Following is an edited version of Dr. Bernard Jensen’s speech at the Annual Cancer/Nutrition Convention sponsored by ALTERNATIVE CANCER THERAPIES in New York City on May 1st and 2nd, 1976.
Introduction by Clinton R. Miller, Master of Ceremonies:
We would like to have you prepared to receive a mental and spiritual feast from Dr. Bernard Jensen. Ruth says he looks fine; he is in good health; he has had surgery, but he has recovered well…
The thing that impressed me most when I met him some 25 years ago was that he, like God, looks at everybody as equals. I’ve never seen him give preferential treatment to anybody because of the amount of money they had or the prestige. And neither have I ever seen him turn down anybody who came to him for help; and this may be one of the reasons why his health did give way, temporarily. I’ve prayed that his life would go on forever…
He is the father of Iridology in this country. He has, perhaps, taught more thousands of people correct principles of nutrition and health than any man. I want to give you Dr. Bernard Jensen.
FEELINGS
Thank you, I feel wonderful. You know when I say I feel wonderful, I am so thankful that I recognized one thing in life, that spirit is everything. So I feel too that feeling is essential to life. We have feeling in this body and most of us don’t know that feeling is the secret of putting all the elements into their proper perspective.
We mentioned tonight about my operation. Well, I’ll tell you what, I didn’t think it would ever happen to me – the night I went into the hospital we cancelled two hundred appointments for the next four days. And I think sometimes that the operation they made, they should have made up here (points to head). I feel that some people don’t know how to control and conduct their life, and I have probably been one of them. Because, after all, you get to the place where you are dedicated to service and you just feel that you have to serve.
I don’t know what the insatiable desire is to give and to let out everything, but I feel too, now, that after some 19 books that I’ve written, I have 9 more ready for the press now, WHY? 1 do feel that this desire to serve can be overdone,. When I evaluate it, I seem to have lived about one hundred and forty-five years. Fifty years without a Sunday off; this is something to think about seriously. Just think of it-averaging 50 patients even on Sunday! Then I begin to think, well, gee, this isn’t the way to live.
We have to learn how to recuperate and one of the great things is to be able to cut off and go to sleep. I consider sleep the same as an eraser. Sleep is important… Our body is our temple; you’ve got to give ita chance to repair. You’ve got to be able to sleep and let go…The body is self-healing, self-curing, self-repairing.
The most important time in my life was when I was sixteen years of age. I reached over into a cactus bed and I didn’t see this cactus point coming up and reaching my eyeball. That cactus went right through my eye. It left my eye flat. They took me to a doctor and he said, “We’ll have to take the eye out At that moment, I fought like a tiger. I said, “No! Leave the eye alone. I am sure that it’ll grow back.” The doctor said, “You’re too young to know.” Hmmm, I’m too young to know? But in a year’s time that fluid came back and that eye is just as good as the other one today.
I know that nature cures, but it needs an opportunity. It cannot tolerate abuses. I believe my difficulty began while I was climbing some glaciers just south of the Chinese border in the Hunza land Here was this little fellow 5’4″, and coming right out of an office and over there I climbed those glaciers with a 125 pound pack on my back plus my cameras – I wasn’t going to let any young people take the best part of my trip and say that I was old. But you know, when you get close to 70, you have to rethink your life-style. I didn’t even think that 1 was old. I didn’t think that I had a body that I had to take care of. We have to recognize feelings.
FOUR BASIC NEEDS
Now let’s get into the physical. We need good digestion. When I see nerve rings in the iris, I know we need more protein, more amino acids. You need lots of protein to feed the nervous system, you need hydrochloric acid – so when you’re lacking in hydrochloric acid, no matter how little protein you need, you’ve got to be able to digest it. But if you have nerve rings, you find out that you don’t have enough HCL.
Realize this tonight, when you go home that it is not what you eat that counts, it’s what you digest. It’s what you digest that is going to repair your body. When we get the chemical elements and we get the good body, we aren’t going to need an excessive amount. We’re going to need a good balance.
-Let me tell you this basic fact. You should have six vegetables a day. You should have at least two fruits, one protein and one starch. But if you don’t digest these, where are they going to go? You have to have a good nervous system.
The second thing we have to have is good blood. What we’re dealing with now are diet and blood.
The third thing is exercise, which we have to do to move the blood around. There are all kinds of gadgets that get you to move – and you must move. Walk and hike. You must get the blood where it’s needed. I must tell you that in this repair job, the blood – when it brings the proper chemical elements to the various parts of the body, it carries away waste. Did you know that every twenty-four hours you build new skin on the palm of your hand? Every eleven months you can repair and rebuild a whole liver.
Most people don’t even know that half the bowel movement is your own body breaking down. Did you know that the cells don’t just break down and just drop off? It has to go through the eliminative organs. So we have to have good blood and plenty of blood going into the places where it is needed. In other words, if we have a congestion, we have toxic materials. When this happens, we do not repair nor rebuild.
The fourth thing is rest. I know that when we come to the fourth thing, that all of these things don’t amount to a thing unless we have a rested body. All sick people are tired. And when you’re tired you don’t repair and rebuild. When you’re tired you can’t even have a good bowel movement. You cannot eliminate properly through the kidneys. People who are tired cannot get rid of acids and the acid accumulations go to the joints, causing arthritis, rheumatism and so forth.
One of the nicest books I know is Enervation, The Beginning of Disease, by Dr. J.H. Tilden.
I wish I could take those people who come to my ranch and send them to bed for three days before I examine them. Some of their symptoms would disappear.
They come in with so much anxiousness and sit down, no they don’t sit, they bounce on the chair. You cannot repair unless you are rested.
Don’t just breathe; take it easy. Through a rest period you take care of yourself. You can recuperate and your body can get ready to digest your food.
Another thing is this: we all have inherent weaknesses. When I present iridology tomorrow, I’ll show that you are all different. The eye is like a thumbprint and we all have different thumbprints. So too, we all have different irises.
Now, in order to heal, we have to build up the body and repair previous illnesses. I treated a lady who weighed 520 pounds. She reduced and reduced right down to130 pounds which was her normal weight as a young girl. At that time, she developed a healing crisis – a healing elimination. She developed a fever similar to one she had had before she gained weight. When the crisis was over, she no longer had trouble with her weight. We build chronic disease ourselves and we get well going over our old troubles. We have to eliminate what we have stored.
We use superior foods to make a better body. Everything you choose must be the very best. If I put a pickle here and a ripe apricot here, which would you want? You are the one to decide. Now chalk is the highest in calcium. But, if I put a calcium tablet in one hand and green kale in the other, which would you choose? Or a nail powdered and put into a capsule – you need iron for a goad bloodstream – or nice black bing cherries, which would you choose? The powdered nail in the capsule or the bing cherries?
At Harvard University they’re finding that the live foods have an electrical field. And when you eat the live foods you absorb the electrical field.
Sixty percent of your diet every day should be raw and alive. When I cook foods at the ranch, 1 use very low heat. I can take wheat and when I finish cooking it, I can plant the kernel in the ground and it will still grow. It will still be alive. Cream of wheat won’t grow anything. With live food, you’re going to have the electrical energy too. You may not get that with single extracted elements in tablet form.
NATURE’S REMEDIES
I’ll tell you some remedies you can use. Let us start at the top with the head – your hair. Alfalfa is the finest thing I know for hair. You can use it sprouted, as tablets or you can use alfalfa tea. Results will not be evident for at least a year. You must also improve circulation and bring the blood to the head area. A great stimulant is to use an egg yolk and a half teaspoon of sea salt (must be sea salt because it contains iodine and minerals) as a shampoo. The scalp will absorb the lecithin in the yolk. Afterwards wash it with a castile soap.
Massage the scalp three times a week and use the slant board. Get your head down so you can get more blood in the head. The area becomes anemic. When you are tired, you can’t get the blood uphill into the head area. Tiredness produces an anemic condition in the head.
How about the eyes? Are they getting dimmer? Are you getting enough circulation into the head? The four things I gave you are needed for repair. All are necessary – food, blood, exercise and rest. A few drops of linseed oil (not from paint store, from health food store) put in the corner of each eye is the best thing for inflammation. A great thing you can use when they get tired and fatigued is a warm milk pack right over the eye. Just plain honey, runny honey, mixed half and half with water and just a drop put in the corner of each eye is a wonderful thing.
Teeth – pyorrhea. The best thing is to put papaya tablets on each side of the mouth and let soak after the meal. Papaya eats up old dead material – skin that’s degenerating. You could put a handful of papaya tablets on a lamb chop overnight and the next morning it will be gone. The papaya will eat right through dead meat. We find that it’s a great thing to digest protein. We use it as a digestant in most cases. Use the papaya tablet on both sides and then use liquid chlorophyll as a mouthwash. This cleans up the mouth.
Now, I’ll tell you something to go along with this. Let me tell you a little story first My son,at the age of eight or nine, had crooked teeth in the lower jaw. We took him to the dentist and he said he had to have braces. When we got home, I talked to David and I said, “David, would you do what I tell you for the next six months and see if we could do without braces.” I got his cooperation. He ate a carrot every morning for breakfast, before lunch he had another carrot and another carrot before dinner. He spit out the pulp so it didn’t interfere with his meals. But chewing that carrot developed the gums and brought them so that they had all the blood to build goad teeth, and he developed a lower jaw where the teeth came in straight. Today, he’s got beautiful teeth and he never had to have braces.
The value of your teeth is in the gums. If you don’t have healthy gums, you can’t have healthy teeth. They need exercise. In testing the pressure of Eskimos’ teeth, they found that it was 400 pounds to the square inch as compared to a football player with only 100 pounds pressure per square inch.
Let me take you back to the eyes. Do you know that when you wink, you always wink the upper lid and that is why the wrinkles are in the lower lid? Now look straight ahead, don’t move the head but look up. Now wink. This gives the lower lid exercise.
Next, the throat and the chest. One of the nicest things I know for catarrhal conditions of the throat and chest is an onion pack. Chap an onion fine, put it in a skillet or pan and warm it. When it’s warm, put it in a cloth and put it on the chest and leave it there all night. For a good cough syrup, chop some onions real fine, put some cherry concentrate on it or honey and let it set for 2 or 3 hours. Take a teaspoon of that syrup and it gets rid of the irritation in the throat. Sometimes we need this for someone with a bad heart where coughing can be difficult on them. Coughing helps to get up catarrh. This remedy is not a suppressant.
Now for the heart – the finest heart remedy I know is taking a half cup of ground whole wheat and put it in a cup and a half of hot water in a thermos bottle, cork it and let it stand all night long. The next morning you use that as a cereal. Use it every morning for three months. Don’t use sugar as a sweetened use raisins. This builds the heart.
Anybody who has heart trouble needs starches, carbohydrates, sweet fruits. Honey is good for the heart. One teaspoon in a cup of water is wonderful for the heart. I’m not telling you this is for a heart attack, but that it helps support and build the heart.
Now, we go down to the stomach. One of the finest stomach digestants is papaya – pepsin. Take the seeds from the papaya and dry them. After they are dry, make a tea out of them or grind them and use as a seasoning. I wouldn’t take them whole as they’re pretty rough and scratchy on the intestinal tract. If you have digestive upset, I would rather use half and half of vegetable juice with milk. I find it sits better than all vegetable juice.
Now, when we come to the bowel, we have a lot of remedies for the bowel. I like flaxseed tea. One cup of flaxseed tea with a teaspoon of liquid chlorophyll in it and it’ll soothe that stomach and bowel beautifully.
I was asked to speak in church and the minister wanted the one topic that would help his parishioners most. I wasn’t sure he would accept it but I chose bowel management. Bowel management is most important. What I like best is alfalfa tablets. Plain old alfalfa tablets. You use four tablets at each meal. But crack them instead of swallowing them whole. They should be cracked because they’ve been pressed by 3000 pounds pressure per square inch. If you don’t have a good digestive system, they go right through you whole.
Question: “Before or after meals?”
Answer: “Right with your meal.”
If you’re taking vitamins or minerals, take them with your meals. Take a little food, a little of the vitamins, a little food, and so on,. Never take a handful of vitamins at one time. You’ll use up the digestive juices at one time and it will cause trouble. Take them with your food. You must get the alfalfa from the pulp because the bowel has nothing to work against if you take the juice. Doctors say that if you have pockets in the colon, they are incurable. If they’re incurable, you can keep them clean anyway. You understand, keep them clean. Voice from the audience: “Bran?”
Do you know the country’s going crazy over bran? If you get the proper bulk in your diet, you won’t need all these things. This bran craze exists because 92% of the people in this country are sick. We need fiber. We need raw food. If you take sprouts, friends, you’ll have the finest of all fibers for the bowel. Alfalfa sprouts are best of all. Another good bulk is flaxseed. One tablespoon each meal. It’s good with children. Mix it with their cereal.
THREE THINGS TO ELIMINATE
There are three things I’d cutout of the diet. I’d cut out citrus fruit. They’re picked green and green fruit is acid. They produce too many acids in the body. The second thing is head lettuce. There is no nourishment in head lettuce. There’s a hundred times more nourishment in leaf lettuce. The third thing is, and I don’t like to say this, but I’d cut out bread. There’s good bread on the market but baked goods break up the chemical balance where lecithin is necessary. High heat destroys lecithin and that oil is necessary for the brain and nervous system. Lecithin is necessary for nearly everyone. Our nervousness today burns out the Lecithin. Did you know that the glandular fluids, including the sexual glandular fluids, are 85% lecithin? So we have to rejuvenate them. We are only as young as our glands. They’re found under our arms, in the groin, along the spine, along the neck, and they must be exercised to move the fluid. The glands take care of toxic material bringing it out and moving other elements in. You have to force the fluids along with exercise. Nutrition alone won’t do it. The lymph glands are eliminative organs.
Now the blood has to be recharged and you do it with food. The life of the body is in the blood. You move it along with exercise. You need good digestion and the power to digest comes with rest. In getting well we need the total thing – the detoxification and reversal process. We want the whole body taken care of. We want to get closer to life and further from death – dead food, dead walls, dead books. Consider each day survival day. Be happy.
