Dr.Switzer's Wild Plant Primal Diet (english)

For more than 30 years I have studied the strengths and weaknesses of various nutritional approaches. But I was never satisfied with any type of diet, whether it came from a macrobiotic, ayurvedic, vegan, primordial, metabolic-balance or raw food perspective.

It was only after spending a day weeding my garden did I come up with an interesting idea. My German mother had told me how healthy sting nettles were when made into spinach and soup. She literally lived on them during the war and was remarkably healthy during this stressful time. My thought was to mix them in a mixer together with fruit, which might make them taste better than spinach.

The result was a delicious and invigorating wild plant smoothie! Not only did the smoothies taste great, but they seemed to reawaken dormant energies inside me. I began to feel stronger and more invigorated. I began working out. Maybe this was the game-changer I was looking for, a nutritional upgrade with wildcrafted plants.

Soon, I was learning everything I could about edible, wild plants. My teacher, Sepp Ott, taught me everything he knew about native wild plants growing in Bavaria. He gave me the job to turn them into tasty dishes for my patients - food as medicine.

Wild plants contain a wealth of phyto-nutrients which can kick-start our immune system. Conventional veggies and fruits have a hard time competing: a wild apple contains 475 times more phyto-nutrients than “pink lady”, a popular hybrid apple. This translates into 475 times more power needed for activating genes that release antibodies and killer cells (2). This is an important aspect for patients fighting against cancer or chronic inflammation! If you compare sting nettles with iceberg salad, the contrast is just as striking: nettles contain about 25 times more organic calcium and many more vitamins than hybrid lettuce!

Wild plants contain an abundance of nutrients such as bio-photons and phyto-nutrients, which are even missing in organic veggies. The power of native plants such as stinging nettles, dandelions, goutweed, plantain, sow thistles and lamb’s quarters to heal and satiate is awesome. Professor Fritz-Walter Popp, a German bio-physicist, claimed that bio-photons are needed in order to stave off degenerative disease.

15 years of research have taught me that most diets lack important nutrients such as chlorophyll, organic trace minerals, bio-photons, probiotics, enzymes, phyto-nutrients and lactobacillus. Even if you buy your food at an organic shop, you are bound to come up short with many of these important nutrients.

A diet based mainly on industrial foods and grains such as bread, pasta, potatoes, rice, corn, fast food as well as hybrid vegetables and fruits is woefully lacking in nutrients. Even organic foods lack genetic diversity because many vegetables and fruits are grown from hybrid seeds. Hybrid plants contain far fewer phyto-nutrients than heirloom vegetables and wild plants. GMO plants are even worse.

As a result of these nutritional deficiencies, food cravings arise and people get hooked to sweets, starch, meat, sausage, fast food, milk products, alcohol and other stimulants in an attempt to fill this nutritional void. This is why most diets are destined to fail. People get fatter, sicker and more toxic ever year.

Homeopaths are no exception: according to Dr. Filip Degroote, MD from Belgium, the prevalence of cancer in homeopaths is quite high (1). I personally have witnessed about 20 ayurvedic therapists and doctors die of cancer over the past ten-years, many of them were my age or younger. In America, about 43% of all men and 37% of all women can expect to develop cancer during their lifetime (3). About 50% of all seniors over 85 reveal symptoms of dementia. As homeopaths, we must insure that our health rests on a solid foundation. Wildcrafted plant recipes, fermented juices and sprouts can make a huge difference.

How else can we handle a toxic environment with over 70,000 manmade chemicals which threaten our health? How can we protect ourselves from industrial agriculture which uses tons of herbicides, pesticides, fungicides, nitrates, preservatives and GMO’s, many of which are carcinogenic?

Recently, the WHO listed glyphosate, also known as “Round-up”, as a probable cancer-causing herbicide (5). Millions of tons of this chemical are used not only to fight weeds, but also to improve harvest yields. If you see a field of grain growing without flowers, it is likely that this herbicide was used. Over 70% of all city dwellers have glyphosate in their urine, according to a German study. Glyphosate can deactivate mitochondria and pave the way for cancer and chronic inflammation to arise. (6).

Can we protect ourselves from environmental challenges just by prescribing our homeopathic globuli? Or do we need to look outside our homeopathic box?

Even the great master George Vithoulkas expressed his reservations about whether homeopathy can cure cancer. My personal experience indicates that a combination of the Gerson therapy, ayurvedic detox procedures, wild plants and homeopathy can improve treatment outcomes in cancer and other serious diseases.

The wild plant cocktails, salads and main entrees are not only tasty and easy for patients to prepare at home, but also help improve compliance with the Gerson therapy. The results have been nothing short of remarkable. My patients love the wild plant cocktails, salads and sprouted nettle and flaxseed crackers. There are even recipes for sting nettle ice cream and other nutrient-dense desserts.

Fermented Kombucha and sprouted quinoa and brown millet provide important pre- and probiotics for reinvigorating the intestinal flora. About 95% of the recipes contain live enzymes and bio-photons, providing important electrical bio-energy for upgrading the mitochondria, a prerequisite for preventing and healing cancer, diabetes, autoimmune, neurological and heart/circulatory disease. Many of these diseases arise due to acid-damaged mitochondria.

I believe the time is ripe for homeopaths to adopt a truly holistic approach for treating their patients which includes optimal nutrition. Yes, it is exciting to discover that exact similimum which perfectly fits the patient, using tools at our disposal, such as the Shankaran’s sensation method or the Boger approach. But why not improve the treatment outcome even further by recommending wild plants? Your patients will be grateful. Nagging problems like high blood pressure, liver enzymes, homocystein and cholesterol will often vanish like snow melting in the sun. These parameters are difficult to optimize even with a good similimum.

Wild plants, after all, can often be found growing on our front door, you can almost trip over them. Is Mother Nature trying to tell us something? Dr. Willibald Gawlik, a famous Bavarian homeopath and teacher of mine, recalled how arnica would often grow next to a field hospital during the war. We need to open our eyes to the plants growing around us.

My wild plant teacher, Sepp Ott, told me how a rare plant with a reputation for treating arteriosclerosis suddenly began spreading like wildfire about thirty years ago here in Bavaria, just as the Alzheimers epidemic began to take off. Also known as “colewort” or geum urbanicum, this plant can now be found growing everywhere in Bavaria, even during a snowless winter. It is so hardy it probably contains anti-freeze!

Can a domesticated salad plant survive extreme temperatures like this wild plant? Hardly, for it needs the warmth and protection of a greenhouse. Can a domesticated lap dog brave a cold winter like a wolf? Can an American “couch potato” survive a winter in a Native American tepee without central heating? I doubt it. These indigenous people also lived on wild plants!

Can a tasty salad or cocktail using this wild plant dietary approach help upgrade our immune system and improve our resilience? Can a reduction in the body’s toxic burden improve the efficacy of homeopathic medicines? These are interesting questions that should be explored.

Thousands of wild-crafted phyto- nutrients improve digestive fire, increase bile flow and sweep the intestines clean like a broom. This is the ultimate approach for treating obesity, freeing the arteries and intestines from plaque and slowing down the aging process. Wild plants can even eliminate cravings for junk food and stimulants such as nicotine and alcohol!

Native plants such as dandelions and stinging nettles contain anywhere from five to 50 times more nutrients than conventional veggies. The many-faceted taste nuances of wild plants can be delightful when used in a salad, pancake or smoothie. Culinary fulfillment can go hand in hand with cutting edge nutrition. The wild plant primal diet can improve stress resistance, circulation, sleep quality and mood.

Excess weight, allergies, digestive issues and skin problems often vanish with the help of wild plants. Many patients have reported an increase in mental clarity and creativity. Special innovative recipes, such as the quinoa curd hummus, are designed to improve digestibility. A special sprouting and fermentation process is used in order to reduce phytic acid content and increase nutrient availability. This process has helped cancer patients regain lost weight and prevent cachexia. Optimizing nutrient intake with the help of wild plants, probiotics, sprouts and superfoods can lay the groundwork for improving health. After all, it was Hippocrates, the father of medicine, who suggested that food is often our best medicine.

Wild plants, which have accompanied mankind’s evolutionary path for the past four million years, may indeed be our best medicine. A nutritional upgrade using wild plants has the potential to improve everyone’s health, regardless of one’s personal dietary preferences. In an age where chemical agriculture and GMOs threaten our health, taking recourse to the bounty of Nature may be the best option available.

This primal energy dietary approach helps stabilize challenging patients while providing a fallback treatment plan should a homeopathic solution prove difficult. Cancer patients show good results in rehabilitating from chemo- or radiation therapy. Ayurvedic detox often helps clarify symptoms leading to a homeopathic remedy.

Combining the wild plant primal diet with the Gerson therapy will optimize this important anti-cancer treatment, helping to improve treatment outcomes. A seminar dealing with this upgraded version of the Gerson 2.0 wild plant treatment will be held on January 16, 2016 in Feldafing, south of Munich, Germany.

As our patients become increasingly toxic in a suboptimal world, we should consider looking outside our homeopathic box. More and more patients experience degenerative diseases at a younger age. Would our treatment outcomes profit from a more eclectic approach? Can humans enjoy a healthier and longer lifespan as envisioned by Professor Roy Walford, UCLA, in his CRON (calorie reduction optimal nutrition) diet?

A full description of the Gerson treatment protocols as well as my favorite recipes for fermentation juices, api-bee-therapeutic agents, various wild plant concoctions and detox protocols can be obtained in my German book: Wildkräuter-Vitalkost: Energie-Nahrung der Zukunft, 2. Auflage. This book will be translated into english in 2016. My wild plant primal diet recipe book with 179 recipes is now available in English.

Dr. Switzer’s Wild Plant Primal Diet, € 22,90 or $ 24,90 Ayurveda Health & Beauty Verlag

About the author:

Dr. John Switzer MD was born in 1957 in Oregon, USA. He moved to Munich to rediscover his German roots and study medicine. For the past 25 years, he has been medical director of Ayurveda Health & Beauty located on Lake Starnberg, Bavaria. His clinic specializes in detox treatments and includes homeopathy, Gerson cancer therapy, intestinal cleansing, fasting and wild plant nutrition. He is the author of two German wild plant bestseller recipe books. He is an enthusiastic practitioner of the Shankaran homeopathic sensation method.

1 Homeopathic Links, 3/15; P -142

2 Eating On The Wild Side; Astrid Derfler Kessler

3 US National Cancer Institute’s Surveillance Epidemiology and End Results (SEER) Database, 2009 – 2011

4 Healing the Gerson Way: Defeating Cancer and Other Chronic Diseases Charlotte Gerson

5 Nature : Nature looks at the Evidence Daniel Cressey 24 March 2015

6 Glyphosate found in the urine of city dwellers fom 18 European states, a study conducted by the environmental group BUND between March – May 2015.

Available at Rocky Mountain Phyto Essentials