In this article, Paul Nison shares on his story of immediate healing, as well as mistakes along the way, going raw. Paul Nison is a raw food chef and educator. He is also the author of seven books including "The Raw Life."
Kevin: Paul Nison is a raw food chef and educator. He's been eating a raw food diet since he was diagnosed with colitis, many years ago. With no other choice but surgery according to the medical profession Paul decided to stop eating all cooked foods. Today he is 100 percent cured of his so-called incurable disease. Paul, welcome to the call.
Paul: Thank you.
Kevin: No problem. Let's start with your own personal story because I think a lot of people can learn from it.
Paul: Sure. A lot of people out there have heard me and they know it but basically, to make it short and sweet I'll tell you I got diagnosed with inflammatory bowel disease, which is inflammation of the colon. It's also known as ulcerative colitis and Crohn's Disease, when I was 19 years old. The doctors told me that I had to be on drugs for the rest of my life and the only inevitable was I was at a high risk for colon cancer at 20 years old. They said by the time I was 30 I would probably have it and the only complete cure was to get rid of my colon. They said, "If you don't have a colon you can't get colon cancer." The doctors told me what to do and I listened to them and did exactly everything they told me to do short of surgery. Every time I did what they told me to do I wasn't getting better, I was getting worse. So then I got wise and I started doing the opposite and got better.
One day when I moved to West Palm Beach, Florida, without knowing it I moved right next to a place called Hippocrates Health Institute. I was in the health food store one day and I saw a fellow there, his name was Brian Clement. He was giving a lecture to some people there and I was listening. He was talking about raw food. My doctor had always told me raw foods would be bad for me. When I told that to Brian he said, "Of course they would. If you were healthy they wouldn't get paid." He told me a lot more things about the food.
I asked my doctor if the raw foods are really bad for me and she said, "They're definitely the worse thing for your condition." When she told me that I knew I was on the right track and I went on a raw food diet.
Since that day I've been completely better and helping people get better. I have to pinch myself. I enjoy every day so much.
Kevin: Now the process of healing probably didn't happen overnight. Why don't you explain how you dove into it and what are some of the things that worked for you and some of the things that you found didn't work for you.
Paul: Well actually, it did happen overnight. What I found out is health doesn't begin when we add to our diet, it begins with what we eliminate. So when I found Hippocrates Health Institute and spoke to Brian Clements, the director there, he told me to eliminate everything that was contributing to my problem. He knew what it was. It was not really the cooked food as much as the dairy, the wheat, the processed food, the overeating, eating late at night, mis-combining my meals, not chewing my meals. When I stopped doing all those things... People ask me how long it took to get well, I give them two answers. One answer is "Immediately." As soon as I stopped that I actually started feeling better, even though I wasn't completely cured. The other answer is, after almost 17 years of doing this I'm still healing because each day I feel better than the last. That is not an exaggeration. It's amazing. I feel better now than I did last year and I feel better than two years ago. I continuously feel better and I'm learning new things.
I made some mistakes at first and I see a lot of people making those mistakes today. It's one of the things that motivates me to get out there. If I didn't change I wouldn't have been too healthy today. I see a lot of people coming to the raw food movement that are making a lot of these errors.
I was blessed to meet a man who is one of my best friends, Dr. Fred Bisci, when I was interviewing people for my first book. He really woke me up and told me that it's not just about eating raw food. You can't just eat tons of fruit and you can't eat raw junk food and expect things to continue to get well. Eventually you're going to hit a road block. He really helped me understand why and how that happens.
You have to continue to change as the body changes. There's a lot of people out there in the raw food movement making mistakes. We really have to understand that raw food is great but it's not a panacea. If it's raw junk food it's just a matter of time before that's going to take its effect on your body.
It's very simple - raw, ripe, fresh and organic. We can't overeat and have got to eat at the right times. All this is what my new book is really about, but so are my other books.
My last book, was a book by Arnold Ehret. Author of "The Mucusless Diet Healing System" and he had something in there called the formula for life. If anyone understands that formula, they'll understand what the mistakes are and how to avoid them. The formula basically is power minus obstruction equals vitality. In other words, health minus disease equals wellness. So we have to put things in our body that can contribute to our health and eliminate things that contribute to disease. Then that will determine the state of our health.
Kevin: All right. Let's get into some specifics here. What were some of those specific mistakes? What were some of the foods and things that you were eating that were eventually contributing to you not getting the results you wanted?
Paul: Well, the first one was eating too much fruit. At first it was great. To anyone out there that's eaten McDonald's their whole life and then switched to a diet of eating fruit, they could eat all the fruit in the world and they're probably going to show some improvement. However, after your chemistry starts cleaning up and you continue to eat tons and tons of fruit, it's too much sugar for the body. At Hippocrates Health Institute people with certain illnesses they completely take off sugar, including the sugar that's found in fruit. So there's nothing wrong with fruit but it's overdoing it that's a problem. One of those mistakes I made was overdoing the fruit.
People ask me, "How much is too much?" It might vary for each person but you have to understand that the stomach is the size of our fist. So we have to use some common sense and say, "That might be a little bit too much food there. Look how much you're eating." We have to look at that. That's one of the big errors I made.
Kevin: Paul Nison is a raw food chef and educator. He's been eating a raw food diet since he was diagnosed with colitis, many years ago. With no other choice but surgery according to the medical profession Paul decided to stop eating all cooked foods. Today he is 100 percent cured of his so-called incurable disease. Paul, welcome to the call.
Paul: Thank you.
Kevin: No problem. Let's start with your own personal story because I think a lot of people can learn from it.
Paul: Sure. A lot of people out there have heard me and they know it but basically, to make it short and sweet I'll tell you I got diagnosed with inflammatory bowel disease, which is inflammation of the colon. It's also known as ulcerative colitis and Crohn's Disease, when I was 19 years old. The doctors told me that I had to be on drugs for the rest of my life and the only inevitable was I was at a high risk for colon cancer at 20 years old. They said by the time I was 30 I would probably have it and the only complete cure was to get rid of my colon. They said, "If you don't have a colon you can't get colon cancer." The doctors told me what to do and I listened to them and did exactly everything they told me to do short of surgery. Every time I did what they told me to do I wasn't getting better, I was getting worse. So then I got wise and I started doing the opposite and got better.
One day when I moved to West Palm Beach, Florida, without knowing it I moved right next to a place called Hippocrates Health Institute. I was in the health food store one day and I saw a fellow there, his name was Brian Clement. He was giving a lecture to some people there and I was listening. He was talking about raw food. My doctor had always told me raw foods would be bad for me. When I told that to Brian he said, "Of course they would. If you were healthy they wouldn't get paid." He told me a lot more things about the food.
I asked my doctor if the raw foods are really bad for me and she said, "They're definitely the worse thing for your condition." When she told me that I knew I was on the right track and I went on a raw food diet.
Since that day I've been completely better and helping people get better. I have to pinch myself. I enjoy every day so much.
Kevin: Now the process of healing probably didn't happen overnight. Why don't you explain how you dove into it and what are some of the things that worked for you and some of the things that you found didn't work for you.
Paul: Well actually, it did happen overnight. What I found out is health doesn't begin when we add to our diet, it begins with what we eliminate. So when I found Hippocrates Health Institute and spoke to Brian Clements, the director there, he told me to eliminate everything that was contributing to my problem. He knew what it was. It was not really the cooked food as much as the dairy, the wheat, the processed food, the overeating, eating late at night, mis-combining my meals, not chewing my meals. When I stopped doing all those things... People ask me how long it took to get well, I give them two answers. One answer is "Immediately." As soon as I stopped that I actually started feeling better, even though I wasn't completely cured. The other answer is, after almost 17 years of doing this I'm still healing because each day I feel better than the last. That is not an exaggeration. It's amazing. I feel better now than I did last year and I feel better than two years ago. I continuously feel better and I'm learning new things.
I made some mistakes at first and I see a lot of people making those mistakes today. It's one of the things that motivates me to get out there. If I didn't change I wouldn't have been too healthy today. I see a lot of people coming to the raw food movement that are making a lot of these errors.
I was blessed to meet a man who is one of my best friends, Dr. Fred Bisci, when I was interviewing people for my first book. He really woke me up and told me that it's not just about eating raw food. You can't just eat tons of fruit and you can't eat raw junk food and expect things to continue to get well. Eventually you're going to hit a road block. He really helped me understand why and how that happens.
You have to continue to change as the body changes. There's a lot of people out there in the raw food movement making mistakes. We really have to understand that raw food is great but it's not a panacea. If it's raw junk food it's just a matter of time before that's going to take its effect on your body.
It's very simple - raw, ripe, fresh and organic. We can't overeat and have got to eat at the right times. All this is what my new book is really about, but so are my other books.
My last book, was a book by Arnold Ehret. Author of "The Mucusless Diet Healing System" and he had something in there called the formula for life. If anyone understands that formula, they'll understand what the mistakes are and how to avoid them. The formula basically is power minus obstruction equals vitality. In other words, health minus disease equals wellness. So we have to put things in our body that can contribute to our health and eliminate things that contribute to disease. Then that will determine the state of our health.
Kevin: All right. Let's get into some specifics here. What were some of those specific mistakes? What were some of the foods and things that you were eating that were eventually contributing to you not getting the results you wanted?
Paul: Well, the first one was eating too much fruit. At first it was great. To anyone out there that's eaten McDonald's their whole life and then switched to a diet of eating fruit, they could eat all the fruit in the world and they're probably going to show some improvement. However, after your chemistry starts cleaning up and you continue to eat tons and tons of fruit, it's too much sugar for the body. At Hippocrates Health Institute people with certain illnesses they completely take off sugar, including the sugar that's found in fruit. So there's nothing wrong with fruit but it's overdoing it that's a problem. One of those mistakes I made was overdoing the fruit.
People ask me, "How much is too much?" It might vary for each person but you have to understand that the stomach is the size of our fist. So we have to use some common sense and say, "That might be a little bit too much food there. Look how much you're eating." We have to look at that. That's one of the big errors I made.
May 13, 1971 my doctor said, "I wish I could help you. You have to get rest. Don't worry about drug addiction. The pain counteracts this. You have no other choice." Then he pulled out a prescription blank for two hundred of one of the most powerful pain averting drugs available. I was dying of cancer and the doctors had done all they knew to do. For over four years they had fought to save my life.
