Ancient Remedies Read online

  This book is intended to supplement, not replace, the advice of a trained health professional. If you know or suspect that you have a health problem, you should consult a health professional. The author and publisher specifically disclaim any liability, loss, or risk, personal or otherwise, that is incurred as a consequence, directly or indirectly, of the use and application of any of the contents of this book.

  Names have been changed in patient stories throughout the book.

  Copyright © 2021 by Dr. Josh Axe

  Cover design by Julianna Lee

  Cover photographs copyright © David Molnar and Daniel Rivera

  Author photograph by David Molnar

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  ISBN 978-0-316-49647-6

  E3-20210109-JV-NF-ORI

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Introduction: Recognizing the Flaws of Pharmaceutical-Based Healthcare and Reclaiming Our Health

  PART I

  THE WISDOM OF ANCIENT HEALING Chapter 1: Ancient Medicine for a Modern World

  Chapter 2: Curing the Root Cause

  Chapter 3: Eat Right for Your Ancient Element

  Chapter 4: The Ancient Way of Eating

  Chapter 5: Meals Are Medicine

  PART II

  YOUR ANCIENT PHARMACY Chapter 6: The Healing Value of Herbs, Spices, and Mushrooms

  Chapter 7: Cannabis: The Forbidden Herb

  Chapter 8: The Power of Essential Oils

  Chapter 9: Emotional and Spiritual Secrets for Breakthrough Healing

  Chapter 10: Ancient Therapies and Lifestyle Medicine for Modern Health Woes

  PART III

  ANCIENT PRESCRIPTIONS Chapter 11: Understanding the Five Organ Systems of TCM

  Chapter 12: Prescriptions for 70+ Conditions

  PART IV

  RECIPES FOR ANCIENT NUTRITION

  Acknowledgments

  Discover More

  About the Author

  Books by Dr. Josh Axe

  Notes

  This book is dedicated to my beautiful, bold, and brilliant daughter, Arwyn; to my best friend, wife, and love of my life, Chelsea; and to my father God, for giving me the platform and favor to write this book. I am beyond blessed!

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  INTRODUCTION

  Recognizing the Flaws of Pharmaceutical-Based Healthcare and Reclaiming Our Health

  I was raised in a family that believed wholeheartedly in the power of Western medicine. My grandmother’s conversations often began with the phrase “My doctor told me I should…” And she followed his advice to the letter. As a result, by the time she was sixty she was on fifteen medications and taking forty to sixty pills a day—so many that she carried her plastic pill container with her everywhere, pulling it out of her purse frequently to pop yet another small tablet or capsule into her mouth. In spite of her strict commitment to her doctor’s advice, she was chronically unwell. Her health stood in sharp contrast to my grandfather’s. He took zero medications until he was in his nineties—and he ran a full-time business, golfed, served the poor, and remained robust until he passed away at the age of ninety-six.

  My mom shared my grandmother’s faith in Western medicine, so when my siblings and I were growing up, we dutifully took meds for every sniffle and cough. I was raised in Troy, Ohio, and got sick pretty much every winter, often coughing through an annoying bout of bronchitis from early December to late February. Even though we now know that antibiotics are ineffective for bronchitis, which is caused by lingering inflammation in your bronchial tubes after an actual infection clears up, back then I essentially lived on the drugs for those chilly three months. Our doctor was a good man. He was only doing what he thought was right. But when I look back at all the unnecessary, ineffective, and harmful medications I ingested, I see that they contributed to the gut and liver issues I developed later—issues that healed only when I began using traditional remedies and food as medicine.

  Although antibiotics can be lifesaving if you have a staph infection or bacterial pneumonia, for instance, it’s best to reserve them for dire circumstances. These medications, designed to kill harmful bacteria, also wipe out the population of healthy, protective bacteria, known as probiotics, in your gut, putting you at risk for inflammatory bowel disease, heart disease, obesity, type 2 diabetes, anxiety, and depression. These medications we’ve all been led to believe are benign are actually quite dangerous. But you’d never know it by how frequently doctors prescribe them during outpatient visits—nearly 260 million prescriptions in 2017 alone.1

  Our habitual reliance on prescription medications can be hard to change. In fact, it took a heartbreaking experience for me to finally begin to question the pill-for-every-ill mentality that pervades Western medicine. When I was thirteen, my mom was diagnosed with—and treated for—breast cancer. I’ll never forget the shock of finding clumps of her sandy blond hair on our bathroom floor—a side effect of the toxic chemotherapy—or the months and years afterward, when I realized that while my mom’s cancer was gone, she was far from well. Before her treatment, she was an energetic, athletic swim instructor and gym teacher, who juggled her substantial work and family responsibilities with apparent ease; after, she was chronically exhausted and depressed, she had hypothyroidism, and she struggled with bowel issues. I was still a kid, but even at that age, I found it hard to accept the idea that the only way to cure an illness was to take medications that left you more debilitated than you were before.

  That’s when the seed was planted: Maybe our kindly doctor didn’t have all the answers. Maybe there were safer ways to heal disease. Maybe that array of amber bottles in our medicine cabinet was actually part of the problem. And maybe I could, one day, find a more wholesome solution.

  Those were radical ideas for me at the time. But looking back, I see how they began shaping my life—how they led me to question the medical and health status quo. For instance, I started connecting the dots between the foods I consumed and the way I felt. As a high school soccer player, I noticed that milk made me phlegmy, which was especially unappealing during practices. So I stopped drinking it. Not long after, I gave up soda—not because it made me feel bad, but because I read an article about it and learned that the beverages I guzzled every day contained zero nutritional value. So why was I—why was everyone—drinking them?

  By th
e time I was in my early twenties, I’d committed myself to learning everything I could about healing. I was living in Florida, earning a chiropractic degree, and becoming more and more immersed in the study of nutrition, as well as Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), Ayurveda, and Biblical medicine.

  I was avidly engaged in that mind-expanding mode when I received a life-changing phone call from my mom. The moment I heard her tearful voice, I knew it was bad. She told me she’d been diagnosed with cancer again. I felt sick with worry and fear, but I also knew there were strategies that might help—ones that wouldn’t leave her debilitated afterward. I knew about the healing power of nutrition, and I’d begun learning about alternative healing modalities in TCM and other forms of ancient medicine. So I vowed to learn as much about cancer as I could.

  The question I faced: Where should I focus my research? Since I was already painfully familiar with the side effects of the most commonly prescribed modern cancer treatments, the medical paradigm of the present seemed unlikely to provide hopeful solutions. So I looked to the past.

  I wasn’t sure what I’d find when I typed in the search term “ancient remedies for cancer.” But I uncovered a trove of centuries-old wisdom that has been ignored—and sometimes intentionally maligned or buried—by the Western medical establishment. I learned that medicinal mushrooms have been used to treat cancer by traditional Chinese practitioners for years. I discovered research on epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG), an anti-cancer component in green tea. I was surprised again and again to read about the cancer-fighting benefits of herbs like ginseng, turmeric, and astragalus. As I compiled a list of safe, gentle, effective compounds that had been used for millennia, I felt like an explorer who had uncovered a map to buried treasure. Here was the path I’d been looking for. Here were the healing jewels that just might help my mom get well.

  Based on my research on ancient healing, I completely overhauled my mom’s diet, tossing out all the processed foods, sugars, and simple carbs that filled her cupboards and fridge, and replacing them with vegetables, berries, herbs, probiotic-rich foods, and bone broth. I taught her to eat healthy fats, like avocado, salmon, and olive oil, as well as a variety of mushrooms, like shiitake, cordyceps, and reishi, known as the “mushroom of immortality” in traditional Chinese medicine. We paired her healthy new diet with other healing modalities, like lymphatic massage, healing affirmations, prayer, and essential oils like frankincense and myrrh, ancient treatments that have been shown to relieve stress and anxiety, support immunity, and fight cancer. Instead of being crippled by toxic chemotherapy, she was supported by healing nutrients—and she began to feel better than she had in years.

  Four months after we’d begun our regimen, she went for a CT scan. The images were a stunning affirmation of the path we’d chosen. Her tumor had shrunk to half its original size. She hadn’t done any chemo or radiation, and yet her cancer was receding. We returned from that appointment feeling optimistic, hopeful, and even more determined to stay the course than we’d been before.

  Nine months after that, our faith in ancient remedies received the best support we could have hoped for. My mom’s lab work and CT images showed she was in almost complete remission—and she remains vibrant and healthy to this day. In her sixties, she runs 5K races, water-skis, and stays incredibly active. She continues to maintain the healthy diet and lifestyle approaches we devised after her diagnosis. And she says she feels better than she has in years.

  Cancer is a challenging diagnosis. When you’re facing a life-threatening illness, every choice should be weighed and decided upon with the help of trusted healthcare practitioners. But watching my mom get well was the final piece of evidence I needed to be certain that Western medicine didn’t hold all the answers—and that looking to the past might be the best way to take care of our health in the future.

  The seed for Ancient Remedies was planted in that pivotal moment when we learned that my mom’s cancer had receded in the face of our gentle, holistic approach. In the intervening years, I’ve continued to learn as much as I can about TCM, as well as other ancient healing traditions, like the Indian Ayurvedic, ancient Middle Eastern, and Biblical approaches—and the more I’ve learned, the more shocked I’ve become. Why have we all been taking dangerous, costly pharmaceuticals when these safe, gentle, inexpensive treatments have been here all along? Why has Western medicine ignored plant-based therapies for so long? And those gnawing questions led to another pivotal one: What could I do to get this vital, buried medical information into the hands of the American public, who need it today more than ever?

  The answer to that final question is the book you’re holding in your hands. It’s high time you understand that you don’t need to take dangerous drugs for every ailment, that the Western medical system’s profit-based approach isn’t doing your health any favors, and that there are wonderfully effective alternative therapeutics that can heal your health issues and put you safely on the path to lifelong wellness. I’m thrilled to finally be able to introduce these wholesome, natural treatments to you so you can make the best health choices for you and your family.

  In Part I, you’ll learn how our medical system was hijacked by pharmaceutical companies, which put profits over people’s health, and why the medications designed to make us well often create a cycle of sickness that’s difficult to break. I also explain why ancient remedies are a smarter, safer choice, and lay out the basics of the ancient approach to curing disease, which lies in a single, simple strategy: Instead of treating symptoms, heal the root cause of the illness. You’ll also learn how to use the tenets of ancient medicine to find a diet that’s right for your body and how to combine foods in ways that make each healthy ingredient exponentially more beneficial.

  In Part II, I provide insight into the fundamental foods and lifestyle habits that serve as the foundation for whole-body healing and health. You’ll learn about the value of ancient spices and herbs—including CBD, a component of hemp!—essential oils, and healing mushrooms, as well as potent lifestyle changes like meditation, digital fasting, and various types of therapeutic movement, which can offer breakthrough healing.

  Ancient healers not only believed in identifying the root cause of each patient’s illness, but they also did years of meticulous research, cataloguing and studying which natural remedies, derived from plants, flowers, mushrooms, herbs, and spices, work best for which illness. Part III offers an immersive, easy-to-understand guide to this ancient knowledge. I explain an ancient way of looking at illness through the lens of TCM’s Five Elements theory, which includes your organ systems, emotions, and lifestyle; provide eating plans to treat imbalance and ill health within each organ system; and offer ancient prescriptions for more than seventy common ailments that afflict far too many people in our country today, including digestive issues, hormonal havoc, immune dysfunction, neurological disorders, and autoimmune disease.

  Finally, in Part IV, you’ll find delicious, healthy recipes to help you put the dietary advice in this book into practice. By giving your organs, blood, and other tissues the simple, wholesome nutrients that have sustained humans for centuries, it’s possible to not only prevent and cure disease, but also to transform your health, so you can live your best life.

  As growing numbers of Americans fall ill after following their doctors’ orders and taking dangerous pharmaceuticals, and more people question the wisdom of Western medicine, alternatives are desperately needed. I wrote Ancient Remedies to respond to that need. On every page, I offer a new way of thinking about health and healing—one based on the time-tested knowledge from ancient medical systems the Western establishment would rather you didn’t know about. But by embracing these age-old approaches, you can, just as my mom did nearly twenty years ago, overcome chronic ailments, heal the root cause of your ill health, and reignite your inner spark. I’m grateful to you for picking up this book. In its pages you’ll discover the tools you need to make the goal of lifelong health, strength, vigor, satisfaction, and joy
a reality.

  PART I

  The Wisdom of Ancient Healing

  CHAPTER 1

  Ancient Medicine for a Modern World

  How Pharmaceuticals Took Over Healthcare, and Why We Need to Reclaim It

  It’s surprising to think that the practice of Western medicine as we know it began less than two hundred years ago, when the American Medical Association was founded in 1847. The first pharmaceutical companies were formed around the same time, and in the intervening years, the two industries partnered to set unprecedented prices—and reap sky-high profits. The pharmaceutical era gave rise to an increasingly systematic and formulaic approach to healing—one that is focused on treating individual, superficial symptoms instead of addressing the true, underlying root cause of disease, and has forgotten that each human being is a complex, synergistic blend of body, mind, and spirit. In doing so, modern medicine turned its back on thousands of years of medical knowledge about how the body works holistically—and how best to support healing.

  Ancient cultures around the world, including those in China, India, Greece, and the Middle East, created sophisticated medical systems at least four thousand years ago—and they’re still in use today in many countries. In fact, interest in ancient remedies is surging, including in the United States. Here’s why: Through years of trial and error, early physicians crafted gentle but powerful holistic therapies that relied on diet, herbs, essential oils, acupuncture, movement, and emotional strategies, like meditation, prayer, and spending time in nature. Their treatments were designed to heal the body on a deep level, curing disease from the inside out and elevating the mind and spirit to make you truly well—energetic, happy, robust, engaged. Today, these ancient approaches have been validated in hundreds of rigorous scientific studies. But most doctors in the United States still don’t prescribe them.