Gary Null's Ultimate Anti-Aging Program Paperback - 1999

Excerpt

THE GOOD NEWS: AGING IS CHANGING

As Baby Boomers turn fifty, fear of aging has prompted an explosion of interest in slowing, if not reversing, this process. Boomers, and subsequent Generation Xers, are united in their passionate desire to remain young. They work out; they eat foods that are perceived to be healthy; they take supplements; they wear trendy clothes--all to maintain a grasp on youth.

Why is it, then, that some people remain youthful well into what is considered middle or even old age, while others begin to show marked signs of aging in their twenties? In my own family, virtually all the men on my father's side were either prematurely gray or bald. My hair was already thinning and graying at age eighteen and, by twenty-five, I was letting my hair grow a bit longer to make the hair loss less obvious. All the vitamins, supplements, organic foods, and exercise in the world cannot restore hair lost because of a genetic tendency for balding. Like many others, I, too, believed that such genetic programming could not be reversed.

Or so I was taught.

AGE IS ONLY A NUMBER

Like it or not, we begin to age the moment we are born. However, given that our bodies are designed to live productive, vital lives well past age one hundred, this should not be an issue. As a population, we are living longer. This, however, does not mean that we are aging better. Hypertension, congestive heart disease, arterial sclerosis, stroke, dementia, arthritis, diabetes, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, cancer; osteoporosis; menopause; graying and hair loss; wrinkled skin; fatigue; weakness; loss of muscle mass and tone; diminishing vision, smell, and hearing; a tendency to overweight; digestive problems, and loss of appetite--I refuse to accept these conditions as normal.

I assert that, while a youthful attitude is helpful, no one needs to simply accept a decline in vitality--be it wrinkles and balding, gray hair, or osteoporosis and loss of muscle mass and tone--as their fate because they have reached a certain age. Once we accept that age is only a number, there is much we can do to retain, and even regain, our youth.

The good news is that we have done just that. Not once, which could be a fluke, but with four successive research groups--more than a thousand people who participated in four separate nine-month programs and two separate eighteen-month programs.

THE SEARCH FOR A WAY TO LIVE FOREVER

In 1993, I began a quest to better understand what really causes us to age prematurely and develop these diseases assumed to be part of the aging process. Frequently, symptoms of these ailments could be alleviated by dietary changes. Diabetics could better regulate their blood sugar through diet and exercise; osteoporosis patients could restore bone mass through dietary changes and weight training; even patients with cardiovascular disease could reduce serum cholesterol levels through diet, but nothing could effectively change the aging process.

During the past five years, I have conducted studies with approximately five thousand people--one thousand volunteers specifically for this project--in my search to create a protocol to slow aging. My goal was to not only alleviate these conditions--lower dangerously high cholesterol levels; help insulin-dependent diabetics get off insulin, etc.--but to find a new way to process disease.

My premise: A healthy body does not get sick with anything. And, in this context, a healthy body does not age prematurely.

From this point of view I began my search for effective ways to slow, and even reverse, aging. This book is a distillation of a powerfully effective protocol that, followed fully, stalls aging, regardless of your current age.

THE QUEST BEGINS

Historically, we have considered everything from gray hair and creaky joints to heart diseases and memory loss to be normal manifestations of the aging process. However, in my travels around the world, I had already seen enough contradictions--even within the same culture--to know that there are things that people do that vary the speed of the aging process, as well as the number of illnesses experienced in this process.

My research took me to Italy several times specifically to interview hundreds of people about their diets, exercise levels, genetics, as well as environmental and stress factors. In town after town, village after village, I found that people who lived in rural areas lived longer, chronologically, and, more important, exuded a sense of calm, joy, and serenity that I did not observe in those who lived in the metropolitan areas of Milan, Rome, and Naples. This was also true of my visits into the countrysides of England, Scotland, Ireland, and France.

It then became a task of trying to isolate which factors changed when a person moved from the more bucolic countryside to the suburbs or the cities, and vice versa. This took years of effort. In the course of my research I reviewed all of the world's available epidemiological research on longevity and interviewed thousands upon thousands of individuals in several countries about their diets and exercise habits, health, environmental conditions, and attitudes about aging. I documented my findings and felt ready to put what I had learned into practice.

THE PROTOCOL EVOLVES

Over the next five years I worked with more randomly selected volunteers from Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., Miami, and New York City. I would experiment with different criteria, but I always used the same basic protocol, which consisted of a pure vegetarian diet.

Excluded were all dairy products--including milk, yogurt, and cheeses--and processed foods, refined carbohydrates, simple sugars, artificial preservatives, color and flavor enhancers; foods treated with pesticides and herbicides; carbonated beverages; artificial sweeteners; meat, chicken, and shellfish; caffeine, including coffee, tea, cola drinks, and chocolate, and most salt.

To the uninitiated, this may sound painfully restrictive; however, I assure you, this diet was very versatile. It included a wide selection of whole grains, nuts, seeds, fruits, legumes, fresh herbs, and cold-pressed oils, such as olive oil, flaxseed oil, and macadamia oil. Water was to be pure, free from fluoride, chlorine, and chemicals. And participants were to consume at least one to two liquid meals a day, preferably from quality proteins made from rice or soy, plus a wide variety of phytochemicals from fruits and vegetables. I also suggested a number of cookbooks to show people how creative this regimen could be. Part VI--Eating to Live tells you how to completely restructure your eating habits.

My associates and I then measured parameters and created groups accordingly. At one time, we had five hundred overweight people in one group. Other groups created were for those with arthritis, herpes, Lyme disease, chronic fatigue syndrome, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, food allergies, depression, and anxiety disorders. We soon found that people had difficulty sticking with the program as I outlined it for them. I found it ironic that a person who thought nothing of eating fifty french fries or three scoops of ice cream would balk at taking three or four vitamin capsules.

THE LAWS OF COMPENSATION

The basic nutritional and exercise programs formulated in the course of developing this protocol are not adequate to reverse the damage incurred in the course of a lifetime of neglect. The laws of compensation stress that, to the degree that we have damaged our bodies--through caffeine, sugar, meat, processed foods, environmental pollutants, etc.--we must supply the body with a like amount of nourishment, from whole, pure organic foods and concentrated supplements, to compensate and rebuild our bodies.

Eating moderately, or taking a daily multivitamin, alone, will not undo the damage. That process is so advanced and the damage so incipient that it will require enormous compensation. A little vitamin C, for example, will not repair a body damaged by years of abuse; massive amounts, administered over a couple of years, may.

Society places few limits on what we can do to damage our bodies--alcohol, cigarettes, meats, fried and processed foods, etc. Yet, when it comes to doing something good for our bodies, such as eating healthy, nourishing foods, exercising, even taking vitamins and supplements, we limit ourselves. Remember this warning when you read what I recommend for this anti-aging protocol, when you hear yourself say, "What do you mean I have to take . . ."

We are ultraliberal in creating disease and radically conservative in the areas of preventing and treating it. To live longer and healthier, these conditions must be switched.

Nevertheless, if you only follow the diet from your teens, you would double your life span. Once you reach your mid-twenties, you need the diet and nutritional supplements, exercise, and stress management to stave off aging. Just imagine what is possible if you integrate the entire program into your life while you're in your twenties, thirties, or even forties!

Yes, I can teach you how to retard and even reverse aging even if you're in what is statistically old age. I've even developed a repair and rejuvenation protocol that has proved affective in reversing ailments in people over sixty. Some of the participants have joined in my study as their last chance for relief before resigning themselves to living out their lives in nursing homes.

SUCCESS AND FAILURE

The highest failure rate (95 percent) occurred in the study group comprised of people who had been diagnosed with chronic depression. Those participants couldn't make it through the first month. A group of overweight individuals fared only slightly better, with a 90-percent failure rate after three months. One group had nothing wrong with them. Here, there was a success rate of about 40 percent. Less than half of those participants finished either six months or a year with the program.

I then reworked the protocol, this time adding an exercise program. This included forty-five minutes a day, six days a week, of power walking, and three sessions of weight training per week to build muscle mass. The addition of this physical component improved our success rate by approximately 7 percent across the board.

The next alteration in the protocol was the addition of stress management techniques. This included a variety of techniques, including biofeedback, hypnosis, guided visualizations, and positive affirmations. I had thought that behavior modification technology would support, and even increase, participants' ability to adhere to the program; however this did not result in more people sticking with the program.

So, we looked toward their home environments.


ENVIRONMENTAL OUTREACH

We began to teach people how to clean up their personal environments--one more place to lessen their exposure to toxins. They learned how to go through each room of the house getting rid of hidden toxins by removing carpets, particleboard, and other unsafe materials. People learned how to properly insulate their homes; how to get rid of dust and mold; how to shop for and use healthy cleansers, such as apple cider vinegar for washing windows. They learned to replace chemical-laden toothpastes, mouthwashes, and cosmetics with biofriendly products.

We held in-depth workshops on the advantages of full-spectrum lighting, and taught people how to garden using diamide-rich earth and praying mantises and ladybugs in lieu of toxic pesticides for their houseplants and gardens. We covered shopping for all-organic cotton sheets, blankets, and bedding in place of products made from chemically treated fibers. This became a very popular part of our protocol. Any time we would announce a meeting on this topic, there would be a 95-percent attendance level.

We discussed the vital importance of good nutrition. I spent a tremendous amount of time reviewing the world's literature and doing my own research to see which nutrients could best benefit us by stopping disease processes like cancer. I found more than a hundred different fruits and vegetables that could do that and listed them in The Clinician's Handbook of Natural Healing.

I researched foods high in phytochemicals to balance the body's natural hormone levels. These were given in juice form, which provided higher bioavailability, so that the person doesn't lose nutrients due to poor digestion. Then I considered foods that help to cleanse and detoxify the body, and talked about garlic, onions, shallots, and other sulfur-rich foods that can eliminate harmful bacteria, parasites, and viruses from our intestines, blood, and liver. Earlier in life, many people damaged their bodies by taking drugs or drinking alcohol; this was an effort to reverse that damage by repairing the cells. Part of the protocol then included flooding the body with organic fruit and vegetable juices spiked with various nutrients from aloe vera to vitamin C to stop mutagenic activity, end DNA damage, cleanse the system, and ultimately repair the body.

The final step in this process was rejuvenation. We found that antioxidants, as a family of nutrients, were very important. Some came from the foods themselves, but much more was recommended in the way of supplements. I gave much higher than usual doses of what people would normally take. Vitamin C, for example, could go from 5,000 to 20,000 mg or higher per day. In some cases, individuals went beyond protocols of what could be taken orally and began to take nutrients intravenously, including high levels of vitamin C, glutathione, and aqueous vitamin A (a water-soluble form of vitamin A), plus selenium and B complex. This was determined to be particularly beneficial for people who had hepatitis, herpes, cytomegalovirus, Epstein-Barr virus, cancer, and AIDS.

Hundreds of people, under the supervision of their physicians, used these protocols with remarkable benefits. In fact, one of these individuals would later become a co-instructor in my program as a nurse practitioner. After earning a doctorate in nursing and spending twenty years in the field, she developed hepatitis B, herpes, Epstein-Barr, mycoplasma, and cytomegalovirus.

Today she has none of these diseases. She is completely well. This would not have happened through diet and vitamin supplements alone, as she had been diligent in those areas. She did not see any concrete improvement until she began the intravenous vitamin protocol.

This nurse is not alone. There are hundreds of people just like her who eliminated viruses, bacteria, and diseases completely from their systems, solely by following the program I have developed for you.

This taught me that, in many cases, proper diet alone was not enough, nor was exercise or stress management. These treatment modalities did prevent a person from additional injury and assault to the system, but they could not undo the damage already done from years of abuse or neglect. When I saw that these people were making enormous strides with the more rigorous procedures, I realized that my protocols would have to become more intense.

But there was still something missing. Despite the benefits, many people continued to drop out. I did a hair study on 707 individuals in a nine-month period. Those who actually stuck with the protocol had a success rate of more than 90 percent in reversing balding, graying, and thinning. Some individuals who had been bald for more than thirty years had a new head of hair.

Other things changed as well. Diseases were reversed--arthritis disappeared, energy increased, sleep improved, and allergies were gone. I knew that the protocol definitely worked. What I didn't know was how to get people to stick with it. I did another study on reversing the aging process.

This was a huge study done for the first time in the United States with before-and-after photographs, blood and medical workups, and journals to record daily results. We followed participants' progress, and, every three months, added an additional regimen to their program. Those who followed the program rigorously and stuck with it for the duration of the study experienced remarkable benefits. Women who were fifteen years postmenopause became menopausal again. Wrinkles began to disappear. Bags under the eyes and jowly chins were gone. Gray hair became black, thick, and lustrous. Libidos returned and muscle tone came back.

At our final meeting, one woman said to me, "I have my youth back, something I never thought possible."

Many didn't achieve these results because, once again, few stayed with the complete protocol. Still wondering why, I decided to do other studies. I did a second one-and-one-half year reversing-the-aging process group and a second hair study group, again with phenomenal results for those who adhered to the program. I knew I had at least answered one basic question--can we slow down and reverse the aging process?--with an unequivocal yes.

But I had not yet found an answer to my second question: Why aren't people sticking to something that can so benefit them?

Then it occurred to me: What I had omitted was what I would now find to be the single most important part of the entire program--modification not only of the behavior but of the existing beliefs as well. Our belief system is what creates our impression of reality which, in turn, determines whether or not we are able to stick with a program. That's why we have overweight people who are unable to stick to their diets, people who engage in mindless daily acts that can lead to self-destruction.

What I did next was to create a program for self-empowerment. In this program, I would take a topic; for instance, the subject of starting over. We talked about what has been lost in life--relationships, loved ones, jobs--and discussed ways of letting go and getting back into life. I realized that people frequently don't receive unconditional emotional support at home or at work. More likely, they're surrounded with toxic thoughts and negative, cynical, and bitter attitudes. You can't be happy until you think happy. And you can't be angry unless you think angry. Many people do not think before they act.

I created a program to help people think, reducing their chances of flying off the handle. I also took a look at the strengths and weaknesses of the twelve-step recovery movement, and created some eighty different two-hour lectures. I went from holding these sessions monthly to having groups meet on a biweekly basis. These study groups would deal with behaviors, beliefs, and values, as well as the physical components of the program--diet and exercise.

I quickly saw that this was the missing ingredient; there was now a 90-percent success rate among people who stayed with the program. I found that if a person just followed the diet or exercised regularly, they would not stick with the program. However, if they dealt with the more important issues, they would stick with the diet and exercise.

I took small groups of twenty-five to fifty people off to my ranch in Texas and, more recently, to my home in Naples, Florida, for intensive cleansing and rebuilding programs that lasted for one to two weeks. Here, people had no responsibilities other than to relax in a supportive environment surrounded by people who were there to encourage them, telling them how capable they were of making proper choices with their life and health. No negativity was present, only unconditional sharing. In addition, they had a chance to experience what it was like to eat gourmet vegetarian meals every day and juice up to twelve or fourteen glasses of fresh organic fruit and vegetables a day. People lost weight; they got their energy back; they began to understand how they had created their own problems. For many, this was a revelation.

Participants in these intense detoxification programs had a 97-percent success rate. They stuck to the program, and they had the greatest overall reversal of aging.

WHAT'S AHEAD IN THIS BOOK

I cannot list every thought related to every question raised in these study groups. There is not enough room to permit me to include details of eighty-six different self-empowerment series, some with as many as fifty questions. What I have done, however, is select some of the most popular questions--more than enough to get you started on your own anti-aging program.

I have given you a complete, in-depth look at how I would view each question in the larger context to show you the various ways in which you can answer them. Take your time with this book. Don't rush through it. Come back at different times to the same question to see how many ways you can look at the problem. Over time, as you open yourself up, you'll find more and more positive solutions to negative problems.

In the end, I have developed a program that helps people with every imaginable issue. It is not merely designed as an attack against disease but rather as a means to rebuild a person's health through diet, detoxification, exercise, stress management, and self-actualization.

This last component--self-actualization--was not part of the protocols employed by the early study groups. Whereas the majority of participants in those groups did not stick to the program, more than 90 percent of the people who come to our program now stay with it.

Louann Pennse, who has assisted in teaching the study groups, has worked with more than a thousand people in the last three years. She teaches five days a week, and I with her, three classes a night, and she gives me her feedback as well as that from her participants. As a result, I have been able to determine what people are using and not using in the program.

After working with more than five thousand people these last ten years, I have been able to filter everything down to an understanding of what we have to do to change the way we age. This I will share with you.

BONFIRE OF THE CALENDARS

Much as bra burning was emblematic of the feminist movement in the 1960s, I see calendar burning as the sign of these times, as more and more people--of all ages and types--disregard their chronological ages and, rather than seeing the years that they spend on this planet as a countdown to death, adopt this life-transforming program that teaches all they need to know to stay biologically young and in peak performance for all the decades to come.