Brian Clement Lecture - Notes

Brian Clement, head of the Hippocrates Health Institute in West Palm Beach, Florida, gave a 2 hour lecture titled "Living Foods and Health" at the San Francisco Whole Life Expo, Explorations in Natural Healing, on Saturday, 21 October, 1995. Below are my notes from the lecture. Contact addresses and my comments are given after the notes.

Notes:

We don't talk about nutrition - vitamins, or even the most important area - enzymes and oxygen. Today we speak about hormones, as they relate to the function of the entire body, and the mind cell connection. Today we are seeing more young people coming to our programs with disease.
To illustrate the importance of hormones: 20 years ago, young women began menstruating at about 12.5 years of age; today it begins at 9.5 years! He then discussed the link between eating meat and prostate cancer. He claims that nearly all men (80%) will get prostate cancer if they live long enough (over 70 years).

Your great grandparents ate food from their own gardens; these foods were hormonally rich. The new most important element in food is hormone content. Hormones in food? Lots! There are hormones in meat and dairy. These are all female hormones, which is bad for men and women also.

Chemicals in the environment. These chemicals create estrogens when assimilated in the body. Synthetic fabrics, carpets, etc. do this as well. Living foods help the body remove excess hormones. You can stop eating bad food, but our polluted technological environment still creates estrogens.

Abundant lifestyle. You must connect your self to the "primal cell" or the planet to overcome the problems of our technological society and lifestyle. In terms of their overall importance, we have: nutrition   <enzymes, oxygen < hormones and hormones control the physical body, mind, and spirit. (*see comment 1)>

Nutrition. We want foods with the most energy in them. Enzymes are the manifest form of energy. The only source of energy is to eat raw food. To have enzymes, food must be heated below 115 degrees F. You can heat raw, living foods if you find it comfortable. (* see comment 2)

Consumption of living foods is on a weight basis. We suggest 80% raw, 20% cooked, by weight (not by volume or caloric value). An illustration. If you drink 2, 16-ounce glasses of raw veg/sprout juice per day, and eat 2 large salads per day (0.25-0.5 pounds per salad), you can eat 0.25-0.5 pounds of cooked food at each meal.

If you have a disease that challenges your physiology, 95-100% raw is suggested, for 18 months. It's OK then to eat a very small amount of cooked food, on occasion.

Oxygen factor. If you eat the food right off the plant, you get all the oxygen. If it sits or gets juiced, you lose the oxygen. Juice must be fresh - made immediately before drinking (no refrigerated juice). Freshness is important with hormones also. Hormones are the "mind" or "memory" of the plant.

Brian's diet is 50% by weight sprouts. The interpersonal relationship that you conduct with your food is most important. You can see this with sprouts, as they won't grow for negative people.

What is spirit? Does it need to be anything? Spirit it believing. Learn to surrender. We live in a matter based society, with racism and sexism, other negatives. For this we live in a state of disbelief. To avoid this, you must learn to surrender, to believe. Develop consciousness, to find yourself. (* see comment 3). We don't understand our birthright; we can achieve the un-achievable.

Questions:

Q: Do you drink the foam on your juices?
A: Yes; it's oxidized a bit but OK.

Q: What to do about type I diabetes? [Type I = insulin dependent]
A: Living foods are very effective against type II [non insulin dependent]. In type I, the pancreas is destroyed. You must work with sprouts, green foods, to eventually reduce, in rare cases eliminate, insulin. Try a mono-diet for 30-60 days. (* see comment 4)

Q: What about hydroponic vegetables?
A: Most are grown with chemicals. It's OK if they are grown with liquified seaweed. Wheatgrass, buckwheat greens grown that way are OK, nearly as good as those grown on soil.

Q: Difficulty in digesting raw foods? What about cooked brown rice (macrobiotics)?
A: Different diets reflect differences in consciousness. Cooked brown rice is OK for people into macrobiotics. Digestion is a major problem with raw foods. As children we did not have a proper diet and hence did not develop the correct internal muscle structure (for digestion). However you cannot digest cooked food. Take enzymes, lacto-bacteria; exercise, use castor oil packs for digestive help.

Q: What is the distribution of visitors to Hippocrates?
A: 50% sick, 50% well seeking to learn. We have many foreign visitors, a nice spa, and a Health Educator program.

Q: How long can you keep food in the refrigerator?
A: Depends on the food. Root veggies can be kept for months, sprouts a week or two.

Q: What about fruit juices?
A: They are a small part of the program. Modern hybrid fruit is too high in sugar. Also, beet, carrot juices are too high in sugar. Use green vegetables, sprouts for juices; the ones that taste the worst are the best for you. (* see comment 5)

Q: Wheatgrass juice?
A: An important part of the program. Greens year-round are emphasized in the program.

Q: Cost of visiting Hippocrates?
A: $200-300 per day, for a 21 day program.

Brian has a new book in progress, also a series of 14 videos in progress. (Videos due out Nov/Dec this year). Several books are available at present, including "Hippocrates Health Program", and books on belief, exercise, relationships, and children. The books are all small, paperback, and low priced ($6 full price, only $3 at his Expo talk).
The remainder of the program was a food preparation demo by Sheila (last name?) from the Garden Taste Restaurant in Del Mar, California (San Diego area). They are a vegan restaurant that serves raw food dishes in addition to the standard cooked fare. She prepared two large salads using sprouts and red sauerkraut. I didn't write the recipes down, sorry!

Contact addresses:

Hippocrates Health Institute
1443 Palmdale Court
West Palm Beach, Florida 33411
Phone: 407-471-8876

Hippocrates Publications
- same address/phone as above

Garden Taste Restaurant
2 locations, both in the San Diego area:
1237 Camino Del Mar
Del Mar, California 92014
Phone: 619-793-1500 Fax: 619-481-3740

1020 W. San Marcos Blvd.
San Marcos, California
Phone 619-736-4949

Comments:

Hormones and the mind are inter-related but hormones don't control the mind. The example of your mind/body producing adrenalin in a fear/shock situation illustrates this point well. In that case the thought (fear) came first, and the body produces the hormone (adrenalin) after.
"The only source of energy is raw food" is a direct quote and I sharply disagree with this. Food is the source of only a small part of your energy. Most of your energy comes from the air you breathe; it's referred to as prana in yoga and Ayurveda. If all your energy came from food you could simply eat when tired, you wouldn't need rest or sleep! By the way cooked food has some energy in it, but much less than raw food. Cooking also can derange what energy is left behind...
"Spirit is believing." I suspect he was speaking figuratively or loosely here. Belief is a mental process, and spirit is another dimension, beyond the mental. Belief is necessary for interface with the spririt, but it is not the same as the spirit.
Clarification on the pancreas in Type I diabetes. In Type I, the beta cells in the islet of langerhans, in the pancreas, stop functioning and may even be dead. These cells constitute about 1% of the pancreas. The remainder of the pancreas may be functional.
Green juices - are great! Try celery mixed with lemon/lime, or grapefruit. For an intense juice, try celery mixed with cilantro juice (and lemon/lime). Celery mixed with the juice of any of these: dandelion, endive, escarole, and/or Chinese/Indian bitter melon (Latin name Momordica charantia, grows wild in Florida), can serve as a raw herbal bitter (liver cleanse). Cucumbers can be juiced, but you might find it flat compared to celery. Mustard green juice can be very pungent, while fennel bulb/green juice is fragrant and very soothing.

Comment on Clement Workshop Notes

in comment 2 of the workshop notes posting, I wrote:
>Food is the source of only a small part of your energy. >Most of your energy comes from the air you breathe; it's referred to as >prana in yoga and Ayurveda. If all your energy came from food you could simply >eat when tired, you wouldn't need rest or sleep!
After posting this, the thought came to me that someone might say, "if all your energy came from air you could simply breathe when tired, you wouldn't need to eat". This deserves some clarification. First, there are a few, very rare people who are known as breatharians, who don't eat, they only breathe. There are descriptions of some of these people in Viktoras' "Survival..." book, and also in Yogananda's book, "Autobiography of a Yogi".
Second, although becoming a breatharian is not feasible for most of us, one thing is clear: if you practice certain yoga deep breathing exercises known as pranayama, you can significantly reduce the amount of food and sleep you require. A pranayama practice is more practical for most of us, instead of trying to become breatharians. The specific practices that reduce need for food are: sitali and sitkari pranayama (other types are helpful also). In order to reduce your food requirement, you must practice regularly, and for a long time each day - a minimum of 1.5 hours per day. Further it takes some time (months) for the reduced needs to manifest.
There are other yoga practices that reduce the need for sleep. Savasana, or deep relaxation, and yoga nidra, the yogic sleep, can sharply reduce the need for sleep. A regular meditation practice can reduce stress and improve the quality of your sleep (thereby reducing quantity required).
In summary, a regular pranayama practice, coupled with deep relaxation, can sharply reduce both your food and sleep requirements. Of course a raw food diet, to a certain extent, can convey similar benefits.
Tom Billings
teb@stat.Berkeley.EDU

Addendum May 1998
I wanted to revise my comments above re: breatharianism, to reflect my current position. Basically, the issue of breatharianism is primarily a spiritual topic, and not a scientific topic.

In scientific terms:

* there are no confirmed cases of breatharians

* to achieve breatharianism may require that one violate the laws of physics, and (somehow) survive the experience

* an earlier advocate of breatharianism was discovered to be a fake - eating hamburgers

* a current advocate of breatharianism advises her followers that they can eat for social purposes or fun, and still consider themselves breatharians (such a claim is highly suspicious, in my view).

In spiritual terms:

* enlightenment cannot be scientifically proven; if one takes enlightenment as a spiritual view, then breatharianism can be taken as a spiritual view as well.

* if breatharianism is somehow a grand spiritual goal, one wonders why we were created with/evolved with, a digestive system

* the most credible claims of breatharians are in "Autobiography of a Yogi" by Paramhamsa Yogananda, and the "Aghora" books by Robert Svoboda. These reports are intriguing, but one wonders if these breatharians ate no food whatsoever, or specifically, no solid food. As milk consumption is common in India, one wonders if those reported as breatharians are consuming milk (which has significant food value). I am not challenging or questioning the reports, only asking about a potentially important detail.

* all/nearly all enlightened souls/saints eat food, just like the rest of us; one wonders if breatharianism has any real spiritual significance at all.

* in the "Aghora" books, the discussion of breatharianism indicates it is not for ordinary folks.

To clarify my earlier comments re: doing large amounts of pranayama may reduce the need for food. There is no scientific proof of this, so one must try and see. One limitation here is that such an effect, if it appears at all, may require more than 1.5 hours practice per day: some yogis regard a "serious" pranayama practice as 4-6-8 hours practice per day, and that is each and every day!

Large amounts of pranayama may reduce food needs via a number of mechanisms:

+ direct ingestion of prana as claimed in yoga principles (skeptics won't believe this)

+ reduction of calorie needs as sitting and breathing uses fewer calories than other activities

+ increased breathing raises general oxygen levels in the system, making digestion and assimilation (and other body processes) more efficient.

It is appropriate here to warn readers that excessive pranayama can cause serious negative side-effects. (I personally have gone that route in the past.) If you are interested in developing a practice, I encourage you to do so - very slowly, gradually, and carefully, under the guidance of an experienced teacher. Do not jump in and try to go from no pranayama, to a lengthy daily practice - if you do, you will probably hurt yourself!

In summary: that breatharianism may be possible, in theory, is a spiritual belief. However, there are no scientifically confirmed cases at present. I would encourage readers to be skeptical about breatharianism. Even if it is possible, why would you need (or want) it?

P.S. you can get pranayama instruction, generally for nominal fees, at many yoga centers. There is no need to pay high prices for breathing lessons.