How Not To Use Garlic And Cayenne
Those of you who are regular readers of this site have probably read my posts on Curing the Incurables with Dr. Richard Schulze. If you haven't and know someone who is sick I would recommend that you view or listen to the videos. They are potentially life-changing for someone who is suffering from a major disease. There are three videos posted thus far and 5 more to go.
The videos are a necessary introduction to the work of Dr. Schulze. The real workhorse material was recorded in a different video series titled The Sam Biser Save Your Life Herbal Video Collection (Advanced Herbal Healing Techniques for Chronic & Even Incurable Health Conditions) 
As I noted in the introduction to the How To Get Well: Curing The Incurables series, food by itself isn't always the answer. Some people are already very sick and adopting some kind of traditional diet alone isn't going to solve the problem. Some people get sick with a major degenerative disease even after a diet and lifestyle change. Further, my guess is that 99.99% of those who write in the arena of health, fitness and alternative healing would choose conventional mainstream treatment if they were diagnosed with a terminal illness.
Thus one of my goals with this website is to provide field tested methods that work for folks when everything else doesn't. There are very few websites today that are doing this in a way that is credible both in terms of substance and presentation. I have seen some websites that look as if they were started at the dawn of the internet, caught in a cyber time warp of sorts, even though some of the information appears to be quite helpful. Such a dated look makes the sites seem very much on the fringe (which they are but no need to reinforce the point!) and thus not credible to many an every day seeker.
One thing I appreciate about Dr. Schulze's approach is that when you are sick, and I mean really sick, he uses the kitchen sink approach whereby he throws everything at the problem. If you have ever been to one of his seminars you know that Dr. Schulze is nothing if not intense, and believes that most so-called natural healers are much too wimpy and couldn't cure a hangnail if their life depended on it. He believes that natural healing suffers from people who aren't willing to get as intense as establishment medicine which doesn't hesitate to cut, chop, saw, burn, or otherwise treat disease very seriously, even if wrongheadedly.
Having been to one of his "crusades" and personally used his techniques on myself and others, I also believe in the kitchen sink approach when it comes to major terminal illness (no, I have never been diagnosed with a "terminal" disease). I once contemplated a career in the healing arts but figured there had to be a safer and more sane way to make a living than having to hide out from the FDA and wonder when your clinic is going to be raided by armed Federal agents.
Still, in my personal life, I abide by much of what I would have taught and done had I become a practitioner of the healing arts with a clinic hidden away in Malibu revealed only on a need to know basis for people with major health problems and the desire to get it solved no matter the cost or inconvenience.
Dr. Schulze is well known for reminding the anal retentive among his clientèle (when they start asking silly questions essentially equating food with drugs) that most of what he prescribes is food, not some powerful drug with which you have to be extremely careful.
To true, yet the other day I was reminded that sometimes one can go overboard and I will illustrate that with an experience I had with cayenne and garlic, two of the most powerful medicinal herbs on the planet (both of which should be in everyone's cupboard) which are especially useful in emergency situations (like heart attacks), but more about that in a future post.
In the late 1990's I went to a Dr. Schulze Healing Crusade much like what you see in the videos I have posted in earlier posts. It was extremely educational and informative. I had a very good time and even became long term friends with a lady (and later her husband) from the conference.
Dr. Schulze is a vegan so the lunches that were provided at the seminar were very large and tasty looking salads. Now I am a big fan of salads but only if they are loaded with tomatoes, avocados and cheese. At least two of those three ingredients need to be present or I am likely to skip the salad and head straight for the meat. When it comes to vegetables my preference is to eat the animals that eat the vegetables. Unfortunately for me there were only tomatoes and since there was no meat it was either eat or go hungry (which isn't always a bad idea).
Though there wasn't any animal food in sight, there were large bowls of garlic, ginger, and shakers of Dr. Schulze's infamous cayenne pepper formula. Everyone at the table was liberally dousing their salads with all three so I dutifully followed suit except I left out the cayenne. After a few strong but tasty bites I then added a few hefty shakes of cayenne. With just a couple of bites after the addition of the cayenne, blood was rushing to my head and I was sweating like it was 110 degrees inside even though we were eating in a pleasant climate controlled room. There is a very good reason that cayenne is known as the circulation herb.
Everyone else didn't seem to be having a problem even though they all had more cayenne on their salads than I did. So I acted as if everything was fine though my mouth was burning and I was sweating like a pig. Since I was at a table of mostly Schulze employees I reasoned they were used to it and I was not, which was largely true, but unbeknownst to me it was a foreshadowing of things to come.
A few years later I was doing a juice fast circa 2002. One of my favorite concoctions was a homemade V8 style veggie drink. I loaded mine not only with freshly juiced tomatoes and other veggies but also freshly juiced cayenne peppers and garlic. Being aware of fresh garlic's powerful medicinal qualities I decided what is good in small quantities might be better in large quantities. Instead of juicing a few cloves like normal I decided to juice an entire large bulb into the mix of my homemade V8 cocktail.
Mistake. Full Stop. Do not pass GO and do not collect $200. Right after drinking my very delicious cocktail over the next few moments I experienced the most excruciating pain ever from head to toe. I immediately fell to the floor and was rolling over in the kitchen feeling like my life was coming to an end.
This was no joke. Whatever is the worse pain you think you have experienced, multiply it by a factor of 10 and maybe you will come close to what I was experiencing. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity (but was actually only a few minutes) the pain subsided. A few minutes later I was able to stand. 30 minutes later it was like nothing ever happened and I felt great. I learned my lesson. There is a threshold which can be reached when you are not eating these foods but using them in a concentrated manner and I would never repeat that mistake again, or so I thought.
Fast forward to just a few months ago. Knowing full well the exemplary effect of properly prepared cayenne peppers on the heart and circulatory system I decided to avail myself of some Dr. Schulze cayenne powder I had in my cupboard. Now I knew from the experiences of a friend (who took some encapsulated powder and had a similar though not nearly as dramatic reaction as I had with the garlic) that you have to be careful when using cayenne as a medicinal and not as food, and that in tincture or loose powder form it is very easy to overdo, as my experience at the Schulze seminar amply demonstrated.
By overdoing it I don't mean you are likely to bring harm to yourself, but you are likely to make yourself feel extremely uncomfortable. If you are the type who naturally likes to push the limits, you should be very aware of what you are doing and move slowly ahead.
I would have preferred the tincture since I know the dosage like the back of my hand, but as I only had the powder I figured I was careful enough not to go overboard given I had been about this business for many years and was taking the cayenne in water, not a capsule.
Mistake. Full stop. I took a little too much and yes I was back on the kitchen floor in excruciating pain begging God to have mercy on my pitiable and silly soul. Then after what seemed like an eternity but was only a few minutes (sound familiar) the pain went away, and 30 minutes later I felt great and it was like nothing ever happened.
The moral of this story: by all means be serious and intense when dealing with life threatening diseases, but sometimes over familiarity can lead to doing a little too much when such is not necessary. It is probably impossible to do what I did if using garlic and cayenne as food with food, but be more cautious when using them alone in either juiced, tinctured, or powdered form. You have been forewarned. 
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Michael Miles is the editor of Nutrition and Physical Regeneration
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