60 Achieving pH Balance to Treat Specific Ailments
and oxygen. This in turn improves digestion and the transit of food and
waste through the digestive tract, which gives the intestines a chance
to heal.
Bess healed her colitis and ileitis by relieving her anxiety and depres-
sion. She took a supplement called SAM-e. (SAM-e is activated methi-
onine.) SAM-e increases the production of the neurotransmitters that
have a calming effect and lower stress hormone levels—L-dopa, dop-
amine, and phosphatidylcholine. Bess also took Aangamik, which
relieves depression by oxygenating the brain cells. After she had been
on this regimen for several months, she no longer felt anxious over the
least deviation in her daily routine, and her feelings of depression lifted.
She was the fi rst member of her family to have conquered a mental
disorder. Her calmness indicated that her stress-promoting hormone
levels had dropped. The resulting increase in blood fl ow to the intes-
tines normalized her intestinal function.
A major cause of intestinal disorders is bad diet, which is most likely
a contributing factor in cases where mental stress is the primary cause.
Anyone with a bowel disorder should try to reduce intestinal infl am-
mation by avoiding foods that produce an allergic reaction and by eat-
ing only organically grown foods based on their metabolic type.
Martha’s intestinal function got better when she made some changes
in her diet. She tested herself for food allergies (see Chapter 2) and
found that she was lactose intolerant, the most common allergy in
people with intestinal infl ammation. (In a study of 77 patients with
irritable bowel syndrome conducted by Italian physicians, 74 percent
were found to be allergic to milk. They were put on a milk-free diet for
three weeks, and their condition in all cases improved.^16 ) Martha’s
attacks of diarrhea became less frequent but didn’t go away entirely, so
she took three tablespoons of bran three times a day to strengthen the
intestinal walls. Eating bran on a regular basis speeds up the transit
time of stool by increasing peristaltic movement. In Martha’s case,
however, it acted as an irritant, causing her intestines to become more
infl amed. Discouraged, she went to her family doctor for treatment. He
told her that raw garlic was effective for all forms of infl ammatory
bowel disease but asked her to keep it confi dential—what if it got
around that he had recommended a folk remedy! It always worked, he
said. The patient had to eat as many raw cloves of garlic as he or she