THE WHOLE WORLD STOPS FOR A HEALING FEVER: THE ULTIMATE NATURAL HEALING PROCESS 1. Hippocrates, the great Greek physician, has been quoted as saying: Give me a fever and I will cure any disease, or words to that effect. 2. At the age of 18 years I had the privilege of studying with the late Kenneth S. Jaffrey, great grandfather of Nature Cure in Australia. His booklet Fever: Nature's Own Healing Process stands in my memory as the choice work on the subject.
3. Jaffrey practised for many years (sixty or so) teaching natural diet and lifestyle to his clients. He gave them steam baths and wet sheet wraps (hydrotherapy), adjusted their spines, and taught them about fasting during healing fevers. In short, he taught them and assisted them in raising their Vitality. 4. In simple terms, in the absence of enough Vitality, toxins accumulate and store up in the tissues of the body. When the body accumulates enough Vitality, it initiates a healing fever as an intensive healing effort to remove the toxicity. Once the healing fever comes, all the work has already been done to raise the body's Vitality. All that then need be done is to allow it to do its work. 5. Once the healing fever came, Jaffrey was very happy for the person, as he knew that their body had now accumulated enough Vitality to heal itself. According to his personal testimony, in sixty years Jaffrey never lost a client who he accepted, and he worked with clients with an incredible variety of chronic problems. 6. During a fever, the digestive organs of the body cease functioning. If the person ingests food, then the body must waste energy eliminating rotting food which is not digested and forms more toxicity. This food acts like pouring more fuel on a fire. Particularly in infants, fevers tend to increase in temperature if the parent/guardian insists on forcing the child to eat against its instincts. 7. In twelve or so years as a naturopathic physician, I have never attended a childhood fever which needed any intervention or regulation unless the parents had fed the child. 8. So what must be done during a healing fever? Ideally, Nothing. Truly Nothing. The egos and fears of overeager practitioners, physicians, parents, guardians, and the individual themselves must be set aside, and Mother Nature allowed to rule. 9. The person must be supplied with the environment to fast properly. According to Jaffrey, fasting did not simply mean not eating, but meant resting totally, on all levels. In this way, the person conserves their Vitality, so it can be allowed to do its job cleaning out and repairing the body. This rest includes: a. Rest of the digestive organs only drinking natural cool water, nothing else. (Some other practitioners are less strict than Jaffrey and indicate that not everyone can stop work and set aside the time for a proper fast. They therefore advocate a very dilute high-water-content diet, consisting of juices, or juicy fruits and/or vegetables, until the fever passes and true hunger returns. If the person is exposed to heavy metals (e.g. mercury amalgam fillings) or other toxins, requires to continue taking certain medications, or cannot rest, then true fasting is probably contraindicated.) b. Rest of the heart and mind a knowledgeable confidence in the process of fasting during healing fevers and an aware equanimity, without stressful or energy-consuming mental or emotional dealings c. Rest of the senses and muscles lie down, drink water, breathe. Don't read, watch television, study, go for walks, etc. Total rest. d. Any sort of rest I forgot to categorise and mention! Total energy conservation. 10. The person must never chill, and their resting environment must support this no air-conditioning, naturally ventilated air. 11. The resting environment must have natural light and ventilation, and not be noisy. It must be restful. 12. A plentiful and easy supply of natural cool fresh water should be available with minimal effort. 13. Showering facilities for tepid to cool showers should be available. 14. Nursing assistance will probably be required, especially if the fast prolongs beyond a few days, as the client usually becomes weak, and may be prone to injuries when bathing themselves or fetching water. 15. A brief full body sun bath can be taken morning and evening once the higher part of the fever has passed. Jaffrey taught his clients to point their feet toward the sun, and to lay down on the ground, face up, and face down. It is important to never overdo it. You should never burn. 16. Emotional support, and gentle caring counselling and instruction about the benefits of healing fevers and the process of optimal support for them is very helpful, boosting the confidence of the person, and benefitting their healing process. Sometimes it's nice to have someone to just hold your hand and be aware of you and your needs. 17. If the person experiencing the fever cannot retain the water they swallow without vomiting, then Jaffrey taught an old Egyptian technique called Achamana. Someone must attend the person, preferably with an eye dropper, and place a drop of water on the person's lips/tongue every 30 seconds to a minute or so. This allows for a gradual absorption of the moisture preventing dehydration, without allowing it to pool into a vomitable quantity. 18. If there is prolonged diarrhoea, sweating, vomiting, or other fluidic eliminations, then the body can become depleted in electrolytes. Some rigid Nature Cure advocates may see nothing wrong with continued total fasting under these circumstances. It is however a potential danger to be aware of. Dr John Ray indicated that supplementary electrolytes may be necessary in such cases, especially potassium. He recommended Cream of Tartar as a source of potassium. 19. There are severe dangers to prolonged fasting in the absence of a feverish Vitality. Jaffrey didn't encourage fasting for longer than three days unless the individual evidenced strong Vitality by the presence of a healing fever. Neurological damage, malnutrition, and other problems can occur from excessively prolonged fasting in the absence of a healing fever. 20. The unnecessary suppression of healing fevers sets the stage for the development of further more chronic diseases in the future, as the toxins the fever would have removed are retained in the tissues of the person's body. There are often unnoticed long-term effects on metabolism after such suppressions, with long-term weight problems and suppressed thyroid and immune function, and other chronic problems which only began after the suppression of the fever. During future health-building lifestyle programs, the fever is eventually re-experienced, and if properly managed and not suppressed, results in the disappearance of these previously long-term health problems. We could therefore surmise that the initial suppression of the fever stopped the body from healing itself, forcing it to retain its toxicity and causing long-term chronic health problems which only resolved with the re-experience of the original suppressed fever. To fully grasp the reality and importance of this it is necessary to understand the retracing of old symptom patterns, also called the healing crisis concept, and the healing and disease process continuum. It also helps to understand the process of crystallization, and role of suppressed eliminations in forming crystallizations in the body. (Please see articles and CD by same author.) 21. There seem to be several gravestones in the world which attest to the fact that not all fevers are curative or healing fevers. Some can result in death, evidently. Whether this is through mismanagement, overfeeding, wasting of the body's vitality, or simply a severe disease process, often infectious, right from the outset is open to some debate. It therefore seems necessary to intervene in certain fevers. 22. If intervention seems necessary, then rather than totally suppressing the fever, the most non-toxic regulation of the fever to keep it within safe limits and still allow it to enact its cleansing of the body is often desirable. It is possible that a disease fever could be changed into a healing fever through correct management. 23. The methods of intervening in a fever can be graded from least to moast invasive, and thus least to moast preferable. a. No intervention fast (rest) on all levels, physical (sensory, motor, and digestive), emotional, mental b. Occasional cool sprays of water, of varying levels of frequency c. Brand Baths gentle tepid water friction to increase heat radiation from the body's skin surface d. Wet sheet wraps full body compress must be maintained cool/wet, uncovered, and skin cleansed must not dry out e. Very cold immersions the body must have the Vitality to react to the cold water, by turning the skin bright pink and rewarming it. f. Cold water enemas of varying temperatures depending on fever temperature. g. Acute homeopathic remedies for fever (e.g. Belladonna 6X) h. Increasing the body temperature further to induce sweating and cook the fever. This has been done in different ways. These include overheating water baths (Uberwarmungsbader in Germany), steam baths, sun baths, and sun baths covered with blankets or banana leaves. This technique is probably suited to very strong constitutions only. Employing this technique with a weaker body type, particularly if the person's blood is weak (anemic), or their skin function is lazy (often the case in mercury amalgam toxicity), is considered dangerous by some. i. Herbal remedies of diaphoretic herbs (induce sweating) are often given as warm drinks. j. Various pharmaceuticals can be purchased at pharmacies or prescribed by doctors. 24. So how can the difference between a disease fever and a healing fever be deduced so it can be determined whether to intervene or not and how much to intervene if necessary? This is a very tricky question. 25. First of all, is the person's overall lifestyle currently Vitality-building? Do they drink enough chemical-free energized water, eat enough fruits and vegetables, stretch and exercise, deal with stress constructively, sleep enough, think and feel reasonably positively, mostly avoid toxins most of the time, etc.? This is a very general overall consideration of whether the person's overall lifestyle builds this difficult-to-define term called Vitality. If a person has been in generally good Vitality, or has deliberately undertaken a Vitality-building lifestyle, and especially if they felt VERY WELL the day before the fever (perfect balance), then it is very often a healing fever. 26. During intense systemic healing processes, the iris fibres of the iris of the eye all move anteriorly away from the posterior pigment later and become brighter in perceived colour. In a blue iris, these fibres all stand forward and appear bright white. In a brown iris, the colour is more yellowish. Localised areas of inflammation appear similarly, but only one section of the iris will indicate fibres which have moved anteriorly. 27. Professor Doctor Sir John Whitman Ray suggested one method that is somewhat¦debatable¦or subjective perhaps. He would feel the forehead of the person with the fever for warmth/coolness, and then move his hand a little above the skin of their forehead (about ¼ to ½ an inch) and feel for warmth/coolness. Warm on the skin, and cool above the skin meant the person had a healing fever. Any other combination was a disease fever. 28. Also from Doctor Ray, comes the following discernment about kinesiological testing. During a healing crisis the person is not balanced in terms of muscle-testing. Certain parts of the body are overenergised deliberately while tissue is growing back/regenerating. Muscle-testing results are inconsistent or inaccurate during this time. If you pick something you know is good (like a broad-spectrum colloidal mineral formula that is naturally sourced that has gotten good results with many people for many years of confirmed healing crisis accompanied with confirmed positive iris structural change) and muscle-test a person for its appropriateness for them while they have a healing fever, or other healing crisis, they will probably muscle test weak, or inconsistently over several tests. 29. A full-body, synchronous pulsing of 72 beats per minute is often seen as a very favourable healing indication in some healing systems, including Polarity Therapy. If you feel the arterial pulses all over the body, in different combinations, you will notice that they are not all synchronous, or balanced in terms of palpable amplitude, all the time. You could compare the arterial pulses at abdominal aorta near navel, inside inner ankle, behind knee, hip, armpit, elbow, wrist, throat, and perineum. It is a characteristic of systemic healing processes in the body that all pulses become balanced, even and synchronous at 72 beats per minute. Initially this feels very relaxing and energizing at the same time termed balance in Polarity Therapy. If maintained in this condition of full-body synchronistic pulsing, people tend to begin more intensive healing processes involving the re-experience of suppressed conditions from the past. 30. If the person's fever is a disease fever, or if there is ever a doubt about a person's safety, or whether their fever is a disease or a healing fever, it may be wiser to save the person's life with conventional modern medicine and suppress the fever. Later on, the person can begin a health-building program and raise their Vitality to a point where the fever returns as a healing fever, and can be re-experienced without suppression or intervention. 31. Parents/guardians are often very concerned about fevers in their children, and understandably so. It is commonly believed that if a fever in a child goes too high then the child can begin fitting and suffer brain damage. Some naturopaths have differed with the rigidity of this view over the years and believe that the brain damage results from the toxic drugs that were used in the attempt to suppress the fever. This is a debate that will probably never be resolved. I strongly recommend regulating the fever adequately to avoid the dangerously high fitting temperatures. With that said, I have never seen a child whose fever needed to be regulated unless they were fed. If regulation is deemed necessary, the least invasive set of measures which achieves the result is always preferred. 32. Many naturopaths hardly deal with fevers as people tend to shop at the pharmacy, doctors, or hospital for services in this regard. In addition, practitioners, and doctors may have concerns about potential liability if something bad happens. The understanding of the healing crisis concept and the healing and disease process continuum is not commonly held or agreed with, by orthodox medicine, and many modern natural medicine practitioners only pay lip-service to it at best. The end result is that fewer people manage the natural efforts of their bodies to deal with toxicity through fever in the most biologically favourable way, fasting (total rest on all levels), and adequate water. Their bodies end up carrying a layer of suppression and retained toxicity instead, which predisposes them to more chronic problems later on. 33. It seems somewhat difficult to encapsulate the whole art of bedside attendance of the feverish person, with the associated understandings about symptom retracing, healing crisis, etc. in a document. Ultimately, the necessary skills, perceptions, and decision-making processes are attained experientially as well as intellectually. This document is at least an attempt to expose this art, and open the doorway to its conscious preservation. 34. I cannot accept responsibility for the health conditions of every person who may be directly or indirectly influenced by this document in relationship to fever or overall health. We are all responsible for ourselves, even in this era of extensive litigation, layblame, and justification. I have shared my beliefs and understandings as honestly and accurately as possible. Some may say I am avoiding responsibility for what I am teaching. I could therefore write nothing and be responsible! On the other hand, if nothing is written, awareness of this important understanding will continue to lessen. So I have made a small beginning.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Kyle Grimshaw-JonesWelcome to my Blog! I hope to contribute useful and interesting material for you to read here. Be Happy! Archives
January 2020
Categories
All
|