Enjoy These Excerpts from "Patient Heal Thyself"
by Dr. Jordan Rubin

from Chapter One…
Everyone flocks to see today's heroes play music to thousands of adoring fans, or dunk a basketball with thunderous power, or glide their way to Olympic gold in the downhill skiing finals. We see these modern day heroes, musicians, athletes, and actors at their best, at their shining moments, standing on the crest of the mountain looking down at the rest of us. But think for a moment. These heroes each put in thousands of hours of sweat, toil and failures with no screaming fans to encourage them. They made sacrifices far beyond what any of us have made. They swam hundreds of laps in cold pools in the wee hours of the morning while we were still asleep. They played music in dingy clubs to a handful of people who weren't even paying attention to them. They practiced day in and day out, even when their friends were out having fun. The common denominator in the lives of these superstars was an insatiable drive and determination to succeed. The truth is that the chance of any one of us becoming a rock star, or an all-star basketball player or an Olympic gold medalist is smaller than winning the lottery.

I believe that the process of overcoming an incurable illness is much the same as training for and winning the Olympics. The individuals who have the courage to take charge of their own health, have the unending determination and make the near impossible sacrifices it takes to be one of the select few who beat illness and choose life are today's true heroes.

My own healing journey from death's door to a return to super health was not an easy one. I made a lot of mistakes along the way. But I know in the end that my journey produced lasting changes in my life, and I hope that by sharing what I have learned with you, you can take charge of your own health and realize your body's phenomenal potential…

Jordan began suffering from constant diarrhea, fatigue, chronic systemic infections and acute weight loss while working as a camp counselor during summer break from his studies at Florida State University where he was an athletic/scholarship student. He returned to FSU that fall and tried to deny he was sick. But within a short time, he became so ill he had to return home.

The very next morning, my father and mother took me to the emergency room. It was the first time I had ever been in a hospital. Unfortunately, it wouldn't be my last. I was hoping it would be a quick visit. I'd get some "cure all" medication and be on my way back to school.

My "quick visit" lasted two weeks. During this period, I would lie in bed with an IV pole attached to each arm, delivering intravenous antibiotics and nutrients, and watch TV. I got even more depressed because this was the time of the Oklahoma City bombing.

The doctors prescribed antibiotics and antiparasitic drugs that had to be given intravenously for maximum effect. To add to this, my body was so overridden by infection that it had become terribly inflamed. To combat this, I was prescribed two heavy-duty, highly toxic steroid medications, hydrocortisone and prednisone. I was given every kind of test imaginable. I got more x-rays in those two weeks than most people get in a lifetime. Both my upper and lower gastrointestinal tracts were scanned-and believe me, these weren't the usual short bursts of radiation you get with dental x-rays. I felt like radiologists were conducting an in-depth tour of my gut.

I was told that I had Crohn's colitis. Crohn's disease is a condition primarily involving the small bowel and proximal colon that causes the intestinal wall to thicken and cause narrowing of the bowel channel, blocking the intestinal tract. The result is abnormal membrane function, including nutrient malabsorption. I had an even worse variation of the disease. The doctors noted I had marked duodenitis, an inflammation of the duodenum, which is at the beginning of the small intestine, coupled with widespread inflammation through my large and small intestine. Although less than one percent of Crohn's disease patients specifically experience duodenitis, it appeared that I was one of the chosen few with both duodenal and total colonic inflammation.

Neither his doctors' best intentions nor their medical drugs helped. Jordan's weight dropped from 177 pounds to 104 pounds. It was doubtful he would survive his illness. He became wheelchair bound. At one point, doctors suggested a newly introduced but still experimental surgical removal of a portion of his colon. Such extreme measures led Jordan to realize no answer for his woes would come from modern medicine. Thus, he began to seek answers in the field of alternative medicine. It was an odyssey filled with hope and disappointment.

I estimate that over the course of about two years my father spent $150,000 on natural health treatments. I took dozens of probiotic formulas, as well as enzyme, fiber, anti-candida and antiparasitic formulas. At one point I was taking upwards of six bottles a day of extremely expensive probiotics; one of these products sold for two dollars a capsule and was delivered in a special oil matrix carrier. I remember using two bottles of powdered acidophilus a day, two bottles of bifidus, and two bottles of bulgaricus-mind you, every day. One product alone, the two-dollars-a-capsule oil matrix product, was at a dosage of thirty capsules a day. I wanted to get better. I wanted to end the pain. So I was willing to try anything and everything.

My search for an answer for my Crohn's disease sent me further and further from home. I traveled to clinics all over the world, oftentimes in a wheelchair. As I mentioned, I went to the offices of 70 health professionals from seven different countries-in Europe, South America, Mexico, and Canada. As my search grew more frantic and desperate, at times I was grasping for straws. I tried two or three treatments that no rational person would consider. I know what it's like to be desperate, willing to try anything. I tried almost 500 different "miracle" products. I was the victim-and I choose that word carefully-of many well-meaning network marketing distributors of health products who made outrageous and unfounded claims. So much of what passes for scientifically validated nutritional supplementation is shamelessly promoted through network marketing or multi-level marketing and truly has little, if any, scientific substance.

Sometimes help comes from the unexpected. For Jordan, devoutly religious, help came from his Creator.

So what else was new? It was early 1996. My father had just gotten through telling me he had spoken to an eccentric nutritionist on the phone. My father didn't want me to get my hopes up so he had investigated the man's program himself. The nutritionist told my father he believed I was ill because I was not eating the diet of my ancestors, based upon Biblical principles.

When my father told me about all of this, naturally, I was curious. Since I had opted not to have surgery and I was still alive, I decided to try this. It fit into my belief system. In an effort to start all over, I took myself off all nutritional products and read the Bible to see what people ate thousands of years ago. I also learned that the longest living cultures in the world had one thing in common: they consumed living foods that abounded with beneficial microorganisms.

A few weeks later, I got on a plane, still bound to my wheelchair, and headed for southern California to live closer to the man who would teach me how to eat from the Bible. After integrating into that particular nutritionist's program some of my own findings about nutrition and health from the Bible I saw some improvement.

Most times promises are best kept, but, occasionally, times arise when a promise broken is best. It had been ten months since I had taken any supplements, and although my father had promised he wouldn't send me anything else to try, he decided to send me something anyway. It was a plastic bag containing black powder. I had already tried over thirty different probiotics. Now was I supposed to eat this stuff that looked like dirt?

"Forget it," I thought.
My dad called on the phone and urged me to give it a try.
"It may look like dirt, but it isn't," he said. "It contains healthy organisms from the soil."

An article that accompanied the package explained that these were the nutrients missing from today's pesticide-sterilized, barren soils-not only trace minerals but organisms (Homeostatic Soil Organisms™, or HSOs™, as I later named them). These were living organisms that had been wiped out by the pesticide treatment of America's farm lands, pasteurization of foods, and modern man's disdain for all microorganisms-even those life-supportive bugs our bodies need for great health.

I decided to include these HSOs in my daily diet, which also included raw goat's milk in the form of fermented kefir, different organically grown free-range or grass-fed meats, natural sprouted or sourdough breads made from whole grains that were yeast-free, organic fruits and vegetables, raw sauerkraut, and carrot and other vegetable juices-all "live" foods with their beneficial enzymes and microorganisms intact.

During my forty days and nights of parking my motor home close to the beach, I prayed, listened to music and planned everything around buying, preparing and eating my food. My weight went from 122 to 151 pounds. I gained 29 pounds in 40 days! The photograph of me on the beach that you see on the cover of this book was taken during this period. I was not completely well yet, but I had made miraculous strides toward full recovery. I continued to gain weight and strength, and by my twenty-first birthday, I weighed 170 pounds-practically my original weight before I got sick. I doubt if anyone in the world was happier than me.

The terrain of my body and my intestinal tract were being rebuilt, and it appeared that somehow the HSOs themselves were taking care of my underlying condition. After all, in three months, I had gained over 50 pounds.

The combination of the Biblical diet and the HSOs had restored my health. I still went through periods of detoxification every few months or so, but I continued to persevere. In December 1996, I came home to Florida. I was at my normal weight. I was ready to start my life again. I was finally healthy. Praise God!

I've Got A Gut Feeling
from Chapter Two…
Why do we say when a performing artist, whose songs were so full of feeling, sang from his gut?

Why do performers get "butterflies in their stomach" before going on stage?
Why does indigestion produce nightmares?
Why are antidepressants now also being used for gastrointestinal ailments?
I like word games. I like definitions.

Here's one from Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary.

The etymology of the word gut leads us back to the Middle English word guttas, which then takes us to sometime before the twelfth century to the Old English word gEotan, meaning "to pour." Your gut, the dictionary says, is "the basic visceral or emotional part of a person," also "the alimentary canal or part of it (as the intestine or stomach)," or "the inner essential parts." As we go along, keep these definitions in mind.

It turns out that both our gut and our brain originate early in embryogenesis from a clump of tissue called the neural crest, which appears and divides during fetal development. While one section turns into the central nervous system, another piece migrates to become the enteric nervous system, and thus form both thinking machines. Only later are the two nervous systems connected via a cable called the vagus nerve, the longest of all the cranial nerves whose name is derived from Latin, meaning "wandering." In keeping with its etymological origins, the vagus nerve meanders from the brain stem through organs in the neck and thorax and finally ends up in the abdomen. There's the brain-gut connection.

So profoundly influential is the state of the gut upon people's health that I have coined the term-it's a tongue twister-gastro-neuro-immunology to try and capture the essence of the link between our two brains and even our immune function.

It is from the healthy gut that we enjoy neurological and psychological as well as immunological health. This is not to discount the highly important mass of gray between our ears-the human brain. This is simply to say that the body has two brains-the brain we all know of between our ears and the second brain, our gut.

In China, the gentle art of tai chi emphasizes the lower abdomen as a reservoir for energy. Tai chi teacher Kenneth Cohen, author of The Way of Qigong (Ballantine Books 1997), explains that it's possible to strengthen the abdominals by learning how to compact qi (prana) into the belly. "From the Chinese viewpoint," he says, "the belly is considered the dan tian or 'field of the elixir,' where you plant the seeds of long life and wisdom."

Lastly, in Biblical times, the seat of emotion, which we call the heart, is actually referring to the bowels. That thought in itself conjures up an image of a young Romeo sending a love note to his girlfriend with the inscription, "Baby, you really move me."

The trouble with these modern times is that so many influences today are counterproductive to gastrointestinal health. I know: I was very likely one of the victims of one or more of these influences-including vaccinations; milk contaminated with Mycobacterium avium subspecies paratuberculosis; indiscriminate overuse of antibiotics; and poor diet-and that's just a few of our modern day enemies out to destroy our gastrointestinal health.

Many people are falling victim to these influences. As a result, they are experiencing health problems that could be overcome if they knew that they centered in their gut. No wonder so many of us have poor health. We've neglected the health of our gut for far too long.

For us, the center of health is the gut-the body's gastrointestinal tract. And that's why at Garden of Life our whole food concentrates are always targeted, in one respect or another, to aiding gastrointestinal health. One of our mottos surely is that, "you are not what you eat, but what you assimilate."

But the gut is more than the second brain; it is also the seat of the body's defenses, the center of immune function. In addition to the lymphoid tissue concentrated within the lymph nodes and spleen and immune cells circulating in our bloodstream, lymphoid tissue and immune cells are also found at other sites, most notably the gastrointestinal tract, respiratory tract and urogenital tract. Such lymphoid tissue is termed MALT or mucosal-associated lymphoid tissue. In the gastrointestinal tract, however, it's called the GALT or gut-associated lymphoid tissue. Our gut produces about 75 percent of our body's total immune system cells. So when we want to boost immunity, we must also look at improving gastrointestinal health.

So profound was Jordan's healing story, noted medical journalist Morton Walker filed an in-depth report in The Townsend Letter.

Once my story became public through the Townsend Letter, demand for these homeostatic soil organisms was incredible. I became the "hub" for anyone in the world with a gastrointestinal problem who couldn't get better and soon I began receiving thousands of phone calls. Eventually, I had to create a formula containing these organisms. I called the product Primal Defense™, because I believed that what we were doing was original and primitive, closely approximating one of the truly important, beneficial influences upon our Earth's first inhabitants.

There's a good reason why Primal Defense with Homeostatic Soil Organisms (HSOs) has become our flagship formula at Garden of Life. Every idea that we have put into action has come from the premise of this formula and the lessons it has spawned. A lot of diseases, we now realize, result from living too far removed from our microscopic allies, the beneficial bacteria in our environment.

I chose a name for the company-Garden of Life-to exemplify my belief that our Creator gave us everything we need within His creation to have abundant and healthy lives.

Beyond Probiotics
from Chapter Three…
Asthma. Allergies. Irritable bowel syndrome. Rheumatoid arthritis. Lupus. Crohn's disease. Chronic fatigue syndrome. Immune disorders. All are reaching epidemic proportions.

To protect yourself from these disorders and insure long-term super health-as well as to aid your body's healing quest in the case of these and other related disorders-may I respectfully suggest you eat some dirt?

Do not be surprised by what I say. Dirt-or to be more specific, the Earth's soil-is one of your body's best friends.

Dirt or soil is so essential to health that if you or a loved one is suffering from any of the above conditions, this may be due to a lost connection with Earth.

When we were back in the era of primitive man, we got dirty. We were exposed to all sorts of microscopic bugs. Our food was dirty. But was this all bad? Not really, and it's a shame that today words like dirt or soil are such a negative concept.

Even today as children, we are meant to make mud pies, to play in the mud, to get dirty. It is as necessary to our long-term health as almost anything. Our immune systems need this kind of exposure to learn how to react later on in life to real or not so real threats to our health. You see, without early exposures to all sorts of organisms in the soil, later in life when our immune system is exposed to various benign intruders, it may overreact. Hence, we develop autoimmune diseases, some types of asthma, and allergies. And that's just one of the consequences of our lost connection to Earth. Our immune system may never truly reach its full zenith of defensive powers against disease-causing organisms or chemical toxins without re-establishing this lost connection to the Earth.

So while modern civilization proceeds full speed ahead with technology, we must not allow ourselves to become apart from Nature. It is in our best interest to maintain contact with the good Earth. Most of us don't.

Therefore one premise-one guiding light for Garden of Life-is that most of us will benefit by returning to our bodies these missing microorganisms.

In fact, society's growing separation from dirt and germs may well be the cause of the growing incidence of a wide range of maladies, says epidemiologist David Strachan, who first advanced the over-cleanliness theory in 1989 when he was at Britain's London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

At that time, Dr. Strachan noticed that children belonging to large families were much less likely to develop asthma, hay fever or eczema. Dr. Strachan theorized older children coming home dirty with all sorts of resident soil microorganisms were actually protecting their younger brothers and sisters.

We need dirt, says Dr. Strachan. He may be onto something. But, in fact, the reestablishment of the HSO-body link yields far more benefits than simply aiding in cases of autoimmune disease. Overall bodily functions and immunity are greatly improved. Cholesterol levels are naturally reduced; energy levels are increased; and resistance to disease-causing organisms is enhanced. We have even seen increases in serum enzymes and normalization of serum albumin, indicating improved lymphatic flow and removal of lymphatic blockages.

With soil organisms, I was able to enhance my own body's healing response. Two of the soil organisms in Primal Defense are Bacillus subtilis and Bacillus lichenformis. In studies conducted in Germany at the University of Berlin's Max-Volmer Institute, both were shown to inactivate human immunodeficiency, herpes simplex (HSV-1 and HSV-2), simian immunodeficiency, feline calicivirus, murine encephalomyocarditis, and other lipid envelope viruses-along with mycoplasmas, fungi and bacteria. They do so by producing a potent chemical called surfactin, a detergent-like substance that dissolves the lipid membranes of lipid envelope viruses, thereby rendering them completely inactivated.

The soil organisms provide even more important health benefits. They establish colonies in the entire digestive system, starting in the esophagus and ending in the colon, by attaching themselves to the walls of these organs. Burrowing behind the putrefaction, which lines the intestinal walls, they eat and destroy unfriendly microorganisms. The decay is then dislodged and flushed out of the body in the normal evacuation process. This aids in detoxification of the intestinal tract, increases the body's ability to absorb nutrients, and, again, makes the immune system super-strong by removing mucoid plaque that covers the gut-associated lymphoid tissues, especially aiding the body's ability to fight off infectious viruses and bacteria.

The Miracle of Poten-Zyme
But there was something more that I learned from my own illness. I realized people used to get much more reliable results from herbal medicines because their digestive tracts, at one time, were far more able to utilize foods and herbs than today. Today, for most of us, our digestive tracts are damaged to greater or lesser degrees due to our overuse of medications and poor dietary habits. Many herbs and other sources of natural healing agents, such as mushrooms, are fibrous and difficult for the body to break down.

We took the fermentation process that helped heal me-what today we call the Poten-Zyme™ process, with more than 14 species of homeostatic soil organisms and other lactic-acid producing microorganisms-and use it to "unlock" the active ingredients of our whole food concentrates and herbs.

This is important. There are records of traditional herbalism from the Orient and other cultures in the Far East dating back 1,500 years ago, which talked about herbal remedies that were used to treat a variety of ailments. In the past, they provided very predictable, very effective, very potent results. Yet today, we are not getting the same kind of healing response from these herbs. The reason people today aren't being helped is not necessarily due to the lack of healing properties in the herbs themselves-it is the direct result of an ultimate breakdown in the human digestive tract. The nutrients and phytochemicals contained in herbs are not being broken down and utilized properly by the body, primarily because people's guts have been destroyed from the overuse of prescription medications-antibiotics, corticosteroids, and other immune suppressive drugs-as well as chlorinated and fluoridated water, ambient pollutants in our environment, and an overall poor diet coupled with a steady intake of junk foods. The application of the Poten-Zyme process is a way for the body to utilize all of the phytochemicals and phytonutrients available in these herbs, with very little stress on the digestive tract. This benefit is extremely important to those people undergoing chemotherapy and radiation, or those with AIDS or other immune disorders, who have very little digestive capability. This enzymatic "pre-digestion" process increases bioavailability and absorption of the medicinal compounds making them "body-ready" for everyone, even those with compromised digestion. In other words, the sickest persons, with the least ability to utilize fibrous herbs, receive a much greater boost from our nutritional formulas, thanks to the fermentation process that the whole food concentrates and herbs undergo, making their healing constituents far more available to the sickened person's body.

This ancient method of bio-fermentation incorporates beneficial microorganisms (probiotics) and their enzymes into the foods to gently break them down into their most basic elements. This is not something that any company could easily duplicate. Our fermentation, done in the U.S. Southwest and Australia, is not available anywhere else in the world. Our Poten-Zyme lactic acid fermentation process uses a "mother" culture that contains microorganisms resistant to many of the agents that kill more fragile probiotic species (such as acidophilus)-including stomach acid, heat, cold, chlorine, fluorine and ascorbic acid. We now have a rare, self-sustaining culture.