Interview with David Wolfe on raw foods, the bird flu and herbal healing

Wednesday, March 08, 2006 by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger Editor of NaturalNews.com (See all articles...) Tags: health news, Natural News, nutrition

https://www.naturalnews.com/019197_food_herb_herbs.html

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Wolfe: I'm having the best day ever, by far. How are you doing?

Mike: I'm doing pretty well, too. Now, let's talk about bird flu. What are you talking to people about in the world of food as medicine that can help defend them against bird flu or other infectious diseases?

Wolfe: I think the first thing with nutrition is that we have to make sure that we are actually nourished, that we have a complete assortment of minerals and vitamins and nutrients from our food, so that we are not deficient in anything. That's really a great place to start. Just begin by adding certain foods into your diet in order to have a complete and wholesome diet. If we are depleted in magnesium, or depleted in chromium, or depleted in vitamin C, we're putting a tremendous burden on our body.

Most "diet" people and most diet books are saying, "Eat this, but don't eat that," and that's not our approach here at all. What we're saying is, "Make sure you add certain things in," and we'll list those things, just to make sure that you have a complete nutrient base. You automatically don't want the things that aren't good for you over a period of time. So that's the easier approach to the diet. It's kind of the least effort with the most results. That's the best way to transform ourselves.

What I recommend adding in are, of course, organic fruits and vegetables. Those things are very important, and when we're dealing with fruits, let's try to eat more of the lower sugar fruits. Things like tomatoes and cucumbers and even tart apples. Things of that nature are generally more supportive of our immune system than things like bananas or oranges, which can be very sugary and too sweet.

Of course, we want to add in raw nuts and seeds. That's very easy to do, since any health food store has these things. That is really a great source of fat and protein. Generally, we have had very low amounts of the right kinds of oils and fats in our diet. I'm a real big fan of hemp seed and flax seed, and those are things that you can add in your diet in many different ways. Flax crackers are a great replacement for crackers and bread. Another thing that is great to add in is seaweed. What's going to happen is we may be cut off from food for a while and we have to have the most nutritious storable food available to us in glass at home. Seaweed is a great thing to store at home. If you don't know anything about seaweed, just go into a health food store and start asking questions and get a few things. Just try some different stuff.

Mike: Now, you just opened up a door to a whole new area of discussion there, talking about what to do if the food supply chain is not fully functioning because there aren't enough people working the system. What if the truck drivers are sick? What if the power company workers are sick? The World Health Organization is estimating as many as 30 percent may become infected temporarily, so what happens out there? I think people don't realize they may have to fend for themselves for several days or maybe even a couple of weeks.

Wolfe: That is very, very likely. In addition to the food, of course, we want to make sure we always, no matter what, in spite of an epidemic or anything, have some back-up water supply at home. Make sure you have 10 to 20 gallons of water in big sealed jars in the basement, just in case. Water is one of the most precious resources that we often take for granted, but it's also a very, very important aspect of survival. Twenty gallons can keep you going for months. We definitely want to say when we talk about nuts and seeds that these are really great to have stored in glass. I want to emphasize "in glass," because there are mice and little rats and things like that, and they get hungry, too, and they can get into other packaging, and glass keeps them out. It makes it easier to eat some wild food that's around, like wild salad vegetables that are growing up by your front door, when you have some kind of a fat or oil present.

Mike: It's also nice if you haven't put pesticides on your lawn. I want to mention that you're the founder of Nature's First Law. You are one of the pioneers in raw foods, and many of these foods that people can benefit from are available through your distribution center, correct?

Wolfe: Our niche is raw foods, superfoods and sea vegetables. Rawfoods.com isn't just me. It's a conglomerate of about 25 people who are working in this movement, to get people organic, healthy, pesticide-free food that is extremely nourishing. Goji berries are a good example of that. These berries are a complete protein and taste better than a raisin, so you have every excuse to want to eat it, plus you're getting all that nutrition on the back end. In terms of protecting ourselves from a pandemic, again I want to stress that we have to make sure that we're not in any kind of nutrient depletion. We've got to have everything present and that's going to include all those foods that we mentioned: Fruits and vegetables, organic nuts, seeds and seaweed. I also recommend sprouts if you're into grasses.

We're really into distributing superfoods, which are things like spirulina and blue-green algae, and chlorella and bee products, like pollen and honey, maca from the highlands of the Andes Mountains and goji berries, the cacao bean -- which is the chocolate -- which is what all chocolate is made out of. These foods are extraordinarily nutritious and very fun to eat. It's just a joy to be able to get those into people's hands and heart, to get them to experience that.

Mike: For those preparing for a bird flu pandemic or even another hurricane or earthquake, wouldn't it be better to eat these superfoods? Remember, David, after hurricane Katrina, people were scavenging for food, and what were they getting? Doritos, Hostess Twinkies and Gatorade. That's what they were finding available. That's not what you want to live on.

Wolfe: Right, that's food that causes starvation. That food actually robs you of more energy and life force than it's giving. What we're doing here is saying that not only should you be prepared, but when you are prepared, you can actually eat and have a blast sitting in your home eating chocolate, nuts and goji berries. If you're in that situation, you might want to have stored up extra, not just for you, but for your family, your friends, your community. You may be prepared and other people may not and it may not be a big financial obligation for you. It may be good to be extra prepared for other people because they aren't aware.

Mike: That's a very good point. Things that are easy to store that are nutrient-rich are sprouting seeds. If you have water and sprouting seeds, you can grow your own food in your own kitchen with no soil for days at a time.

Wolfe: That's true, and fresh food, too. We can be extraordinarily healthy, essentially, for pennies a day, if we're really clever. That's why we've had to educate ourselves about sprouting, eating nuts and seeds and wild food foraging. A big thing that I'm into is just wild eating what's out there in nature. You don't want to be eating what's growing out of the sidewalk, but if you are in a rural area, you can find so many edible things out there that you'll never worry about starvation.

Mike: So it's a good time to start getting close to nature, and realizing some of these gifts that Mother Nature can provide to us.

Wolfe: Mother Nature is always just giving, giving, giving, all the time. My feeling and my experience is that balance begins with the right kind of nutrition and essentially, part of our diet should be raw food or natural food from the earth that has not been tampered with and therefore, we're connected to the earth directly.

Mike: You mention nature's balance here, and I want to take that one step further. Do you think this bird flu pandemic rises out of how we treat chickens and animals, the way we raise them in cages and deny them sunlight, air and good nutrition? Is that a fair statement?

Wolfe: I would say that's a fair statement. I look at it as karma, and the old Sanskrit understanding of that word. Karma means what you give is what you get, and we have to be very, very careful, especially about poultry products, because the bird flu can be passed from chickens to humans. That's what it's looking like right now. We don't know for sure, but it seems to be that way, and factory farmed poultry is one of the most dangerous foods out there. Most people are not aware that you can actually die from eating chicken that's infected with different types of viruses or bacteria. I know two people who have died from eating chicken.

Mike: You're kidding! Two people who have died from chicken?

Wolfe: It was a good friend of mine in New York. Her son died from eating chicken.

Mike: Was it salmonella?

Wolfe: It was a salmonella, E.coli situation. That whole experience really impressed in my mind that the food supply is actually dangerous.

Mike: This makes the case for vegetarianism or veganism. Those of us who don't eat meat, we don't have to worry about mad cow or bird flu or salmonella in chicken or mercury in fish. We get clean food.

Wolfe: I'm not real dogmatic about being a vegetarian or being a vegan, but I'm so glad that those choices were made available to me. Freedom means being able to eat what you want, but you have to be a little bit clever these days, because what you're getting is not exactly what you suspect it is.

What we're saying here is, again, we want to make sure that we have the nutrients behind us, supporting us, the organic fruits and vegetables, nuts and seeds, seaweed, sprouts and wheatgrass, and that kind of thing. We want to make sure we have superfoods in our diet like bee products and spirullina and blue-green algae, and things like the cacao bean, which is the raw chocolate nut, and the goji berry and maca and these kinds of foods. We can have other foods, too, but we just want to make sure that we're not missing anything. When we really get down to what knocks out the bird flu, we have to focus on traditionally what has worked. That would be herbs, and that is where I want to take us now.

We have the nutrients and we have the herbs, and the herbs that I want to really focus on here that are known to kill these kinds of viruses and bacteria are garlic and garlic extracts. Now, garlic is one of the greatest medicines in the world, but the problem is that if you eat too much garlic, you start smelling like garlic and you have garlic breath. So, that problem was solved thousands of years ago when they realized you can soak garlic by dicing it up and soaking it in lemon juice or vinegar. It deodorizes without disturbing the immune system chemicals that are in garlic. That's something you can do at home. You can also purchase garlic extracts that have been deodorized, and you still get the immune system chemicals, but you're not getting that heavy garlic odor. It's great to have stored up in your home. I have lots of it stored up myself. I have fresh garlic in huge amounts, as well as garlic extract, just in case anything happens, I have enough for not just myself, but enough for my staff and anyone involved in my life.

Mike: Wonderful. Wonderful advice, and there are products out there, aged garlic as well, and I think Kyolic has a product.

Wolfe: Kyolic has a great product out there.

Mike: So garlic is number one. What is your second?

Wolfe: The second would be echinacea, and echinacea is a flower. It's a traditional kind of Native American herb, very well renowned for its immune system supporting properties. There are great echinacea products out there. You can have echinacea, just dried echinacea flowers in glass tucked away, and you can make tea out of that. If you need it in that moment, you can have echinacea extracts that are encapsulated. Those are in almost every health food store for almost nothing. I was in a health food store the other day, and they had organic echinacea encapsulated for $5.00 a bottle.

Mike: Wow, that's a deal.

Wolfe: I bought every one they had. It's amazing. Generally, you're going to find a combination of the flower and the root, or you'll find just the root or just the flower. All of it has the same chemistry.

Another really great herb I want to mention is a Native American herb, and it's traditionally been used successfully against avian flu bacteria and viruses before, and that is the lomatium herb, and that is a wonderful herb to have. You can find that if you buzz around on the internet. On the 'net, you can get bulk herbs, like a pound of lomatium, for about $30.00. I mean, that's enough for your whole neighborhood.

Mike: Yes, that's a lot of herbage right there.

Wolfe: If you are turned on to these things, if you are aware and you're going to get on the internet and get this stuff, get extra, because it's not that much more expensive. Let's say it costs you a hundred extra dollars, but you can literally save your entire neighborhood with that. Another herb that I want to mention is one of my favorite herbs and just so dear to my heart: Reishi mushroom.

Mike: Oh, yes. Perfect. I love it.

Wolfe: It's such a great herb. One that everybody should know about, and it really comes out of a long tradition, thousands of years in Chinese medicine. It is known to kill SARS. Reishi mushroom is one of the great immune system supporting substances ever. Generally, if you're out in the forest and you find a wild reishi mushroom, you want to do a tea of it. You bring it home and dry it and make a tea out of it, and that's how you do it. That's really, really rare. What I recommend is going to a health food store and finding reishi mushroom extracts. They're perfectly prepared, highly digestible and work incredibly well.

Mike: I know there's a company out there called The Maitaki Mushroom Company that has wonderful extracts of reishi and shitake and maitaki.

Wolfe: There are some really great companies out there doing that, and I want to mention one, my friend Ron Teagarden of Dragon Herbs.

Mike: Oh, Ron. Sure.

Wolfe: He's got some great immune system formulas that deserve mention, and Ron's Dragonherbs.com gets my highest recommendation.

Mike: He's got that one product that has something like 72 different Chinese herbs in one, doesn't it?

Wolfe: Yes.

Mike: Yes, I tasted that. Wow.

Wolfe: Because we're talking about Dragon Herbs, I want to mention a specific reishi product he has that I feel is absolutely one of the strongest things I've ever tried. The product's name is Protector 2000 at dragonherbs.com". In there, you find that reishi mushroom spores have been eaten up with enzymes and made digestible to you. I caught Ron at a trade show the other day, and this is what he told me. He said that the reishi spore extract that is in that product is 70 times more powerful than the reishi mushroom itself. If you're a student of herbs, that is almost impossible. I mean, that is an incredible feat and yet here it is, that's a product available to you.

Mike: I've heard so many good things about Dragon Herbs and Ron's work. I keep hearing it from almost everybody I'm talking to. The guy's doing it right.

Wolfe: He's doing it right. It's coming from his heart. He really cares.

Mike: We're going to wrap this up in a couple minutes because I know you have to run out of here, but I'd like your feedback on this comment. I got an email from a doctor who said, "Mike, you're giving people terrible advice. Don't you know that the 1918 bird flu actually killed people who had stronger immune systems?" That was true, so he said, "The advice you've got to be giving people is not to strengthen their immune systems. They have to weaken their immune systems to survive bird flu." So I replied back, "So what's the bird flu protection diet? Donuts? Pizza? Coca-cola? What should we be telling people?"

Wolfe: What did he say?

Mike: I haven't heard an answer on that one yet, but what do you think about that?

Wolfe: Well, I think that what we're seeing there is simple. I come from a family of medical doctors. Both my mom and my dad are M.D.s. I grew up in that environment. My dad and mom don't know a thing about nutrition. They don't have any idea of the relationship between food and medicine and that food should be our medicine. That, to me, is a very strong indicator that our whole medical system has lost touch with common sense, and yet, if you get into an accident and need to be stitched up, doctors are great at doing that.

With health advice, they have no idea what they're talking about. Usually with doctors, you can just look at them and say, "Hey, I don't want that guy to help. My God!" That is a great way to tell what advice is good and what advice is not. You just look at the person and say, "Hey, do I want to look like that, be like that, feel like that or have an aura and glow like that?" If the answer is yes, do what they're saying. If the answer is no, you've got to do something else. Anyway, one of the things that we're seeing in the real niche study of immune system modulation is that foods and herbs that we want to modulate the immune system are like reishi mushroom in that they modulate the immune system up and down as needed.

Mike: That's right, it's adaptogenic.

Wolfe: That is possibly what confused this doctor. He probably thought, because garlic is an immune system upper, you know, it kills everything off. Echinacea kills everything off, and to doctors that's confusing. They go, "Oh, if it kills everything off, what's going to happen to all the good bacteria, and everything like that?" Well, people have been eating garlic for thousands of years and it's still one of the great folk medicines on the planet for a reason. It has a history behind it. Anyway, the great adaptagenic herbs act like reishi. Another one I want to mention before we let this go is astragalus.

Mike: Oh, you bet.

Wolfe: That's one of the great Chinese herbs. It's a root, and it is considered one of the top six or seven herbs in the whole Chinese medicinal system, and that's another one that's an immune system modulator. If you need your immune system to go up, it will go up. If you need your immune system to calm down, it will go down. By the way, people will say, "Why do you need your immune system to calm down?" The reason could be allergies and the autoimmune conditions, and those are two situations where you want to tone the immune system down a little bit.

Mike: It's worth mentioning, too, that in the world of Chinese herbs that people may not know, the Tamiflu anti-viral drug is, of course, sourced from the star anise Chinese herb.

Wolfe: That's amazing.

Mike: Did you know that when they manufactured that, there's a stage at which it is highly explosive?

Wolfe: No, I didn't know that. I'm not surprised.

Mike: I was reading this in Fortune magazine. I kid you not. At some point this stuff is like plastic explosives. It can go up in flames if they don't handle it very carefully, so that's a lesson when you try to extract chemicals from nature. You never know what you're going to get.

Wolfe: I want to mention something, because people are confused about this vaccine thing. A very good friend of mine, Dr. Len Horowitz, is just a super, super intelligent, clever and amazing guy, and he's turned on to herbs and natural cures and that kind of thing. On his web site, which is tetrahedron.org, he has a lot of very upfront information about the danger of vaccines. I want to turn that on because the government is into scaring, and people get frightened. They are just corralled into getting a vaccination. We have to be well educated in order to resist that temptation of falling back into old patterns.

Mike: Absolutely, the vaccination industry is a for-profit industry. They want people to take this because it makes money, and let's be honest about a couple of the connections here. Donald Rumsfeld is a shareholder in the company that is distributing the bird flu antiviral drug, Tamiflu. It's not a conspiracy or anything. It's just a small world up there in Washington and the people who are making the decisions are some of the people who are benefiting from it financially.

Wolfe: Exactly, and one of the most important things that we need to look at in terms of the United States and the future of the free world is the corruption levels at the highest post of government. The corruption is very, very high. We have to transform the planet ourselves.

Mike: Can I assume, then, that you won't be standing in line for a vaccine shot?

Wolfe: I think you assume correctly. I'm going to be drinking my superfood drink smoothies and literally just having the best day ever, no matter what's going on in the world. Ultimately, the only thing we really can do is transform ourselves by transforming our heart, and where we're coming from emotionally and our connection to spirit. That will ultimately transform others around us, and that transforms the planet into a beautiful, happy, wonderful place. There's nothing outside of us that we can really change, only the inside.

Mike: I want to leave people with a positive message here, too. I don't want this to be a scary segment or anything, but the fact is that if this becomes a global pandemic, the kill rate of the virus will drop to something probably around 1 or 2 percent, which means that all you have to do to survive the bird flu pandemic is be healthier than 2 percent of the population.

Wolfe: Let's say the bird flu comes into your neighborhood or city or wherever you're at, and you start on the garlic, the echinacea, the lomatium, the reishi and the astragalus. You have all the superfoods, like the great vegetables and fruits. Your immune system is going to be able to knock it off. You're not going to get hit with it. It won't be able to hold onto you. Being prepared like that will literally save your life. Now, how much is it going to cost to have that tucked away in your herb cabinet? I'd say a maximum of $200.

Mike: Even if the bird flu doesn't hit this year, you can save those herbs for next year.

Wolfe: Exactly, even five years or 10 years.

Mike: That's right. It's easy insurance. You talk about insurance in some of your public presentations. This is great insurance for protecting your health, your family and maybe even your neighborhood.

Wolfe: Exactly. Again, I want to reiterate that not everyone is turned on to this kind of thing with natural health and what can be done with herbs. You may take it upon yourself to be prepared for your neighbors. They may be coming to you and saying, "Hey, what do you have, what do you think I should do?" And you're prepared, and what a gift, what an amazing thing to be able to give that gift. What about a neighbor's kids? Do you know what I mean? They've got to be prepared and they don't know. I mean, you can prepare for them even if the parents don't know.

Mike Adams, you are doing such a great job of activating people's awareness about this bird flu. I mean, we have seen from these hurricanes this year that Mother Nature is activated, something is happening, and this is no fluff here. This bird flu virus can break out anytime and anywhere.

Mike: Recently, Taiwan and Vietnam announced that they have found a human transmissible form of this bird flu virus. They both have patients now, who caught it from other people. In China recently, there were three more confirmed cases. This is happening out there, folks. This is not Chicken Little stuff. This is basic common sense. Microbiology is alive and well, and we must be healthy, aware, lucid individuals to outlast this and make a positive difference in the world.

Wolfe: I agree, and what's really wonderful about what's happening with our awareness about food and diet and herbs and natural medicine is that we're deferring to the ancient wisdom, the stuff that's worked for thousands of years, and ultimately, the safest bet. Vaccines have not been around for thousands of years. It's not the safest route just because it doesn't have a history. We want to go back to the things that the great Chinese medical doctors figured out thousands of years ago. Going back to the great ayurvedic practitioners, the great herbalists of North America and the Native Americans in their time, it not only helps us heal, it also connects us to something. For me, it's a lot of fun. It connects us to a whole lineage, a whole history, and it's something that we're taking inside our body. We eat things, and it's just going in and out, but when you take in these really powerful herbs, it's like a sacrament. We realize how holy these things are, and that they are Mother Nature's gift to us, God's gift to us.

Mike: These ancient healers have so much wisdom, I'm blown away when I go back and study the history of Chinese medicine. They had things figured out 2,000 years ago that we still can't grasp today in the Western world.

Wolfe: I'm right with you on that one, Mike. It's so incredible where these guys were thousands of years ago.

Mike: It's truly amazing. Let's give listeners all the web addresses one more time, starting with your company, David.

Wolfe: Okay, I have two big web sites that I work with. One is thebestdayever.com. What happened was that over many years, I accumulated all kinds of lectures. I've given over a thousand lectures in the last 10 years, so those are up there as mp3 files. It's a subscription service, so you can subscribe for $30.00, download 50 lectures, quit if you want, and get all that health information. The other site that I have is an e-commerce site that is an online health food store, rawfood.com, which has been around 11 years now. It's out there serving the community, and it's a lot of fun.

Mike: And you also mentioned Dragon Herbs, right?

Wolfe: Dragon Herbs is a great company that is owned by my friend, Ron Teagarden. That's dragonherbs.com. They've got wonderful stuff there. A product that I really recommend is Protector 2000. There is also a great reishi mushroom product he has.

Another great friend of mine has tetrahedron.org, Dr. Len Horowitz. He's the main guy in the country in terms of the anti-vaccination movement and natural herbal alternatives.

Mike: Yeah, Len will blow your mind with a listing of what's actually in vaccines.

Wolfe: It is absolutely frightening. I mean, I saw that list and I just about fell over.

Mike: It's like shooting up with toxic waste. Amazing. Well, David, it's always a pleasure talking with you. I want to thank you for taking a few minutes here today.

Wolfe: Thank you so much, and I applaud the work you're doing, and, you know, I'm there supporting you. Just go, go, go, and make it happen. I totally appreciate the contribution.

Mike: Well, likewise. You are an amazing individual making a positive difference out there. I want to continue to bring your work to the public as much as I can, as well.

Wolfe: Thank you. I totally appreciate that, and the feeling is mutual.

Mike: Okay, David, have a great day, and we'll talk again soon.

Wolfe: Beautiful, have the best day ever.