23 Days to Health

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23 Days to Health

Cleanse, Detox & Rebuild Your Body From the Inside Out
by Alison B. Ader Traditional Doctor of Naturopathy with Robin D. Ader, M.S.

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© Copyright 2007, Alison B. Ader [email protected] All Rights Reserved No part of this book may be reproduced, Stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the authors.

This e-book can not be shared, distributed or reproduced in whole or in part. If you would like to share it with others, please direct them to our website http://www.NatOpt.com/23Days where a legitimate copy can be downloaded for free.

Disclaimer: This publication is for informational and educational purposes only. It is not intended to diagnose or treat physical, mental or emotional disorders. For serious conditions, see a trained healthcare professional. See full disclaimer on a separate page.

© 2007 Copyright Alison B. Ader, All Rights Reserved v 9.2

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About the Author

Alison Ader has been a healthcare provider and healer since 1980. Having completed her two-year training as a Respiratory Therapist, she attained the higher certification of Registered Respiratory Therapist (RRT) after another year’s study and board certification. She spent seven years at Miami’s Jackson Memorial Hospital a major teaching and community medical facility where she plied her skills in the ER and Trauma Room. It was during that time that she suffered a major medical condition of her own, which her colleagues could not diagnose or treat, but caused her to suffer periodic Grand Mal seizures. Alison started a course of personal study and found the root source of her illness. Dealing with disease from the cause and not the symptom became her obsession. Within ten years she had achieved mastery in Herbology, Aromatherapy, Iridology, become a licensed massage therapist in the State of Florida, and earned her certificate as a Traditional Doctor of Naturopathy. Alison’s current practice in Marietta, Georgia, Natural Health Options, Inc. [www.NatOpt.com] specializes in helping people with chronic conditions where traditional—allopathic—medicine has proved ineffective. She gives frequent lectures, the most often asked for being her “Women’s 18 to 80 Hormone Workshop.” She is also a Metabolic Type Advisor. This treatise on healthy eating choices, self-monitoring, and the importance of periodic cleansing of the body has long been a passion. “I’d like to have fewer patients and more time to spend with my child,” Alison says, “If only people would just take a little more personal responsibility, medical care in this country would be reduced at least by half.” This e-book is being offered at no cost so that all those who are receptive to the premise of personal responsibility may benefit from its wisdom.

© 2007 Copyright Alison B. Ader, All Rights Reserved v 9.2

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Disclaimer The information presented in this book is provided for informational and educational purposes only, and should not be considered as medical advice, whether towards diagnosis or treatment of a health issue, weight problem or disease, or for prescribing medication. This program is not intended to heal you of serious illness or injury. If you have, or feel you may have, a medical problem, contact your allopathic or homeopathic physician or other qualified health care provider. The authors, their agents, publishers and distributors of this text assume no responsibility for how the information provided here is used. It’s always advisable for you to seek any outside assistance you may need at any time during the exercise of this diet. This includes, but is not limited to, mental or therapeutic assistance, if the release of the toxins, heavy metals and contaminants in your body are more than you can deal with on your own. It is our hope that you can fully benefit from the application of the information contained herein. We do recommend that you never do anything that causes you pain or discomfort. As with any course of study, we recommend that you use what seems helpful and you discard the rest.

© 2007 Copyright Alison B. Ader, All Rights Reserved v 9.2

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Table of Contents PREFACE……………………………………………………………………………… CHAPTER ONE – Five Years Ago & Five Years from Now ………………………... CHAPTER TWO – What is Health? ………………………………………………….. CHAPTER THREE – The First Step in Achieving Health: TENACITY……………… CHAPTER FOUR – What are Toxins? ………………………………………………. CHAPTER FIVE – Organic Foods …………………………………………………… CHAPTER SIX –Pee, Poop and Passing Gas ………………………………………… CHAPTER SEVEN –Detoxification, Nutrition, and Weight Los ……………………. CHAPTER EIGHT – Preparing for Detoxification ………………………………….. CHAPTER NINE – Find Someone Who Knows What She/He is Doing …………… CHAPTER TEN – C D R ……………………………………………………………. CHAPTER ELEVEN – Catching your breath ………………………………………. CHAPTER TWELVE – The Healing Crisis ………………………………………… CHAPTER THIRTEEN – Conclusion ………………………………………………. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT ..………………………………………………………….. 6 9 13 17 20 28 30 36 43 48 51 55 57 59 62

© 2007 Copyright Alison B. Ader, All Rights Reserved v 9.2

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PREFACE

This book is not about weight-loss. It is about getting healthy, and it has been demonstrated over the years, that when one chooses health, the weight comes off as a natural byproduct of a healthy lifestyle. This book is not politically correct. Some of you are fat and we’re going to call you fat. Some of you are lazy and we’re going to call you lazy. If you can’t take the heat, stay out of the kitchen, but, then again, if you could stay out of the kitchen you wouldn’t need this book, would you? This book is a practical in-your-face guide to attaining health, losing weight and improving your quality of life. It is not intended to be a scientific exposé, and consequently, it is small, direct, and to-the-point. Where easy to read, consumer-oriented references are available, relative to the topic at hand, these are presented should you wish more information. However, you are admonished not to seek these out until after following the step-by-step instructions in this book and implementing and adhering to the health rules as instructed herein.

© 2007 Copyright Alison B. Ader, All Rights Reserved v 9.2

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Please note that while we, the authors, do have considerable scientific and medical training, we do not present any information here as medical instruction or advice. We do not know you and cannot, therefore, diagnose you. Before going on a diet—this or any other—you should seek the counsel of your family physician and/or medical specialists. Certainly, do not change the course of any ongoing medication or treatment, related or unrelated to your weight, without speaking with the prescribing physician. That being said, you will find the steps to health, revealed in these pages, easy to follow, physically satisfying, and most often not in conflict with your current health status. You are not challenged to perform any unrealistic act. The entire course of the first regimen is just twentythree days in which time you will be called upon to adjust your intake of specific foods, get some level of easy, stress-free physical activity, and change your mindset.

READ THIS ENTIRE BOOK THROUGH BEFORE STARTING ANY PART OF THIS PATH-TO-HEALTH GUIDE!

This is the very first step of your 23 Days to Health. Throughout this book we endeavor to keep it simple! Do you have the Will-Power, the patience and the fortitude to first read everything in this tiny little book? Or are you going to jump in blind, like you have with the last dozen diets you’ve tried, without fully understanding the principles set forth? And then fail! You must make a contract with yourself and enforce every clause in this contract to attain health. If you fail to maintain your commitment to every item, then the entire contract is null and void and you will remain unhealthy; you will not lose weight.

© 2007 Copyright Alison B. Ader, All Rights Reserved v 9.2

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When you have finished reading this entire book, and decide that you are ready to make concessions to eliminate self-destructive behavior, you will find additional information for your benefit supplied on our web site at http://NatOpt.com Access to the web site is not necessary to your success. Understanding this book is. Our wishes are with you for the best of luck in achieving optimum results with this step-by-step guide to health. But, candidly, neither our wishes nor luck have anything to do with it. It is YOU who have complete control over the quality and quantity of your life. ABA Roswell, GA September 2007

© 2007 Copyright Alison B. Ader, All Rights Reserved v 9.2

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CHAPTER ONE – Five Years Ago & Five Years from Now

What is overweight? It’s not what the scale indicates. It’s the extra roll of fat around your stomach, the jiggle in your thighs, and your second—or third—chin. Large, non-fat people, like some professional football players and members of Olympic teams in some sports, just look big, but you wouldn’t call them fat. If you refer to an insurance company, actuarial chart of “healthy” height vs. weight, these athletes would be classified as obese! We know they are not. So pay less attention to the scale as an absolute measure of your fat-ness, and use it just as a barometer of weight loss—to keep track of where you are compared to where you started. You may be ten, twenty-five or fifty pounds overweight, or more. Make losing that amount of weight your long-term goal. You have accumulated your fat over the course of years; you have not acquired it overnight. Do not expect to lose it overnight either. Which brings us to… Health Rule #1: It is not healthy to lose considerable amounts of fat-weight too quickly.

© 2007 Copyright Alison B. Ader, All Rights Reserved v 9.2

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Rapid weight loss almost always results in rebound weight gain which, in too many cases, over-shoots your original weight and leaves you worse off—fatter—than you began. Further, toxins accumulate in the body, often in fat tissue. We’ll discuss this in much more detail later, but losing fat-weight too quickly pours these toxins into your system where they can cause sudden onset of disease. You should not lose weight any faster than your body can reasonably eliminate these toxins. Makes sense doesn’t it? As a reminder, this is a book about health that results in weight loss, so you must strive to become healthy, not skinny. The objective is to deal with the root-cause of your fat, not with the fat. For example, how do you get rid of that annoying sound that your car engine is making? Turn the radio up real loud, right? Wrong. You deal with the root-cause of the noise, because if you don’t, you will likely have a large scale, mechanical break-down. In turn, this will require massive repairs. Or even worse, you will be forced to buy a new car before you are financially comfortable to do so, which will cause any number of other problems in your life. Get the analogy? If you ignore the root-cause of your weight gain, and just treat the fat as a free-standing, independent issue, then you won’t be addressing the health-cause of your fat. This can ultimately lead to massive mechanical failure of your heart or other organ systems. Even with insurance, the financial burden is equally massive. Should money not be an issue for you, consider the stress on your family which can result in affecting their health. Ultimately, you could die prematurely. Look at the word “pre-maturely,” which means, before you’ve reached your full maturity and potential, and for a person to do that to him or her self is unconscionable. Health Rule #2: Don’t live by the numbers

© 2007 Copyright Alison B. Ader, All Rights Reserved v 9.2

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If you feel you must lose twenty-five pounds, the first question we’d ask you is: How do you know you must lose twenty-five pounds? Perhaps twenty would be enough to make you look and feel as you’d like—maybe it’s thirty. “Pounds” look different from one person to another and, logically, a pound looks different on a person six-foot tall person than it does on a person five-foot tall. Let’s not forget all the internal fat you’ve accumulated around your organs, including your heart, which is far more important to eliminate than your chubby thighs. You still have a chance to find the love-of-your-life with fat thighs. You have no chance if you’re dead. So don’t live by the numbers or by your waist size. When you begin to lose weight, you will see some difference in the way your clothes fit, to be sure, and you’ll be encouraged. You may not see as much of a difference in your clothes as you’d like, and as your scale would indicate, when using the Health-First-Weight-Loss-Second program. Don’t be discouraged. If you have engaged in some mild exercise, as discussed in a later chapter, you will be losing internal fat—the far more important fat to eliminate—before you drop to a size 2. Now let’s discuss the topic indicated by the title of this chapter. How long has it been since you were at the weight you wish to be now? Some of you might answer that you’ve always been fat, or perhaps your weight gain has been gradual over years or even decades. Have you considered yourself “fat” for two years? Five years? Ten years? Five Years Ago: As an example, let’s consider five years as your answer and twenty-five pounds as the amount of “overage” you wish to reduce… we want to keep the arithmetic simple. Starting five years ago, could you have taken some action to make small, temporary changes in your eating and exercise habits in the course of the year that would have returned you

© 2007 Copyright Alison B. Ader, All Rights Reserved v 9.2

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to your January 1st weight by December 31st of each of those five years? Obviously, YES, you could have. But you didn’t. Why not? We’ll discuss that in a subsequent chapter as well. Five Years from Now: Are you going to be wishing you had followed the step-by-step guidelines in that stupid little book you read five years before, so that you wouldn’t be carrying around fifty pounds of fat?

© 2007 Copyright Alison B. Ader, All Rights Reserved v 9.2

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CHAPTER TWO – What is Health?

Have you ever seen a teenager in the mall or on the street with a Mohawk hairstyle died purple and green? Do you have a teenager with a Mohawk hairstyle died purple and green? When confronted with this sight, many people, of the middle-class-American demographic, go immediately into judgment mode. What’s he trying to prove? Who does he think he’s impressing? Fact is, if you embrace the values codified in the Constitution of the United States, as we do—regardless of how ridiculous the hairstyle really is—you have to accept that each person in this country, and many others around the world, are guaranteed their freedom to select their preference of fashion in hairstyle and clothing. The kind of car you drive, the home in which you live, including its furnishings, the music, books and TV shows you enjoy, are all a matter of choice. (We’re looking at the generality, not physically harmful exceptions.) If you’re reading this book, then, unless you’re reading for the benefit of someone else (yeah, right, you’ve got a “friend” that needs to lose weight), we’re going to assume that you have made one additional choice in your life: the choice not to be healthy.

© 2007 Copyright Alison B. Ader, All Rights Reserved v 9.2

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Killing yourself instantaneously with a bullet in the head is illegal. If you try and fail you can be arrested when you get out of the hospital. However, there is no law against killing yourself slowly over the course of years—by digging your own grave with a fork! As a matter of demonstrable fact, big business in concert with government has encouraged poor eating habits for more than half a century. Government agencies have played around with the food “pyramid” more than a bipolar pharaoh. Health, hygiene, and peaceable social interaction with others are not optional lifestyle choices. These are the fundamentals of participating productively in civilized society. Which brings us to the question: What is Health? Health is not just the absence of disease. It’s very hard to prove a negative. How do you demonstrate that something isn’t there? Perhaps it’s there, but we can’t see it, or feel it, or perceive it. Have you ever heard someone say, “Hey, did you hear about Charlie? He was in perfect health. He’d never been to a doctor in his life. He suddenly got cancer and died.” Suddenly? Suddenly got cancer? Did someone send him an infected email or did he pick it up from a toilet seat? No! Charlie’s cancer was the product of years of self-inflicted personal abuse or neglect, lifestyle choices, and failure to monitor his own bodily functions (also to be treated in a later chapter). Don’t let the tone of this paragraph infer that we feel Charlie deserved to get sick and die. Certainly, that’s not our intent. But there’s an important lesson that few people learn from the news of Charlie’s demise. How many people will ask, “What was it about Charlie’s body that made it turn on itself and devour his organs from the inside out?” That’s what cancer is. Cells in the body begin to grow out of control, consume all available nutrients, and invade and crowd out organs, ultimately destroying the body’s ability to maintain vital functions. Further, Charlie’s immune system—

© 2007 Copyright Alison B. Ader, All Rights Reserved v 9.2

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which protects the body from the spread of these rogue cells when they occur and as they do naturally in all of us—failed. Did Charlie have any warning signs? Why didn’t his immune system protect him? Well there were times Charlie felt a little down. He had some bad days when he just didn’t have the get-up-and-go…but that happens to everyone from time to time. He was as healthy as a horse! Horses get sick and die, too. And, Yes, it seems that “that” happens to everyone from time to time, but it’s not suppose to. That’s called dis-ease, the frequency and intensity of which probably increased over time until Charlie had to make his very first trip to the doctor and suddenly had cancer. A depressed or inefficient immune system is also a disease state that has no symptoms until it lets a cancer cell grow, or a virus or bacterium multiple and attach to—or attack—the healthy cells of the body. We can never say we are healthy for sure, because the apparent absence of disease is not proof of health. However, there are things we can do to increase our chances of being as healthy inside as we feel on the outside, assuming we feel healthy on the outside. This book provides guidance; the advice given here is a safety belt for your wellbeing. The step-by-step guidelines in the following chapters describe a technology for keeping us truly healthy until we’re struck by a cosmic ray or our “number is up” or we’re called by an Almighty Being. Take your choice depending on your personal belief. There is ample medical and scientific evidence that the human body has no built in timeto-die. If Galapagos tortoises can live to be two-hundred, why can’t we? Cells can renew themselves almost indefinitely, if maintained in a biological environment associated with perfect

© 2007 Copyright Alison B. Ader, All Rights Reserved v 9.2

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health. Unfortunately, “perfect” health is elusive. Impurities, toxic substances and diseaseinducing factors assault us each and every day. Our water, air and food supply are tainted, and our lifestyles are stressful. This makes extreme extension of our lives, for all practical purposes, impossible. But a healthy, productive and youthful life to One Hundred or More Years is well within our grasp.

© 2007 Copyright Alison B. Ader, All Rights Reserved v 9.2

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CHAPTER THREE – The First Step in Achieving Health: TENACITY

The optimum Cleanse, Detox & Rebuild (CDR) protocol lasts only twenty-three days. It is usually required not more than once a year, but many of you have treated your bodies as toxic waste-dumps for so long that you will be well advised to work through the full program twice, six months apart, in the first year. Before you begin any health regimen, you must be tenacious about becoming healthy. This may sound extremely simplistic, but it’s fundamental to all that follows. If you’re not prepared to devote the time to change your life for the better, then don’t begin. That is, don’t begin now. Yes—you can find the right time. Here are some things to consider. Do not begin your program-to-health by indulging in gluttony and over indulgence. Don’t do it in October in anticipation of Thanksgiving through New Year’s binging. Remember Peace on Earth usually gives you a bigger Piece on your Thighs. Also, do not begin a month before you take that cruise-of-a-lifetime. The best time to begin a health regimen, for most people, is early in the year as there are few eating or drinking feasts until Easter/Passover in the spring.

© 2007 Copyright Alison B. Ader, All Rights Reserved v 9.2

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Note #1: My apologies to those of other traditions, but this is not meant to be a study in comparative religion. Note #2: “Drinking” includes non-alcoholic specialties such as eggnog, diet and non-diet sodas, caffeinated drinks and a few others. We’ll get to that in a later chapter.

Though February and March programs to health may cause you to have to pass on the chocolate on Valentine’s Day and go sober on St. Patrick’s, that’s part of the “tenacity” to which we refer. Sports “Fans”—short for Fanatics—have the added pressure asserted by the yearround parties precipitated by Sunday afternoon regular season games. Playoff games and Finals/Series/Bowls up the ante even further 1 . The good news is that once the initial CDR is over, you will have so benefited by your change of habits that you will no longer reflexively make visits to the refrigerator out of boredom. You will eat less and eat healthier. Further, you will be allowed to eat, drink and be merry, transgress on occasion, and even pig-out when circumstances absolutely demand it. It won’t ruin everything, as long as the binges are spread far enough apart and interspersed with healthy food choices. At the end of the CDR you will feel so much better than you do now, that you will not want to “ruin” it with marathon eating and drinking, even though your friends, associates and perhaps even your family, will do all in their power to push you back to where you were. On the one hand they will congratulate you on how great you look, praise your loss of weight, marvel at the tone and texture of your skin and hair, and envy your general ambiance of health—on the other hand, they will hand you a beer and a knockwurst. You will learn to hate everyone you know. Prepare yourself for that.
1

If you look at the history, a good portion of the promotion of sports on television was enacted by the beer and snack manufacturers. It’s big business and sports would not be as important in American culture as it is, if it weren’t for the influences of those corporations that don’t give a damn about your health.
© 2007 Copyright Alison B. Ader, All Rights Reserved v 9.2

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One last admonition: Do not hyper-binge the night before you start. If anything, try to calm down your eating for several days in anticipation of the beginning of your healthy lifestyle implementation. This will make the first few days of your Cleanse less challenging.

Step #0 – Finding the Time • • Get a calendar, preferably one that indicates your particular ethnic and religious celebrations. Draw a large “X” over each day on which some non-healthy eating and/or drinking may be expected. • Find a block of four weeks with no marked-out days. This is your target CDR period, and will allow for the twenty-three day protocol plus a few extra days to calm-down before going on the formal program. • You may start on any day of the week; it does not have to begin on Monday; that’s entirely up to you. • Remember: don’t select a time period that ends the day before Thanksgiving or any other festive (derived from the word “feast”) day.

© 2007 Copyright Alison B. Ader, All Rights Reserved v 9.2

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CHAPTER FOUR – What are Toxins? 2

We’ve already, flippantly, tossed around the word “toxin” and “toxic” and even called you a “toxic waste-dump.” Part of CDR, the first step to establishing life-long and long-life health, is the “D” for “Detox” short for “Detoxification”—the removal of the toxic substances from your body. So what are toxins? Toxins are substances that inhibit or harm normal, healthy operation of your body. A note: just because science hasn’t discovered that a substance is harmful, doesn’t mean that it’s not. At one time we didn’t know that the pesticide DDT was harmful—and not knowing didn’t make it harmless 3 . However, for now, we feel that biological and medical science has progressed sufficiently far to have fairly well classified most of the substances that are poisonous to human health. This includes broad groupings of chemical compounds, such as pesticides in general. If we can eliminate those from our bodies, and our future foods, we’ll be far better off.

2

This chapter may appear to go on for a while—perhaps even seem like a rant—but there’s some very important information here. Please read it through. It’s part of your initiation. 3 From the outset, there were those who objected to the introduction of artificial chemicals into our food supply. Did they just make a lucky guess, or were they scholars?
© 2007 Copyright Alison B. Ader, All Rights Reserved v 9.2

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Then we can work on avoiding the introduction of any new and unnecessary substances into our diet. The following is a list of the toxins and toxic substances which are present in our environment. This list is not all-inclusive, but is meant to give you an idea of how pervasive the assault on our health really is. The shame is that much of the attack on our wellbeing is the product of economic greed and can be easily avoided with just a small hit to the profits of major corporations—but that’s the subject of a different book.

Common toxins and toxic substances: 1. Heavy metals: mercury, cadmium, arsenic, lead, iron and aluminum 4 a. A more extensive list would include antimony, bismuth, cerium, chromium, cobalt, copper, gallium, gold, manganese, nickel, platinum, silver, tellurium, thallium, tin, uranium, vanadium, and zinc. b. A few of these are necessary in trace amounts, such as manganese and zinc, but can quickly become toxic if present in excess… and, yes, even iron can be toxic in large amounts or in its improper form. 2. Chemicals: pesticides, preservatives, hormones, antibiotics, metabolic analogs such as artificial sweeteners, food dyes, and even additives to our drinking water mandated by our government such as chlorine and fluoride. 3. Biologicals: yeast, viruses, parasites, non-native bacteria. 4. Common foods and food additives that cause toxic reactions including allergies.

4

Aluminum, while not a “heavy” metal either chemically or intuitively, is implicated as a cause of Alzheimer’s as well as other disease states.
© 2007 Copyright Alison B. Ader, All Rights Reserved v 9.2

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The Concept of Toxic “Load”

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Paracelsus (Born Phillip von Hohenheim in Switzerland, 1493-1541) is considered the father of modern toxicology 5 . He stated, "All substances are poisons; there is none which is not a poison. The right dose differentiates a poison…." This has been shortened, in modern times to “The dose makes the poison.” While one might be quick to question this observation, Wikipedia relates in a footnote to their article on Paracelsus,
“January 26, 2007: Dr. Adrian Cohen was saddened, but not surprised, to hear about the 28-year-old woman who died earlier this month after drinking nearly two gallons of water to try to win a radio station contest. (Wash Times).”

Even water, when consumed in excess, can overwhelm the body’s ability to process it. The flip-side of this, of course, is that some substances are always toxic, even in very small quantities. The acceptable amount of mercury present in the body is zero, period. The acceptable amount of lead in your blood is zero, period. Yet, the United States government places the “acceptable” level of lead in your blood at 10 micrograms per deciliter: bear with us… …that’s 10 billionths of a gram, a gram is 1/28th of an ounce—per 1/10th of a liter, about 3-1/3rd ounce—which calculates out to about three-one-hundred-millionths of an ounce of lead per ounce of blood—that’s a very small amount indeed… …but, just to continue a very long sentence… dramatic decreases in IQ—a measure of intelligence—in five year old children is associated with an increase of lead from 1 to 10 micrograms per deciliter, a range entirely within the “acceptable” limits permitted by big brother 6 . A much longer sentence is the lifetime incarceration of the intellectual potential of
5 6

from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paracelsus 8/10/2007 from http://www.webmd.com/news/20060920/13-adhd-cases-linked-to-lead-smoking; - Andrew Adesman, MD, chief, developmental and behavioral pediatrics, Schneider Children's Hospital, New Hyde Park, N.Y. Bruce
© 2007 Copyright Alison B. Ader, All Rights Reserved v 9.2

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those children exposed to lead in their infancy. The same effect has been reported in adult exposure to lead. Can anyone argue that there is “acceptable” exposure to this substance? We think not. Thank you for your patience. This is the last technical tirade to which you will be subjected, at least for a few chapters. The point has to be made. Here we’ve discussed just one of the offending heavy metals, but there are many, as we’ve listed above, along with the other toxins and toxic substances. Hundreds of studies all demonstrate the toxicity of substances that have governmental “acceptable” limits. YOU—You whose eyes are reading these pages—have to take responsibility for your health. YOU have to avoid the ingestion of toxins. After all, YOU have complete control. Not to exercise that control is analogous to not using your seat belt in your car. You may get along for a while, but it will catch up to you when you least expect it. Remember Charlie? Now that’s the good news. Are you ready for the bad news? The effect of ALL the toxins you take in is cumulative. They add up. Your body can “handle” and eliminate a certain amount of exposure to foreign substances. That’s the job of your immune system, liver and excretory functions. “Handling,” however, does not mean that toxins have no effect on you. When you have an “off” day— irritable, fatigued, difficulty thinking or concentrating, sensitivity to sound, like your spouse’s voice—you’re probably suffering from the cumulative effects of toxicity, even if you’ve not pushed yourself into a diagnosable disease state. Imagine a bucket with a spout at the bottom. You can keep pouring sludge into the top, as long as the spout is open and sludge can flow out at the same or greater rate as you pour it in.

Lanphear, MD, director, Cincinnati Children's Environmental Health Center at the Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center. Lanphear, B. Environmental Health Perspectives, Sept. 19, 2006
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If sludge is added too quickly, the bucket will start to fill up and eventually overflow. This is our metaphor for disease, dysfunction and, ultimately, death. As long as your body can deal with the cumulative levels of all the toxins and toxic substances in your body, you are within your “load” limit. This does not mean you’re healthy, but you can get by. But for how long? As soon as the amount of toxins exceeds your load limit, you “suddenly” get sick 7 . One more visit to the bucket. The sludge itself will start to plug up the spout, slowing the rate at which the bucket—your body—can eliminate the sludge—toxins. Less metaphorically, the toxins you ingest can severely damage your immune system and lower the ability of your body to deal with the offending substances, lowering your load limit. The net effect is that your health goes into a downward spiral. Few practitioners of traditional—allopathic—medicine will advise you to take a strong look at the package labels on the food you’re eating, avoid food dyes, eat organic food, advise that you drink chlorine-free water, or tell you to make any major dietary changes outside of “cutting down” on alcohol, tobacco, fat and cholesterol. But the medical community is another subject for yet another time 8 .

Why Now? In recent years, there has been an explosion of cases of diabetes, ADD, ADHD, coronary disease, breast, colon, prostate and lung cancer, childhood asthma, and on and on and on.

7 8

This deserves another DUH! Hippocrates, whose oath is taken by every medical doctor—MD—stated that when a patient presents with a disease, the physician should FIRST advice an adjustment of diet. Only when that fails, Hippocrates added, should medicine be employed. DUH! DUH!
© 2007 Copyright Alison B. Ader, All Rights Reserved v 9.2

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Concurrent with this tsunami of disease is the bastardization of our food supply. More and more chemicals are being fed to us that were not part of our diet fifty years ago. Here’s something to think about: our [the authors] mothers, now in their eighties, never had PMS—and didn’t know anyone who had PMS—when they were young women. Were they of healthier “stock,” or was it that in the 1940s, ’50s and ’60s, they were not as chemically “battered” as women (and men) are today? Certainly there were offenses previously; Upton Sinclair details abuses at the beginning of the twentieth century in his classic The Jungle. But we had a few good decades with the advent of the Food and Drug Administration and benevolent regulation. This was before the bloodless coupe that put governmental control of our food supply into the hands of multinational agribusiness. In 2001—the beginning of the 21st century—the new administration in Washington, doubled acceptable arsenic levels in our drinking water from those instituted by the previous occupant of the White House. In China, cows are being fed so much antibiotic that their milk cannot be used to produce yogurt—the bacterial cultures won’t grow in it—and yet, for the sake of corporate profit , China is supplying increasing amounts of our food, as opposed to our feeding ourselves. Wasn’t the United States the “Food Basket” of the world at one time? As of this writing, September 2007, dozens of food products from China, in the pet and human food chain, have been found to be tainted by poisons—the no-acceptable-limit kind of poisons. At this moment, while poultry cannot be imported from China for fear of bringing Bird Flu to this country, our current President shook hands with the President of China, all but sealing a deal that would allow American chickens to be shipped to China, processed there, and returned to the United States for sale in our supermarkets. Oh, there’s more—from the “add insult to

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injury” department—this same administration is pressing to have “country of origin” labeling laws relaxed so that you’ll never know that your dinner had more frequent-flyer miles than you do. One more issue: the food we eat is not as nutritious as it used to be. Here’s an example: Broccoli is a cruciferous vegetable; it’s supposed to contain lots of calcium. However, broccoli grown in calcium-depleted soil doesn’t have lots of calcium, but it still looks and tastes like broccoli. The same is true of any presumably mineral-rich vegetable or fruit. All minerals in plants come from the soil in which they’re grown. Mineral rich soil produces mineral-laden food, while veggies grown in soil that is poor in minerals still tastes bad to your kids, but isn’t worth the fight to get them to eat it.

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Summary •

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Toxins are substances that disrupt the normal, healthy function of your body. They may be elemental, chemical, biological, or a normal food that causes metabolic irritation.



Toxins are present in the air we breathe, water we drink and food we eat… including the socalled “healthy” foods; broccoli can be covered in pesticides, too.

• •

Toxic “load” is the cumulative effect of all the offending substances that you have ingested. Long before you reach your load-limit that causes external disease, the toxins start to impact your immune system effectively lowering your limit; it’s a downward spiral.

• •

The government will not protect you by ensuring the cleanliness of your food 9 . It is each person’s responsibility, and the responsibility of parents for their children, to act intelligently with regard to what they eat, drink, and even breathe to protect and foster the health of their bodies and minds.

9

This is not a political statement; while things have gotten much worse in the past few years, they were never perfect, though things were moving—slowly—in the right direction before the current administration.
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CHAPTER FIVE – Organic Foods

To make up for the ramblings of the last chapter, we’re going to do this one very to the point: Eat Organic Food! From the web site of IFOAM 10 , The International Forum of Organic Agricultural Movements:
“The role of organic agriculture, whether in farming, processing, distribution, or consumption, is to sustain and enhance the health of ecosystems and organisms from the smallest in the soil to human beings. In particular, organic agriculture is intended to produce high quality, nutritious food that contributes to preventive health care and wellbeing. In view of this it should avoid the use of fertilizers, pesticides, animal drugs and food additives that may have adverse health effects.”

“Organic” is not just food grown without pesticides. For farming to be certified as organic, it also has to adhere to a regimen of crop rotation, use crop residues, animal manures and mechanical cultivation to maintain the productivity—nutritional content—of the soil. Tillage supplies plant nutrients and controls weeds, insects and pests. Animals must be raised in a caring environment and be free from antibiotics and hormones and be fed a diet healthy to the animal.
10

http://www.ifoam.org/about_ifoam/principles/index.html
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Should you doubt that organic vegetable and animal products are healthier for people than their non-certified counterparts, please read through IFOAM’s rather extensive website, and we’re sure you’ll see the difference. IFOAM: http://www.ifoam.org/

Summary • Organic food supplies a significantly greater amount of nutrition than non-organic foods, providing the full complement of minerals and vitamins in foods known to naturally have high quantities of those nutrients. • Organic food, void of pesticides, additives, hormones and antibiotics, does not contribute to the toxic load in your system and, therefore, is essential to the elimination of the poisons in your body.

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CHAPTER SIX –Pee, Poop and Passing Gas

Diabetes mellitus, or sugar diabetes, is characterized by sugar being passed in the urine. Originally, doctors would make their diagnosis by tasting, yes tasting, the urine of a patient who exhibited other symptoms of the disease. Sweetness in the urine would confirm the diagnosis. Of course chemical methods have replaced this distasteful testing (we couldn’t resist), but the example is given to raise your awareness that what comes out of your body can give you precious insight into what’s going on inside—and what’s going in. The theme of this book is getting control of your health through diet. Some of you may find this topic indelicate, but looking at what comes out of you is a non-invasive and cost-free way to get some control over your metabolism. We’ll take each of your excrements, liquid, solid and gas in turn, and try not to belabor this any more than we have to.

Pee Urine is the body’s way of getting rid of normal waste products, mostly nitrogen, from your metabolism. Just as a burning wood produces light and heat—the job it’s supposed to do—

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and leaves ash when it’s used up, so does metabolism leave byproducts. Many of these chemical compounds are toxic to your body and must be eliminated quickly. Your kidneys are responsible for filtering your blood, and they selectively remove those chemicals harmful to you, most notably, urea 11 . Urea is always present in the blood and actually has some positive metabolic effect when in low concentrations. However, it gets toxic very quickly as levels rise. People with low or no kidney function require dialysis to remove urea from their blood. The kidneys also remove the excess quantities of some needed and neutral compounds. We’ve all seen our urine change to deep yellow or orange after taking certain vitamins. You’re literally peeing away surplus quantities of otherwise needed vitamins. Those of us who love asparagus get to enjoy the wafting smell of asparagine when we pee. This non-essential amino acid is abundant in the vegetable and passes through our kidneys to our bladder, in what seems like just minutes after a meal. Without the consumption of anything specific that might change the appearance of your urine, it should be pale yellow in a healthy individual. Urine is an excellent way to monitor your water intake. Dehydration: When you are dehydrated, your urine will become dark yellow. Dehydration, lacking water, doesn’t have to occur only after you’ve been out in the midday sun or doing exercise. Your body is expelling water with every breath and this water has to be replaced. If you go an entire day without drinking water, your urine will darken. Please note that we’re speaking of water—not coffee or any caffeinated drink, not carbonated or sports drinks, certainly not wine, beer or booze. Many of these, certainly caffeine and alcohol,
11

Urea’s chemical formula is (NH2)2CO – for a fairly small molecule, it’s got two Nitrogen atoms. Nitrogen, a byproduct of protein digestion, binds with other compounds in the body and is very toxic; that’s why there’s this elaborate system for getting rid of it.
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dehydrate you by making you pee more. It may look like you’re doing fine because your urine will turn very pale as you pee away all your water without the benefit of removing toxins from your blood as urine is intended to do, but it will catch up to you quickly enough. Over-hydration: Except for the extreme case cited earlier, there is no pathology associated with “normal” excess in drinking water for people with healthy kidneys and bladders. Drinking water throughout the day is healthy. However, should your urine remain clear most of the time, you may be washing vital, though invisible, nutrients from your body. You should make sure you are eating healthy, vitamin and mineral rich foods. Normal hydration: Increase water intake during outdoor summer activities, before, during and after strenuous exercise, and when you’re in a dry climate. Again, your urine should remain a pale yellow most of the time. Poop Poop—so much more of a fun word than feces—is how your body gets rid of what’s left over after extracting all it can from your solid food consumption. Poop should be a brown, not yellow and not black. Should either of these two latter conditions exist for a period of time, certainly if you have concurrent pain or digestive issues, you should see a physician. Poop gets much of its color from bile, a digestive enzyme produced by the liver and stored in the gallbladder, that’s secreted into the duodenum—the first and smallest part of the small intestine where most chemical digestion takes place. Bile aids in the emulsification, digestion and absorption of fats. Most of the information you get from your poop will be gleaned from its texture and its smell. Briefly, poop should be well formed and soft-ish. It should not be like a day at the beach,

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all sand and water, nor should you be like a pirate ship firing hard little canon balls at the Spanish Armada. Too hard, and you may be dehydrated or borderline constipated. Too soft, and you could be eating too much fat, getting too much soluble fiber, or you may not have sufficient quantities of friendly bacteria in your bowels to properly digest your food. We’ll speak about how to deal with these issues later on. Right now we’re discussing how to monitor the state of your digestion. Bathroom smells have long been the fodder for teenagers and sophomoric comedies. This exploration of poop will include the smell of gas, whether passed with, or exclusive of a bowel movement. While some smell is inevitable, if you leave the bathroom unusable by someone else, you’ve got a problem. Barring pathology, diet can quickly, within a week, eliminate the issue. Again, you may think it funny, but improper digestion that results in terrible odors means you’re not getting the nutrition from your food. This can lead to other health issues. In the worst case scenario, smell can indicate that you’re permitting undigested food to linger in your bowels. This allows toxins produced by normal and opportunistic bacteria to accumulate and can lead to serious disease, including, but not limited to, cancer. Suddenly, it’s not so funny.

How to combat severe bowel odors If you’re a meat and potatoes kind of person, get some vegetables and fruit into your diet. An exclusively protein and starch diet will cause an unhealthy mix of bacteria in your bowels to flourish.

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If you like to have a big, cold glass of milk with every meal, including your steak and potatoes… don’t. Dairy products and meat protein are digested differently. Meat relies heavily on acid hydrolysis, that is, stomach acids break down protein into small pieces that can be further digested by enzymes. Dairy—milk—is alkaline. It neutralizes the acid in the stomach. While the stomach can fight back by producing more acid, sipping that cold milkshake while eating your triple-decker hamburger turns out to be a losing battle for meat-protein digestion. Meanwhile, the over-production of acid interferes with the enzymatic digestion of the milk products. It’s a lose-lose scenario. There are those, even in the medical community, that might dispute some of the fine points of this analysis. Again, as stated early on in this book, we’re trying to avoid too much of the biology and chemistry except where little smatterings give you some perspective. If you doubt, conduct a poll. Next Christmas, when you walk into the bathroom after Cousin Harry has used it and you find the wallpaper peeling off, watch how he’s the one sipping the glass of milk while enjoying the spiral-cut ham. Rather than belabor this point, the main message you should glean from this discussion is that horrid bathroom smell is not normal. It is a sign of digestive issues that, if left unresolved for long periods of time, can cause you to “suddenly” get a serious disease later in life.

Passing Gas We’ve already discussed bathroom smell. Gas just passes along bowel smell. Their main advantage is that you can disrupt normal activity in any room of the house or anywhere in public. The only thing to add is a point about flatulence, that is, frequent passing of gas. Bowel gas is a result of one of two activities. Bacteria in the large intestine—the bowel—produce gas,

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mostly methane, from bowel content. Most of all, these bacteria love sugar. If you eat a lot of sugar, or just a large quantity at one sitting, some sugar can make its way past the stomach and into the intestines where the bacteria have a field day. If you are paying attention, you will notice that your gassiest episodes will occur after binging on ice cream. Again, a properly balanced diet, which does not necessarily exclude ice cream or other sweets, should balance bowel flora and minimize gas. Like some of the poop issues, re-establishing a population of the “good” bacteria in your system will also reduce flatulence. The second cause of gas can be swallowed air. Digestion begins in the mouth. If you tend to shovel food in your mouth, gulping air and only half-chewing, in addition to allowing more sugar to pass through to your intestines, you will also push air through your stomach which will be carried along until it has only one way out. Most of the oxygen is absorbed as it goes through the intestines, leaving Nitrogen (again), though as a gas, nitrogen is not toxic, almost 4/5ths of the air we breathe is nitrogen.

Summary • • Monitor the color of your urine to ensure proper water balance in your body. You don’t have to touch your poop to “feel” its texture and determine if dietary changes are required to bring you back in balance. • Bathroom smell isn’t funny. Terrible bathroom odor is a sure sign that you have digestive issues which should be addressed before disease takes hold. • • Digestive issues can be easily addressed through changes in diet. Flatulence and smelly gas are signals that you are not eating well, not digesting well and/or overindulging in self-destructive eating patterns.

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CHAPTER SEVEN –Detoxification, Nutrition, and Weight Loss

We’ve repeated several times that this diet is about health and that health will lead to weight loss. Let’s discuss this in more detail. When your body accumulates toxins, it knows they are there. In the body’s attempt to neutralize the effects of these chemicals, unable to expel them, it encapsulates these foreign substances in fat cells and other tissues of the body. It then tries to dilute the impurity, adding water and swelling cells to their capacity. This manifests, on the outside, as cellulite, a big belly and a large butt. Detoxification removes the reason these cells are swollen and you will begin to lose weight automatically. Many people comment that they feel less “bloated” within a few days of beginning this diet. Yes, it may be as simple as that. Further, during the CDR program, you will be required to remove foods from your diet that, in all likelihood, are causing subclinical inflammation and allergic reactions in your body. Many of these foods are high in fat and calories. You’re going to be on a much lower calorie intake.

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It’s All About The Calories

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Some diets change your metabolism by manipulating your foods. The most severe of the low-carbohydrate diets does exactly that. It causes your energy generating system to discard some of your calories before they’re used. It does this by putting you into ketosis whereby you pee away some calories in the form of ketones, a metabolic intermediary. This might seem like a great trick to play on your system, but ketosis can be risky. Your kidneys weren’t designed to take this abuse for long periods of time. More—because redirecting your metabolism into ketosis takes several days to “gear-up,” even a single transgression—perhaps a meatball, pepperoni and mushroom transgression—will set you back, disrupting the metabolic processes that cause weight-loss or weight-stabilization and put you back in a weight-gain mode. It’s for this reason that people who swear that they love the low-carb diet find it necessary to go on it several times a year. Health rule #3: Numerous studies around the world have linked longevity—long life—with stable weight. To state it the opposite way, your life expectancy is reduced if you are constantly fighting your weight, if your weight goes up and down. Putting on ten pounds during the year with the expectation of low-carbing it off just before Thanksgiving, is a long-term formula for disaster. Ultimately, it’s about the calories. Take in a little less, and burn a little more, and you can begin to lose weight—and be much healthier—almost immediately. Can you reduce your intake of calories so that you lose just one ounce a day, on average? Your scale won’t even register that small amount, but if you set that very simple goal, you will lose almost twentythree pounds in a year. Consider the several pounds you won’t gain that you normally would have, and you’ve accomplished something significant. Of course, the most important part of two sentences ago is “on average.” Your weight will vary day to day due to differences in your water retention, bowel content, and that piece of

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Aunt Freda’s birthday cake that was just too good to pass up. But every sixteen days, you should be one pound lighter—about two pounds a month. That’s all. The best use of this information is to bring to light—more like hit you in the face—with the reality that a double-cheeseburger with fries at 1,000+ calories does a lot more damage to your weight-control objectives than you might have originally thought. It could set your objectives back a week or more. Health rule #4: Long-term health that includes weight control requires personal responsibility Here’s what you have to do: 1. Eat less of those foods that are highest in calorie content—the worst offenders. 2. Get some exercise—any exercise—just get up and move—a little—please. Getting healthy, as a strategy for weight loss, puts you in concert with your body—you’re working with it, not against it. As your body gets healthier, it wants to shed excess fat, which doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ll get skinny. Your weight will drop to a level where it is not affecting how you move, how you feel and how you live. It improves your quality of life.

Won’t I Be Hungry? No. There are many reasons for that feeling you call “hunger.” It has been clinically demonstrated that many people confuse thirst with hunger. The next time you get hungry in the middle of the day, that is, sometime other than a normal meal hour, try drinking an eight ounce glass of water. Then wait at least fifteen minutes. You will find that most of the time your “hunger” will go away and you’ve just saved yourself 100, 300, or 500 empty and unnecessary calories. Ever hear the expression that half an hour after Chinese food, you feel like eating

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again? That’s not hunger. Chinese food, at least in the form served in America, is very high in salt. You get very thirsty a half hour later and your “hunger” should be satisfied with water. Another common sensation that many people confuse with hunger is stomach irritation. How many times have you—or the proverbial someone you know—been on an eating and drinking binge and then woke up the next morning “hungry.” “Gotta eat something to absorb all that alcohol I drank last night,” is the common excuse. But it just isn’t so. The booze is long gone. What you’ve done is to irritate the lining of your stomach and perhaps your esophagus as well. The best thing to counter that irritation is to eat a small portion of something bland. Small & Bland! That will give you the sensation of something in your stomach, quench the psychological urge to eat, and not further abuse your gastrointestinal tract. Another cause of faux-hunger is an allergy to some food you’ve eaten. Many people, due to the ubiquitous nature of wheat in foods, have developed a subclinical allergy to wheat gluten. Same situation with corn and corn by-products like high-fructose corn syrup. The consumption of even a small amount can set you on a quest to devour everything in the house. Try this: don’t have anything with gluten or corn at breakfast. You will most likely find that you’re not as hungry for lunch as you usually are, and certainly your hunger-alarm won’t go off as early in the day as it normally does. And the worst thing you can do is to head for the vending machine to get a candy bar—sugar is a major offender that will set your blood sugar levels into chaos and make conforming to a healthy eating regimen that much more difficult. No discussion of false hunger would be complete without a mention of the psychological basis for even mildly compulsive eating. Boredom, stress, and other emotional factors can all

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drive you to the refrigerator. That’s the hardest to overcome, and we’ll touch on that in a later chapter. Now to answer the question, “Won’t I be hungry?” The answer is still “No.” In designing the CDR program, attention has been given to one of the greatest driving forces in the compulsion to eat. This might sound avant garde, but there are times you may feel hungry because you’re hungry. “Wow,” you say, “these people really know their stuff!” Ah, but there’s an underlying science to the “Theory of Actual Hunger.” Have you ever finished a nice-sized meal, even an extremely unhealthy one that should have provided you with all the sensory—even sensual—delights of consuming salty, fatty, sweet and sour… yummy— but you still have the desire for more. “Let’s see the dessert menu,” you request—no—demand! First, you should wait fifteen or twenty minutes to allow your body to fully process the food you’ve eaten. The hunger may go away. If that doesn’t work, consider this: perhaps, even though you’ve eaten a lot of chewable, tasty stuff, your body is still lacking one or more vitamins, minerals, or other mandatory nutritional factors, the need for which keeps your hunger-alarm going. Have you ever had a red light appear on the dashboard of your car. You fill up the gas, you add oil, perhaps you even top off the transmission fluid—the red light is still on! What do you do? Do you put in more gasoline or more oil? No! Maybe there’s something else, something you rarely check because you need so little of it. Power steering fluid? Brake fluid? Might these be essential? It’s the same with your body. There are some essential nutrients that are required in very small quantities, the lack of which will confuse your hunger-sensors and set you on an eating

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binge. However, if you weren’t getting these before, it’s likely you won’t seek new foods, or even new supplements that might include the missing factor and break your hunger cycle. The most effective way to properly control appetite is through complete nutrition. This includes a range of proteins, vitamins, cofactors, minerals, an appropriate amount of fats or oils, and a small, reasonable quantity of healthy carbohydrates. This is not a low-carb diet. Carbohydrates, most commonly bread and pasta, are okay as long as you’re not allergic to gluten, and if you are, you can still have rice or other gluten-free carbs—in quantity—if you wish. These carbohydrates should have a low glycemic index—more about this in the next section. This is a full-nutrition diet. You will not be hungry because your body will not be demanding anything. It may seem hard to imagine, but we’ve been there personally and we were just as amazed as you will be when you try it. What makes this the hardest diet in the world? It’s the socialization. For about four weeks, you won’t be able to participate in Happy Hour, you’ll have to keep caffeine consumption to a minimum—best to none—and certainly no alcohol at all. Ethnic foods are off the menu for that time. No Chinese, no Italian, no Mexican, no Jewish, no Polish—it’s a white supremacist’s dream come true. At the end of the regimen, you’ll feel great, people will tell you that you look great, your hunger will be in control, you’ll be accustomed to smaller—not necessarily small, just smaller— portions at meals, and you’ll learn, just as we did to our surprise, to genuinely enjoy foods you used to take great pains to avoid. And you’ll keep some of those new habits even when you’re able to eat those other foods again. You’ll make compromises with yourself, allowing just one or two evenings of your old habits, but keep to a full-nutrition diet the other five days. You’ll

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keep the pounds off and probably continue to lose a few more. You’ll have more energy, need less sleep, and be more responsive to your family and the special people in your life. You’ll exercise more because it won’t hurt to move. Your weight will stay consistent until the Holidays when you’ll blow it all off and gain only a few pounds, because you will still exercise some restraint. Then you’ll go on the diet again, more for the cleanse portion than anything else. Just a few weeks and you will be set for another year. Each year will roll by with those around you getting older and fatter, but you’ll be staying on top of your game. Your weight will always be the same on December 31st as it was on January 1st, unless, of course, you’ve taken off a few more pounds.

The Glycemic Index It’s important to know that all carbohydrates are not the same. Some have a greater effect on your blood sugar and insulin levels—important factors in how “hungry” you get. Carbs with a low-index do not cause large fluctuations in blood sugar; these are good. High-index carbs, those that have a greater effect, conflict with long-term healthy eating and weight stability. Boiled white rice, for example, has about half the Glycemic Index rating as boiled white potato. Keep this in mind when you prepare meals. Sure you can have potato, but not at every meal; have more low-index carbs that high-index carbs during the week and you’ll be closer to reaching your health goals. Lists of foods and their Glycemic Indices are available in books and all over the web. *** So… Do you think it’s time to dig in and discuss what you have to do? Are you ready? Here we go!

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CHAPTER EIGHT – Preparing for Detoxification

The two major causes of un-health are chronic, subclinical allergies and chronic, subclinical inflammation. Let’s look at those terms. Chronic means that it’s with you all the time. The opposite extreme would be an acute reaction. An acute allergic reaction would include a reaction to peanuts or shell fish that closes down your throat, or, less life threatening, the swelling of your eyes and sneezing when exposed to cat hair. These reactions subside when you are removed from the allergen—the substance that induces an allergic reaction. Acute inflammations, of course, are those reactions normally associated with an infection, a bacterial infection around a cut, or the redness of your throat when you have Strep. Chronic disease, inflammation or allergy, is not, by definition, immediately life threatening. But they do reduce your quality of life and ultimately, shorten the length of life as these reactions are signs that your immune system has been made less effective. Those with chronic conditions are more susceptible to the onset of acute diseases including diseases

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unrelated to the chronic condition. In short, if you deal with chronic disease effectively, your body will be more protected from those factors that cause acute disease.

Sensitivities and Allergies It is possible for your body to be sensitive or allergic to almost anything. These conditions can arise at any time in your life. Babies, toddlers, preteens, adolescents, young adults and mature individuals can all develop a new allergy to something they may have been exposed to throughout their lives. Sensitivities are the immune system’s way of alerting you to an imbalance in your body caused by some substance to which you have been exposed through your food, drink or the air you’ve breathed. You can also be sensitive to substances with which you’ve come into skin contact. Sensitivities manifest as headaches, itching, feeling of tiredness after a meal, bloating and gas, irritability or hyper-behavior, stomach upset or other discomforts. If caused by food, these sensations may be most pronounced immediately after eating. Allergies are your immune system’s over-reaction to the presence of a substance. It has been found that there are some allergens that are more-allergic than others. Cat dander produces reactions in more individuals and stronger reactions in those individuals than almost any other allergy causing substance. Among foods, peanuts and corn are just about the most “allergy-causing”—the correct word is allergenic—to be found. For this reason, people who suffer from severe systemic allergies—allergies that effect their entire bodies—such as asthma, are generally advised to avoid being in places with cats, and, should not eat highly allergenic foods, such as peanuts. This is advised—or should be—even if no direct allergic reaction has been observed to cats and peanuts.

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Inflammation

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Like allergies, inflammation is the result of your immune system responding to some stimulus. Inflammation around the site of an infection is the immune system’s response to bacteria and viruses that have penetrated the skin. Antigens, like allergens, are the substance to which your body responds. The immune system sends a variety of types of cells and proteins to the site of the infections and the potentially disease causing organisms are destroyed and disposed. Arthritis is an inflammation. Chronic sinus issues are the product of chronic inflammation. Many more of the annoying and debilitating challenges we face are the product of inflammation in the body. These are the things that you have often been told to “just live with.” Inflammation can be an adjunct to an allergy, or it can be auto-immune, that is, an immune reaction to yourself as opposed to a reaction to an invading bacteria. Such is the case with arthritis.

Yeast, Bacteria and Parasites These living pests exist everywhere in nature. All animals, including humans, are covered in microscopic organisms. Many are essential to our health. On our skin, they protect us from more harmful, opportunistic organisms that can infect us. In our gut, there are a host of helpful bacteria that digest our food and release nutrients that we need and which we can absorb. Simply stated, they cannot be avoided. However, through improper nutrition, these pests will begin to multiply to a point that they endanger our health instead of support it. Too much refined sugar in our diet will encourage the growth of yeast until it severely impacts our day-to-day lives. Have you ever just been itchy

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for no apparent reason? That could very well be the yeast in your system. Yeast and parasites can also cause mood swings and has been implicated as a causative factor in ADD/ADHD. Bacteria of the wrong kind, along with microscopic parasites, can overwhelm the bowel, causing digestive problems, malaise and some of the issues we discussed earlier. The Detox phase of the diet won’t eliminate these organisms, but will reduce their affect on your toxic-load. *** You live in a world in which you are barraged with allergens, toxins and microorganisms at every moment of every day. Your challenged by the fact that you cannot possibly know to which foods and environmental factors you are allergic. There is no way to determine which things you eat stimulate inflammation in your body. Fortunately, some excellent research has been done, so the most offensive substances are known. These are the things that are most commonly found to be causes of dis-ease in individuals who have been subjected to extensive testing.

Where to Begin? The first step is to remove ALL the highest profile allergens, inflammants and toxins from your environment and diet as best you can. You may not be able to remove them all, but don’t cheat. Remove what you can and certainly don’t add to your toxic-load while trying to detox, that is, don’t get a new cat, even if you already have one or more, until after you’ve detoxified. You want to prepare your body for detoxification by first removing the new incoming assaults on your organs, cells and immune system. To this end, you should closely adhere to the

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food restrictions of the list below, and eat only those foods indicated as permissible. This will clean you out and open the channels needed to allow the toxins stored in your body to flow out of your system in phase two. Remember: The first phase lasts just six days. It is not a list of life-long restrictions. You’ll be back to pizza and ice cream in a less than a month. However, a little precaution now, and some moderation later, will keep you enjoying these foods, on occasion, for decades to come. You will prepare your body for six days by avoiding foods on the list in Chapter Ten. To guarantee that you are getting sufficient minerals and vitamins, you must also take supplements.

© 2007 Copyright Alison B. Ader, All Rights Reserved v 9.2

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CHAPTER NINE – Find Someone Who Knows What She/He is Doing

In the next chapter we’re going to tell you specifically what you can and can’t eat, but you will also need supplements and activators. Supplements ensure that you’re getting enough vitamins, essential minerals and cofactors to ensure a healthy body environment and prevent you from being hungry. Activators are herbs and glandulars that facilitate the three-step process of Cleanse, Detox and Rebuild. • Cleanse prepares your body for Detox in six days. It’s the period where you stop eating, drinking and subjecting yourself to substances that cause allergic reactions and the inflammation due to sensitivities. Cleanse lasts t a week to ten days, and permits your body to rest from the ongoing assault and allow your liver, adrenal glands and immune system to marshal strength. • Detox is the purge of the toxins in your body. Detox is ten days. We’ve discussed these, which include heavy metals, foreign hormones, drugs (antibiotics and others) that you didn’t know you were “taking” through the food you were eating. You will also

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eliminate bacteria, yeast, viruses and parasites that are harmful. It’s not a 100% purge. Some of these take years to totally eliminate—they took years to accumulate—but you’ll be reducing the amount in your system well below your “toxic load” limit. • Rebuild lasts seven days and facilitates and accelerates the repair of what has been done to your body on the macro-level (losing weight, toning skin) and the micro-level (the repair of organs and tissues). Rebuild can be extended as long as you’d like.

While the list of foods is easy, it’s more difficult to give you a list of what supplements and activators to take because of the wide variety of combinations and brands available. Under no circumstance should you make purchases at a warehouse store or buy generic store-brand vitamins or supplements. There’s a reason why they are so cheap… excuse us… inexpensive. There is definitely a difference in the quality of vitamins—B-complex is not just B-complex— it’s NOT just all the same. That’s why you must find a knowledgeable owner or manager of a health store in your area. That may not be the eighteen-year-old with a nose ring behind the counter at the mall’s chain-store—though it could be, we won’t completely prejudge. But more likely it’s the neighborhood shop that’s been in business for years and has a long-time employee who understands the products on the shelves and can guide you, and certainly make things less overwhelming. These people will give you the full benefit of their considerable experience and expertise once they know that you are serious about your health. Most herbs come in combinations that work synergistically together, so simply ask for assistance and look for some of the listed herbs on the labels. For example: a good adrenal

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support combination product may include some or even all of the herbs on the chart below, plus added vitamins/minerals that also support adrenal function. The most important aspect of supplementation is to acquire those products that support your Adrenal glands, Liver, Colon and provide nutritional support though digestive and proteolytic enzymes. In addition to a quality vitamin/mineral supplement, the following should be sought:

Supplements and Activators for Organ and Gland Support
Adrenal Support: 1. Licorice Root (do not take with high blood pressure or if diabetic) 2. Saffron 3. Chinese asparagus root 4. Siberian ginseng Colon Support: 1. Slippery elm 2. Psyllium husks 3. Marshmallow 4. Peppermint leaf 5. Cascara sagrada 6. Activated charcoal (food grade) A good digestive/proteolytic enzyme 1. Whole leaf aloe 2. Alfalfa 3. Ginger 4. Papaya

Liver Support: 1. Milk thistle 2. Dandelion root 3. Turmeric (do not take if you have gallstones or jaundice) 4. Bupleurum • Ask for a “between meal” drink that has high bio-available nutrition. Add a WHEY protein supplement. This should be made from rice. Neither should contain any form of sugar. Add STEVIA for sweetness. • For Candida/Yeast, ask for caprylic acid or grapefruit seed. Follow the directions on the manufacturer’s directions. • For Heavy Metals, get a good chlorophyll, and follow the manufacturer’s directions.

Should you still need assistance, please visit our web site, specifically this page: http://www.NatOpt.com/CDR for information about the convenient, pre-packaged, all-in-one, CDR program.

© 2007 Copyright Alison B. Ader, All Rights Reserved v 9.2

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CHAPTER TEN – C D R

It is very important that you eat only the foods we’ve specified below, and completely avoid the foods that can cause allergic or inflammatory responses. Food and drink that you cannot have: • Alcohol, caffeine, and drinks containing sugar and artificial sweeteners. This includes all sweeteners no matter how “natural” they claim to be. • • Avoid all foods with refined sugar including refined sugar. No gluten—look for “Gluten Free” on the package. Wheat, rye, oat and barley contain gluten, so all foods containing these grains—most notably bread and pasta—are to be avoided. • • No dairy, period. Eggs are okay in the first phase of your detox. Avoid corn and tomato sauces, foods high in fat and oil, refined oils, shortenings, margarine and other butter substitutes. • • No peanuts. Duh! Miscellaneous: No pork products, processed meats (hotdogs, sausages), or shell fish.

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Certainly avoid anything else, not mentioned here, to which to know you have an allergy or any kind of reaction. What kind of reaction? “Gee, it seems whenever I eat a lot of ____, I want to just lie down and go to sleep.” That kind of reaction.



Reduce salt as much as is possible (though this is not a salt-free diet) and use Celtic sea salt when you do.



NO hydrogenated fats or oils (Read the labels!)

You will abstain from these foods for the duration of the diet.

You should drink a gallon of water a day, sipped in portions of several ounces each throughout the day. No chlorinated or fluorinated water, that is, avoid tap water.

You are permitted to eat: • Vegetables, fruits and melon—though fruits and melon will be avoided in the second phase to cut down on your sugar consumption. • Nuts, not peanuts (double DUH!), but almonds, cashews, Brazil nuts, walnuts and pecans are all acceptable. Acceptable are sugar-free, organic nut butters, i.e., almond butter. • Fish, chicken and turkey can be eaten for protein, though fowl should be skinless. Lean, lean beef is also okay. Remember: no pork. • • Olive oil for cooking and salads. No corn, canola, etc. Rice and buckwheat, that is, non-gluten containing grains can be eaten.

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Ezekiel bread is gluten-free bread made from sprouted grains and can be used throughout the diet as a bread substitute for sandwiches, etc. 12

• •

Caffeine-free coffee and tea—green and herb tea—and clean drinking water. Have as much sex as you can handle 13 . *** The Cleanse

For the first six days, conform to the diet as specified above. This will prepare your body, “loosening” things up and opening channels for the excretion and elimination of those substances during Detox. Supplement with: • • • • A full-spectrum vitamin and mineral supplement Omega-3 fish oil supplement Acidophilus supplement You can eat as much as you’d like of lean protein and vegetables, and a moderate amount of nuts and non-gluten grains/bread. Salads are okay, whole tomatoes included. • Reserve fruits and melon for deserts, having just a small portion due to the sugar content of these foods. *** The Detox For the subsequent ten days you will actually eliminating the toxins and inflammants from your system. Yeast and harmful bacteria will also be reduced or eliminated—certainly brought within your body’s tolerance and ability to deal with them. Adhere to the diet, excluding the fruits and melons:
12 13

Personal note—it takes a little getting used to, but it’s not that bad. Give it a chance. Subject to the approval of your doctor and your partner, of course.
© 2007 Copyright Alison B. Ader, All Rights Reserved v 9.2

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• • Eat lean protein, vegetables, nuts, etc., as in the Cleanse.

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Follow the supplement regimin specified in the Table on page 46: Supplements and Activators for Organ and Gland Support *** The Rebuild For the following seven days you will be eating a healthy diet that will allow your body

to restore cells, tissues and organs to health. Obviously, in just a week or so, you won’t be made to look and feel like twenty, unless, of course, you are twenty. But this extra time allows your body to “gear up” for youthful cell production. Stick to the food list. You may add fruit and melon, conservatively, back to your diet. • • • • Lean protein, vegetables, nuts, fruit, etc. Vitamin/Minerals Omega-3 oil Acidophilus

© 2007 Copyright Alison B. Ader, All Rights Reserved v 9.2

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CHAPTER ELEVEN – Catching your breath

If you’re reading this book through for the first time, as you were instructed to do, you will be in either one of these two mindsets: 1. “I can do this,” another version of which is “I gotta do this.” Good. Truth is, there’s no one that loves bread and pasta and pizza and rib-sauce–did I mention bread?—more than I do. But I did this and felt a whole world of better, my flexibility was increased, my energy levels came up, and I lost ten pounds in phase one and kept it off long after I ended the formal diet. —or, perhaps you’re thinking— 2. “These people are nuts!” If this is the case, then you must be reading the wrong book. This is for the benefit of people who want to get healthy and in the process they want to lose weight, increase their energy levels and live longer. You really wanted to read Grandma Hazel’s 101 Ways to Chicken Fry Steak. Yeah, I know, the covers look a lot alike.

© 2007 Copyright Alison B. Ader, All Rights Reserved v 9.2

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Some Perspective

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By the end of the Cleanse, you’ll notice a big difference in your eating habits. You won’t be eating portions as large as you used to. Perhaps it’s because you’re not as enamored with the selection of foods from which you have to choose. That’s okay, too. You’re developing new habits while suffering through this phase of the plan. We don’t pretend that this is easy or that you’ll be satisfied with the rather narrow meal selections. Each one of you, assuming you are an adult, has, at one time or another, had to endure unpleasant surroundings, an intolerable high school or college professor for a semester, wear a cast on a broken arm for weeks, or perhaps suffer through boot-camp in preparation for military service. It’s just four weeks. You can do it. You will soon see the difference in the fit of your clothes, the cleanliness and smell of your body, and the clearness of your lungs; you will breathe more deeply and more clearly than you have in a long time. Your sinuses will suddenly feel open and smells—especially your neighbor’s bar-b-que—will have more texture. Whoops. Well, it’s true, and you’re less than a month away from enjoying the foods you really love again, and they will have more flavor than you remember. However, there is one issue that we must discuss with you—the Healing Crisis.

© 2007 Copyright Alison B. Ader, All Rights Reserved v 9.2

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CHAPTER TWELVE – The Healing Crisis

You are a toxic waste-dump. We’ve said that before. It isn’t possible to empty a toxic waste-dump without the use of heavy machinery. The Cleanse phase is often accompanied by a period where you feel like absolute crap. And when we say “often,” consider it a certainty. The symptoms might be physical or psychological: • • • • • • Malaise, tiredness, fatigue, need to sleep all the time Headache—especially for caffeine addicts—or dizziness Mild stomach upset or periods of nausea Aches in extremities Irritability or irrationality Anger, easily provoked

Drink lots of pure, clean, non-chlorinated and non-fluorinated water. This helps reduce the severity and duration of the healing crisis. You should be drinking about a gallon of water a day, sipped in portions of several ounces each throughout the day. It’s highly unlikely that you will experience all of these. Usually, in any individual, the healing crisis manifests as just one primary with a lesser secondary symptom. This lasts about

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three to four days starting anywhere from the second to fifth day of the diet. Some women have remarked that it is not unlike PMS. Be prepared for it. It will happen. It’s great for sympathy. Use it. Caution: If the symptoms become extreme, to the point that you feel that they are beyond anything you’d reasonably expect to endure for the sake of a diet, abandon the diet. Don’t go crazy, but reintroduce some regular food, eat a normal meal—don’t gorge yourself—and make sure you drink lots of water. This is a diet to live by, not to torture yourself. But just realize: • If you’ve ever put up with morning sickness and all the other myriad discomforts for the sake of having a baby (this mostly for women), or if you’ve ever put up with a pregnant woman for the sake of having a baby (this mostly for men), or; • If you’ve ever been totally hung-over with all the associated morning-after torments for the sake of a great night out with the boys (this mostly for men), or you’ve ever put up with the drunken slob that crawls in the house in the middle of the night (this mostly for women), then; You’re already willing to make sacrifices for something or someone that’s important to you. You should be willing to tolerate some short-term discomfort for the sake of your long-term health.

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CHAPTER THIRTEEN – Conclusion

Throughout this book we’ve dropped hints about how you might approach some of the mental challenges in attaining health at the expense of your lifestyle up to now. Each of us lie somewhere on the continuum between just not knowing how eating affects health and weight on the one hand, and just not caring on the other. There’s also the possibility—perhaps a probability—that you had a general idea, but were not willing to make the sacrifices—bite the bullet instead of the burger—to move yourself toward the end of the spectrum where the healthy people are. Food is an all-pervasive part of our culture. Holidays are Feast-ivals. We eat when we’re happy, we eat when we’re stressed, we eat when we’re depressed, and we eat when we’re bored. It’s clichéd, so we won’t spend much more time on that dimension of the dietary challenge of American life.

© 2007 Copyright Alison B. Ader, All Rights Reserved v 9.2

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Good News & Bad News

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First the bad news. It’s hard. It’s real hard to get healthy. I’m not going to try to convince you that there won’t be some salivary-satisfaction missing from the food choices proscribed in this book. Also, because the chemical and biological assault on our bodies by way of our food supply is ongoing, even if we attempt to eat only organic food, it is advised that you go on the program at least once a year.

But the Good news is that: • • • It’s a short-term protocol You’ll feel results very quickly The diet is self-fulfilling, that is, you will be less hungry and you will have fewer cravings, if any, than you have had on any other diet you’ve ever tried. Staying on the diet will not be as difficult as you anticipate. • If you choose to begin a program of exercise, mild or more concerted, you will find that you have greater energy, you’re more flexible, and your lungs are more efficient. 14 This, too, will accelerate your weight loss, if that’s a primary impetus to your engaging in this program. • Mental acuity will be heightened, stress levels will reduce—even in the presence of the same external circumstances—and you will be much slower to anger. • You will just feel better than you have in a very long time—and think how that will effect your interaction with your family, friends and coworkers.
Always begin any exercise program gradually and do not over-do right out of the gate. A proper physician’s examination is always recommended.
© 2007 Copyright Alison B. Ader, All Rights Reserved v 9.2
14

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In short, with so much to gain, and only a little over a month’s hedonistic pleasure to be sacrificed, why would you not push the limit of your willpower to prove to yourself, and those around you, that you can regain control of your life. Remember, it’s not just the weight-loss that we advocate; it’s the overall improvement of your standard of living, quality and quantity of your life, and the enhancement of your well-being that we advocate.

© 2007 Copyright Alison B. Ader, All Rights Reserved v 9.2

23 Days to Health
ACKNOWLEDGMENT

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Special thanks to Phyllis Marks, attorney and former Registered Nurse, who was instrumental in the preparation of this manuscript. She is a principal and partner with Alison Ader in Natural Health Options, Inc. which sponsored this text. Ms. Marks has also authored “Live Cadaver: The True Story of Kellee Kendell and Scandalous Treachery Within the Medical Community,” which details the abuse of a woman and subsequent malpractice suit in which Ms. Marks was the attorney for Ms. Kendell. It’s a mustread for all women that have been told they must go under-the-knife due to issues with their reproductive systems. Know before you Go!

http://www.LiveCadaver.com

© 2007 Copyright Alison B. Ader, All Rights Reserved v 9.2

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