clinic in Mexico over a thirty-year period from 1940 to 1970 with impressive results; Ann Wigmore has success at her clinics; and the next generation, including the Tree of Life Rejuvenation Center (www.treeoflife.nu), has made the next step by using live foods not only for healing of physical disease, but for repairing mental and emotional imbalances and as a way to actively enhance spiritual life.

Cooking destroys enzymes in live foods. Enzyme reserves seem to be connected to life force, health, and longevity. There are natural enzymes in raw food that minimize the enzymes that need to be secreted by the body for digestion. The body’s enzymes can then be converted and used for the process of detoxification, repair, and overall healing.

People have been eating live foods for thousands of years. Ancient cultures primarily ate live foods; for example, the inner circle Essenes, who were reported to be on live foods, seem to have had an extended life span of approximately 120 years and enjoyed a higher quality of health, vitality, and joy. In summary, live foods have the highest amount of bioactive food nutrients, phytonutrients, bioelectrical energy, biologically active water, and electrons and the most energized and organized subtle organizing energy fields.

The foods that we eat, or don’t eat, communicate with our genes—for better or for worse. What we put into our bodies does not change the genotype, which is the physical structure of the genes, but the foods we eat do change the way the message in the genes is expressed in the phenotype. In other words, the genetic messages of our genes can be either turned off or turned on by the nature of our diets and lifestyles. What we eat and how we live directly affects our optimal phenotypic expression. An important corollary to this is that genes do not give rise to disease, but disease arises when lifestyle and diet alter the gene expression in a way that creates disease.

What we eat affects how we think and feel because it affects the genes that regulate how we think and feel. Well-documented journal research, for example, shows that alcohol decreases the healthy expression and production of endorphins, GABA, dopamine, noradrenaline, acetylcholine receptor sites, and various other central nervous system agents. In other words, not only what we eat, but how we live and the stresses we create, directly affect gene expression. The significance of this is that through proper living, diet, fasting, lifestyle, exercise, and emotional, mental, and spiritual development, we have the opportunity to activate our youthing genes.

Diets that are high in fruits and vegetables are very high in phytonutrients, which include a variety of antioxidants, carotenes, vitamin E, vitamin C, phenolic compounds, and terpenoids that specifically turn on not only anticancer genes, but antiaging genes and anti-inflammation genes.

In the author’s experience, there are three main dietary practices that greatly increase the youthing process: undereating (calorie restriction), veganism, and live food nutrition (a natural form of calorie restriction) and spiritual fasting. Dr. Stephen R. Spindler, professor of biochemistry at the University of California, Riverside, did research with calorie restriction using gene technology. His results give some deep insight into why live foods are such a powerful healing and rejuvenating dietary approach. He studied the expression of eleven thousand genes in the livers of young normally fed and calorie-restricted mice. He found a 400 percent increase in the activation of antiaging with a 40 percent calorie restriction. He found that there was a fourfold increase with short-term caloric restriction and a 2.5-fold increase with long-term caloric restriction in the activation of antiaging. He was able to reproduce this 95 percent of the time. Dr. Spindler’s research is perhaps the first to show that caloric restriction could actually turn on the youthing genes and literally reverse the aging process. The research showed that calorie restriction seemed to quickly decrease the amount of inflammation and stress, even in older animals, and suggests not only an increase in antiaging gene activity, but also in anticancer, antistress, and anti-inflamation. These four points directly apply to the healing and rejuvenating effects of live foods.

Calorie restriction happens naturally and safely with a live food diet. According to the Max Planck Institute, when we cook foods, we lose 50 percent of protein, 70–80 percent of vitamins and minerals, and 95 percent or more of phytonutrients. By simple mathematics, we only need to eat 50 percent of the calories on a live food diet versus a cooked diet. Therefore a live food diet is a natural form of calorie restriction that turns on the antiaging, anticancer, and anti-inflamation genes. This is a powerful insight and scientific explanation for the youthing and health effects of a properly eaten live food diet that the author has observed in thousands of patients since 1983.

There are many levels to understanding the healing and rejuvenating power of live foods, but the simplest way to understand raw foods is “if it isn’t broken, don’t fix it.”

** This article is one of 101 great articles that were published in 101 Great Ways to Improve Your Health. To get complete details on “101 Great Ways to Improve Your Health”, visit http://selfgrowth.com/healthbook3.html

Author's Bio: 

Gabriel Cousens, MD, MD (H), DD, diplomat of the American Board of Holistic Medicine, diplomat in Ayurveda, is the founder and director of the Tree of Life Foundation and the Tree of Life Rejuvenation Center in Patagonia, Arizona. Gabriel is the leading medical authority in the world on live food nutrition and uses the modalities of nutrition, naturopathy, Ayurveda, homeopathy, psychiatry, and family therapy blended with spiritual awareness in the healing of body, mind, and spirit. He is a best-selling author of many books, including Spiritual Nutrition, Conscious Eating, Rainbow Green Live-Food Cuisine, Sevenfold Peace, and Depression-Free for Life. He facilitates the spiritual, nutritional, and lifestyle support teleseminars, “Alive with Gabriel.” His next book, There Is a Cure for Diabetes: The Tree of Life 21-Day Program is due to be released on January 8, 2008.