Eat for Health

By Julie Kypreos
Special to the Coastal Point

If you eat a diet that consists mostly of vegetables, fruit and fiber, your body can digest and move the food through more quickly. This helps to reduce the amount of toxins that can be stored in ones body and mutate cells. Eating less processed foods and saturated fat has been proven to reduce bad cholesterol, heart disease and breast, colon and prostate cancer. The risk of stroke, osteoporosis and gall bladder disease is also greatly reduced. We know medically for all of these things to be true. But the big question and controversy now is can we cure disease by diet?

There are many factors to consider when drastically changing ones diet to cure a disease. Even if there is no “cure” for a specific disease, it makes sense to try and eat a diet that will enable your body to heal. An example is food high in anti-oxidants. It is scientifically proven that anti-oxidants keep cells healthy. So eating a diet rich in these cell boosters would be a great start. But it is very important to do research if you are targeting a specific disease and not just aiming at prevention. There is much information available for many different diseases. Some food plans might recommend a gluten-free diet, others might suggest dairy-free. Every individual also has different needs and should take them into consideration before starting a major dietary change.

Carolyn Hockman, a local in this area, is currently testing the theory of curing a disease with diet. She was diagnosed in 1991 with a disease called Scleroderma also known as systemic sclerosis. Scleroderma is a chronic tissue disease classified as an autoimmune rheumatic disease. There is no cure for scleroderma and the disease can be mild to life threatening. Luckily, Carolyn has a very mild form of the disease. She has a form known as CREST, which stands for Calcinosis, Reynauld’s, Esophagus, Sclerodactyly, Tetangiectasia. Even in this subdivision of the disease, she is lucky to have very mild symptoms. She mostly suffered from cold hands and feet. And although that may not sound too bad, her hands get so cold that she wears gloves all year. She also has developed the telltale calcium deposits on her hands. These deposits can grow very large over the joints, causing immobility. Although surgery was offered to remove the deposit in its early stage, Carolyn opted to forgo it. She believes the size has been greatly reduced since she has been on her cure diet.

Carolyn has decided to “let your food be your medicine and your medicine be your food.” And although some people think she has lost her mind, she is very determined and feels that she can cure her Scleroderma in a year or so. She feels like her family has been the hardest to win over, but her husband has totally supported her and will continue by joining her on the next step of her diet.

Carolyn began by a total raw food diet. This was no easy task. She spends at least three hours a day prepping food in order to juice. She usually uses about five pounds of carrots at a time. She drinks 10 ounces four times a day. Her favorite is a blend of carrots, apple and celery but also uses beets. She says she is not hungry on this diet and eats fruits and salads in between the juicing. She also eats nut and seeds, but only in their raw state. Carolyn stayed on the juicing portion of her diet for six weeks and has now moved on to the next stage.

Her next step is a modified version of the “The Hallelujah Diet” developed by Rev. George Malkmus. This portion of the diet consists of 85 percent raw foods and 15 percent transitional and cooked foods. Rev. Malkmus does not recommend consuming any meats, seafood, processed foods, white-flour products, alcohol, coffee, tea, soft drinks, milk, cheese, eggs or ice cream. This is just a portion of the foods to be avoided. But this is a much more flexible plan than the raw food diet that Carolyn is coming off of now. She started out by following Dr. Lorraine Day’s raw food diet.

Dr. Day was an orthopedic trauma surgeon who was diagnosed with cancer. She claims that it was her diet and beliefs that cured her of her cancer, rather than conventional medicine. Carolyn said that Dr. Day is one of her heroes and she is following her 10-step plan.

To supplement her diet, Carolyn also takes a product called Barley Life, a B12 vitamin and flax seed oil every day.

In addition to her cure diet, Carolyn exercises every day and gets plenty of sunshine. She feels like her mental state is just as important as her physical state in order to cure her disease. Carolyn believes in what she is doing 100 percent and feels that it is the most important part in order to cure her scleroderma. I hope that in a year’s time to meet with her again and hear the wonderful news that she has tested negative for her disease. Wishing you all the best.

*Sorry, no recipes this month. If you have any interest in a raw food diet, Dr. Day or the Hallelujah Diet, there are multiple Web pages you can visit. If you would like to correspond with Carolyn Hockman, please send an e-mail to the Coastal Point at coastalpoint@mchsi.com with your information in order for her to contact you.