THE IDEAL VERSUS NORMAL METABOLISM

By David L. Duffy, MD

The body is a living organism with a capacity to think, move, and feel. A person in normal health is able to function with occasional symptoms. It takes up to 72 hours for food to pass through a normal person's intestines. He may be a little overweight. He is subject to headaches, colds, and muscle pains. He may have several asymptomatic conditions such as high blood pressure, elevated serum cholesterol, and hiatal hernia with occasional heartburn. He goes along in a normal pattern drinking coffee to wake up, taking Tylenol or Advil for pain, and using over-the-counter Pepcid to relieve his heartburn when he overeats. He is not anemic. His electrocardiogram and chest X-ray are normal he is considered "normal" and is given blood pressure, cholesterol-lowering, and antacid medications to keep him "healthy".

What is wrong with this picture? Is he really healthy?

The body is like a house. Over time junk accumulates in the basement and in the garage. Drawers and closets are stuffed. The carpet stays vacuumed. The beds are made. The kitchen floor is mopped. To a guest the house appears to be clean. Then one day the house burns to the ground. Rags with turpentine and a spark from a frayed lamp cord in the basement caused the fire. The house was not really clean.

Arnold Ehret has given us insight into the difference between “normal" health and really being clean. He does not use the term "ideal metabolism" but that is what he is talking about. The purpose of the Mucusless Diet Healing System is to help a person gradually clean his body and have an ideal metabolism, which thrives on fruit and green leafy vegetables.

First consider the state of the intestines. Ehret suggested two experiments. If you ate a regular dinner and then vomited up the contents of the stomach after one hour you would find a "sour fermenting mixture of a terrible odor." (p, 75) Alternatively, you could put all the food for dinner in a cooking vessel, cook it at 98 degrees Fahrenheit for 30 minutes and then let it sit overnight. In the morning you would find a smelly mess.

This is a model of what the intestines are like. Eating a typical American diet creates a cesspool of waste in the intestines supporting the growth of millions of germs. When one follows a mucusless or mucuslean diet the bowels clear more rapidly. There is less waste for bacteria to feed upon. The first step in approaching an ideal metabolism is to keep the bowels clean and moving rather than stagnant and constipated.

Next we consider the immune system. There are many diseases, which involve overloading the immune system. A person with hay fever has recurrent inflammation in the nasal sinuses stimulating the outpouring of mucus. Crohn's disease is a disorder in which the intestines are filled with "granuloma". A granuloma is a group of white blood cells, which swallow and store waste material. Symptoms include abdominal pain, diarrhea, and weight loss. Pulmonary tuberculosis involves the accumulation of granuloma in the lungs. The granuloma cells contain the tuberculosis germs. The person experiences coughing, fever, and shortness of breath. In the disease AIDS billions of viruses grow in the body and destroy immune cells called lymphocytes. The Mucusless Diet Healing System helps take a burden off the body. The immune system is allowed to catch up and slowly eliminate waste. As the body is cleaner the immune system becomes more responsive and reacts more vigorously to the presence of waste.

Finally we consider the blood, When the blood receives huge amounts of sugar, fats, and amino acids, what does the body do with them? It delivers them to storage areas such as in fat cells, in the basement membranes of blood vessels, and in vital organs such as the heart, lungs, liver, and kidneys. The body gets heavier. The blood vessels get clogged. The organs are slowly filled with useless material.
The body stays in equilibrium with a diet, which we suppose contains our minimum daily requirement of nutrients. The concept of a normal diet is based on the assumption that we need to replace the tissue, which the body continually breaks down. Ehret strongly disagreed with that assumption. We should not continually replace the waste, which our bodies are trying to eliminate. We should permit this elimination and focus on pure fruit sugar ("grape sugar") found in fruits.

As we follow a mucusless or mucuslean diet we can reverse the disease-forming process and eliminate waste. As we unclog the system and provide a clean environment for our living cells our vitality improves and our capacity to function increases. We have thrown out the junk hidden in the nooks and crannies of our bodies. We have removed the "latent disease" lurking within.

How do we know when we have reached our ideal metabolism? How much dietary protein will we need? How much sleep? How much will we weigh? The answers to these and similar questions are individual and cannot be answered specifically. We all have genetic limitations. We each must find our personal equation of diet exercise, faith and works. As we make improvements in our personal health we will be grateful to Arnold Ehret for leading the way. We will be grateful to God for giving us the opportunity to be healed.

Mucusless Diet Healing System. Mucusless Diet Healing System

Contemporary Insights to Professor Ehret was written as an introduction to to the 75th anniversary edition of Professor Arnold Ehret's Mucusless Diet Healing System. Mucusless Diet Healing System is available from Ehret Literature Publishing for $4.95 (US) online.Click here to purchase the 75th anniversary edition of Professor Arnold Ehret's Mucusless Diet Healing System.