To recover from an illness, it is of the utmost importance for anybody who cares about health to understand the causes of disease. It is no good just treating the symptoms. Roger French in his book "The man who lived in three centuries" described the problem accurately:

"Consider a garbage can. If the can is full of garbage, there will be rats and flies around it. We can shoot the rats with a rifle and spray the flies with poison, but as long as the garbage is there, rats and flies will keep coming. On the other hand if we tip the garbage out and wash the can, there will be no rats or flies appearing and we won't need to fire a single shot or spray any pesticide to be free of them."

As far as the body is concerned, you should be preoccupied about the quality of your blood. If your blood is clean and contains all the nutrients necessary to feed and repair the cells, then you are healthy.

However, if you feed yourself with junk food such as sugar, consume regular meat, dairy, cakes, biscuits, chocolate, coffee, tea, pre-prepared meals, take drugs etc.. You cannot expect your blood quality to be good enough to prevent your body from getting sick. Whatever you put in your mouth (and whatever comes out of your mind) will determine the quality of your health.

Nowadays, people treat their body as they treat their car. If a part is not working properly, they take a trip to the mechanic/ doctor and ask them to fix it. They do not consider that they are responsible for their illness. The doctor will in most cases try to block the symptoms but will rarely advise on how to remove the cause of the problem.

So say, you have a cold, which is a natural way for your body to get rid of some toxins it does not like such as mucous. You will be prescribed some drug that will block the release of mucous and other toxins. The cold symptoms would in fact have cleared these toxins. As the toxins have not left your body, they will go deeper and eventually will try to come out again, maybe in the shape of flu.

If you block the flu symptoms with more drugs, more toxins will accumulate and the problem will escalate. Eventually, you may end up with bronchitis and if blocked once more.. pneumonia or any other serious chest condition.

What should we do to deal with a cold? Follow the laws of nature and rest, this is what your body is telling you. Then, fast (stop eating) or at least reduce the quantity of food you ingest to give your body less work and a chance to recover. Drink plenty of clean water and allow the toxins to naturally come out of your body. Your body does not like to be sick and out of balance. When this happens, it will automatically try to fix itself by giving you symptoms.

If you ignore these symptoms, then the problems escalate. There are many causes to disease. But by far the most important are Diet, Emotions (including stress) and environmental toxins. If you can work on these three and improve them, you stand a good chance of recovery.

Dietary - One of the three main causes of disease In 1936, the United States senate issued document 264, which said:

"Our physical well being is more directly dependent upon minerals we take into our systems than upon calories or vitamins, or upon precise proportion of starch, protein or carbohydrates we consume..."

Research by Jo Wallace (Author of "Dead Doctor's don't lie" tape) claimed that the soil in the UK is 72% void of minerals through over fertilisation, pesticides abuse and the fact that farmers have not replaced the minerals in the soil. Organic farming has, in the past few years, been on the increase because of consumer demand. It is up to you and I to make sure that this trend carries on.

Eat organic. The more people do, the cheaper it should become and the healthier we shall all be. We are what we eat and if we do not respect this simple rule, we head for trouble. The food that we eat determines the quality of the blood that irrigates all the organs in our body. If we eat too much animal food, sugar or food that contains chemicals, additives, colouring, flavouring etc... then we eventually get sick.

People often tell me that their grandfather or grandmother regularly ate dairy products or other animal food and that they are in good health. This may be true. But when these elderly people were young, their diet was much better than ours is today. Meat and dairy products were expensive and were not eaten so much. The chemical manipulations of these foods were also not so intense. It is when we are young that we create the strength or the weakness of our immune system and organs. Fertilisers and pesticides were also not used so routinely.

Children nowadays eat large quantities of junk food, chocolate, sugar and chemicals. The results are plain for all to see. Lots of youngsters at school suffer from asthma, eczema or other skin conditions and even cancer. When I was school age, I cannot recall any of my friends suffering from such conditions.

The preservation of our food using strong chemicals also causes a great health hazard. In an ordinary supermarket apples for example will have been saturated with chemicals such as iprodione, vinclozolin, captan and chlorpyrifos and on top of all this, it is sealed in wax to look good.

Teenagers are now prone to getting the type of cancers that only used to attack adults. Another important factor is the way animals are raised for meat. They are left in a confined environment, fed with hormones, tranquillisers, antibiotics, extracts from other dead animals etc..

In France, I have seen some cows kept in a dark environment, they never went out grazing and were fed some man made mixture. They could not even walk!

When comparing maps of the world, it is clear that some countries are more prone to certain cancers than others. Western countries for example have an incidence of colon cancer that is 20 times higher than Eastern countries. Their meat eating habits are well documented.

In conclusion: If you wish to be healthy, clean your diet. YOU ARE WHAT YOU EAT .. and think Eat more organic whole grains (brown rice, barley, millet, corn, bulghur, oat, couscous, wholewheat pasta, quinoa etc..) some beans (lentils, aduki, chick peas etc..), lots of vegetables (virtually all, although deadly nightshades are not the best). Add soups to your diet, your body will love them. Cut down or eliminate meat, dairy, sugar, alcohol, coffee, chocolate, sweets etc.. Drink clean water and avoid sugared drinks and too much citrus fruits juice.