Diverticulitis is another of the “civilized diseases.” While 30 percent of Americans suffer from the discomfort of diverticular disease, it is extremely rare in undeveloped nations living on a diet of unrefined foods and not subjected to the SAD (Standard American Diet). It has become increasingly obvious that out low-fiber diet of highly refined foods is the major cause of diverticulitis and colon cancer.
For diverticulitis to occur, the neck of the diverticulum becomes blocked by swelling or doo doo, bringing about bacterial invasion. From this an abscess can form, spasm can occur, resulting in intestinal destruction. This in itself may require surgery. If perforation of the abscess occurs it leads to peritonitis, which is inflammation of the inner walls of the abdomen covering the abdominal organs, and is a severe surgical emergency.
The healing of any of these complications can result in fibrosis and narrowing of the colon, which may require surgery down the road.
So, in diverticulitis, prevention is better and easier than the cure.
When the diverticula become filled with bacteria large amounts of B vitamins are consumed and blood loss may occur, which explains the fact that anemia is so often found in people with diverticular problems.
Clearly, since a lack of fiber is the major cause, the commonly used low-fiber diet is not at all beneficial because lack of fiber in the diet causes chronic poor eliminations and constipation. The constipation then causes an increase in the gas pressure against the colon walls. To add insult to injury, the low-residue, low-fiber diet takes two to three times as long to pass through the colon. This then encourages excessive water absorption and leaves a very concentrated small stool, which is difficult to pass and demands more forceful peristaltic contraction to move it along its way. Then all this excess work puts more pressure on the colon walls, helping to produce little pockets in the diverticula.
But, a high-fiber diet composed of unrefined grains, raw fruits, and vegetables helps prevent diverticular disease and favors proper intestinal action in several ways. On such a diet the stools are two to three times as bulky as those formed on a low-fiber diet. The fiber absorbs water, making a softer stool that is passed easily with less forceful peristaltic contractions. Transit time is also reduced, with an average of 12 to 24 hours as compared to 36 hours or significantly longer on a low-fiber diet.
Contrary to the situation with a low-fiber diet where excess abnormal bacteria produce harmful carcinogenic substances from normal bile acids, cellulose actually encourages friendly bacteria development, which in turn produces several of the B complex vitamins for use by the body. In addition, while a low-fiber diet with its sticky doo doo tends to cake the intestinal membranes, fiber will help clean the walls and stimulate local circulation.
There’s an interesting juxtaposition here concerning diverticular disease – while a low-fiber diet is the major cause of the disease, the initial stages of treatment require adherence to a low-fiber diet. The duration of this is short and only lasts as long as it’s necessary to reduce the localized irritation. Once the inflammatory stage of diverticulitis is under control, then, the gradual introduction of high-fiber foods is absolutely essential to reach maximum results.
So, during any given meal within the healing cycle of the acute stage, the meal should consist of only one type of liquid. In other words, fasting brings about cure. The liquids to choose from are as follows:
Water (the best, but most difficult)
Carrot juice
Carrot and lettuce juice
Celery and lettuce juice
Beet juice
Watercress juice
Grape juice
Apple juice
Slippery elm tea
Comfrey tea
Marshmallow tae
Chlorophyll liquid (wheatgrass is best)
Spiulina liquid drinks
Bear in mind that we are talking about fresh juices here, not store bought, pasteurized juices.
This liquid diet (fast) should be continued until all painful symptoms have subsided. At that point semisolids are added slowly and carefully, watching for any adverse reaction. Add papaya, mashed banana, steamed carrots, baked yams, or sweet potatoes.
Once it becomes apparent that these foods are well tolerated, other cooked and pureed foods of higher fiber content can be added, including grated raw foods. Begin with grated apple and raw grated carrot. It still will be necessary to avoid fruit skins and fruit, and fruit and vegetables with small hard seeds such as tomatoes, cucumbers, figs, strawberries, raspberries, guavas, etc.
The next stage includes the addition of grains and proteins. Brown rice or quinoa well cooked and well chewed are the best choice of grains. Tofu is a good protein. Once these are well tolerated the diet can proceed to include all natural unrefined food. Thorough chewing the food until is becomes liquefied in the mouth is absolutely essential in the initial stages of this diet.
The process of weaning toward a high-fiber diet will take 6 to 8 weeks. This diet will then help heal the intestinal walls and prevent further severe attacks of diverticulitis. In long-standing cases the diverticula may remain for years. This can only be known by x-ray. Some cases never go away. But most cases will remain symptom-free despite the presence of the old diverticula as long as a high-fiber diet is rigidly followed and bowel eliminations remain regular.
Basically, the diet change is 90% of the solution. Bran helps add fiber and speeds up normal bowel function. Stick to the high-fiber approach even with up to 10 days of gas or discomfort. The body has to readjust. Also, drinking six to eight large glasses of water is a very useful aid to proper bowel function, especially if bran is employed as well.
Above all, if you suffer from this malady, see a naturopath and NOT an MD. One treats naturally and one treats with synthetics and a knife.
Aloha!
About Hesh:
I have been doing a radio show in Honolulu since 1981 called “Health Talk”. To listen to the show please go to www.kwai1080am.com on your computer at 8am Hawaii time. FYI, 8am Hawaii time is 11am on the West coast and 2pm on the East coast. To call in, the number is (808) 524-1080.
Now, American Voice Radio will be picking up my streamed show and playing it all week until the next one takes place. To listen, go to americanvoiceradio.com and click on my link at AVR 2.
See you on the radio!
In 2007, I was “forced” to get a masters degree in Nutrition to stop all the doctors from calling in asking what my credentials were. Besides that, they never liked it when I asked them what their credentials were that would enable them to treat an illness without drugs or surgery.
If you go to www.healthtalkhawaii.com and click on Podcasts, there are years of shows there as well as hundreds of health related articles.
I am an activist. I am vehemently opposed to GMOs, vaccines, processed foods, MSG, aspartame, fluoridation, and everything else that the “pimps” (big pHarma, Monsanto, and the large food companies), and the “hookers” (the doctors, the government agencies, the Public Health officials, and the mainstream media) thrust upon us, the “tricks”.
At 75, I am in 3 softball leagues, racewalk, do stand-up paddling, hike, swim, do weights and cardio, and teach women’s self-defense classes based upon 20 years of Wing Chun training. I have been a vegetarian since 1975 and a vegan since 1990, have no illnesses and take no meds.
After being vaccinated with the DTP vaccine as a child, I developed asthma, which plagued me until 2008 when I learned about and started taking the organic sulfur crystals. My asthma was reversed in 3 days and has not come back.
So far, 22 cases of autism that we know about have been reversed, as has cancer, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, asthma, osteoarthritis, joint pain, gingivitis, and erectile dysfunction. The sulfur has increased sexual activity, eliminated toxins, heavy metals, radiation, and parasites. It speeds up athletic recovery time, increases blood circulation, reduces inflammation, increases resistance to the “flu”, reduces wrinkles, allergies, PMS, monthly period pain, migraines, nausea, and way more, because the oxygen that the sulfur releases floods and heals the cells in the body.
The sulfur, as proven by the University of Southampton in England, enables the body to produce vitamin B12 and the essential amino acids.
You can find out more about this on my website under Products.
My book, “A Sane Diet For An Insane World”, which has been published, can be viewed and purchased at www.asanediet.com. The book clearly explains why what you eat, for the most part, is designed to keep you in a state of declining health.
I have recently discovered an amazing super food – Zeal – that contains 42 amazing probiotics, anti-oxidents and more, all designed to build and strengthen the immune system. For more info about this please email me.
And now I have come across an amazing bee pollen that is so soft it melts in your mouth. If you read my article, “Be With the Bees”, you can learn how valuable it is.
Hesh Goldstein, MSNutri
“Health Talk” Moderator, K-108 Radio
POB 240783, Honolulu, Hi 96824
(808) 258-1177
www.healthtalkhawaii.com
www.asanediet.com
[email protected]
Just to put things in perspective, after I graduated from Weequahic High School and before going to Seton Hall University, I had a part-time job working for a butcher. I was the delivery guy and occasionally had to go to the slaughterhouse to pick up products for the store. Needless to say, I had no consciousness nor awareness, as change never came then despite the horrors I witnessed on an almost daily basis.
After graduating with a degree in accounting from Seton Hall, I eventually got married and moved to a town called Livingston. Livingston was basically a yuppie community where everyone was judged by the neighborhood they lived in and their income. To say it was a "plastic" community would be an understatement.
Livingston and the shallowness finally got to me. I told my wife I was fed up and wanted to move. She made it clear she had to be near her friends and New York City. I finally got my act together and split for Colorado.
I was living with a lady in Aspen at the end of 1974, when one day she said, " let's become vegetarians". I have no idea what possessed me to say it, but I said, "okay"! At that point I went to the freezer and took out about $100 worth of frozen, dead body parts and gave them to a welfare mother who lived behind us. Well, everything was great for about a week or so, and then the chick split with another guy.
So here I was, a vegetarian for a couple weeks, not really knowing what to do, how to cook, or basically how to prepare anything. For about a month, I was getting by on carrot sticks, celery sticks, and yogurt. Fortunately, when I went vegan in 1990, it was a simple and natural progression. Anyway, as I walked around Aspen town, I noticed a little vegetarian restaurant called, "The Little Kitchen".
Let me back up just a little bit. It was April of 1975, the snow was melting and the runoff of Ajax Mountain filled the streets full of knee-deep mud. Now, Aspen was great to ski in, but was a bummer to walk in when the snow was melting.
I was ready to call it quits and I needed a warmer place. I'll elaborate on that in a minute.
But right now, back to "The Little Kitchen". Knowing that I was going to leave Aspen and basically a new vegetarian, I needed help. So, I cruised into the restaurant and told them my plight and asked them if they would teach me how to cook. I told them in return I would wash dishes and empty their trash. They then asked me what I did for a living and I told them I was an accountant.
The owner said to me, "Let's make a deal. You do our tax return and we'll feed you as well". So for the next couple of weeks I was doing their tax return, washing their dishes, emptying the trash, and learning as much as I could.
But, like I said, the mud was getting to me. So I picked up a travel book written by a guy named Foder. The name of the book was, "Hawaii". Looking through the book I noticed that in Lahaina, on Maui, there was a little vegetarian restaurant called," Mr. Natural's". I decided right then and there that I would go to Lahaina and work at "Mr. Natural's." To make a long story short, that's exactly what happened.
So, I'm working at "Mr. Natural's" and learning everything I can about my new dietary lifestyle - it was great. Every afternoon we would close for lunch at about 1 PM and go to the Sheraton Hotel in Ka'anapali and play volleyball, while somebody stayed behind to prepare dinner.
Since I was the new guy, and didn't really know how to cook, I never thought that I would be asked to stay behind to cook dinner. Well, one afternoon, that's exactly what happened; it was my turn. That posed a problem for me because I was at the point where I finally knew how to boil water.
I was desperate, clueless and basically up the creek without a paddle. Fortunately, there was a friend of mine sitting in the gazebo at the restaurant and I asked him if he knew how to cook. He said the only thing he knew how to cook was enchiladas. He said that his enchiladas were bean-less and dairy-less. I told him that I had no idea what an enchilada was or what he was talking about, but I needed him to show me because it was my turn to do the evening meal.
Well, the guys came back from playing volleyball and I'm asked what was for dinner. I told them enchiladas; the owner wasn't thrilled. I told him that mine were bean-less and dairy-less. When he tried the enchilada he said it was incredible. Being the humble guy that I was, I smiled and said, "You expected anything less"? It apparently was so good that it was the only item on the menu that we served twice a week. In fact, after about a week, we were selling five dozen every night we had them on the menu and people would walk around Lahaina broadcasting, 'enchilada's at "Natural's" tonight'. I never had to cook anything else.
A year later the restaurant closed, and somehow I gravitated to a little health food store in Wailuku. I never told anyone I was an accountant and basically relegated myself to being the truck driver. The guys who were running the health food store had friends in similar businesses and farms on many of the islands. I told them that if they could organize and form one company they could probably lock in the State. That's when they found out I was an accountant and "Down to Earth" was born. "Down to Earth" became the largest natural food store chain in the islands, and I was their Chief Financial Officer and co-manager of their biggest store for 13 years.
In 1981, I started to do a weekly radio show to try and expose people to a vegetarian diet and get them away from killing innocent creatures. I still do that show today. I pay for my own airtime and have no sponsors to not compromise my honesty. One bit of a hassle was the fact that I was forced to get a Masters Degree in Nutrition to shut up all the MD's that would call in asking for my credentials.
My doing this radio show enabled me, through endless research, to see the corruption that existed within the big food industries, the big pharmaceutical companies, the biotech industries and the government agencies. This information, unconscionable as it is, enabled me to realize how broken our health system is. This will be covered more in depth in the Introduction and throughout the book and when you finish the book you will see this clearly and it will hopefully inspire you to make changes.
I left Down to Earth in 1989, got nationally certified as a sports injury massage therapist and started traveling the world with a bunch of guys that were making a martial arts movie. After doing that for about four years I finally made it back to Honolulu and got a job as a massage therapist at the Honolulu Club, one of Hawaii's premier fitness clubs. It was there I met the love of my life who I have been with since 1998. She made me an offer I couldn't refuse. She said," If you want to be with me you've got to stop working on naked women". So, I went back into accounting and was the Chief Financial Officer of a large construction company for many years.
Going back to my Newark days when I was an infant, I had no idea what a "chicken" or "egg" or "fish" or "pig" or "cow" was. My dietary blueprint was thrust upon me by my parents as theirs was thrust upon them by their parents. It was by the grace of God that I was able to put things in their proper perspective and improve my health and elevate my consciousness.
The road that I started walking down in 1975 has finally led me to the point of writing my book, “A Sane Diet For An Insane World”. Hopefully, the information contained herein will be enlightening, motivating, and inspiring to encourage you to make different choices. Doing what we do out of conditioning is not always the best course to follow. I am hoping that by the grace of the many friends and personalities I have encountered along my path, you will have a better perspective of what road is the best road for you to travel on, not only for your health but your consciousness as well.
Last but not least: after being vaccinated as a kid I developed asthma, which plagued me all of my life. In 2007 I got exposed to the organic sulfur crystals, which got rid of my asthma in 3 days and has not come back in over 10 years. That, being the tip of the iceberg, has helped people reverse stage 4 cancers, autism, joint pain, blood pressure problems, migraine headaches, erectile dysfunction, gingivitis, and more. Also, because of the detoxification effects by the release of oxygen that permeates and heals all the cells in the body, it removes parasites, radiation, fluoride, free radicals, and all the other crap that is thrust upon us in the environment by Big Business.
For more, please view www.healthtalkhawaii.com and www.asanediet.com.
Namaste!
