25 Feb LIVE FOOD

The Power of live foods for healing is being more & more supported by traditional research. Based on recent journal articles the power of a calorie restricted diet (which is still feasting on live foods) and of upgrading gene expression have become keys to understanding the clinical effectiveness of live foods.

The essence of understanding living foods is … if it is not broken, don’t fix it. Living foods or raw foods are those, which have not been cooked, processed, “pesticide” or “herbicide”, micro waved, 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 mechanics view of nutrition.
Research by Dr. Brekhman of the former Soviet Union illustrates a foundational truth – when he gave whole, live foods to animals, their endurance was 2-3 times greater than if he gave them the same foods after they had been cooked. From a traditional nutritional perspective there should not be a difference since cooked and raw foods have the same amount of calories and therefore the same amount of energy. Brekhman’s results can be explained, however, if we understand the effect of cooking on the whole food. Thorough cooking destroys the ecological balance of the food. It makes 50% of the protein unavailable, destroys 60-70% of the vitamins, up to 96% of the B12, and 100% of phytonutrients such as: gibberellins, anthrocyans, nobelitin, and tangeretin which boost the immune system and other body functions. Cooking foods also disrupts the bioelectrical structure, the bioelectricity transfer power, and the bioluminescence. All of 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. One of the most famous was Dr. Gerson who healed Dr. Albert Schweitzer of diabetes and Schweitzer’s wife of TB. Dr. Gerson 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 30 year period from 1940-1970. With the use of live foods he healed 90% of his patients, of which 17% were considered incurables. Later came Ann Wigmore and her clinics, and then the next generation including the Tree of Life Rejuvenation Center and The Whole Person Healing centre Drogheda which has made the next step by using live foods not only for healing of physical disease, but as a way to actively enhance spiritual life.
Cooking destroys enzymes in live foods. Enzyme reserve seems to be connected to life force, health, and longevity. Enzymes are living biochemical factors that activate and carry out all the biological processes in the body such as digestion, nerve impulses, detoxification processes, functioning of RNA/DNA, repair and healing of the body, and even the functioning of the mind. There are natural enzymes in raw food, which minimize the enzymes that need to be secreted by the body for digestion. The body’s enzymes can then be converted and be used for the process of detoxification, repair, and overall healing. The preservation of our enzymes by eating live foods seems to play an important role in slowing the aging process. With age there seems to be a significant drop in enzyme reserve.
Cooking our food may also change the molecular structure of its components and consequently impair our health. For example, researchers found that Eskimos eating about two pounds of raw blubber a day had no heart disease or atherosclerosis. When this same community of Eskimos began eating the same amount of cooked blubber, they developed high rates of heart disease and atherosclerosis. Other researchers have since found that cooking fats changes their molecular structure in a way that disrupts cell structure and impairs cellular function.

There has been some interesting research to validate Dr. Bircher-Brenner’s insights. Dr. Hans Eppinger of the First Medical Clinic at the University of Vienna found that with a disease process, the micro-electrical potential of the cells would decrease and the ability of chronically diseased people to absorb nutrients and excrete toxins would be diminished. He found that live foods were the only type of food that could restore the micro-electrical potential of the cells. The electrical potential of our tissues and cells is a direct result of the aliveness of our cells. Live foods enhance the electrical potential in cells, between cells, at the interface of the cells, and with the microcapillary electrical charge. When cells have the proper micro electrical potential, they have the increased power they require to rid themselves of toxins, and maintain their selective capacity to absorb appropriate nutrients and oxygen supply.
Eppinger’s work correlates with that of Dr. Kollath’s from Sweden. Dr. Kollath found that when he fed animals the typical cooked food of a Western affluent diet; they developed what he called, “meso-health”. This is a condition in which the animals looked to be as healthy as the animals living on their raw food diet, but that they had less resistance and developed chronic, degenerative diseases at an earlier age than the live food animals. He found that the ingestion of raw food was able to restore their health and slow the rapid aging process, whereas giving them specific vitamin and mineral doses could not effect a significant change in the process of reversing them from meso-health to vibrant health.
People have been eating live foods for thousands of years. Cultures who have eaten primarily live foods such as the Pelegasians (ancient Greeks living in the peleponesus area in 3000 B.C., reported by Herodotus to live an average of 200 years) and the Essenes seem to have an extended life span, 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, electrons, and most energized and organized SOEF’s (subtle organizing energy fields).
The foods that we eat, or don’t eat, communicate with our genes – for better or for worse. Foods do 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 diet and our lifestyle. The point is to understand how to turn off messages that result in disease and turn on messages which result in health and well being. What we eat and how we live directly affects our optimal phenotypic expression. An important corollary to this is: genes do not give rise to disease, but disease rises when lifestyle and diet alters the gene expression in a way that creates disease.
Diet and Genetic Expression
The type of food we eat has been shown by research to also affect a particular DNA expression. For example, the activation of fat production and of fatty acid synthesis is brought about by switching from a high-fat, low-carbohydrate diet to a low-fat, high-carbohydrate diet. Eating a high-carbohydrate diet is definitely accompanied by an increase in circulating insulin levels. It appears that increased insulin levels increase the transcriptional rate that produces fatty-acid synthetase and activates other lipogenic genes. Insulin is a powerful effecter on gene expression. Insulin treatment results in a rapid increase of fatty acid synthase, mRNA, and gene transcription. Within six hours of insulin administration, the DNA of animals was induced to create a level of production that was observable in previously fasted mice put on a low-fat, high carbohydrate diet. Polyunsaturated fats of the n-3 and n-6 families were found to suppress hepatic mRNA levels of several lipogenic genes. These polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) work on the level of gene production
Alcohol and Genetic Expression

Alcohol creates is an example of a negative or down grading of our gene expression. It seems to affect many of the gene expressions within the central nervous system. Several studies have shown that chronic alcohol exposure alters the expression of both the NR1 and NR2 gene units. This is the area of the brain where many changes of the MDMA receptors sub-unit messages of the messenger RNA and protein are observed. The MDMA receptor sites are called glutamate-N-methyl-T-aspartic acid. The overall picture of the research suggests that alcohol affects the regulation of the MDMA receptor sub-unit genes, which may actually contribute to alcohol withdrawal-related central nervous system hyper-excitability. There is also a substantial amount of evidence that suggests that acute and chronic alcohol use affects the GABA receptor system It has also been established that the GABAA receptor sub-unit genes are associated with alcohol. Alcohol affects the GABAA receptor sub-unit gene expression sites and several brain regions including the cerebral cortex, the cerebellum and hippocampus. In other words, research shows that GABAA receptor sub-unit gene expressions are sensitive to alcohol manipulation.

GABA is associated with the valium receptor sites in the brain and is a neurotransmitter suppressor unit system in the brain for calming the system. Alcohol also affects glycine, which is an inhibitory neurotransmitter in the brain as well, which acts on a strychnine set of receptors. Chronic alcohol use has also been shown to alter the expression of the number of dopaminergic receptors. The research seems to suggest that there is a sensitization of the dopaminergic after chronic alcohol intake. Further research shows that alcohol affects the function of the serotonergic system. There are a number of human serotonergic genes affected from the chronic use of alcohol. There are as many as fourteen different serotonergic receptor sites that may be affected by the alcohol. The result of alcohol appears to be a decreased function of the serotonergic nervous system. This includes a decrease in the number of, and density of, postsynaptic 5-hydroxytryptamin receptors in the cortex and hippocampus. Although there are lots of these in the noradrenergic system in relationship to alcohol, there seems to be a strong increase in activity of the brain stem noradrenergic system. Research also shows that ethanol alters the expression of opioid genes. Alcoholism is associated with low endorphins, and paradoxically leads one to increase of social drinking in a futile effort to increase endorphins. Chronic alcohol use also has been shown to create a 30% downregulation and decrease in density of the muscarinergic acetylcholine receptor (mAChR) systems. Chronic alcohol use seems to also cause a decrease in neurotensin receptor density and binding affinity. The point being is that while we have a decrease in the receptor sites we’re having a decrease in the DNA gene function that produces these receptor sites. Alcohol and other foods clearly affect the expression of a variety of genes in the central nervous system. Further research using micro-array chip analysis to examine gene expression in the frontal cerebral cortex of human alcoholics, found selective reprogramming of the myelin-related genes as well as changes in cell cycle genes and several neuronal genes.
What we eat affects how we think and how we feel because it affects the genes that regulate how we think and how we feel Well documented research, for example shows that alcohol decreases the healthy expression and production of endorphins, GABA, dopamine, noradrenaline, acttlycholine receptor sites, and various other central nervous system  genes. The use of alcohol is emphasized not only because it is toxic, but because it has been well studied to show how what we eat affects every aspect of our gene expression, including our gene expression in our central nervous system..
Now that a scientific foundation is established, we can speak in more general terms as to the overall principles involved in the whole concept of eating and living in a way that activates our healthy genes and turns off our disease-promoting genes. The basic principle being that not only what we eat, but how we live and the stresses that we create, directly affects gene expression. The genetic expression of every cell in our body, is potentially accessible at any time. 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.

Another exciting piece of proof that supports this hypothesis was the treatment of sickle-cell anemia. In 1949 Dr. Linus Pauling, who really is the progrnitor of molecular medicine, along with his graduate student, Harvey Itano, M.D., at Cal-Tech, published an extraordinary paper on sickle-cell anemia. In their paper they made a prediction based on the model of sickle-cell anemia, which is an inherited condition having to do with one amino-acid change in the hemoglobin structure, which causes the hemoglobin to sickle in adults. About six percent, according to the author’s original research done in Harlem in 1967 of children of African descent, have this genetic defect. What happens is the sickle cell hemoglobin crystallizes in the cell and actually causes the cell to change its shape, and causes a certain amount of sickling of the cells that actually cuts into the organs, damages the cells, and damages the organs where these sickle-cells clump. Therefore it is appropriate to call the sickle-cell anemia a molecular disease. Pauling theorized that in the future we’d be able to modify the expression of sickle-cell anemia as a genetic disease. In 1994, researchers found that two substances actually do that. One is hydroxyurea and the other is butyrate. Either one of them awaken the embryonic program which is a normal hemoglobin in adults and children with sickle-cell anemia. In utero fetuses who have sickle-cell anemia have normal fetal hemoglobin; it is only after birth that the genetic expression for producing the adult hemoglobin emerges which has the amino acid defect. By giving them one or other of these substances, the adults with sickle-cell anemia are able to turn on a production of a high percentage of fetal hemoglobin in their system, which is a non-sickling, healthy hemoglobin. This ameliorates the negative affects of sickle-cell anemia. This is a really exciting message.

Through what we eat we literally are able to turn on the healthiest possible expression of genetic information – the phenotypic expression.
 

Lifestyle and emotions can also up or down regulate phenotypic expression. For Example  the story of Peter Pan. When J.M. Barrie, the author of Peter Pan, experienced the traumatic death of his brother, it shut down his phenotypic expression. In his sixties when he died, he was four-foot, ten inches and never went through puberty – in essence this story was about himself.
From a spiritual point of view, of course, this is important. Taking care of your body, the point of Spiritual Nutrition, is to obtain optimal physical and mental energy to develop your spiritual life. When people don’t take care of themselves and they finally wake up to the importance of spiritual life, often their physical body and their mental states (as affected by the function of the brain) aren’t strong enough to optimize their spiritual pursuits. With this understanding in mind, the importance of eating and living in a way to activate your genes at their highest phenotypic healthy potential, gives us the option to maintain our health for an extended period of time to optimize our spiritual life. Once we begin to understand the key is that our genes do not themselves give rise to disease as the majority cause. In most cases, disease manifests when people live and eat in a way that turns on the poorest phenotypic expression of who we can be. This is called disease.
According to the book Genetic Nutritioneering, gerontologists are now stating that seventy-five percent of an individual’s health, after the age of forty, is dependant on what the person has done to keep their genes healthy and not on the genes themselves.
These principles are part of the foundation of the author’s book Conscious Eating, which talks about the importance of individualizing our diet according to our constitution, our lifestyle, and obviously our genetic makeup.
The teaching in Conscious Eating, as in Spiritual Nutrition, paraphrases Roger Williams’ research, which is that nutrition is for real individuals, not the hypothetical “average” person. So all the RDA levels with which the government is trying to minimize our health by assuming there is such thing as an “average” person create a great deal of confusion. This is because they aren’t paying attention to the science that has been established now about the principles of genetic polymorphism, and pluri-potential within the human potential. Roger Williams’ concepts in the 1950s were way ahead of the research that proved his point beyond a doubt, which is that we are not statistical humans. We are diverse, unique human beings who operate on the principle of biological individuality. This is the principle that is shared in Conscious Eating and Rainbow Green Live-Food Cuisine, where it is presented in detail about how to eat in order to enhance your particular biochemical individuality. It is unrealistic for the purpose of this book to cover all the details; but the author simply wants to give people some idea of the extent of the specifics of this concept.
One of the most potent components of food that affects gene expression on the molecular level are phytonutrients. The research in the area of phytonutrients supports the general findings, for example, that eighty-two percent of one-hundred fifty-six different published dietary studies found that fruit and vegetable consumption helped protect against cancer. People who eat more fruits and vegetables have about one-half the risk of cancer mortality than those people who are not vegetable eaters.
Diets that are high in fruits and vegetables are very high in phytonutrients which include a variety of anti-oxidants, carotenes, vitamin E, vitamin C, phenolic compounds, and terpenoids that specifically turn on not only anti-cancer genes but anti-aging genes, and anti-inflammation genes.

Some of the phytonutrients include: the allyl sulfides in garlic and onions which are potent stimulators of improved phenotypic expression, anti-oxidant function,  and detoxification; phytates in grains and legumes that have anti-cancer effects; glucarates in citrus, grains, and tomatoes that improve the genetic expression of detoxification; lignans in flax that improve the metabolism of estrogen and testosterone; isoflavones in soybeans that increase activity of estrogen and testosterone; saponins in legumes that have anti-cancer qualities; indoles, isothiocyanates, and hydroxybutene in cruciferous vegetables that improve detoxification against carcinogens; ellagic acid in grapes, raspberries, strawberries, and nuts that improve anti-oxidant function; and bioflavonoids, carotenoids, and terpenoids that decrease inflammation and improve immunity. These substances have been shown generally, according to Genetic Nutritioneering, to specifically induce anti-cancer genes, to turn on and to turn off cancer-producing genes. One of the most powerful phytonutrient fruits is oranges. They have over one-hundred-seventy phytochemicals and sixty bioflavonoids. The combination of these have the effect to obviously modify gene expression in a positive way, as well as create and increased anti-oxidant expression, anti-inflammatory expression, inhibit blood clots and activate the expression of increased detoxification systems.
The author’s favorite anti-inflammatory food is ginger and it has active phytochemicals called gingerols.
Research shows that high concentrations of it is found in apples, onion, and garlic, help improve gene expression in relationship to allergy and arthritis. Bioflavonoids, of which quercetin is one, are perhaps some of the most important modifiers of gene expression, in addition to being antioxidants.
Resveratrol also has certain anti-aging qualities that are recently being found in research that mimic the calorie restiction effect. However, red wine also has the down side of being alcohol. Alcohol does many things to disregulate and undermine healthy gene expression, particularly the neurotransmitter systems, as well as other systems in the body. Resveratrol, quercetin and the bioflavonoids can easily be gotten from substances other than red wine. Sources of bioflavonoids that are healthy include: grapes, onion, garlic and the white inner peel of citrus fruits. The bioflavonoids also promote the activation of the genetic expression of phase two detoxification enzymes in the liver. Bioflavonoids are a class of phytonutrients that contain subclasses including: isoflavones, flavones and flavenols.
Vitamins and minerals also affect our gene expression. The B vitamins are particularly important in this, especially B6, B12, and folic acid. These clearly modulate gene activity to protect us against cancer, heart disease, as well as improve brain function. Minerals, of course, play an important role in affecting our phenotypic gene expression. Zinc being one of the most important of these; it’s involved in over three-hundred enzymatic reactions. Zinc is important in growth function, immune function and hormonal development.
Nutritional Practices for Youthing
Now that we have firmly established that what we eat and what we don’t eat affects our genetic expression, and therefore youthing, we are ready to explore  the optimal nutritional practices that will indeed turn on youthing gene expressions. 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, and Spiritual Fasting
An important scientific study to support the point that what we eat affects gene expression is Dr Spindlers recent research
Dr. Stephen R. Spindler, professor of biochemistry at the University of California, Riverside work with calorie restriction, using gene technology gives some deep insight into why live foods are such a powerful healing & 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% increase in the activation of anti-aging with 40% calorie restriction. Dr. Spindler found that sixty percent of the age-related changes in gene expression from calorie-restricted mice occurred just a few weeks after they started the calorie-restricted diet Dr. Spindler found that calorie restriction specifically produced a genetic anti-aging profile and was able to reverse the majority of age-related degenerative changes that show up in gene expression. This four-fold increase in short-term caloric restriction and a two-point-five-fold increase in long-term caloric restriction is highly significant. He was able to reproduce this with ninety-five percent reproducibility.
Dr. Spindler noted that the caloric restriction did not only prevent deterioration or genetic change gradually over the life span of the animal, but actually reversed most of the aging changes in a short period of 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. He found what has already been stated: that weight loss improved insulin sensitivity, improved blood glucose, decreased blood insulin levels, decreased heart rate, and improved blood pressure. He also noted the potential anti-cancer effect. He found that a significant amount of this inflammatory gene expression and stressed gene expression diminished with calorie restriction.
In summary, Dr. Spindler’s results as published in the proceeding of the National Academy of Science, basically showed: (1) No matter what age you have obtained, you still get an anti-aging effect with calorie restriction. (2) Anti-aging effects can happen quickly on a low-calorie diet. (3) Calorie restriction of only four weeks in mice seemed to partially restore the liver’s ability for metabolizing drugs and for detoxification. (4) Calorie restriction seemed to quickly decrease the amount of inflammation and stress, even in older animals and there suggests not only in an increase in anti-aging gene activity, but also anti-cancer, anti-stress, and anti-inflamation.
Calorie restriction happens naturally and safely with a live food diet. When we cook foods, we lose 50% of the protein according to the max plank institute; 70-80%  of vitamins & minerals and 95% or more of the phytonutrients are destroyed. By simple mathematics, we only need to eat 50% of the calories on a live food diet versus a cooked diet. Therefore a live food diet is a natural form of calorie restriction which turns on the antiaging, anti-cancer, and anti-inflamation genes. This is the first scientific explanation for the youthing and health effect of a properly eaten live food diet which the author has observed in 1000’s of patients since 1983.
Conclusion: The are many levels to understand the healing & rejuvenating power of live foods but the simplest way I can explain raw foods is…If it is not broken, don’t fix it.
From ” conscious eating” gabriel cousens
For diabetes and hypoglycemics, it seems whether food is cooked or raw is very important for their well-being. In research at George Washington University hospital, when 50grams of raw starch was administered to patients, the blood sugar only rose 1mg in one half hour before it began to decrease, With the cooked starch there was a dramatic average increase of 56mg in one half hour and then a 51-mg average drop by one hour. This is quite a significant shift in blood glucose. The major difference between raw and cooked is the raw starch came with its own amylase and so was able to be predigested in the food enzyme stomach.