My Life Storyby Dr. Ann Wigmore

The beginning of my life was meant to take place in America because my father and mother planned to come here when I was about to be born. However, this was not to happen � I was born prematurely and very sickly in Lithuania. My father, who was a very stubborn man, told my mother that since I was a girl, I had not a chance to live and that I should be put in back of the barn for the wolves. This is not uncommon in many European countries.

My grandmother was to live at the homestead after my parents departed for America. Another grandparent also stayed behind. It was customary for the grandparents to move in with the children when they became old or sick. But my grandmother was very active in the field of health. She was a nature doctor. She immediately rescued me and took me into the barn, where she fed me with goat�s milk through an eye dropper, so that I would survive. She kept me there for some time - until my health improved and I was able to move into the house. I stayed up there until I was five years old. My grandfather was an alcoholic. Life was not very pleasant either for my grandmother or me then, so my grandmother moved out and took me to another willage until World War I broke out.

During the war, life was horrible and dangerous - simply a matter of survival and moving from place to place. At that time, however, my first and greatest interest was to be with sick people. I remember climbing through a window and entering a yard where casualties were brought after the battles. Some of their legs were cut off, some had been shot. I remember that there was a great deal of screaming.Occasionally we had to go to the root cellar in the yard, because it was unsafe to live even in the basement of the house. Three or four different families lived in that cellar. My mother was able, in spite of all the flying bullets and all of the dangers, to get hold of some food in the form of grass and seeds or whatever she could find that was not destroyed. Most of the gardens were trampled over. The food in the house was taken by the soldiers. The only life-giving foods available were grasses and weeds.

Before the soldiers came, there was a great campaign to save foods, because we were told that when the Russians came, everything would be taken in that village. All the horrors were displayed in sketches explaining what would be done to the people if they would not cooperate and leave the village. My grandmother and I stayed behind for quite awhile, but then were forced to flee because there was no food available anywhere in that village. There was a battle, with bombs flying everywhere. We could see the explosions and fires burning all around us. My grandmother finally had us move in the middle of the night from a hollow full of water that would eventually have drowned us all, as we were waist deep in water.

In a remote section of war-torn Europe during the bloody First World War, and with hand encounters between Russian and Germans occupying two solid nightmarish years, I came to know the most wonderful physician in the world - my grandmother. Only the Almighty and nature could have given her the knowledge she bestowed everywhere. Resourceful, kindly, considerate, she was the unnamed leader of the few remaining villagers who huddled waist deep in water in the root cellar of that shell-blasted orchard.

Our hastily gathered provisions were gone and we knawed bark from the tree roots which had pushed through the walls and chewed ordinary grass and seeds that my grandmother had brought back from her forays into the darkness of the nights. But rising water, drowning two of our little band, made our shelter a morgue, so grandmother led the scurry for life across the open fields as bullets - angry bumblebees - zipped past our ears. Some went down as we, like frightened chickens, dodging around the prostate forms, scattered in all directions.

But today, what I recall most vividly of that terribly drawn-out ordeal, is that grass and seeds brought me, a frail and sickly child, through alive. Yes, grass and seeds can also save people from the ravages of slow starvation leading inevitably to the huge premature death rate that so many countries are experiencing.

We traveled furtively through fields, hiding between bushes and trying to move into areas of safety - however, safety was nowhere to be found. Finally, we came to an empty house and moved into the cellar, where there was a fireplace. We stayed there for several days but then had to move again, and all during the time of moving, we could see the soldiers fighting, riding horses and running about, and the people scattering to different ditches, screaming.

Finally, we settled down in a haunted house where no one had lived since the family had been killed. I remember vividly that in this house my grandmother cared for sick people during the whole year after the war. We were able to get some sheep, customary in primitive countries where people had to make their own clothing in order to keep warm. Luckily, we had a spinning wheel in the house and somehow we were able to get some goats for milk. When we found the food which was stored by the family which had been killed, we were not only able to feed on it but to share with others.

There was a white kid, orphan of a goat the raiders had killed the week before. He was brought to my cousin and me in the cellar of the "haunted" house. Before daylight, I would visit the cave in the swamp where our remaining goat was hidden, get the milk and, with my cousin�s help, feed it to the tiny animal through a nipple made from an old rubber glove. The warring Russians had ruthlessly stripped the valley of all food, driving my grandmother from her home. The approach of biting winter weather frowned upon a starving village and we finally found shelter in this deserted farmhouse. For several days my cousin and I nursed the kid, ignoring the pitiful whimpering of little Whitey, my grandmother�s dog, begging for more milk.

This morning, the cries of the puppy annoyed my cousin who struck the wall near the animal's nose. This slight blow was enough - a crack opened wide as it spread upward, and a moment later I pushed into a well-concealed root cellar, crammed ceiling high with grain, seed, and root vegetables. It seems this precious food had been carefully hidden by people who had since been killed, and my grandmother, as she gathered us in her arms, whispered softly, �You four have saved this village from starvation. We now have enough food until spring.�

My job was to help my grandmother. We had a room full of bunks with sick people and ailing soldiers, battered by the war and left behind. My grandmother knew no enemy; either Russian or German wounded was welcome to be healed with her nurturing grass juices and poultices. Some of the villagers came to help with the soldiers. It was my grandmother�s job to act as a natural doctor. She always knew what to do. No matter what the problem, she always helped the people to get better, just as she had helped me to survive during early childhood. She told me how she used to put me in mud baths and how she would give me certain chlorophyll-rich foods.

She depended upon grasses, which were always available and she would use these on the soldier�s wounds. Before dawn, I was sent into the woods and fields to gather these wild foods. I traveled through fields, swamps and woodlands before daybreak and vividly remember how sleepy I was when my grandmother would wake me up. She would feed me with warm goat�s milk and dress me while my eyes were still closed. I was very young then, perhaps only six or seven years old. Every single day I would go through dangerous pastures and meadows to collect weeds, but I always had an animal with me, a dog, goat or sheep. This was the way I got acquainted with all kinds of wild creatures because I was very fearful at first, until I g

ot in tune with them.

It was instilled in me that if I heard a dog bark or saw an indication that someone was coming, I should immediately flee from the area, as there were many robbers and murderers left after the war. Many times I would run through the woods with the goats, sheep or dog, as they tried to protect me. Occasionally, I would encounter a very dangerous place where farmers' cows and other animals were killed for meat by some robbers. I was in constant danger, yet I had a feeling that this was the greatest contribution I could make to help my grandmother - taking care of the animals.

A cow was given to her, but it had to be sold so that the money could be spent for things that were necessary for the house. All of our foods had to be grown in the small garden. Grandmother would be gone practically all day to take care of sick folk in the village. Our neighbors were very generous with their time and would come to help me for many months when I got sick with malaria and other illnesses, but my grandmother was always cheerful and assured me I would survive. She always told me I had a mission.

When I was able to get back on my feet, my grandmother decided that I should go out to work on a farm to earn money for my trip to America: I was then about nine years old. She always considered my future, and she thought that I should have more experience of being with other people, so she sent me to work on a farm. She felt that I should always be in a good environment.

On that farm, the father had passed on, and the mother took care of it with the help of five unmarried daughters. The oldest one was the director of the farm and the other daughters were under her supervision. I was to receive (in American money) about $12 a month, which was to be saved for coming to America to fulfill my mission.

I was very lonely at first on the big farm away from my grandmother, but I tried to adjust myself to being away, although I would cry way into the night. The work was very hard. The oldest girl planned continuously to sell the farm, because the other girls were not interested in it; they did take care of the animals well. I had to feed the horses, cows, sheep and goats. I used to be in the stables most of the time, taking care of the horses. They had a little colt that was deformed and much smaller than the others. They had planned to sell it, but I begged them to let me care for it and raise it myself, so that later I could sell it and save the money towards my trip to America. I liked to take care of sickly animals and bring them back to health.

I watched the colt grow into a beautiful horse through my love and care, improving and becoming a very useful horse on the farm. One day, I saw a farmer beating a horse, one that was different from all the others, a war horse that had been left behind by the soldiers. The horse was very sickly, so I asked the farmer to sell it to me. I bought it, using some of the money I was saving for my trip, but I was bound to have that horse, and to rescue it when I saw that it was not healthy, as I do for other animals even to this day.

So, when I brought it home, the girls thought it was silly of me to buy this kind of weak, poor-looking horse that would be of no use with the farming. I fed him and tried to ride him, but he bucked and didn�t seem to respond. We tried to put a harness on him and he rejected it. Finally he became cooperative and loving and I was able to ride him without a saddle. Every Sunday I would ride him to the city, a distance of about 13 miles, to visit my grandmother.

By this time my grandmother had returned to the city and I used to see her once a week. Most of the time, I would walk or ride my beautiful horse. I needed to sell the horse but for no other reason than to get money to go to America. I need

ed to work very hard to earn enough money so that at the age of sixteen I would be able to go to America, as my grandmother had continually insisted. I even went out to various farms to do extra work, especially during the period of harvesting.

I remember on one particular day, we cut the wheat, rye and hay by hand. The oldest girl was the main farmer and I was her assistant. We would bring in the seeds and thrash them by hand. It was a very exciting time when we took the seeds to market, perhaps once a month. We had to go long distances to the city market.

On other special Saturdays we had to take a sauna outdoors for a bath. There would be about three or four women from the village also, for there was a separate time schedule for men and women. I remember running from the house to the sauna without any clothes on and in winter I would roll in the snow. One of the girls was quite playful. She would always make eyes at the boys and try to lure some of the suitors who came to court the older girls (who were supposed to be married first). The younger girls were not allowed to participate in this courting; therefore, she would always run away from the farm but always came back to tell her sisters about the experiences she had had. She even fell in love with one of the farmer�s sons, but could not marry him.

The oldest girl, who was supposed to be married first, was not very pretty, but she was a real farmer type. There was no heat in the house where I lived, except for a wooden stove that was used most of the time only for cooking and baking. A small oven-type settee was in the living room, which we could sit on to warm ourselves during the baking and cooking time, but outside of that the house was very cold. We had to keep warm by being very active, although the invigorating steam bath made us warm on Saturday evening.

As the years went by, I had accumulated nearly enough money to go to America. One day I had to go to the city for my inoculations to enter the States. When I returned, I felt very drowsy, and the girls could not rouse me in the morning - I could not move or speak. Then the excitement really began when they took me for dead. All of the girls started to cry, wondering how they would bury me without my grandmother present. All this time I could hear them talking, crying and carrying on. They had distributed among themselves the scant few clothes that I had prepared for the American trip. I was desperately trying to scream or move, but nothing happened. It was the most frightening thing that I have ever experienced. I was afraid that I would be buried alive, as so many others had been before me. There were no doctors, but the girls searched for my grandmother. Then I heard a commotion - my grandmother coming through the field with her little dog, Whitey.

Whitey had come so often to visit me, and now he came running from about twenty feet toward the house, through the door, jumped right up on my chest and began licking my face. As my grandmother approached, everyone was saying, �She�s dead!� Grandmother said, �She�s NOT dead - a dog wouldn�t lick a dead person.� My grandmother began to put me into cold water, then hot water, and began to massage me to bring me back to life. Gradually I was able to move, and in a few days to sit up and get my health back.

Just when I was ready for my trip, the value of the mark went down. The situation was very serious for many who sold their property. I remember going thirteen miles to town to see about the money values but it seemed useless to try to get any help - there was nothing to do but start over again. I remember before the devaluation of the money, people were selling their homes for very high prices. But when the value of the mark reached the bottom, people committed suicide and many of them died from starvation. Many families left for the big cities, looking for a way to start again, but the situation seemed to get more and more difficult. Fortunately, my uncle had planned to go with me to America, and he was some h

elp, so we managed to arrive after many delays. It took us over two months before I left for Middleboro, Massachusetts.

I went to the passport office to make arrangements only to find that they had sold our reservations to someone else. We had to borrow money for another passage and buy someone else�s place. My uncle refused to go home until we had secured our tickets, and we rented a little room in that big city to stay in until we had secured passage.

Meanwhile, I was very curious about big city life. I wanted to know how the electric lights worked. I thought it was strange how the city lights burned without oil and lighted the room - they looked like big candles. I took the little light bulb out of the lamp and put my finger inside the socket to see what made it burn. I was knocked out cold on the floor and remained unconscious for a long time! From then on, I began to think, �I must not rush into anything so fast without understanding what it is.� But I was, and still am, a very curious person. I had had no formal schooling, but this did not stop me from doing things. With God�s help, I thought that nothing was impossible.

When we finally reached the boat, I was down to skin and bones. I was very sick on the ship and I was continually gagging and vomiting - unable to eat anything. The only thing I remember eating that was very soothing was an orange - my first one, although I did not eat them later on in life. We were lodged way down below the decks. It was a horrible place, with such a foul smell that it was difficult to stay there, so I stayed on deck most of the time, as the boat rolled and rolled. I asked God to let me be pushed into the ocean, so that I wouldn�t have to go down again into that hole which was my room, because I could not stand the smell of vomit.

Finally we arrived in America, at Ellis Island. There the people looked at me with my very long, golden hair and told me I had attracted some lice and they would have to cut my hair off. I learned later that more than likely they sold my hair to a wig maker! This unnecessary act made me very unhappy because I didn�t want my parents to see me for the first time with a bald head. They would think that I was a sickly person because I was so thin after losing so much weight. I was down to about seventy pounds.

When I arrived my father was disgusted because he had thought he would have someone to work hard for him, which was why he let me come to live in his house. When he saw me, he was more disappointed than ever. Neighbors came to help me, bought me American clothes, and prepared me for the new life in America.

My mother was very humble, never having anything to say or disputing my father�s ideas. Those time were very difficult for me � going from one adjustment to another. From the very beginning, my father and I didn�t get along. He wanted me to settle down and get married because I was about sixteen. I began to work for him in his bakery and candy store, where my job was to deliver the bread. I had to be up before four o'clock in the morning for this. He also had me feed the pigs and cows that he had grazing on the other side of town. I used to bring garbage to the pigs through the town, which I did not like to do.

I was very disappointed in American life because I thought it would be entirely different, as my grandmother had told me that the streets were lined with gold. I did not mnd the hard work as much as the very restricted life with my father, which I resented. It was not like the hard life with my grandmother, where there was a lot of love and togetherness - life with my real family was very cold.

I became sick from eating candy and donuts from the bakery and my teeth began to fall out. I became very sad and was sick most of the time. One day I was driving the wagon to deliver bread when one of the horses got scared and began to run,

so I pulled on the reins and dropped one. As the horses turned around, they tipped the wagon over and it fell on top of me and began to crush me. Both my legs and an ankle were broken, and I was choking to death until someone came along just in time to lift the wagon off of me.

They took me out and on to the hospital. After a two-week treatment the doctors said that gangrene had set in and my legs would have to be amputated, because there was no way that I could possibly live with the gangrene. I said no, that I wanted to go home. The doctor and the nurses were upset and would not attend me anymore. My parents wouldn�t come to visit me. My body burned with fever and I wanted to die. I didn�t see how I could live without legs.

God will always send someone to help if you just pray and call out. It was my alcoholic uncle who answered my call and helped me through these trying times. He placed me underneath a tree in an area where there was grass, and I kept chewing the grass and weeds like dandelion, purslane and lambsquarter. I wanted some water, but no one would come near me because my father said I was in that condition because I had disobeyed him. It was months before I could even walk with my crushed legs, but they healed. As I got better, I ran away once to a farm, but was discovered and brought back home again because I was not yet eighteen.

My father got very angry at many of my actions, because I didn�t eat what they supplied in the bakery anymore, neither the candy nor the dairy products they sold. He punished me over and over for disobeying him. I knew if I ate the flour and milk or cheese that I would never get well. After nearly a year of abuse from him, I heard him downstairs one night making arrangements to have me taken away and married to a person I did not know who was much older than I was. He was going to get money for forcing me to go with that stranger!

Because of this, I ran away again and my parents were unable to find me. I was eighteen by now and was, for the first time, strictly on my own. I had many jobs, such as child sitting, house cleaning, and restaurant work. While in the restaurant, my legs gave out again completely, and the woman I worked twenty hours a day for got very angry when I had to leave, and didn�t pay me my wages. I walked with an old suitcase for about ten miles with terribly painful legs and then decided to go to Brockton Hospital where I had previously worked. I asked them if I could stay there until my legs healed, and when I ws better I would work there again to repay them.

They agreed and when I improved, they put me in a cancer ward to help patients suffering in the most severe stages. This is where I learned what it was to pass on from cancer, and I would go into the bathroom and cry. It was very hard for me to understand why people had to go through so much suffering and pain. This was when my real interest in cancers began, because I didn�t think it was necessary for people to go through such a horrible experience before they died. For a year and a half, I was very joyful in a way because I loved to work with the patients and try to help - but to hear them crying and screaming was almost more than I could bear.

I turned twenty-one and my real struggles were to begin. A friend introduced me to my future husband, who looked like a gentleman, and he wanted to take me out. I was very shy, reluctant, nervous and afraid to go out with this person, for my grandmother had warned me before coming to America never to let any boys take advantage of me.

I did finally consent to go out with him. He used to shower me with gifts of candy. I ate them to be polite, but got migraine headaches. So, I asked him to bring me fruit instead. I was always afraid to take expensive gifts from the opposite sex.

The time came when he really wanted to marry me, and he brought me home to meet his mother. His family lived in Stoughton, where his father was a contractor. His mother, who was very dictatorial, was always finding fault with her husband. When he could get out, he would sit in the barn by the hour, not wanting to come into the house because his wife was always nagging and complaining. There was always some sort of argument in the house. I desperately wanted to adjust to that environment and although it was very difficult, I did everything possible to do so.

I finally married him, and it wasn�t six months before his father died, and my husband bought the house. We had to live there with his mother, who did not feel well - she always argued and was unhappy and turned her nagging and complaining toward me and her son, who then took it out on me. I felt like a whipping boy.

Eleven years passed and I could not get pregnant so I decided to change my diet and eliminate meat and sweets. I became ill and when I went to the doctor, he told me that I was pregnant but because of tumors in my uterus, he didn�t think I could possibly survive the birth. I had great problems during labor, and when I came back home, I was never really well there afterwards, even though I had the joy of my life, my precious child. My headaches were getting better, but I was never really happy there, because of the way I was treated.

I needed to find people who treated me respectfully and lovingly, and joined various church groups and served as chairperson of banquet committees. We had a huge estate with over one hundred acres of land, and I worked very hard and planted a large beautiful garden with every fruit tree and flower available. My little baby girl was always by my side in her cradle, watching the butterflies, clouds and birds as I worked in the garden. This was the only time I was happy, when I was with her.

The baby girl became very sick and my husband gave me a harder time. He was jealous that I could not give him as much attention as before because I needed to care for my daughter, and he was disappointed that the baby was not a boy. Our relationship worsened and my husband became more dictatorial. The more time I gave to our daughter, the more difficult things became between us.

I had very serious blood poisoning in a finger and went to a doctor who operated on me and gave me my first drugs for the pain. As before, I lapsed into a coma. In the mornings, the doctors would pass my bed in the hospital and say, �Well, I don�t think she will live anyway, so we don�t need to do anything.� That went on for awhile and I came out of the coma. Then I began to understand why I had to come to this country and go through so much struggling, unhappiness and sickness - so that I could learn lessons about sickness and be ready to help other people in similar situations. I began to pray for guidance, which I always received.

One early morning I was lying on a couch reading a Bible and asking God what I should do. I asked why I must be in this predicament. Why was it necessary to find solutions for so much sickness and unhappiness? Then a revelation came. It was almost like a voice saying, �Become a minister and build temples.� It was nearly three years before I understood that "temples" meant "holy healthy bodies." I thought, how can I become a minister?

For help, I went to a Methodist minister and asked him what to do. He looked at me and told me I was crazy and that I should forget all about it because I was a woman, and at my age, I could not become a minister. He said I had other obligations � with my husband and my family. I said to myself that I certainly could not forget the revelation that was given to me by God� it was God speaking to me through ideas. I thought there must be some way to fulfill my mission.

Then I got in touch with a woman I read about in a newspaper. I called her up an

d told her that I wanted to belong to one of her groups. She said that every person who came into her group had to be investigated, so I told her to come and investigate me and see for herself that I was a reliable person. She invited me to join her professional women�s group. At the time, I was a furrier working from my home - I had gone to school for a year to learn the fur business. This woman, I learned later, was studying for the ministry, so she immediately gave me literature that opened a way, a correspondence course from the Unity School of Christianity.

After I had finished the course, I had to go to Missouri and study at the main campus; thereafter, I had to go back for a one month refresher course every year for four years. My husband resented it, but I was determined to continue to the finish to follow God�s request.

As I was away so much, my husband and daughter spent more time together. Finally, he asked me to choose between him and my career. How could I turn down God? He took a shotgun from the closet and told me he would kill me before he let my career come between us. I was not at all upset or fearful and I sat at the kitchen table and looked up at him and said that I would be going back to Missouri. I added I would leave him soon and he could kill me if he wished because I had to follow God�s mission for me. He then laid down his gun and cried like a baby. So then he told me that if I went, I could not come back. I kissed him goodbye, said goodbye to my daughter and proceeded with my plans, hoping that he would come to his senses when I returned.

When I got to school in Missouri I found an article my husband had printed in the hometown paper, saying that I had run away from home, deserting my sixteen year old daughter. He made many other false accusations in it, because he was out of his mind and was determined to ruin my character. I needed him to support me in this holy work, and he was fighting me. I felt pulled in two directions but knew I had to follow God�s plan for me.

I stayed in Missouri to finish that month�s course but then returned and filed for a divorce, as he wished. I signed papers his lawyer wrote turning the entire estate over to him, giving everything away to him, if he would only promise not to have our daughter involved in the court sessions as I wanted to protect her from the pain she and I would feel in hearing lies about me. He broke his promise and brought her to court anyway, and she was exposed to horrible lies about me. I prayed that one day she would know how much I loved her and wanted to protect her from those awful proceedings. He paid the divorce lawyer one thousand dollars.

I was completely without a penny, but borrowed money to go back to school where I had to start from scratch again. I stayed with friends for about a week, and finally stayed alone in a room I found. I continued with the fur work and started a massage business also, to help put me through school.

One day a friend asked me to go help her sister on Cape Cod who was afflicted with cancer and I agreed to go for a few days to take care of her. When I got there, her sister Frances wanted me to stay with her and also help her to study. I wanted to become a Doctor of Divinity, so I helped Frances and studied for the ministry at the same time. After she passed on, I stayed for one and a half years more.

Because of the emotional problems and finding out that I had cancer of the colon, it was a great help for me to be able to stay at a quiet place to gather together my resources for my mission. It was good for me to be alone and I prayed a lot. I was given twenty-five dollars a week by the trustees to care for the estate, and this helped with my schooling and my work in overcoming the cancer problem. I put a great deal of effort into completing the work that I so loved, helpin

g people spiritually, mentally and physically. This effort helped me to survive all of my loneliness for my daughter. My stay on Cape Cod opened a new life for me and afterwards I went to Boston to give classes on spiritual enfoldment and to continue with the help I was giving my body for self-healing.

My first experience on the Cape was to visit some rose gardens. As I sat on a bench, I enjoyed the scene of beautiful roses and gorgeous colors. I looked down and saw some birds. One was struggling and sick; the other was dead. I looked at it, curious to know what had happened. Asking the caretaker what had caused them to become ill, I was horrified to hear that he had just sprayed the roses and this was a consequence of the spraying.

So, I went back to the estate and started a little garden in the yard. The land was sandy, but I took compost from the kitchen and began to enrich the soil. I remembered the neighbors� gardens close by, where everything was sprayed, but which still had flying insects, and I planted some beans. When they sprouted, I noticed that no bugs came close to those in my garden. I wanted to prove that when the soil was healthy, insects and pests would not touch fruits and vegetables planted there anymore than germs would not touch a healthy body. From this point on, I became interested in organic gardening even more than before.

Work started almost immediately after that in Boston, even though I was still living at the Cape. I was sent to visit a woman suffering from back problem. I kept asking her what I could do about starting a nursing home and she told me of a man who was interested in health care who was retiring. He had been publishing a paper on health, and he might be willing to help me. Finally, I was able to make an appointment to meet him in a hotel on Copley Square. I waited in one hotel for him, while he waited in another. I made another appointment to meet him in the library. We finally met, and he seemed to be very much interested in my persistence and in what I was trying to do. He invited me to come occasionally to Boston to help him with his paper, which I did.

When the time came for me to leave the estate on the Cape I moved to my sister�s in Connecticut, but my brother-in-law did not agree with my ideas about health. I baked on a hot plate and lived on less than twenty-five cents a day for over eight months. I had to live on cooked food there and I became very sick again. I traveled to Boson every week to work on the paper but then decided it was time for me to be on my own. I didn�t have any funds to work with so I borrowed money from my cousin and rented a room on the sixth floor of a building on Cumberland Street.

The colon cancer had returned when I came to Boston from the country. The air was polluted as was the water. There was no place in the city that had good healthy food or even fresh vegetables or fruits. It was important for me to get healthy again, so I went to the Charles River bank for weeds and grasses. This improved my health, which was very bad from eating the cooked baked foods at the Cape and in Connecticut.

I was given the health magazine to publish! One evening I was on my way to my sister�s house in Connecticut. I was very tired and pulled off the road and went to sleep in my car. I was awakened by the morning sun, which shone so brightly in my eyes that this brightness took on a new beginning. Then and there I knew that the Rising Sun Christianity had to be born. It was a new beginning for me and a way to share with others. Since then, I have never stopped working, day and night, for a better world, first physically, because then the mental and emotional self would gain strength in order for the spiritual union with body to take place. I sent a paper on this to thirty-five different countries. I mailed the information on health through sprouting, living food and easy-to-digest nourishment and corresponded with people all over the world.

During my ride to Connecticut, everything seemed to unfold slowly and I began to understand what I was to do. From then on, I was guided daily, step-by-step, toward this ultimate goal, which is now in existence. There was much discouragement. There were problems I was facing for the first time, alone, and I had no funds and no home.

Boston was the place where I felt I must unfold. For nourishment, I went to the vacant lots where I gathered weeds and grasses and used them for food. In doing this, I returned to the source of nourishment which had, in the past, greatly improved my health, although this took considerable time.

During that fall, I was able to work in many areas, mailing out information, studying, working on the magazine, etc. I will still quite tired and had to sleep long hours and this bothered me very much as I felt there was not enough time to do all of the things I had to do. Winter was coming and I was concerned about where I was to obtain the grasses and weeds that I had been gathering from the outdoors to live on. At that time, I asked God again to help and protect me.

One beautiful thing happened regarding sprouting, which I considered a great step toward better nourishment. I adopted a sick monkey from a pet shop. At that time, I was helping ill animals wherever I found them. I had been nourishing myself on dry seeds and fed these to the monkey. I noticed she was having difficulty swallowing or digesting the seeds and discovered it was because she was toothless. I wanted to soften the seeds so I put them between two moist towels and, lo and behold, I was led to re-discover the timeless act of sprouting � the seeds opened and put out little tender shoots or sprouts within several days! These easily digested sprouts from softened seeds led me to explore further and that�s how I came to give the world the benefit of my discovery of sprouting - through the love of a pet.

I gave her some fruit also, but her main diet was soft seed in the form of sprouts. I decided to use the same sprouts myself, and I know the Creator gave me the idea of how to add more nourishment to my body through loving that monkey: �as ye do unto the least of them, ye do unto Me.� I began to grow wheat, buckwheat, rye, timothy grass, cats, etc. There must have been six or seven different grains.

Two of them grew very fast - buckwheat and wheatgrass. I kept giving the buckwheat to the monkey, which she enjoyed, and I also began to use it in my salads. These replaced the weeds I had been using before winter came. I was happy because I now had a replacement for the weeds and grasses and felt well prepared to nurture my body. I continued to grow the different grasses and greens and fed them to my pets, observing which ones they liked best. By that time, I had a raccoon, monkey, two cats and a few other animals which I kept in friends� homes as I was not allowed to have pets in my room. I enjoyed taking care of sick animals and watching them get healthy.

My observations showed me that every pet preferred to eat the wheatgrass and buckwheat, but especially loved the wheatgrass. The cats not only kept eating the wheatgrass, but would lay about in it, as well!

About this time I began to be curious as to what were the best nutritional elements contained in the wheatgrass. I discovered that after seven days, wheatgrass was more powerful than the previous six days to heal wounds or make me healthier. I was to find out later that on the seventh day, the wheat grass puts out negative ions, which make us feel great. These are the same ions we feel during a shower, or at the beach when the waves are crashing, or after a rain. Before the seventh day, the grass is pulling the negative ions out of anything or anyone around it, and leaves one feeling depleted.

- contributed by Dr. Flora van Orden III

- Dr. Flora was Dr. Ann's Assistant and Travel Companion for over 20 years, and has been a raw fooder for over 40 years. This story was dictated to Dr. Flora for typing, but was never commercially printed. the water cure..... The Water Cure: An interview with Dr. BatmanghelidjA NewsTarget Special Report by Mike Adams

Physicians rarely promote the curative properties of H2O, but Dr. Batmanghelidj, M.D. has studied water's effect on the human body and has found it to be one of the best pain relievers and preventative therapies in existence. I was one of the last people to interview the late Dr. Batmanghelidj, and I listened in awe as he shared his research and stories about "The Healing Power of Water."

In a fascinating one-hour phone conversation, Dr. B. shares:

� Which common ailments and "diseases" are actually caused by dehydration

� Why many doctors use water-regulating antihistamines to alleviate pain

� How Dr. Batmanghelidj unintentionally discovered water's healing properties

� Why most people are chronically dehydrated and suffer from symptoms of dehydration that are labeled "diseases"

� Which ingredients in soft drinks deplete the body's water reserves

� Why thirst is not a reliable indicator of dehydration

� Why the body produces cholesterol and how water keeps it in balance

� Why Dr. Batmanghelidj believes the public is being mislead about AIDS

� How dehydration impairs mental functioning

� Why some organizations want to withhold alternative health information from the public

� How lack of water causes depression

� Why popular beverages are no substitute for water

� How dehydration causes the vascular system to constrict, leading to hypertension

� How to recognize signs that your body is starting to dehydrate

� Why restaurants push you to drink disease-promoting soft drinks

� Why and how water effectively treats pain and inflammation

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Part 1 - Discovery of the water cure

Mike: Welcome everyone, this is Mike Adams with Truth Publishing, and today I�m very excited to be welcoming Dr. Batmanghelidj, author of Water For Health, For Healing, For Life. Welcome, Dr. Batmanghelidj.

Dr. B: Thank you very much for inviting me to be on the air with you and giving

me the opportunity of sharing my thoughts on the future of medicine in this country.

Mike: I think there are many, many people who have read your books. People are intrigued by the idea that water can be a therapy, a healing substance for the human body. What is it about water? How did you first become aware of these healing properties of water?

Dr. B: Well, it�s very bizarre. As you know, I�m a regular doctor, an M.D. I had the honor and the privilege of being selected as one of the house doctors, and I had the extreme honor of being one of the last students of Sir Alexander Fleming, the discoverer of penicillin. I mention his name so that you know I was immersed in medical school and research. And some years later, I had to give two glasses of water to a person who was doubled up in abdominal pain from his disease, because I had no other medication to give him at that moment. And he was in excruciating pain, and water performed miraculous relief for him. It gave him relief -- within three minutes his pain diminished, and within eight minutes it disappeared completely, whereas he was doubled up eight minutes before and he couldn�t even walk, he completely recovered from that situation. And he started beaming from ear to ear, very happy, asked me what happens if the pain comes back? I said, �Well, drink more water.� Then I decided to instruct him to drink two glasses of water every three hours. Which he did, and that was the end of his ulcer pains for the rest of the duration that he was with me.

Mike: And from that episode then, what happened next?

Dr. B: That woke me up, because in medical school I�d never heard that water could cure pain, that kind of pain, in fact. And so I had the occasion to test water as a medication in subsequently over 3,000 similar cases. And water proved every time to be an effective medication. I came away from that experience with the understanding that these people were all thirsty, and that thirst in the body can manifest itself in the form of abdominal pain to the level that the person can even become semi-conscious, because that�s the experience I had. And water picks them up every time.

So when I came to America in 1982, I went to the University of Pennsylvania, where I was invited to continue my research, and did research in the pain-relieving properties of water. I asked myself, why does the pharmaceutical industry insist on using antihistamines for this kind of pain medication? So I started researching the role of histamine in the body, and the answer was there -- histamine is a neurotransmitter in charge of water regulation and the drought management programs of the body. When it manifests pain, in fact, it is indicating dehydration.

So, the body does manifest dehydration in the form of pain. Now, depending on where dehydration is settled, you feel pain there. Very simple, and I presented this concept at the international conference as the guest lecturer of a conference on cancer, explaining that the human body manifests dehydration by producing pain, and pain is a sign of water shortage in the body, and water shortage is actually the background to most of the health problems in our society.

Because if you look at what the pharmaceutical industry is doing, they�re producing so many different antihistamines as medication. Antidepressant drugs are antihistamines, pain medication are antihistamines, other medications are directly and indirectly antihistamines. So, that is when my work was published, the scientific secretariat of the 3rd Interscience Board Conference of Inflammation invited me to make this presentation on histamine at their conference in 1989, in Monte Carlo. And I did that, and so it became a regular understanding that histamine is a water regulator in the body. But unfortunately, this information is not reaching the public through the medical community because it�s not a money-maker.

So that�s when I began to consider writing for the public, so that the public could become aware of the problem directly without the interference of a doctor, and that�s how I have generated all my medical information for the public. Of course, I have published extensively for the scientific community, but no one is picking up. In fact, the NIH, the Office of Alternative Medicine, had its first conference when the office was created, and I was asked to make my presentation, but when the proceedings of the conference came out, my presentation was censored after the proceedings. So there is a movement afoot within the NIH group of people to keep a closed lid on my information so that it doesn�t get out, because obviously they are more in favor of the drug industry, because it is now obvious that they are getting paid by them.

Mike: I think it is, first of all, that is an amazing account of what has been happening, and I think it is fair to say, too, that the pharmaceutical industry and organized medicine in general, really doesn�t want to promote anything that is free or near-free to the average patient. Sunlight is available at no charge, water is available at nearly no charge -- would you agree that their thinking is if people can cure their diseases, and achieve a high state of health on their own with these free substances, then that diminishes their profits and their importance?

Dr. B: Absolutely. That�s why I�ve created an organization now called National Association for Honesty in Medicine. Because I think it�s totally dishonest, in fact, criminal, to treat a person who is just thirsty, and give them toxic medication so that he gets sick and dies earlier than normal.

Mike: Can you give out the web address to that organization, by the way?

Dr. B: My website is http://www.watercure.com -- it gives you the option of going to one site or the other -- either Water Cure.com, or you can go the National Association for Honesty in Medicine. Or you can go to the information side of my website, http://www.watercure.com, because I have posted all of my scientific articles on dehydration on the website, and lots of other free information that people can have.

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Part 2 - AIDS and the Pharmaceutical Industry

Mike: I want to applaud what I call your scientific curiosity. I think this is the kind of curiosity that has been lost in so much of western medicine, where a true scientist observes nature and observes the interaction between humans and nature, and remains curious and open and to all possibilities, and then forms conclusions after rigorous testing, and I think so much of modern science has drawn erroneous conclusions without really remaining open-minded...

Dr B: Yes, one of the worst ones is AIDS. Because everyone assumes that AIDS is actually a viral disease, which is a fraudulent statement by those people who presented it, because the human body is the product of many, many years of having fought various viral diseases, and has survived. Smallpox, polio, measles, and all the other viruses that can kill very easily, and the body has an ability to mount a defense system against these hot viruses, viruses that actually very quickly can kill. But having survived those, how is it possible that the slow virus would kill us in the name of AIDS? I can�t understand it.

I have researched this topic extensively, and I have shown in fact that AIDS is a metabolic problem, when the body begins to cannibalize its own tissue because of certain missing elements in the raw materials that it receives through food o

r beverages, and the body of a person who gets AIDS, actually, is short of quite a number of building block amino acids. They�re short of tyrosine, they�re short of methionine, cysteine, they�re short of histidine, and they�ve got a whole lot of others in excess. So how can we expect a body that depends on the other amino acids to survive?

Mike: Once again we see AIDS is a huge industry for the pharmaceutical industry.

Dr. B: Well, of course it is, and the whole entire existence of the pharmaceutical industry is based on presentation of false science, and advertising this false science and drumming it into the minds of gullible people who have no curiosity to find out why that is so.

CholesterolDr. B: Another false science is the question of cholesterol. Cholesterol is one of the most essential elements in the survival of the human body. When the body begins to make more cholesterol, it has a reason to do that. It is certainly not to block the arteries of the heart, because we measure the level of cholesterol in the body in the blood we take out of the veins of the body, and nowhere in the history of medicine is there recorded one single case of cholesterol ever having blocked the veins of the body.

So, it is not the stickiness of the cholesterol that is the problem, which the drug industry is drumming it into the minds of people -- cholesterol is sticky, reduce it otherwise you will have blockage of your arteries, which is all nonsense. Cholesterol is actually saving the lives of people, because cholesterol is a bandage, a waterproof bandage that the body has designed. When the blood becomes concentrated and acidic, and is being rushed through constricted arteries or capillaries, in dehydration, then abrasions and tears are produced in the arterial system, naturally, in the capillaries of the heart first.

Now if cholesterol wasn�t there to cover up the tear and abrasions, blood would get under the membrane and peel it off and that person would be dead instantly. Cholesterol is actually an interim lifesaver, giving the body time to recover from its problems. We never understood this. We are knee-jerk doctors. We think that something�s up, bring it down, if something�s down, bring it up. We don�t ask questions why is it down or why is it up?

Mike: And the pharmaceutical companies know that treating cholesterol is a huge industry...

Dr. B: It�s a ten-billion dollar industry. Now there is a report that actually these statins, cholesterol-lowering drugs produce amnesia. In other words, the brain totally loses track of what it�s doing, and it is published by a doctor who is an eminent doctor. He was a flight surgeon, he is a researcher at NASA. And he knows what he�s talking about. He had the problem himself.

Mike: I just wanted to comment on the number of side effects that have been recorded as side effects from using statin drugs. Some people have extreme muscular pain, that amnesia you mentioned seems to be very common, and yet a study just came out, I saw it this morning, talking about how blueberries have phytonutrients that are shown to lower so-called fatty cholesterol, LDL cholesterol, more powerfully than statin drugs.

Dr. B: It�s interesting, because you see, the body manufactures cholesterol as an emergency situation, when it raises the level of its production. Its normal rate of production is of course is to create membranes for the cell membranes and brain cells and nerve insulation and of course the hormones of the body, vitamin D for the body. So these are the essential components that cholesterol makes in the body. We should never interfere with cholesterol without knowing why the body

has starting raising its level.

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Part 3 - No substitute for water

Mike: I have a question for you on water -- a lot of people think that they are hydrating themselves when they consume soft drinks or milk or Gatorade or all these other liquid beverages�

Dr. B: Gatorade is possibly okay, but Gatorade has sugar in it, and it's not particularly good for people who might even get hypoglycemic, or might induce insulin secretion, and that insulin secretion will produce more hunger and they overeat. But as a temporary sport drink, it's okay when you're in the middle of a golf game to drink a Gatorade. It immediately gives you a bit of the minerals that you probably will have lost sweating.

But nothing substitutes for water -- not a thing. No drink -- no coffee, no tea, no alcoholic beverages. Not even fruit juices. Each one of them has its own agenda. Your body is used to a fluid that has no agenda, because the body depends on the freedom of that fluid, water, because there are two kinds of water in the body. There is already occupied and engaged water, which is no good for new function. The body needs new water, or free water, to perform new functions. Now, when you give them sugar containing beverages, or caffeine containing beverages, both sugar and caffeine have their own chemical agenda in the body. They defeat the purpose of the need for water.

Mike: You're also talking about soft drinks here�

Dr. B: I'm talking about soft drinks, I'm talking about sodas, I'm talking about caffeine containing coffee or tea. I'm also talking about alcohol, because alcohol actually stops the emergency water supply systems to the important cells, such as the brain cells. In the reverse osmosis process your body filters and injects water into the cells, and this is what I call reverse osmosis. And it has to raise the blood pressure for that in order to overcome the osmotic pull of water out of the cells, and reinject water into the cells. That's why we develop high-blood pressure in dehydration. And this process of reverse osmosis is stopped by alcohol. It stops the filter system.

Chronic Disease Caused by Lack of WaterMike: Let me start this next section by asking you about the correlation between water consumption and chronic disease. There are many diseases you mention in your books that are related to dehydration. I wonder if you can give our readers a brief of what the major diseases are and why they are aggravated or promoted by chronic dehydration.

Dr. B: Certainly, Mike. I have written a book called Water Cures and Drugs Kill. It's a book that explains why dehydration is the cause of pain and disease, and how the pharmaceutical industry has camouflaged this information or covered it up and instead of letting people drink water, it advertises the use of their products, which actually do kill. Because recent figures have shown that prescription medications, when used according to the instruction of doctors, nonetheless kill over 106,000 people, and make 2 million people sicker than before taking the medication. And then there is another group who die from faulty prescriptions, incorrect prescriptions.

So between them, about 250,000 people die from drug-related problems, medication-related problems. This makes the drugs the use of drugs the number three killer processes in the country -- protected and licensed killer process. After heart

disease, which kills about seven or eight hundred thousand, cancer which kills about 500,000, drugs kill 250,000 people.

Mike: So it's fair to say that pharmaceuticals, as packaged by modern medicine, are the third leading cause of death in this country.

Dr. B: Absolutely, and they are useless, because most of the medication they are using is to cover up symptoms and signs and complications of dehydration in the human body. The human body manifests dehydration by a series of symptoms and signs, perceptive symptoms of dehydration -- in other words, brain senses dehydration, or tiredness when you haven't done a good day's work, or first thing in the morning when you want to get up out of bed and you're tired, you can't get up -- that is a sign of dehydration. Then anger, quick reaction, depression, these are all signs of dehydration, when the brain has very little energy from hydroelectricity to cope with the information or take action. These are some of the perceptive signs of dehydration. Then the body has its drought management program, which are allergies, hypertension, diabetes, and also immune diseases.

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Part 4 - The link between dehydration and asthma

Mike: I'd like you to elaborate a little more on asthma, and the idea that the body is managing its water supply deliberately in a way that produces symptoms that are called asthma.

Dr. B: Yes, well you see, drought management means that you have to clog the holes where water is lost from the body. Water is the most precious commodity in the interior of your body, and when not enough is coming in and more is being lost, this is a no-no situation for your body. The intelligence behind the design of the body has it such that a drought management program will kick in, and then allergies are a sign of dehydration because the system that regulates water balance of the body suppresses the immune system, because it's an energy-consuming situation. Then you get asthma.

You see, we lose about a quart of water through breathing every day. It is actually the surface tension in the alveoli of the lungs that produces contraction of these tiny membranes, and air is pushed out. And in the process, that water will leave with the air that is leaving. So you lose about a quart of water in breathing. We need to replenish that. When we don't replenish it, the body tightens up the bronchials and plugs up the holes and we call this reduced air flow in the lungs because of dehydration, we've labeled it as asthma.

Mike: Right. I've always been amazed that the willingness of modern medicine or western medicine to come up with these complicated sounding labels or names for diseases that should really have simpler names.

Dr. B: Jargon peddling is the way of commercial medicine. Sick-care system survives and thrives on pushing these jargons into the minds of the people, because people don't understand what these jargons, they hear them and they don't associate with anything in the body, but associate them with those jargons of fear that are drummed in the minds of people.

Now, children, there are 17 million children in America, probably more because the numbers rise every year, who have asthma, and the reason is, at the same time, children have been consuming more and more sodas. Three year olds to five year olds have been consuming three times as much soda in the last ten years than in the ten years before that. So these people are getting dehydrated, they are consuming more sodas, which doesn't function in the same way as water, and that is

why they get asthma. Now, give these children water, and their asthma will disappear very quickly, in a matter of a few hours, completely the breathing becomes normal. The need for these inhalers will disappear.

And when I contacted the NIH and explained all of this, the gentleman who was in charge of this said I was so ignorant on what was going on, and yet he wanted to protect his freedom, and so he ignored the information even though I had gone to Clinton, President Clinton to ask him to intervene, and give breath back to these children. But the NIH was adamant to use medication. He wrote me, actually, and said we are satisfied with the way asthma is being treated. So, this is the situation. Now 17 million children is America can recover in a matter of a few days if everyone in the country started talking to asthmatic people and saying water is what you should take. Can you imagine a solution so simple?

Mike: Yes. Yes I can, and there are many such solutions available to treat a great number of chronic diseases, just like you've been describing here. Of course, the pharmaceutical industry I think would be horrified to have that information become widespread.

Dr. B: Yeah, well, because what I'm saying is totally anti-business, and we are not talking about a few hundred thousand dollars, we are talking about a few billion dollars a year.

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Part 5 - Treating hypertension with water

Mike: For the pharmaceutical industry, the existence of disease is a business question, because let's face it, the pharmaceutical industry is a for-profit industry. Profits are always first, and at least it's my belief, and it seems that you share it, that any therapy that competes with those profits is minimized, marginalized or outright attacked.

Dr. B: Yes, recently there was an ad on the television. It was very interesting -- I didn't realize it at the beginning, but I now realize that the ad was speaking to me. In other words, it was an ad against my statements. Because I've said that the heartburn is a sign of dehydration in the human body and you should drink water. And this guy comes and sits at the counter and asks, �Give me a glass of water, my heartburn is killing me.� Or something like that. And the lady behind the counter says, �Water doesn't cure heartburn -- this medication does.� So see, this is how the pharmaceutical industry fights the information that I put out. But nonetheless, people who did discover that water could cure their heartburn are wiser than those who buy into that advertising stunt.

Mike: It seems like there are almost two different groups of people in the United States. There are those who are now dependent on multiple pharmaceuticals to treat everything, every symptom that they have, and who alter their body chemistry and their brain chemistry through drugs, and then there are those who are educating themselves about the true causes of health. They're drinking water, they're avoiding food additives, they're engaging in exercise -- it seems like there's a chasm that's widening between these two groups.

Dr. B: Absolutely. That's why alternative medicine has picked up and you're getting more people going to alternative medicine than conventional medicine. You see, I've sold at least over 600,000 copies of my book Your Body's Many Cries for Water over the past 10 years. And so I've had over several thousand radio interviews in the past 10 years. Information is getting out into the hands of the public, so the pharmaceutical industry has to naturally increase its advertising to nullify this information that I have put out. That is why they have produced thi

s ad -- one of many, actually.

Anyway, we were talking about drought management programs in the body. Hypertension is another one of these problems. When there isn't enough water in the body, or the body becomes dehydrated, 66% of the water loss is from the interior of the cells. 26% is from the environment around the cells, and only 8% is lost from the vascular system. But the vascular system is an elastic system -- it tightens up and takes up the slack so you don't see the problem that is going on inside the cells of your body by testing your blood that is being tested in so many conditions. If people drank water on a regular basis and took enough salt and minerals to expand the capillary beds, hypertension would disappear completely.

And there are 60 million Americans who don't realize that actually hypertension is one of the manifestations of drought management programs of the body when the body begins to operate a reverse osmosis process, to deliver water into the interior of those cells which are 66% water deficient. Now the pharmaceutical industry and the medical doctors arrogantly and ignorantly are treating hypertension with diuretics.

Mike: Let's get rid of the water!

Dr. B: They are getting rid of the water in the body, at a lot of, how shall I say, effort.

Mike: Isn't this an example of the arrogance of modern medicine in believing that it knows more than nature, it knows more than the body?

Dr. B: We, as doctors, are really 007 agents of the pharmaceutical industry. We are totally blind and ignorant and the pharmaceutical industry has hijacked medicine. We learn a couple of years of physiology, and soon as we go on the clinical side we are asked to forget those and begin to learn pharmacology in order to treat symptoms rather than understand the primary cause of the health problem.

Mike: But you were trained in classic, conventional way...

Dr. B: I had to educate myself.

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Part 6 - Thinking outside the box

Mike: What it is that drove you to explore beyond the limited thinking of conventional medicine?

Dr. B: I'm always a curious person. I've been a curious person ever since I was born as far as I know. One day we had a thief come into the house and was on the wall, and I was only a two and a half year old boy. I went to him and said, �What are you doing here? Can't you see you're scaring everyone? Why don't you go?� I wasn't scared, I was curious.

That is what I am, right throughout my life, and that is why when I discovered that water cures pain, then this was an entrance for me to get into it and find out what was the reason. And that was when I discovered that my education was no good. I didn't learn medicine, I learned a little bit of anatomy and a little bit of histology, which stood me in good stead in order to understand the rest of the stuff.

Mike: You are, I'm sure the listeners would agree here, you are to be applauded for being able to venture outside of conventional medicine.

Dr. B: I'm only a healer because that's my way of thinking. I don't think about money, because money is, if you do a good deed, money will come as a by product of that good deed.

Mike: I agree with you wholeheartedly there.

Dr. B: You don't have to try and take the last drop of blood out of a person who comes to you in order to get help from you. That is against my nature. That's why I've put out my information for everyone to use on the internet, and it is only for further use or further education that I have produced my books and so on, and those books unfortunately, the cost of printing, distribution, forces the price on the information. If the pharmaceutical industry had the information that they were going to sell, for example the information in my book Your Body's Many Cries For Water, they would ask for $10,000 a book, not $14.95.

Mike: And, if they could, they would patent water...

Dr. B: They would patent it.

Mike: And try to sell it to you at $100 a dose, right?

Dr. B: That's right. So, basically, this is what's going on in medicine in America. Joint pain, back pain, arthritis cause by chronic dehydration Dr. B.: The human body also has its emergency calls for water. These are localized emergency calls. We call these heartburn, rheumatoid joint pain, back pain, migraine headaches, colitis pain, fibromyalgiac pain, even angina pain -- signs of dehydration in the body.

And the mechanism is very simple -- when there isn't enough water to be evenly distributed and certain parts of the body are working but not receiving enough water to deal with its toxic waste and metabolism, and the toxic waste builds up that area, the nerve endings in that area register the chemical environmental change with the brain. And the brain translates this information for the conscious mind in the form of pain.

Mike: So it's just the interpretation?

Dr. B: It's an interpretation, yes. So the conscious mind gets the information that, hey, this area we can't use anymore, it has a shortage of water. Of course, the conscious mind should have known that, but bad education has robbed us of that information. We think this pain is a disease.

Mike: The predominant diagnosis of this, of course, I think in the minds of most people, and especially in most M.D.s would be that there is something physically or structurally compromised in that area.

Dr. B: Well, of course, the compromise is when the tissue is dehydrated, it's changing structure. The plum-like cells become prune-like. Prune-like cells do not function in the same manners as a plum-like cell. So, that is how symptoms are produced. These symptoms mean, okay, let us get the ingredients that the body needs into the system. Now, when we say dehydration, water also brings a lot of other goodies to the cells. When we are dehydrated, these goodies are not delivered either. So, we need not only correct dehydration, but also to supply the minerals and vitamins and so on so that the body can repair itself.

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Part 7 - Thirst perception not reliable

Mike: I'd like to you talk about how people can know when they need to drink water, because you talk about in the book how some of the signs of dehydration, the classic signs are not necessarily the only signs, and also how much should an average person be drinking?

Dr. B: First and foremost, don't wait until you get thirsty, because that's an error. Unfortunately, the National Academy of Sciences and some other people recently have been telling people to wait until they get thirsty before they drink, which is the main error that we inherited 100 years ago from a man called Walter Bradford Cannon. And that's why, at the time, there was a Frenchman saying that dehydration or thirst is a general sensation and we should study it, and Walter Bradford Cannon said, no, thirst is only a matter of dry mouth.

When the mouth is dry we are thirsty, which is an arrogant statement, and unfortunately western medicine bought into that understanding, and that's why we have a sick-care system, because from the age of 20 onwards, we gradually, imperceptibly become dehydrated without knowing it. We lose our perception of thirst. By the age of 70 we may be totally thirsty and obviously thirsty and yet not recognize the need to drink water, even when water is put next to us.

This was done as an experiment. A scientist asked a group of elderly people to withhold from drinking water for 24 hours, and similarly with young people. After 24 hours when water was made available, the elderly did not recognize that they were thirsty.

Mike: Even after 24 hours with no water?

Dr. B: Correct. Even when water was left next to them, some of them wouldn't reach for it. But the young people drank water, and corrected this dehydration. Now, this is a major problem, and that's why we have so many people in the elderly sector of our society who are sick, because they are totally dehydrated and they do not recognize it.

So, waiting to get thirsty is to die prematurely and very painfully. In fact, this is the title of an article that is posted on my website, www.WaterCure.com, and also on NAFHIM, National Association For Honesty In Medicine (http://www.nafhim.org).

We should not wait to get thirsty, because water is the main source of energy. By the time you get thirsty, you will have lost energy from the water that you should have drunk and made available before you get thirsty. So, if you don't allow the gas tank of your car to come dry before you stop and take some gas, then why should you let your body become thirsty so that it stalls on the roadside before you drink water?

So, first thing, people should never allow themselves to get thirsty -- they should drink throughout the day. An average person needs two quarts of water a day. Average person really needs four quarts of water a day. But two quarts we have to supply. Two quarts we get from food metabolism and water content in foods. We need this amount of water to manufacture at least two quarts of urine. You know, not to put pressure on the kidneys. When we drink enough water so that the urine is colorless, that is a good sign. When the urine becomes yellow, it means that the body is beginning to become dehydrated and when it becomes orange, then the body is truly dehydrated and some part of the body is suffering from that dehydration.

Mike: So this is a very easy sign that people can pay attention to.

Dr. B: Absolutely.

Mike: They don't need a medical degree to see the color of their urine.

Dr. B: Well, that's why we should become observant to our urine production. And breathing -- when we are short of breath, it means we are dehydrated.

Mike: Are there other similar, simple symptoms that people can pay attention to?

Dr. B: The skin -- if the skin is nice and loose and smooth, then we are hydrated. If it becomes creasy and shriveled, it means dehydration. The crow's feet on the face of elderly people, that's a sign of dehydration. The turkey neck under the chin is a sign of dehydration. These are mentioned in my books, Your Body's Many Cries for Water, and also in my Water For Health, For Healing, For Life. I recommend everyone to read Water Cures, Drugs Kill, because in this book I've identified over 90 health problems that we in medicine have called disease, and yet water cures them.

So, when the body is short of water and they give it medication, naturally the person will die, because the medication is silencing the many cries of the body for water. But it's not correcting the dehydration. So we need to understand these symptoms of dehydration, and the book Water Cures, Drugs Kill will do that. People can order through the internet at http://www.watercure.com or Amazon.com orBarnesandnoble.com or go to the bookstore and get it.

Mike: You have an upcoming book on obesity, cancer, and depression, right?

Dr. B: Yes, I've got a book called Obesity, Cancer and Depression: The Common Cause and Actual Cure. I've identified why these three diseases are actually the branches of the same tree, and each one naturally produces a different problem at different age brackets, but they are all related conditions that occur as a result of dehydration over time. Time is of essence -- when incrementally we become dehydrated, the prune-like cells begin to transform. Some of them become cancerous, and I've explained all of this in the book. I explain how dehydration suppresses the immune system, directly or indirectly, and that's how most diseases occur, including cancer.

Mike: When is this book going to be published?

Dr. B: It will be available by the end of the year. People can keep an eye on the websitehttp://www.watercure.com, and it will be posted there when the book is available.

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Part 8 - Sodas cause dehydration

Mike: Now here's another interesting question people have -- when they go out to eat at a restaurant, there's a tremendous amount of economic pressure from the point of view of the restaurant chain or restaurant owner to serve them something other than water. I remember there was a campaign at one time through Olive Garden restaurants. The campaign was called Just Say No to H2O, and they were rewarding waiters for making sure people bought some soft drinks rather than drinking water.

Dr. B: That's because everyone is after a fast buck, even at the expense of someone else's health. These restaurants are no different from the pharmaceutical industry when they push something that the body doesn't need. Of course, they don't know, they don't do it knowingly. One can't fault them. It's bad education, an

d we think that these soft drinks are synonymous with water.

Actually, a lot of children who drink soft drinks actually become �stupid�, but once you take the soft drink away from them, their grades improve tremendously -- C's and F's become A's and B's. So, there is something in caffeine that suppresses the enzymes from memory-making. And this is exactly how the plant survives, because caffeine is a toxic chemical - it's a warfare chemical for the plant. Anything that would eat it will lose its art of camouflage, its alertness, good reaction, good response, and becomes easy prey to its own food chain predator.

Mike: Yes, caffeine is technically an insecticide.

Dr. B: Caffeine is technically an insecticide. So is morphine and so is cocaine. They are the same family of drugs -- neurotoxic substances.

Mike: Is there anything else in particular that our listeners should be aware of or should do to enhance their health through the information that you make available?

Dr. B: Yes, they can keep in touch. They can go to my website on a regular basis, and we post information there and letters that we exchange and so on. They can become part of the movement to bring honesty back into medicine. Because if they're young people, they've got many years to go, and unfortunately in a dishonest form of medical practice, they can become vulnerable.

Mike: That website is�

Dr. B: http://www.watercure.com.

Mike: And the other one is http://www.nafhim.org?

Dr. B: Yes, but they will get the option at http://www.watercure.com to go to either site. This information is free, it's the latest information in medical science, it's the future science of medicine, it's the foundation of the future science of medicine, and they have it at their use, free of charge. All they have to do is become curious as to learn. And the information is in such simple language that anyone can understand it. I don't use jargon. I use very simple English to explain complicated problems.

Mike: I thank you so much for your generosity, being willing to take this time and share your wisdom with the world.

Dr. B: Mike, it is my pleasure, and I thank you. I'm here to be heard and you make it possible for me to be heard, and I'm grateful to you.

Mike: Indeed, and likewise from this side. It's people like you that will revolutionize medicine, and that's what we need today.

Dr. B: Bernard Shaw says that normal people try to conform, and reasonable people do not conform, and look for alternatives. Therefore all progress belongs to unreasonable people.

About This InterviewYou've been reading from an exclusive interview with Dr. Batmanghelidj, author of Water For Health, For Healing, For Life. Dr. B. is also the founder of the National Association for Honesty in Medicine and author of, Your Body's Many Cries For Water. Look for his new, upcoming book, �Obesity, Cancer and Depression: Their Common Cause and Actual Cure.� Learn more about Dr. B. at www.WaterCure.com

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