Last month I did a breast cancer prevention class that taught me 2 unusual things. For one, when you are focused on something, more of that comes your way. I’ll explain later.

Number Two, Large scale national organizations stepped in line to poo poo prevention. Basically, a pink ribbon flying organization told me that classes on breast cancer prevention were not part of their objectives. Arrghh. More on that later too.

Back to insight number 1.

The Sunday after my class, I’m sitting in church and we have a guest speaker. I’m thinking, oh no. But, God had a different plan. It was a fabulous sermon with a personal story from the pastor about his mom who developed breast cancer and refused chemo and radiation and lived and is actually doing very well.

O.K. now I’m interested.

Most people aren’t willing to talk about the alternative things they are doing or they did. Why?

As soon as people talk, the criticism comes flying. It is a rare person that can stand up to the fear mongering and say, “this is my body and I think I need to do this______.”

The harsh reality that no one really wants to talk about is that traditional cancer treatments have a very poor success rate. Using the word “success” is also a misnomer.

So I called this pastors mom and interviewed her. Now, I am going out on a limb here and giving you some details, but I feel like I have to give you the legal FDA warning. I don’t recommend any of the things on the list as a treatment.

• Every cancer is different.
• Consult with an alternative doctor.

These are the things “she” did. I personally would do all, or nearly all of them, if I have cancer. I am going to give you a summary of our interview. Ready? She also gave these things to me in a rough order of the importance she gave them to her success.

1. She cleaned up her diet. Lots of organic foods and more veggies and she completely cut out sugar.
2. This one is also very key. She saw a naturopath and had her blood tested for food intolerances. The number one thing that she cut out was dairy. The liver is the key. If it is struggling with foods it can’t process well, it doesn’t work well to get the toxins out of your body. This is why I take “Cruciferous Complete” from Standard process and “LivCo” from Mediherb. They help the liver immensely.
3. She felt that digestion was a primary thing to improving her health. To ease the burdens she cut out turkey, pork and red meat. One thing I would have maybe added was digestive enzymes or “Zypan” from Standard Process.
4. Based on some help from another doctor in California, she switched to a diet that was 80% vegetables and 20% meat.
5. She also tested her pH levels and was very acidic, so she went on a month long program of juice fasting and raw foods. It wasn’t the Purification Program from Standard Process, but something a little simpler.
6. She drank a lot more water, good clean water, that is.
7. She did another detoxifiction program for 5 days.
8. She found some one to do “foot zoning” for her. She used that to monitor how her liver was doing. She felt the liver was key to her getting better.
9. She used a few naturopaths to get guidance and have access to the hormone testing kits from Diagnostechs. I was pleased to hear that ecause I’ve used Diagnostechs for many years.
10. She also found a clinic in Idaho that did mineral I.V.’s. She found them very helpful and I believe she did the myers cocktail.
11. She also took Essiac Tea twice a day. If you need a source let me know. I think this should be a mandatory protocol for all cancer patients.
12. She also took advantage of Reishi Mushrooms healing effects.
13. And last but not least, she did caster oil packs over the affected areas.

Now, this is not everything she did. These are just the big things. You might be looking at the list and saying, “what on earth was she doing?”

I put this out to give you some new ideas and just expose you to the concept that there are a lot of ideas out there on cancer. I have a book of dozens of treatments that were successful, but sadly have all been wiped of the earth by the all knowing FDA.

The real problem for long term success with things like chemo is the fact that healing occurs from the inside out. Things that create illness can’t simultaneous create health.

Only healthy things can create a healthy body.

This is why I enjoy Standard Process supplements, organic food, and chiropractic adjustments so much. They allow the body to heal from the inside out without getting in the way.

SP order line 612-BE-GREAT (612-234-7328)

or just email with questions, or better yet leave a comment, those will get to me also.

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What if you could control the matrix?

When the bullets are flying, wouldn’t it be great to be able to see them coming and bend left, then right, and watch them fly by in slow motion?  To do that you need to learn some secrets of slow motion.

I’m sure you could make a cool Youtube video of you in slo-mo.

Is it possible to live a slower life and actually enjoy it?  Absolutely.  Now, it wouldn’t be fun to actually live and move in tree sloth time.  What I want you to see is the perception of time shifting into a lower gear.  The real “secret” is being intentional about the speed of your life.

Time, itself, slows down when you do.

Talk to almost anyone older than you and they all say the same thing.  “The older you get the faster time goes.”  I would say that most of the retirees that I know are busier now than when they were still working.  On the flip side, if a retiree sits in the rocking chair and does nothing, they quickly degenerate and die.  It’s true that “a rolling stone gathers no moss”, but what if the stone is rolling too fast?  Chaos can quickly ensue with an out of control boulder.  “Rock Slide”

It is hard to do less. I spent Thanksgiving and the days after hanging out with family and friends purposefully doing nothing.  It was hard to slow down. Oh, so worth it.

Every part of our lives are built around being as productive as possible, or at least as busy as possible.  Everyone feels more important if they are busy, or appear to be busy.  I’ve seen elementary kids with planners.

If you don’t have much experience in simple living and slow living you may just have to take a vacation to kick start a new out look on life.

“Doctor’s orders”

Now, any time off will be great, but you need at least 4 days, preferably longer, to let your brain begin to slow down.  For the first 3 days you will likely be antsy and wanting to do something, resist it. On a “vacation” don’t plan anything.  That’s right…NO plans.  You’re on the non-plan plan.  Some of the best trips and most memorable were never planned.  The patients I prescribe a vacation to need to do nothing and let their minds and bodies rest.  You don’t want to have to take a vacation after your vacation.

If you are taking a R & R vacation my suggestions would be to the mountains or the ocean.  Both of with have a lot of power, energy, and the ability to humble you with their grand scale.  I realize you can get peace anywhere but humans have always gravitated to these places, they offer that little bit extra.

Now if you are really in need of peace and reflection you could sign up for a month of meditation in a Katmandu monestary.  Since that kind of isolation would break most people, me included, go for the ocean or the mountains.

If you are really strapped for time a lake or a forest will do if you don’t live close to the big ones.

A few other suggestions to SLOW life down and enjoy it.

• Go to a foreign country- you will be forced to slow down with unfamiliar surroundings and language barriers.
• Turn off your phone and computer for the day.
• Have no plan
• Travel light - Walking on the cobblestone streets in Mexico I saw this poor guy dragging 2 huge suitcases along while he followed his female companion.  I thought “poor #$%^&*”  Don’t drag burdens around with you.
• Spend the night cooking a big meal and enjoy preparing each piece.

Benefits to you:

• You sleep better
• You feel less pain
• You have more energy
• Life can take on more meaning than to-do lists and bills.

But “I don’t have time…I have this to do…and that to do”

If anything close to those words just came out of your mouth…you must go.  Everyday you wait , you rob yourself of life.  All your stuff will be waiting for you when you get back.

Try this easy, warm, healthy potato soup.

Last night I made a potato soup that my wife and I love.  I savor each bowl of this filling soup.

If you need a warm meal after being outside try this.

Ingredients for 2 people:

• 3 medium potatoes (Preferably organic)
• Onion (small)
• Green beans (about 2 cups)
• Dill (as much as you like), we use a lot.
• 1 Tablespoon Butter
• 2 cups Milk (Preferably raw, if not then whole milk)
• Salt / Pepper (Preferably Celtic Sea Salt)

Step 1:  Start with the potatoes.  Clean the outsides, leave the peels on.  Cut into 4 pieces.  Boil for 20 minutes

Step 2:  Steam the green beans ~7 minutes

Step 3:  Heat the milk on medium on the stove ~10 minutes.  Be careful not to heat too high or too long.  You want it to be “soup” temperature hot.

Step 4:  Blend on “High” for 1 minute.  Milk,  butter, dill, 1/2 of the potatoes, 1/2 of the green beans, 1/2 of the onion.

Step 5:  Add the rest, blend on low to just chop the rest up.  This gives it a chunky texture.

Step 6:  Salt and Pepper to taste.

Enjoy, and eat it SLOW,

Dr. Altman

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

Health is the soul that animates all the enjoyments of life,
which fade and are tasteless without it.
-Seneca
Health literally creates some of the best experiences.  Every time my health has been in the tank, I haven’t enjoyed it very much.

My concern is that people are sacrificing what they have for the illusion of something better and in most cases, people can save a ton of money, eat better and get more bang for their buck with a whole food vitamin and better food.

But to understand the great vitamin lies, I need to make sure I talk about the importance of vitamins, how they are used, lost, made, and ultimately how they can make your life better.  I know my health and subsequently my life are better because I learned about food first, then vitamins second.

“Let food be thy medicine, thy medicine shall be thy food.”
- Hippocrates

That may have been true a few thousand years ago, but our current food supply is very stressed.  There are two main problems with our food.

#1 The commercial processing of our food.
#2 The commercial farming of our soil.

Let’s start with processing, or should I say killing and completely destroying nature.

Most Americans are eating at least some processed food everyday.  Universally, Americans are not eating enough fresh vegetables and fruits, and most of the grains are processed.  Start thinking cereal, pasta, toast and donuts.

Let’s pick on wheat for a moment, only because it is so common in most people’s lives.

Grains are processed for one reason only…shelf life.  So what happens when you shred a grain apart.

#1. Take a kernel of wheat, filled with vitamins and minerals, bran and germ.

#2.  Rip everything of value out: the bran, germ, vitamin E, calcium, manganese, copper, zinc, and potassium, and leave us with the starch.

#3.  Bleach it, so it looks pretty.

#4.  Spray some artificial B vitamins (often derived from coal tar) and iron on it. (called enriched) Enriched is a great term to make you think you are getting something great, but you are really getting ripped off.

#5. Package it up so it can sit on a store shelf in a pretty box.  Unable to spoil, because not even bacteria can live on it.  This process includes packaged breads, rolls, muffins, donuts, cereal, pasta, and all those yummy cakes and cookies in boxes. 

That brings up a fundamental question of commonsense.  If bacteria can’t spoil a product, there is nothing alive or of value in it.  Your body can’t use it either.  “Non-perishable foods” are just that.

Modern milling rips all the nutrition out and leaves us holding an empty bag.  If you follow the modern food pyramid, you’ll be getting 6-11 servings of grains, most of which is processed, empty and dead.   If you see the words enriched or bleached it is definitely processed.  If it is white, you’re in trouble.  Here is a good project for you to get rid of any white bread you have laying around and are now not going to eat.
“Best use of white bread and a $1.41 “

Sadly and quite amazingly this has been going on for a long time.  About 1901, Harvey Wiley M.D. the chief of what we call the FDA now, started fighting for a law to prohibit this kind of adulteration of food.  He actually was able to get a law passed in June of 1911, forbidding “the addition of deleterious substances by the manufacturer.”  “The abstraction of any valuable ingredient also is an adulteration”.  As published in the Washington Post by Dr. Wiley in 1912.

Dr. Wiley also said in 1912 “The manufacturers of our food supply, and especially the millers, would devote their energies to improving the public health and promoting happiness in every home by the production of whole ground, unbolted cereal flours and meals.”

After that, Dr. Wiley was no longer able to rock the boat.  He was removed as the chief of the U.S. Bureau of Chemistry (todays FDA) in 1912.   Too bad, he was on a roll.

Essentially after WWI (1918) food became universally processed, refined, preserved, and general tampered with.  Today almost all food in a grocery store is processed.  Don’t start to panic, help is on the way.  We’ll talk about how to fix it.  I am hoping you are starting to see an emerging picture of why whole food vitamin supplements started to emerge in the 1920’s.  Vitamin deficiencies were showing up back then.

The following headline is the exact reason this book is so relevant.  You shouldn’t buy most multivitamins.  Most vitamins on the market are bad for you, or at the best worthless.  Does that mean you don’t need extra vitamins?  Absolutely not.  This article also highlights why it is so incredibly difficult to study vitamins.
Feb 9, 7:48 PM EST

Huge study boosts disappointment on multivitamins

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By LINDSEY TANNER
AP Medical Writer

“CHICAGO (AP) — The largest study ever of multivitamin use in older women found the pills did nothing to prevent common cancers or heart disease. The eight-year study in 161,808 postmenopausal women echoes recent disappointing vitamin studies in men.

Millions of Americans spend billions of dollars on vitamins to boost their health. Research has focused on cancer and heart disease in particular because of evidence that diets full of vitamin-rich foods may protect against those illnesses. But that evidence doesn’t necessarily mean pills are a good substitute.

The study’s lead author, researcher Marian Neuhouser of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, offered this advice: “Get nutrients from food. Whole foods are better than dietary supplements,” Neuhouser said.

The study appears in Monday’s Archives of Internal Medicine.

They are almost 100% correct.  You do need a multivitamin, but you don’t need a artificial, synthetic one.

They are absolutely right when they say you need to get your vitamins from food.  Vitamins give the body strength, power, and the ability to function.  Vitamins in food have many different pieces all put together, like a 1000 piece puzzle that takes days to do.  Vitamins in most dietary supplements are like the naughty kid who scrambles up the puzzle before Grandma can put the last piece in.  The pieces are strewn about randomly and violently.  So violently, that now all that work is gone and some pieces are missing down the air ducts, never to return.  Get your vitamins from food.

What they missed was separating out the people taking “whole food” multivitamins vs. everything else.  There is a monumental difference.  It is the difference between having the puzzle completed into a beautiful mountain scene or a random mess of turned over pieces.   It was nice to see the recognition that people may need some for of supplementation for poor eating habits.  Unfortunately, that’s most, if not all of us.

Vitamins aren’t drugs.

I know…shocking news.  What I mean by that is a drug is an isolated substance that forces the body to do something, whether it wants to or not.  Thus, it is easier to do double-blind medical research tests with drugs than vitamins.  Vitamins in a food are complex, and depending on the health and nutritional status of the person, vitamins will be used differently.  The body decides what it wants to do with them.   For example: vitamin C may be used to help repair body tissues, to prevent scurvy or it may be picked up and used by the white blood cells to help fight an infection.