Nathan Pritikin

I had the good fortune of getting sick this week. It wasn't pretty folks, coming out both....

What was so good about getting sick though was loss of appetite. I didn't eat for two days. And that made me happy. Many times I start a fast, but as the day wears on, I end up eating. Being sick, it was a piece of cake not to eat. Funny, ha ha. Bun intended.

Fasting is the best gift by far we can give ourselves. This organization (one of the best fasting centers in the world) states that one of the benefits of fasting is  like resetting the clock. They compare it to rebooting a computer. Simple foods, like watermelon which I usually break a fast with, tastes extraordinary. And though I only fasted 2 days, my goal is to do a 3 week fast sometime in my life.

While resting, I got in touch with an old friend--A book by Nathan Pritikin ($.01 used at Amazon). I've probably read this book 20 times. I read it again this week, and I'm going to read it again starting today. I continually am dumbfounded by the wisdom this man expressed and the truths that even for today are so profound. The book was written in 1979 and of course the studies he states happened even before then. And remember, I said Nathan Pritikin, not Dr Pritikin. He was a lay person, not a doctor.

When I say I read his book, actually it's mostly to page 62. Then at the end of the book there's an appendix titled, "For the Health Professional". That's another 40 pages. That's it, the rest is superflous. So it doesn't take much to get through his book.

But, oh the wisdom. He recalls studies by fellows named Lester Morrison, Roy Swank, Dennis Burkitt et al. As far as I know, besides Dr Burkitt--Morrison and Swank are little known, though what they did, far reaching. Especially Dr Swank. Unfortunately, I won't even bother to tell my friends who have multiple sclerosis about him, because in the past I've learned it's fallen on deaf ears.

On Thanksgiving, a guest kindly brought me a magazine called "Well Being Journal". One of the articles on the cover that caught my eye was "Healthy Saturated Fats". I read the article and got both depressed and angry. This is what passes for so called scholarship these days.

There are two forewords in Mr Pritikin's book. One by the great Dr Burkitt and the other by a Dr Harper. Dr Harper was in charge of some kind of insurance program for pilots. If what he says alone in his "Foreward" is true, it's almost unbelieveable. Just reading the two Forewards is worth the price of the book;-)

If you want to see and discover real truths, read the first few pages of Nathan Pritikin's book. If you follow that, you won't have to read any other book on nutrition the rest of your life.

Here is an old video with Dr McDougall and Nathan Pritiken