Pictured above: some people are shocked or “grossed out” about these subjects. I know I’m adding happier, healthier years to my life and hope that I can inspire friends and fans to think outside the box, to find their own paths to personal science. I’m just sorry I didn’t figure it out until I was sixty-one years old. Better late than never. The medical and cosmetic industries hate it, because they are not making one thin cent off my super clean, robust body. To HELL with ‘em!
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[dropcap] T [/dropcap]his is strictly personal. No China Rising Radio Sinoland, no Baba Beijing, no Eurangloland imperial intrigue. Read on. You’ll be very glad you did.
Today is my 64th birthday and marks three years that my body has been free of all soap, shampoo and toothpaste. It also marks one year that I have done daily coffee enemas. As a result of all this, at my ripe old age, I feel like I’ve added years to my life. I’ve never felt happier and healthier.
Personal science is the practice of making yourself a test tube to try non-mainstream approaches to taking care of your body. Three years ago, a colleague and I were talking about hair and he casually mentioned that he had not used any shampoo for ten years. Needless to say, as I was gazing at his beautiful, healthy head of hair, I was both shocked and intrigued. “Just warm water and I brush it out”, he said, so I started doing research online, watching a number of testimonial videos and reading articles. I learned that the first commercial shampoo did not hit the market until the 1930s. What did people do for thousands of years before that?
What I found out is that there is a growing number of people who are joining the “no (sham)poo” movement. Sounded easy enough. I am also an avid plastic hater, so anything I could do to use less of the toxic stuff was music to my ears. Not to mention cost, convenience and less pollution for the city water system. As well, why gratuitously throw money at Wall Street? Also, no more little bottles of shampoo and conditioner to manage in the suitcase, when traveling.
I started doing this in February 2015 and never missed a beat. I have nothing but good things to say about not using shampoo. I used to get dandruff. I now realize that much of it came from all the chemical residues left on my head and in my hair, from shampoo and conditioner. I now just wash my hair with water, scrubbing my scalp all the same. I’ve saved a lot of money, used no plastic, not sent soap pollution into the water system and simplified my life. What more could I ask for?
The success of this personal science experiment got me intrigued and I started looking into soap. Same story, a dedicated and growing group of people have stopped using it. It makes total sense anyway. Our skin is our largest organ and acts like a sponge, sucking up everything that is put on it, via the three trillion, yes – with a “t” – trillion pores that cover our bodies. Our survival depends on the one trillion bacteria, mold and viruses that live on our skin, 1,000 species in 19 phyla. Not to mention trillions of microscopic skin mites, called demodex, that live in each of our pores, munching away on sebum, oil and dirt that clogs them up. All of these microbes collectively function as a holistic, protective shield of good bugs that kill all the bad ones we come in contact with, keeping our skin clean and healthy. Take away your natural microbial skin cover and you’ve got about 48-72 hours until you die from a massive invasion of killer critters. That’s how important it is.
So, it begs the question: why go to so much trouble to try to incessantly scrub off this amazing protective armor, that has evolved over millions of years to keep us naturally clean and healthy? Thus, in March 2015, out went all the soap in my life. Again, I wash with water, rubbing my body with my hands. When my hands get dirty, I wash them with water. Ditto going to the bathroom. Why kill the specialized microbial flora on my hands with chemicals? By just using water, my armor stays in place, killing instantly any bugs that can’t survive on my hands. Why? Our bodies have about 10-15 zones where fauna of microbes thrive exclusively and can live nowhere else on our body: face, scalp, ears, armpits, crotch, feet, etc. Crotch critters cannot last more than a minute on your hands and your hand bugs can’t survive on your feet. Clean and wash with water and you stay bulletproof from dangerous invaders trying to make you sick or kill you. I don’t work in a surgical theater cutting open people. Why go through what they do before donning their medical smocks? It makes no sense.
The results of stopping using soap were even more dramatic than no shampoo. All my adult life, I was afflicted with bad fungal infections behind my ears and between my toes. After years of trying antibiotic creams, to which the bad mold and bacteria slowly built up a resistance, a Bulgarian doctor in Beijing told me to put tincture of iodine everywhere I had a problem. It worked great, so starting in about 1992, I went through no telling how many little bottles of the red-brown stuff, suffering numerous spills and ruining a fair number of clothes over the years, with indelible stains. Not to mention leaks in suitcases when traveling, spills in the bathroom, on the floor, etc. Iodine stains everything it touches, forever.
What happened when I stopped using soap? My natural microbial flora was able to repopulate my skin shield and within one month, I stopped having to use iodine. Incredibly, by not using soap, I have had no fungal and bacterial skin infections for the last three years.
I also used to routinely get jock-type rashes between my thighs and in my crotch, especially in summer. I am a maniac exerciser, so it was frequently a problem. I used all kinds of chemicals to make it go away, including witch-hazel, astringents, creams and the like. The first couple of summers after I stopped using soap, I was able to just use some talcum powder for 2-3 days and it would go away. Last summer, I didn’t even have to use talcum powder.
Ditto pimples. Even as an adult, I used to get pimples on my face, neck, chest and back, quite regularly. After stopping using soap, I get one zit about once a year and it doesn’t last very long. My natural microbial shield is cleaning that infected pore and those demodex mites are stuffing themselves on the oil and sebum clogging it up. Soap just kills all the good and let the bad flourish.
I’ve had many skin cancers over the years, luckily just basal cell and squamous cell carcinomas, not melanomas. They often start out as a keratosis, which is a rough patch of skin that slowly becomes a carcinoma. Since stopping using soap, the number of keratoses I get has dropped dramatically. When I do get one, usually on my forehead or cheeks, I just scratch it off with a fingernail over several days and it goes away. Amazing! When I was using soap, I had to go to the doctor to have them burned off. So, my natural skin shield also has the power to attack pre-cancerous skin cells and stop the mutating process.
Cosmetically, when I used to use soap, it of course left a residue all over my body and like dandruff on the scalp, I used to have what I thought was dead skin flaking off my arms and torso. I suspect some of it was soap residue, but some was also probably dead skin. We each slough off about 2-2.5kg of skin a year anyway. Now, my natural skin mites are in full force, chomping away on any dead skin left on my body, and none of it gets stuck there, in chemical soap residue, so now my skin is silky clean and flake free.
Even more amazingly, over the last year or so, I have found myself just standing under the shower and barely “scrubbing” my body with my hands, except lightly in my private parts and armpits. What I have learned is that my body has the power to clean itself. I will go for days with just rinsing my face and body under the shower head, not even touching them. Finally, after a few days, there will be some dead skin that needs to be rubbed off my face and that’s all. Otherwise, my face and body are spotlessly clean and healthy. No blackheads, no pimples, nothing.
Finally, now that I have been soap free for three years, I’ve been able to quit using all creams and lotions for dry and irritated skin. My skin is now holistically producing the right amount of natural oils and sebum, to keep it supple and healthy. Again, less plastic for Mother Nature and less money for Wall Street.
My bathroom cupboard is pretty empty these days, other than a natural salt crystal deodorant stick, having also stopped using chemically loaded brand varieties, a couple of years ago.
The verdict is in: soap sucks. I’ve never been cleaner, healthier, nor has my skin ever looked as good as it does now. No plastic and no soap going into the water system means a cleaner, healthier Mother Earth too, and fuck Fortune 500’s profits. I’m pocketing that money now.
Next came toothpaste, in April 2015. Same research and of course I learned that many, if not most of the people in the developing world don’t use toothpaste, or substitute it with natural plant products, like swak, which is used in Africa. In the early 2000s, a dental hygienist told me if I started using an electric toothbrush, that I would probably never have to go see a dentist again. She was right. I haven’t been back since then, over 15 years. I had been a religious user of dental floss anyway, since my 20s, so I floss every evening and use an electric brush morning and night.
I drink boatloads of coffee and tea, day in and day out, and my teeth and gums are doing fine. Watch my video podcasts and you can see that my teeth are not blackened or pitted out. They are not George Clooney bleached white, but that’s Hollywood artificial anyway. Teeth enamel is naturally eggshell colored, not cloud white.
Again, why put chemicals in your mouth, when it is full of specialized microbes that are there to kill the bad bugs and keep your teeth and gums healthy and strong? It’s also one less thing to deal with in my life, one less consumer item to buy and travel with and over the last three years, a bunch less plastic and water pollution for our planet. I’ll never use toothpaste again for the rest of my life. I have proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that it is totally superfluous.
All told, without soap, shampoo and toothpaste, my body is in holistic harmony with nature and in equilibrium with itself, the way it was meant to be, thanks to five million years of evolution and natural selection. I’m also saving hundreds of dollars and generate no more plastic and water pollution, by not using these totally unnecessary chemicals.
And chemicals they are. In fact, they are poison, which is something I learned, as I continued to do more research over the last three years. In fact, it’s downright frightening.
According to product liability laws, companies have no legal obligation to stop using dangerous or lethal products (http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Product+Liability) A moral duty, yes, but not a legal obligation. They can hide damaging proof that they are killing or hurting people, they can spend a fortune on propaganda to counter the truth and they can bribe government officials with legal and illegal “donations”, to stop any public or official inquiry into their damage to people and the environment. All they have to risk is a lawsuit and maybe pay a fine, while these days, not even bothering to have to apologize. Nice and clean and neat. And it’s all legal.
Since when did morals have anything to do with capitalism? It’s all about making as much money in as short a period of time as possible, damn the consequences to anything and anybody, other than to the CEO, officers and board of directors. I wrote and podcasted about this recently (http://chinarising.puntopress.com/2018/04/09/chinas-capitalism-is-first-and-foremost-communist-socialist-china-rising-radio-sinoland-180410/ and http://chinarising.puntopress.com/2018/04/20/chinese-democracy-says-no-more-to-western-garbage-china-rising-radio-sinoland-180421/). Capitalism can only “work” for the company’s owners, when they can externalize all the death, destruction and harm they cause onto society at large and on the government, to eventually cover the cost via people’s taxes.
In the above two articles I cited, I talked about how Merck knowingly exterminated up to 500,000 people with their lethal drug Vioxx. They made billions, paid a small fine and no one went to jail. No one even had to apologize for their commercial genocide. It’s called capitalism.
Starting in 1948, Henkel Corporation sold Dial brand and became the world’s first and best-selling antibacterial soap. Dial contained a powerful chemical called hexachlorophene. Soon, evidence was mounting that hexachlorophene was causing “neurological” problems in users, especially children. Even as the obvious was manifest, Henkel kept on selling their dangerous product, causing who knows how many mentally afflicted children and adults around the world (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dial_(soap)). Not until the 1970s, 25-30 years later, was hexachlorophene limited to use in hospitals. Henkel was under no legal obligation to stop selling poison-filled Dial soap until finally, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) was forced to act and made it a legal obligation.
Of course, hexachlorophene was not just being used in Dial soap. It was in everything from toothpaste, mouthwash, makeup, cosmetics, creams, shampoos and deodorants, across the board.
How many untold millions of consumers were harmed by 25 years of its use around the world? We will never know and capitalism is structured so that no one has to answer for it.
What replaced dangerous hexachlorophene? Two other “safe” government approved products, triclosan and triclocarban. Same sordid story. Used in hundreds of consumer products, it was not long that problems were observed, especially causing changes in people’s hormone levels. Hormones are measured in billionths and trillionths of grams, so it doesn’t take much change to really cause terrible effects in people. The biggest results are cancer, auto-immune diseases, obesity, behavioral and brain (neurological) changes. This time, 25 years was not nearly enough time for Wall Street and Western governments to lift a finger on all the human destruction and loss of life they caused. Finally, in 2017, these and whole host of related products were banned from general consumer use, about 50 years after the fact (https://www.forbes.com/sites/ritarubin/2016/09/04/antibacterial-soaps-have-phased-out-controversial-ingredients-but-concerns-remain-about-new-ones/#41322cb633e5). No one was fined that I know of and no one went to prison. No one even had to say they were sorry for all the death and ruined lives they caused. It’s the logic of capitalism, pure and simple.
Now, these poisons have been again been replaced with government approved “safe” ingredients (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benzalkonium_chloride and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benzethonium_chloride). Care to take the chance? Ready to roll the dice on your and your loved ones’ health and life? Not me. I got off this consumer treadmill of ill health and death three years ago and will never look back.
Look at the labels of your favorite soap, shampoo and toothpaste. If you buy typical brands, these ingredient lists look like chemical crime sheets. Names so long they twist your tongue and I’m a science teacher. No company has any legal obligation to tell you if they know any of these products are killing you. Remember, they have a moral duty, that is all, and capitalists are immoral and only duty bound to make as much money as fast as possible for the owners, that is all, while externalizing all dangerous and deadly costs onto you, your loved ones and your environment.
Nobody is even aware of the dangers of an ingredient as common as sodium lauryl sulfate (http://thenaturalpenguin.com/the-health-dangers-of-sodium-lauryl-sulfate/). I could go on with scores of other compounds and chemicals often found in consumer goods. You have no idea until the damage is already done and you and your loved ones are sick or dead. We haven’t even talked about processed foods. Gag! The same capitalist rule of maximum profit and externalizing deadly costs apply.
My wife likes to tell me that her toothpaste is “all natural”. The label brags that it contains no fluoride, carrageenan, paraben and sulfates. Great. But, what does it contain that is hurting her, and/or the company knows it is harming or killing her, yet is under no obligation to divulge those facts or change its business model, in the interest of maximum profit? Her ill health or death is simply a capitalist externalized cost of doing business.
I ask you, why take a chance at all? For the last three years, I have proved beyond a shadow of any doubt that it is all unnecessary, costly, potentially harmful or lethal, wastes a ton of plastic packaging and pollutes our water, that further destroys Mother Earth…
It’s too late for my grown daughters, but I know what I would do if I had children today. From the womb onwards, their bodies would never touch soap, shampoo or toothpaste, using only talcum powder, when needed for rashes. I am sure their immune systems and health would be ten times more robust and resistant than bathing them in chemical concoctions.
Finally, the story behind my decision to start doing daily coffee enemas, starting a year ago.
About a year and a half ago, a member of my family, only in his twenties, was diagnosed with stage three testicular cancer. Yikes! He did what he thought was best under his situation and got all the standard allopathic surgeries and treatments. As of today, he is declared to be in remission, thankfully.
I know so many people, friends and family alike, who have been afflicted with cancer, it’s almost frightening to consider. All of them did the standard treatments: surgery, chemotherapy and radiation. So far, none of them are dead, so it looks like they made the right choice.
But, it got me to thinking. What would I do if I was diagnosed with serious cancer? Being an obvious fan of personal science and feeling very positive about my renunciation of using soap, shampoo and toothpaste, I did hours of research on non-traditional cancer treatments. Among many sources, I was especially impressed with the story of Jesse, who has beaten melanoma, using Gerson’s therapy (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WyEsN9DzSo). I’m a certified science teacher, Jesse is not, and he makes a few statements in his presentation that are not accurate, but still, I was deeply impressed. Melanoma is one of the most lethal cancers known to mankind, with a death rate no one wants to wager against. Yet, Jesse was and I assume still is in remission, using only Gerson’s therapy. Crikey! He even decided not to have it cut out and it disappeared. Impressive, to say the least.
Being here in China, I’m not in a position to do everything Jesse does, but I was intrigued by the coffee enemas. The benefits sounded so compelling that I committed to trying it for two years. That was a year ago.
Like my other personal science experiments, I am very pleased with the results. Overall, I feel healthier and more energetic. Just in the last couple of months, I noticed a dramatic change in my appetite, my desire to eat, to stuff my face. All that has gone way down. Without even thinking about it, I started eating almost everything with chopsticks, which really slows down one’s eating speed. It’s much harder to shovel food in your face with chopsticks, compared to a spoon or fork. I started feeling compelled to use a small bowl, instead of a big one. My full-up point is happening much sooner during a meal and I’m now eating smaller quantities of food more often during the day. Again, nothing was thought out, it all just developed unconsciously. The other striking observation is that in the evening, after dinner, I no longer crave a last-minute bowl of something, before going to bed.
In the last two months, I’ve lost 6-7kg and didn’t even try. In fact, I hardly even noticed. There can be only one reason for this: Gerson’s enema therapy. Since I started, about six months ago, I switched from roasted coffee to green coffee, thanks to a neighbor’s recommendation. I think it has made all the difference. Unroasted coffee is much more reactive in the colon. I went from two tablespoons of roasted coffee in a liter of boiled water to one tablespoon of green coffee, using only 500ml per daily enema, which means it’s four times stronger.
According to Gerson’s therapy, it takes two years of coffee enemas to completely regenerate one’s liver. I’m halfway there and can’t wait to see where my body and health are in May 2019. The benefits have been so spectacular, that I can no longer imagine living without doing my daily green coffee enema.
One other change in my daily life is my level of meat consumption. I don’t think I want to ever become a total vegetarian, but I have cut way back on meat and fish consumption. My wife and I started doing this when our younger daughter left the nest to go to university in Beijing, three years ago. She was a growing young woman and needed meat’s nutrition. We didn’t and don’t. So, Monday-Friday, our ayi makes only vegetarian dishes, replacing it with China’s amazing and multi-faceted tofus and mushrooms. Now, I normally only eat meat or fish when we go out or are in social situations. I still make the most incredible homemade yoghurt and we eat cheese and eggs. But at my age, I sure don’t need to be eating meat like I use to. It’s better for the environment too.
In closing, no soap, no shampoo, no toothpaste, no creams, no lotions, using crystal deodorant, doing daily green coffee enemas and drastically reduced meat consumption have all made me feel happier, healthier, lighter, more energetic and much younger than my just turned 64 years. Not to mention being hundreds of dollars/euros (in my case, thousands of yuan) richer and Mother Nature has gotten a break too. Do what I did, get on the internet, watch videos and read articles, to find your own path to personal science. I predict that you will be glad you did! I’ll report back next year, when I’m 65…
I can’t resist. Here is the Beatles, with the Paul McCartney penned, When I’m Sixty-Four, from their iconic 1967 album, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. I’ve only listened to it about 1,000 times,
Can’t access YouTube? Here it is from my record collection,
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Why and How China works: With a Mirror to Our Own History
JEFF J. BROWN, Senior Editor & China Correspondent, Dispatch from Beijing
Jeff J. Brown is a geopolitical analyst, journalist, lecturer and the author of The China Trilogy. It consists of 44 Days Backpacking in China – The Middle Kingdom in the 21st Century, with the United States, Europe and the Fate of the World in Its Looking Glass (2013); Punto Press released China Rising – Capitalist Roads, Socialist Destinations (2016); and for Badak Merah, Jeff authored China Is Communist, Dammit! – Dawn of the Red Dynasty (2017). As well, he published a textbook, Doctor WriteRead’s Treasure Trove to Great English (2015). Jeff is a Senior Editor & China Correspondent for The Greanville Post, where he keeps a column, Dispatch from Beijing. He also writes a column for The Saker, called the Moscow-Beijing Express. Jeff interviews and podcasts on his own program, China Rising Radio Sinoland, which is also available on SoundCloud, YouTube, Stitcher Radio and iTunes.
In China, he has been a speaker at TEDx, the Bookworm and Capital M Literary Festivals, the Hutong, as well as being featured in an 18-part series of interviews on Radio Beijing AM774, with former BBC journalist, Bruce Connolly. He has guest lectured at the Beijing Academy of Social Sciences (BASS) and various international schools and universities.
Jeff can be reached at China Rising,
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Especially in countries with lower-quality plumbing (or worse, Flint-style chemical contamination), water doesn’t sound like it would be enough to clean the body. No doubt there is profit-driven corruption in the cosmetic and pharmaceutical industries, but some alternative medicines and therapies sound too miraculous to plausibly work.
If water quality is that bad, an inline filter to the bathroom/kitchen is not super expensive.
Since someone told me about all these 15yrs ago, i have literally stop using shampoo, soap, toothpaste.
Initially one might feel greasy unclean, its bcos of these chemical wash with laurasulphate(detergent) have been forcing the body to excrete more oil as compensation. After several days, all will back to normal, so comfortable you won’t want go back to chemical wash.
Beginning i used salt as replacement for toothpaste to keep fresh & white tooth as i drank coffee & tea that stained. But later i juz go with water with at least few minutes brushing until saliva glands get activated. Once saliva flow out in volume, its practically self cleanse. Then complete with flossing to remove any stuck food residue. Never bleed ir feel pain even eating icy cold ice cream.Dentist told my teeth is very good health.
But i lived in forested clean area of softer water. If i happen to visit polluted city, then a wash down with shampoo & soap are necessary to rid that flim of chemical dirt. Usually i tried to use natural soap.
And if i ate some oily junk food with msg, toothpaste work better. Occasionally, i used All White Lion toothpaste to clean off the coffee stains, of course using soda powder is better choice.
But i don’t agree on the daily coffee enemas. I do every few months as routine cleansing. You will feel body so light & fresh for few days after doing, then heavy feeling start set in with oily junk food residues accumulated again in bowel system.
So important is our diet, juz like keeping clean is better than scrubbing that intestines daily. Organic vege diet with brown rice & moderate oil/salt/sugar are best, give lot of energy in small portion.
Meats are essential for weak or cold hands/feet people who lack Yang(fire element). But you need to find organic meat, farm meats are filled with toxic of growth hormones, anti biotics & chemical feeds which caused all cancers.
Some friend did daily coffee enema as Gerson’s therapy, soon he become from healthy strong to weak, and sick. Bcos daily enema may not be goid for normal people, it purges much of our body energy (Yang Qi) out and weaken us in long run. Anything unnatural is bad, incl enema, only if our body no longer able to self cleaning then we used external way.
But for people with cancers or liver/ heatty illnes, then they have lot of toxic(creating lot of bad unwanted heat that either come out from bowel in stink stools/ putrid blood, or thru body as pus & pimples) , then regular enema is very helpful. Still one should stop once feeling good, and allow body to rest & start having its auto cleaning system work.
Back to nature, eat simple & organic, drink clean water free from chlorine & floride. Exercise regularly, perspiration is best detox & keep blood circulation well. Lazy one can use Sauna, its marvellous detox & health enhancers.
Often we only remember to clean our external body, nourish it with pure food,but frequently forgotten our mind too need regular cleansing, detox & nourishment, after its filled with toxic bad thoughts of greed hatred delusion.
Meditation on the In & Out Breath is the easier & best cleansing one can do anywhere, any time. Beginning of the day as warmup, end of the day as cleaning. Once a while join a long retreat to detox. And always nourish it with loving kindness to all beings, avoid killing, cruelty & ill will. If possible, develop spiritually like reading some Theravada Buddhism scriptures.
Then our body & mind can be said truly healthy.
Vapor emissions from personal care products comparable to rush hour pollution, shocking study concludes
https://www.naturalnews.com/2018-05-23-vapor-emissions-from-personal-care-products-comparable-to-rush-hour-pollution.html