Last weekend, thanks to Gina S. and Jill Swyers of the Fresh Network and Hippocrates Institute, I was incredibly privileged to be granted an interview with the director of what I consider to be the world’s most prestigious natural health institute. As much as I’ve changed my diet over the years, speaking with Dr Brian Clement left me feeling like a slacker.
His top ten healing foods for allergies, histamine intolerance and mast cell disorders was especially eye opening.
Always ready to try new approaches, or intensify existing ones, I’m now redoubling my antihistamine and anti-inflammatory diet efforts thanks to my new masticating juice and dehydrator. Expect some fun pictures in the near future! I’m having nothing but green juice with sprouts for breakfast and lunch this week and feeling pretty incredible as a result.
I’m trying to get on the ball video-wise – this should be the first of many. I’ll be posting some thoughts/analysis on the Clement interview and how it’s driving my nutritional transition as well as an interview with Hippocrates Institute nutritionist Jill Swyer.
And now an apology – this video was supposed to be shot by my cameraman, but he wasn’t able to make it. I was planning to be in the frame with Dr Clement, so that we could have a conversation rather than soundbites, but I had to shoot this at the last minute on my DSLR (not tried it before) and the tricky focus got the better of me. Many apologies for that. They’ll be much better in the future…
You’ll find the transcript of the video below.
My questions to Dr Brian Clement are in italic bold.
How does the Hippocrates Institute treat allergies, histamine intolerance and mast cell disorders?
Nourishment is a key component in doing this and most people are completely misguided when it comes to nutrition. They’re told things like meat is a good source of protein, there’s no meat involved, including fish or chicken. They’re told, as an example, that dairy products are good for you, there’s no dairy products involved in this – it’s all plant based organic so that we don’t confuse the body’s hormonal system with pesticides, fungicides and herbicides. Of course we intervene with a lot of cutting edge medicine (non invasive therapies): electromagnetic cold laser, H wave treatment, cyber scan – the list goes on and on. And when you get a person who’s willing to change his or her life, we see these people bring about recovery for themselves.
How important or counter productive is food elimination in the early stages of allergy/histamine/mast cell treatment?
What one has to do is understand is that nutrition is paramount in keeping the immune system strong. Avoidance of certain foods is a given, but its about the inclusion of healthy foods and so you don’t give up everything and eat junk or eat nothing. What you do is that when you give up bad you replace it with good. You can read in my books, if not come to the institute, ‘Living Food for Optimum Health’ and ‘Life Force’; we portray what we’ve learned over the decades.
Salicylate intolerance, how will these people heal if they can’t eat the very foods that are richest in nutrients?
Well number one you have to recognise that when you avoid particular things, even in healthy foods, it’s not permanent and there’s such a wide array and a full spectrum of nutrients that it’s not as if you’re going to lack anything. So if we’re not going to eat grains because they have active ingredients in them that the body’s not responding to well, you replace that. There are other forms and other things we can use, other grains that you may be able to use. The world is big and wide and we’ve explored and pioneered it forever, and we don’t have problems with these issues. When you have problems is when you don’t have the knowledge and wisdom or are being counselled by someone who doesn’t have the knowledge and wisdom.
Is histamine intolerance caused by a gut in disrepair/leaky gut? How do we heal that if we can’t have fermented products?
Well I’m not really sure that the gut’s in disrepair in one hundred percent of histamine issues. I think it’s sort of an over reaction – sort of like a guy who comes back from the war and when he hears an explosion he falls to the ground. I think it’s a biochemical confusion that occurs, and yes the intestinal tract may have something to do with it but it’s more hormonal than it is directly an organ system. So what we do is adjust and balance the hormones with hormonal testing, and see what we can do to increase or decrease particular hormones in the body.
When you say hormones, are we talking (sorry I’m always focused on the female perspective!) About estrogen/progestorone?
No, it could be a wide variety. Estols, estrogen, progesterones, testosterone, and some of the nuance hormones.
A key component of mast cell instability appears to be chemical exposure, how do we deal with that in the 21st century?
Yes – it ’s just unbelievable, everyone is being affected by chemical and heavy metal exposure – the numbers are staggering. I mean back in 1983, only 30 years ago from when we’re speaking, it was one out of ten thousand people who had autism. Today it’s one out of 50, and that is definitely chemical and heavy metal exposure. Other people endure cellular concerns with this – but what you do is detoxify the body, with infrared saunas, there’s certain methodologies, nutrients, that we use, certainly eating a very pure and natural diet, drinking adequate amounts of pure fluid, water and green juices etc, not high sugar, no fruit etc.
And then what we do is use a whole methodology of lymphatic drainage, neuromuscular work, and this expedites the process by two to three times, along with the saunas.
Could you please touch on the role of meditation and stress relief?
When a person focuses, contemplates, meditates, prays etc, the immune system goes up one hundred percent of the time. So when you’re trying to get the immune system to activate, strengthen and have muscle on it, contemplation, prayer, meditation, is as important as eating a good diet and exercise.
Jucing vs smoothies?
Number 1, when you blend a food, it’s ninety percent dead within 90 seconds. So it’s really not that nutritive. The last thing you want to do is drink roughage. If you notice, the major advocates of blending are either obese or emaciated. Because you can’t take roughage and pour it down your throat and not chew it and expect it to do anything but ferment. Juicing on the other hand, with proper juices and immediately consumed, anyone can digest. So people with any allergic reaction, any kind of histamine problem, this is not an activator, just the opposite, it actually tames.
My emergency antihistamine is a green juice – what would be in your ideal antihistamine juice?
Sprouts, sunflower sprouts, pea green sprouts, these high protein, complete protein foods. If I had certain kinds of disorders I might put a little onion sprouts, and garlic sprouts in there, because that’s actually a remedy for you too. Mung bean sprouts if you have other kinds of disorders, aduki beans sprouts. Then there’s the rest can be things like, depending on who you are and what your problem is, celery, cucumber, parsley, watercress.
You’ll find my emergency green juice and other antihistamine and anti-inflammatory foods in the new Anti-Cookbook: High Nutrient Antihistamine and Anti-inflammatory Recipes for Health.
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