John W's Story

Note 5: Clohesy River Health Farm - May 2010


For those of you who have followed my natural healing journey, Note 5 is an update to the previous 4 (emailed at various intervals since I was first diagnosed with prostate cancer, May 30th 2006). All the notes, combined, form a telling 'timeline' of that journey - and the capacity of mind and body to heal itself of its own accord; given the right environment. Interested readers will see, in as much detail as possible, the evolutionary process laid bare.

At this point in time, I am collating all the notes so that there is a coherent and accurate story, both for those who have followed the journey, and those who have perhaps just stumbled across these journal entries. I should have that work completed very shortly and will accordingly advise you. Importantly, I want to tell all who are interested: please, feel free to pass my story along or post it to any blog you may participate in. Doing so will encourage or help others who may be seeking to sustain or regain their own health, naturally. If you have a family member, friend or colleague that might want to contact me, I will certainly respond. There is one note of caution: please, do not publish my personal contact details online - the volume of correspondence that would result would simply not be possible to deal with.

Dear Family, Friend and Colleague

I would dearly like to report, categorically, that my cancer of the prostate has completely healed, but without the precision of a biopsy read-out one simply cannot make such bold statements. What I can say is that my most recent PSA (prostate specific antigen) score has remained steady and significantly below the level it was when I was first diagnosed four years ago.

As some of you know, that diagnosis, not surprisingly, accompanied a range of other acute disease conditions - some serious, all problematic. As a reminder they were:



Overweight

Hypertension (high blood pressure)

Hypothyroidism (an under active thyroid)

Continuous diarrhoea

Various perennial skin ailments

High cholesterol

Regular bouts of Hay Fever and Itchy Eye

Chronic exhaustion







Each of those other conditions is now completely healed as you can see below:

1. Weight: reduced from 83.7kg (184.1lbs) to 60.7kg (133.5lbs); a drop of 23kg (50.6lbs).

2. Blood Pressure: dropped from 135/85 to 110/60 (the blood pressure of a 21 year old, not a 67 year old - at one point sticking around 140/90).

3. Thyroid Function: TSH down from 27.90 to 3.12 (Healthy Range 0.40 – 4.00).

4. Diarrhoea: about 6 months into the raw food program, after initially getting worse, the perennial diarrhoea stopped - normal bowl movements returned and have been sustained.

5. Perennial Skin Ailments: after a very bad eczema attack on my shins, all skin ailments including tinea between my toes and a groin rash I had had since my youth; disappeared; never to return.

6. Cholesterol: reduced from 5.3 to 3.8 (Healthy Range <5.5*).

 LDL Cholesterol (the bad stuff) down from 3.8 to 2.6 (Healthy Range <3.5).

 Coronary Risk Ratio has come down from 5.3 to 3.8 (Healthy Range <5.0).

7. Hay Fever and Itchy Eye: this annual, disabling condition suffered since childhood, has completely cleared.

8. Chronic Exhaustion: three times a week I engage in serious group outdoor personal training: sprinting, endurance running and weight training as well as weekly sessions of Yoga. On my 'off days' I pursue other gentle and not so gentle physical activity - walking, gardening, solo running (6 - 10 kms non-stop) and working out in my home gym with yoga postures and weights. I have reached the point at which my cardiovascular fitness and endurance level compares favourably with people 20, 30 or even 40 years my junior. I feel blessed and very grateful. Blessed, for obvious reasons. Grateful, because it took a life-threatening wake-up call to goad me into action. I feel fit and well...

But after healing these acute conditions, progress plateaued. The chronic condition, the cancer, stubbornly refused to succumb, as the PSA test at that time attested (PSA tests are an unreliable gauge at best but other than a biopsy, they are the only marker currently available as far as I know). My carefully studied lifestyle change had supported my body in its clearing each acute condition, and was sufficient to allow my body to hold the cancer in check, but insufficient to eliminate the cancerous cells. Since that was now my remaining challenge, clearly I needed to take my healing approach to a higher level...

For the curious new reader, I should perhaps outline as briefly as possible what that healing approach is... my philosophical stance on the cause of illness and healing. In this way, my journey will be in context and you will more easily make sense of what follows...

As we Sow So Shall we Reap

Like a lot of people, I used to think I could sustain myself with whatever I wanted to eat and drink, lead a sedentary life, stress myself and assume that my body could handle what I now know, with every sense of my being, to be self-inflicted physical abuse. I passed the buck to my body to deal with the toxic stuff I ingested, the physically inactive life I lead, and the stressful thinking I entertained. And if my body became overwhelmed with the daily intake of lifeless and toxic food, drink and thinking, I could hand-ball my failing health to the medical fraternity who would obligingly prescribe all manner of over-the-counter or prescription drugs. Failing that, I could have the diseased parts replaced, zapped with radiation, sliced away or chemically poisoned...

Yes, I was the quintessential Aussie male. I thought "she'll be right mate" and didn't take care of myself. At gut level (literally, bulging bigger by the month) I didn't grasp that I only had one body and that I was responsible and accountable for its care and maintenance: what I ingested, how I exercised and how I used the power of thought. And more fool me, because I was ignoring knowledge from an earlier study and a significant personal healing experience on achieving and maintaining optimal health. Despite that I was still putting the burden on my body to keep me alive in the face of gross neglect and mistreatment.

But the wake up call was imminent - my urologist presenting the news with a warning that there was limited time to have the tumours cut, drugged, or burnt away; or that they would metastasize, most likely to my bones. "When this happens," she said, "you will die a slow painful death."

I had already been told a short time earlier that I should take medication for my high blood pressure and my rapidly failing thyroid and would need to do so for the rest of my life. I had a range of creams for my skin conditions that gave temporary relief. And I also had undergone blood tests, endoscopies and colonoscopies - all without finding out why I had had 'the runs' for the preceding 5 years. For the onset of each hay fever and itchy eye season, pharmaceuticals were taken to make life bearable. And to make up for my demineralised and devitaminised diet I was taking, on a daily basis, an array of vitamin and mineral supplements in a vain attempt to offset the tiredness and lethargy I felt. I had been taking a variety of supplements religiously for many, many years including saw palmetto (a preparation derived from the berrylike fruit) and selenium; both of which were supposed to deter/prevent cancer of the prostate.

News of the cancer jolted me to my core. I was scared. What to do? Having failed to take care of my health, was I going to continue to pass the buck? Was I going to, like most Westerners, hand the care of my life over to the medical, pharmaceutical, and complementary or alternative medicine fraternity? Or was I going to meet the challenge and allow my body to heal via its own resources? After all, I could now clearly see that the cancer and assorted other conditions were symptoms of neglect and abuse; an irresponsible lifestyle...

Was I ready to take responsibility for my ill state of health? From the deepest recesses of my memory I recalled the books read and lectures attended in my twenties, which spoke to the body's inherent ability to heal. I recalled too, with a mixture of hope and chagrin, a remarkable personal healing experience which had clearly demonstrated that fact: those readings, lectures, and the subsequent natural healing event demonstrated that a 100% raw organic diet, coupled with significantly reduced eating, done in concert with an energetic exercise program and a contented state of mind, would, practiced with daily discipline, enable the body to do what it is designed to do… self-heal.

The decision was made; the recovery path clear. For me, shifting the burden of responsibility for my health to others was neither a viable nor a responsible option. I had faith that, as it had become sick with mistreatment, my body would eventually heal, given the care and consideration it should have received long ago.

Two years six months later aged 67, following a natural-healing regime, my body responded - the cancer test results below showing some improvement:

Biopsy Results 2006 Biopsy results 2008

8 Samples Tumour Lengths *8 Samples Tumour Lengths

a) High-grade dysplasia (PIN) a) High grade dysplasia (PIN)

b) Intermediate-grade dysplasia (PIN) b) Atypical gland focus suggestive of malignancy

c) High-grade dysplasia (PIN) c) Gleason 3+3=6 2 glands <0.1mm

d) High-grade dysplasia d) Gleason 3+3=6 0.5/0.2mm

e) Gleason 3+3=6 0.2mm e) No specific pathologic change

f) Gleason 3+3=6 0.5mm f) High-grade dysplasia (PIN)

g) High-grade dysplasia g) No specific pathologic change

h) Gleason 3+3=6 1.0/1.2mm h) Gleason 3+3=6 0.8mm

*2008 samples, except h), are from different parts of the prostate

My experience is real. It cannot be put down to 'fortune' or 'happenstance'. I now see that passing the buck for our health has become so commonplace that it looks as if it is the reasoned, enlightened, intelligent, right thing to do. Passing the buck has become the norm - a deeply ingrained feature of everyday life promoted by self-interested (though in many cases well-meaning) advocates of every hue. Authority comes in many guises. Does that sound anti-establishment, 'lefty' or 'intellectual'? I put it to you; the degree to which this 'norm' is accepted is frightening...

We smoke. We use drugs. We consume alcohol, caffeine and sugar-laden drinks. Some of us, maybe to salve our conscience, take (or worse, provide our kids with) make-believe health drinks: pasteurised, chemicalised, devitalised fruit and veggie juices and a mind-boggling array of other containerised drinks which, while I'm sure the companies involved haven't deliberately set out to poison us, are by their very nature poisonous and should be considered 'anti' health. -We eat make-believe health foods made with devitalised ingredients. We exist on food that has had the nutrition and nourishment cooked or processed to near extinction. We grow increasingly inactive, fat and unhealthy - or just sickly. We line up in our hundreds of thousands each day across the nation at medical practices and hospitals. We believe pharmaceuticals, operations or other remedies will fix our self-induced (and largely unacknowledged) malaise. We have become a nation of life-time medically dependent consumers. We keep the pharmaceutical companies rich beyond imagination. Others, disillusioned with the politicisation and malfunction of modern medicine, and its clear inability to stem our declining health, turn (in vain) to alternative practitioners, hoping that extracts of this or that tree, bark, root, fruit, shrub, vegetable or herb will do the trick. Or that this vitamin, mineral, enzyme, pro-biotic, anti-oxidant, protein supplement or so called super-food will remedy what Mother Nature has the inherent capacity to provide - if only we bypass the dead-food and drink manufacturers and go direct to the only supplier and manufacturer of good health; Mother Nature.

Unfortunately most of us (including me until four years ago) refuse to take the nature-cure road to vibrant, sustainable health. Instead, we live on a lifeless, denatured (or as some have described it) dead-food diet. In quest of good health, some of us lace our diet with vitamin, mineral or super-food supplements of very questionable value. Who can blame us? Who has the time or endurance to question what we are told? In our blind ignorance, we trust the claims that new wave self-styled gurus and purveyors of these products make - the rejuvenation and repair of our bodies a bridge too far - a pointless adjunct to lousy diets and indulgent lifestyle.

The cumulative affects of diet and lifestyle are axiomatic of the Aged-Care Sector: a juggernaut of immense private and corporate wealth created on our seeming inability to predict a very personal and likely future: a wretched, drug dependent, physically and mentally infirmed old age. And in the main, we teach our children to accept, without question, the dogmas and self-interest of mainstream and alternative medicine. We don't even consider an alternative to medicine. Yes! An alternative to medicine; mainstream or alternative.

I understand only too well what it means to question that which is universally accepted. I see also that the 'alternative' route is now more mainstream than we once might have assumed. Money rules, and for the unwary, there are myriad traps! So perhaps it is not surprising that we prefer the safety and comfort of the status quo - the blind acceptance of a malevolent relationship between modern medicine and global pharmaceutical cartels. In short, a failure to question protects trillion dollar investments and perpetuates the illusion.

Sadly, and perhaps because of, our admiration for medical pioneers, teaching and research universities, GPs and frontline practitioners; the truth is that those otherwise talented individuals work inside a health system that is riddled with self-interest. Most of us are blind ignorant to what is happening.

It is difficult, nigh on impossible, for most of us to grasp just how far we have wandered from healthy living. Multinational food producers and processors create addictive and poisonous fake food with shelf-lives that can outlive all of us… Yes, poisonous! So filled is that lethal fare with chemical additives and preservatives. This, because modern food-embalming techniques are promoted by alluring multimedia and celebrity-driven advertising; making multi-billions of dollars in the process.

Isn’t it insane, when you stop and reflect, that life-sustaining, restorative food - raw, simple and delicious nutrition; barely rates a mention in Advertising circles? Isn't it a complete madness that commercial food producers seem bent on killing off (or at least shortening the life of) the very customers they rely on? Is it really so far 'left of center' to imagine a world in which commercial interests and simple humanity come together? Incomprehensible! What chance has humanity got?

But Change (as we know) comes one person at a time... So hear this: my personal responsibility for living simply and naturally has enabled my body to heal eight out of nine ailments. Given time, with the continuation of nature's natural medicine via a thoughtful combination of raw organic nutrition, exercise and healthy thinking; the cancer, if it has not already, will go the same way as my other lifestyle-induced conditions.

Change is here, and passing the buck for my health has stopped.

2010: TAKING MY HEALING JOURNEY TO A HIGHER LEVEL

I had come some distance from that emotionally distressing but life-transforming meeting with the urologist, but I still instinctively felt that more critical fine-tuning was needed to assist my body in the destruction of the cancerous cells and the regeneration of new, healthy cells. Instinct told me that I was still not living an optimal regime for that outcome (and thus giving my body optimum support)...

I sensed that three meals per day, even without any snacking between, was still too much food, too often, for the body's digestive, assimilation, elimination and regeneration processes. It was still in excess of what Dr Fred Bisci, (my primary adviser) had claimed as optimal for healing. Although 100% raw and 99% organic, 'too much of a good thing' was still counter-productive to the destruction and elimination of diseased cells and the regeneration of healthy ones. And, my penchant for filling life with interesting but non-essential and energy-sapping, emotionally challenging activities was stressful. I was falling short in supporting my body and mind and needed sufficient energy to direct toward eliminating the chronic condition called cancer. Fred Bisci was a critical step in my healing journey, but I had pretty well exhausted his pool of knowledge as it applied to me and my specific condition… and New York, where he is based, was too far away for easy personal access.

I really wanted and needed someone within Australia to consult with - someone who had Fred's level of understanding of our mind and body's capacity to regenerate and heal. As luck and diligent searching would have it, I came across Dr John Fielder, a 78 year old Natural Hygienist, Nature Cure Practitioner, Naturopath, Chiropractor and Osteopath who lives and practices from his property Clohesy River Health Farm just out of Cairns, Queensland. John, president of the UK's Incorporated Society of Registered Naturopaths (ISRN) lectures annually round the world.

Talking with John, it became clear to me that he was the man to point me toward a fresh vantage point: a new view of human healing and regeneration. I determined to visit him, and in the late evening light of 22nd February 2010, my descent into Perth punctuated fifteen days at his farm - fifteen extraordinarily challenging days that were enough to have me once more rethink my entire lifestyle!

About an hour's drive due east from Cairns, John's 330 largely undeveloped acerage is situated just beyond the tropical rain forest at Kuranda and incorporates the Clohesy River in one corner. The property was ravaged by fire 9 years back and is now about two thirds into its re-establishment program, including a tropical and citrus orchard, which before being burnt was 35 years in the making. The property is now, once again, reaping a bountiful harvest.

The 2001 fires destroyed his house but fortunately, the consulting office/ablution block was spared, as were three semi-detached rooms and an undamaged client kitchen and library/communal area (currently used as his temporary home). The story becomes all the more real when we view the office windows with large cracks in each pane - evidence of the fierce heat that came close to destroying that building as well. I'm pleased to report that apart from those windows and some charred tree trunks and fence posts, nature's regeneration has pretty well obliterated sight of that destructive episode.

John works mostly a lone hand at restoring and maintaining his property (a mighty effort for a slightly-built near octogenarian and living example of what he espouses).

While I was there, I met a 73 year old man from Cleveland who was assisting John in exchange for food, board, education and the chance of recovery from adrenal fatigue. Also there was a 22 year old male from Chicago who was seeking to understand nature's cure following a recent period of serious unwellness. At 68 I wanted, even though all but one of my ailments had cured already, to take my health to another level after almost four years on a 100% raw vegan diet...

Clohesy Health Farm was a culture shock. John lives simply. Deeply in tune with and in harmony with his place, he bathes daily in the fast flowing Clohesy River using its sandy bed for soap. He harvests and eats twice daily whatever is in season from his garden and orchard, supplemented primarily from organic suppliers. Drinking water is supplied by nature, and his other water needs are pumped from the river by a watermill he constructed. He has no refrigeration, uses an old-fashioned netted food-safe, and recycles like no other I know. Electricity is supplied via solar panels. He is not entirely 'native'! Broadband access and Skype keep him in touch with family, friends, clients and colleagues around the world and abreast of the current health and healing developments.

My accommodation was a small rectangular timber-framed white painted room, semi-detached from another the same size, with one other identical room attached to that. There were two single beds, a wooden table with cloth and an iron-framed bookcase. That was about it other than one critical concession to luxury, an insect net that hung from the ceiling over my bed to keep the flying bugs and insects at bay (those normally having free access through the room's ample supply of unscreened windows and a large door). The humidity was high. With no fans to provide breeze the large openings were a blessing.

The gas-fired hot water-heater to the communal ablutions failed the day I arrived. No doubt it was good for me to take fifteen cold showers daily, but as I came face to face with the reality of fine-tuning my diet, lifestyle and fasting, I could have done without the additional challenge and enjoyed the comfort of a warm wash!

Apart from that, the most significant shift was exchanging three largish meals per day to two smallish meals - one at noon and the other at 5pm. As John explained in our daily sessions together, a critical part of the human metabolic process starts naturally at sunset and continues till noon the next day - allowing for optimal assimilation of nutrition and elimination of waste and thus limiting the amount of energy used for processing food. In turn, this allows both more time and more energy for the removal of old and damaged cells and the regeneration of new cells. The fact is, most of us use 60 to 70% of our energy simply digesting, assimilating and eliminating food.

With two smaller nutrient-rich meals per day, and no snacking in between at all, we dramatically reduce the percentage of energy used to around 10 - 15%. Thus, we make much more available for healing and most importantly; regeneration. This I think is the key. Reduced calorie intake confined within two meals per day. The other critical aspect being to limit the fat consumed to between ten and fifteen percent of total calories. Whilst this eating regime wasn’t news to me it was the first time the fundamental importance of this approach to daily diet had hit home.

I learned from John just how important working in harmony with our natural metabolic process is to healing. The breaking down of old or diseased tissue and cellular waste is part of what is called Catabolism (destructive metabolism). The process of catabolism releases the energy from this old material for rebuilding new cellular material. Catabolism creates the energy that Anabolism consumes for synthesising hormones, enzymes, sugars and other substances for cell growth, reproduction, and tissue repair. Catabolism creates the energy we need for all physical activity. Another element of Metabolism, and complementary to Catabolism, is Anabolism (constructive metabolism). Anabolism enables the body to maintain existing tissue and importantly, grow new cells. Growth and mineralisation of bone, and increases in muscle mass, are both examples of Anabolism.

If Catabolism is producing more energy than Anabolism requires, there will be excess energy, which the human body stores as fat or glycogen. This is the principle way in which we become overweight. The foregoing was an exciting discovery for me and it explained why, for maintaining optimal health and to heal from illness, I needed to eat only two, highest quality, modestly sized meals at midday and 5pm daily, with no snacking in between.

And as Dr Fielder reiterated, there are several vital considerations to optimal health, healing and regeneration:

1. Our body's inbuilt intelligence knows exactly how to take best care of itself, and we must heed how we feel after we eat each particular food - or better still, while we are eating it. It is a good idea to smell and taste our foods before we eat them. If something does not agree with our chemistry or body needs at a particular time, we will not enjoy the smell or taste and worse still we may feel unwell after eating it.

2. We really must rest when tired or unwell. This is probably the most ignored health and healing requirement. I can’t emphasise this aspect of healthy living enough. We must allow rest time for the body to use its energy for healing.

3. If sick, we also need to fast while resting to recover our health. This gives our body the optimum conditions to heal and regain homeostasis.

4. Don't eat before heavy work or exercise. Whilst this and other ideas taken from John fly in the face of prevailing ideas and norms, I have found that fasting after my evening meal (which is around 5pm or certainly before sunset unless it is a special occasion and I break that health rule), till noon next day, works wonderfully for me. I do strenuous exercise several mornings each week and do so much better on an empty stomach. And I must say I really look forward to breaking my fast around noon.

5. For almost four years, I had been on a vegan diet and prior to that had been a strict vegetarian for 25 years. But I learnt from John (and numerous texts that outline the diets of the healthiest people to have lived since recorded history) that some animal product is necessary for optimal human health. John eats a small amount of deep-sea tuna about twice yearly. On his recommendation, and in pursuit of optimal health, I have started eating some fermented goat kefir on a regular basis. In short, I'm still a strict vegetarian - but no longer vegan.

I have learned a lot from John and been reminded of many things I had forgotten… and I know that there is still much more for me to learn from this amazing man.

Dear reader, if you have made it this far I will, to keep this piece within reasonable bounds, round off this note with a list of both philosophical and pragmatic natural laws of healthy living and healing - some gleaned from John and others which came to me through reflective time at Clohesy River Health Farm:

• There is no curative power in drugs, medicines, herbs, foods, electrical apparatus or anything else outside of our own body.

• Nature has not provided cures for disease. Nature has only provided penalties for breaking natural laws.

• Returning to following natural law is the only valid method of sustainable cure.

• All action by the body is right action. Our body's innate intelligence knows what it is doing. Make no mistake about that.

• Only man makes mistakes.

• Trust in the process of healing.

• Know that this too shall pass.

• Nature has not provided remedies, nature has provided the body with an innate ability to cure by returning to natures laws:

 At least 20 minutes sunlight per day) is essential.

 Get as much fresh air as possible and sleep with the window open

 Drink as clean and as pure water as possible.

 Eat natural whole organic uncooked food grown in mineralised, fertile soil that is free of pesticides, herbicides and fungicides - all chemicals.

 Eschew all processed, canned, packaged, fast and convenience foods.

 Be happy at home, at work and in one's social life.

 Ensure adequate rest to live life fully and abundantly.

 We only need adequate shelter.

 Exercise your body each and every day

 Exercise you mind each and every day

 Exercise your spirit each and every day

I trust that this has been of interest and of value to you; or someone you know. The earlier notes, 1 to 4, fill in much detail that is missing from this note. These are available if you want to email me.

Love… John - May 2010