Author: Dara Dietz

Dara D Dietz is co-founder with her Husband of H.E.A.L. Marketplace, a private Natural Healing Association. As a teacher and counselor she has been supporting the members of H.E.A.L. with Natural Healing information and herbal supports since 1998. She continues to maintain strong ties to the Seventh-day Adventist Church. Since healing her own kidney ailments she has assisted thousands of people in discovering and using natural herbal remedies. Dara has written and compiled numerous articles on a wide variety of natural healing topics. Drawing from her own healing experiences and borrowing from the vast wisdom of natural healers long departed, she continues to provide H.E.A.L.’s international membership with down to earth natural healing wisdom in H.E.A.L.’s bi-weekly newsletters. Dara and her husband currently reside in Rutherfordton, North Carolina.
Ripe red raspberries and green raspberry leaves on a sunlit bush.
Herbal Healing, Women's & Men's Health

Menopause

Dara Dietz

Photo: Mirek Kielar / Pexels

Perimenopause, Hot Flashes, Night Sweats and the Change of Life

Understanding the Condition

Menopause is not a disease. It is a natural passage, as natural as the first period was in girlhood. Through the childbearing years, the ovaries make two main hormones each month. Estrogen builds the lining of the uterus and keeps the skin, bones, heart, bladder and vaginal tissue supple and strong. Progesterone, made after an egg is released, steadies the lining, calms the nerves and helps with sleep. The brain watches over all of it: the hypothalamus and pituitary send a hormone called FSH to call the ovaries into action each cycle.

As a woman moves through her forties, the ovaries’ supply of eggs runs low and they begin to answer that call less and less. The brain calls louder (FSH rises), and the hormones start to swing.

Line diagram of hormone levels from age 35 to 60: estrogen swings up and down through perimenopause then falls, progesterone falls first, and FSH rises steeply, with menopause marked at about age 51.
How the hormones shift through the change. Simplified diagram drawn for H.E.A.L. (not to scale).

How It Unfolds

  • Perimenopause (often four to ten years, usually starting in the forties). Ovulation becomes irregular, so progesterone falls first while estrogen swings high and low. This is the time of irregular or heavy periods, breast tenderness, PMS that grows worse, trouble sleeping, mood swings, and often thinning hair.
  • Menopause itself is one day: the point when a woman has gone 12 months in a row without a period. In this country it comes at about age 51 on average.
  • After menopause, the ovaries rest. The adrenal glands and fat tissue carry on making small amounts of hormones, and the liver keeps clearing used hormones from the body. This is why tired adrenals and a sluggish liver make the change so much harder.

Why the hot flashes come. The same part of the brain that calls to the ovaries also sets the body’s thermostat, sleep and heart rhythm. As estrogen falls and FSH rises, that center is unsettled. It decides the body is too hot, opens the blood vessels in the skin and turns on the sweat: a hot flash, or at night, a night sweat. Dr. Christopher wrote that this same disturbance can unsettle sleep, stamina, heartbeat, digestion and blood pressure, and that few women go through the change without some symptoms.

The common signs are hot flashes and night sweats; trouble sleeping; a racing or pounding heart; mood swings, anxiety and low moods; foggy memory; thinning hair; dryness of the skin and vaginal tissue; urgency or leaking of the bladder; weight settling around the middle; and joint aches. Over the longer term, falling estrogen leaves the bones and the heart with less protection, so this is the time to care for both.

Dr. Christopher believed the hard symptoms are not caused by the change itself but by a body that comes to it undernourished, without the raw materials it needs to make its own hormones. He saw women “glide smoothly through the changes of life” once that food was given. Medicine offers hormone replacement, but its own labels warn of risks to the uterus, breast and blood, and when it is stopped the symptoms often return.

The Emotional Side: the Energy Work

Healing the whole person. We are body, mind and spirit, and all three must heal together. When one part is neglected, the other two cannot find complete healing. A person can follow a perfect herbal program, but if she stays in a life that keeps wearing her down, or never makes time to care for herself, the body will keep losing ground. Healing the body often means facing what is happening in the heart and spirit as well.

The Hormonal Curtain

The real hormonal shift comes at the end, when the cycle stops. Many women think they’re home free when their cycles end without much drama, only to discover it has just begun.

From puberty on, the hormones that run a woman’s cycle also turn her attention outward. It is as if a curtain drops between her and the girl she was when it all began. Her focus turns to nesting, a home and babies, and all of that is hormonally driven. Something is lost during those years, too: the creative side of herself, so alive in her early teens. Not every woman loses it, but many put their inner selves on the back burner through the family years.

In perimenopause, the curtain lifts for longer and longer stretches, and at menopause it rises, never to fall again. The nesting urges simply fade, and you find yourself looking inward more and more. This is a gift. The old tales of the wise older woman, the understanding that comes from a lifetime of living, were always there. You just weren’t looking inward; too much else had your attention. Now you will bloom. You’ll write that book or pick up those paintbrushes again, and discover other amazing parts of yourself. It is time to make friends with yourself.

But behind that curtain is the stash of emotional bills: everything you swept under the rug or tucked away to deal with “later.” Later is here. The more unfinished business waiting there, the harder and more symptomatic your menopause will be.

Well, I hate to be the one to tell you, darlings, but the curtain is gone and the rug is up. It’s time to deal with yourself, or spend the rest of your life trying to medicate it away. You’re always free to keep denying the reality of your life, but you can no longer use the hormonal curtain as a barrier against the inner woman demanding your attention. Do the hard work on you, and become the woman you always knew you were.

Louise Hay, in her book Heal Your Body, describes these patterns:

  • Menopause problems: fear of no longer being wanted; fear of growing older; rejecting yourself; feeling you are not good enough. Turn it around: I am at peace through every change of life’s seasons, and I bless my body with love.

Emotional patterns paraphrased from Louise Hay, Heal Your Body (Hay House).

Areas Affected & Opening the Way to Healing

The change involves the whole hormone family: the ovaries stepping back, the hypothalamus and pituitary in the brain that set the thermostat and call to the ovaries, the adrenal glands that take over making hormones, the thyroid (whose troubles can look much like menopause), and the liver, which clears used hormones out of the body. It shows up in the skin and blood vessels (flashes and sweats), the heart, the nerves and sleep, the bones, and the bladder and vaginal tissue.

Opening the Way: Clearing the Liver and Bowels

  • Keep the bowels moving with LBF, building up one capsule a day until the bowels move two or three times a day. Used hormones the liver sends out through the bile are taken back into the blood if the stool sits.
  • Liver flushing. Juice fasting and flushing the liver are like hitting the restart button. When the body is out of balance, a good week of liver flushing clears a layer of toxins and helps the hormones settle. After that, an ELF (Emergency Liver Flush) once or twice a week until the symptoms have cleared.
  • Cool the triggers. Coffee and other caffeine, sugar, alcohol, spicy foods, hot drinks and stress all set off hot flashes. Many women find their flashes come at certain times of day once they start watching.
  • Hot and cold showers and fresh air. A hot and cold shower in the morning wakes up the circulation and trains the blood vessels to respond. Exercise, outdoor walks and sunshine steady the mood and protect the bones.

Feeding the Female System

  • Female Formula: the first support. Chaste tree berry, wild yam, dong quai, damiana, licorice and hops: it gives the body the raw material to balance its own hormones and calms the nerves, and it helps stop hot flashes, night sweats and the emotional free fall of the change. The daily amount is 1½ teaspoons. For hot flashes and night sweats, split it into three ½-teaspoon portions: ½ teaspoon in the morning, and the rest taken before your problem times. If the flashes come in the late afternoon, take the larger share in the early afternoon so the herbs are in the blood when they are needed most. For night sweats, take a dose at bedtime. Without these issues, take the full 1½ teaspoons in the morning.
  • Changease: hormonal food. Black cohosh, sarsaparilla, ginseng, licorice, blessed thistle, squaw vine, shatavari and vitex. When symptoms still persist after the Female Formula and liver flushing, add Changease alongside it: ½ to 1 teaspoon three times a day. It gives the body the raw material to make the hormones it needs in the last stages of the change; the shatavari is cooling and moistening, a help for hot flashes, night sweats and dryness, and the vitex supports the pituitary.
  • Wild yam cream: a helper alongside. Some women do best using both the Female Formula and a wild yam progesterone cream. Dara used the cream herself, mainly for thinning hair and the symptoms of perimenopause. It is valuable to a degree; the Female Formula is still the foundation, and the cream is an addition, not a replacement.
  • Feed the adrenals. The adrenals carry the load after menopause. The licorice in both formulas feeds them; when a woman is worn thin, see Rebuilding Tired Adrenals.
  • Heavy, breakthrough or lingering bleeding: kick it hard. The everyday Female Formula amount is 1½ teaspoons a day. When the bleeding turns heavy, comes between cycles, or a cycle refuses to end, even if it is only spotting, don’t let it drag on. Take 1 tablespoon all at once in a cup of hot water, and for heavy flooding with clots, up to three times a day. Keep it up for a day or two after the bleeding stops, then drop back to the usual dose. The natural progesterone in the wild yam can make the breasts tender at this higher dose; it eases within a day or two of returning to the normal dose. Any bleeding after menopause needs a doctor (see the box below).

Calming the Heart, Nerves and Sleep

  • A racing or pounding heart. Many women report palpitations through the change. Dara’s supports: NFX and the General Nervine for the nerves, with cayenne and hawthorn extracts for the heart. In hot water at bedtime, cayenne (working up gradually to 3 droppersful) and hawthorn (6 droppersful) make a calming evening tea; when palpitations wake you, take the cayenne and hawthorn every five minutes until the heart settles.
  • Sleep. 2 droppersful each of the General Nervine and NFX at bedtime help with falling asleep and staying asleep. See Two Formulas for a Good Night’s Sleep for more.

Thinning Hair

  • The Female Formula first. Thinning hair is one of the most common signs of perimenopause, and for many women it is the most upsetting. Dara’s own hair was falling out by the handful until she began the Female Formula; then it stopped. Use the daily amount above.
  • Clear the liver. The liver clears used hormones out of the body. When it is sluggish, the hormone swings are harder and the hair shows it. A week of liver flushing, then an ELF once or twice a week, supports the hair along with everything else.
  • Add Changease if it persists. When hair loss keeps on after the Female Formula and liver flushing, add Changease alongside them.
  • Wild yam cream. Dara used wild yam cream mainly for thinning hair, and some women do best using it together with the Female Formula.
  • Ease the stress and check the thyroid. Stress drives hair loss, and the nerve supports above help. Thyroid trouble also thins the hair and can look just like the change, so have it checked if the hair loss is heavy.

Protecting the Bones

  • Calcium the body can use. Dr. Christopher’s Calcium formula (horsetail grass, comfrey root, oat straw and lobelia) with Superfood: 1 teaspoon three times a day. Dara regards ordinary calcium pills as ground-up rock; plant calcium feeds the bones without leaving mineral residue for the kidneys.
  • Weight-bearing exercise and sunshine keep the bones strong; walking counts. Stop the calcium robbers: soft drinks, coffee and junk food.

Using Comfrey With Care

Comfrey root is one of the four herbs in the Calcium formula, used in traditional proportions as part of a blend. Take it at the dose on this sheet, 1 teaspoon three times a day. More is not faster.

When to Get Medical Care

Herbs are support alongside medical care, not a replacement for it. Any bleeding after menopause (once you have gone 12 months without a period) needs to be checked by a doctor, as does bleeding that is very heavy, comes every two weeks, or lasts much longer than usual during perimenopause. Have your thyroid checked if symptoms are strong, since thyroid trouble can look just like the change. A bone density scan in the years after menopause shows how the bones are holding up. If you are taking hormone replacement, work with your doctor to come off it gradually; stopping suddenly can bring a hard rebound.

Emergencies: chest pain or pressure, a racing heart with fainting, dizziness or shortness of breath, or heavy bleeding with lightheadedness. These need emergency care right away.

Level of Commitment

Most women pass through the change well with steady, simple support. How much you need depends on how much your body and your heart are carrying into it:

  • Gentle support. For most women in perimenopause and the change. The Female Formula, timed before your problem times; LBF to keep the bowels moving; cutting the triggers (caffeine, sugar, alcohol); water, walking and sunshine; the sleep supports as needed.
  • Focused cleansing. When the symptoms are strong or don’t settle: a week of liver flushing, then an ELF once or twice a week until the symptoms clear, with weeks of kidney flushing alternated in; add Changease to the Female Formula; the heart and nerve supports; the Calcium formula for the bones. Give it about three months.
  • Incurables Program. The change itself never calls for this. It is for a serious condition that comes along with it, such as fibroids, cysts, or cancer of the breast or uterus; see those sheets. The full Incurables Program includes cleansing the bloodstream with HEAL’s Blood Purifying formula. Blood Purifying contains chaparral, which has long been regarded as one of the strongest blood purifiers in herbal use. It has had years of bad press, but used wisely it supports the body in clearing growths, and over the years many members have used it to eliminate tumors. Use with care: take Blood Purifying in courses, not continuously: two dropperfuls 4 to 6 times a day for a week at a time, in a few ounces of grape juice, while drinking 64 to 128 oz. of liquid a day. Avoid it during pregnancy or nursing and with existing liver disease. If the skin or the whites of the eyes turn yellow, the urine turns dark, or there is pain under the right ribs, stop and have the liver checked.

More Is Not Faster

These doses are set to what the body can clear. Taking more stirs up more than the bowels, liver and kidneys can carry out, and that is when cleansing starts to feel like poisoning. Healing the body requires steady, consistent nutrition and action, not a bigger dose.

People are different, and now and then someone reacts poorly to a particular herb. If that happens, stop it. What I offer here is a guideline. You are the one living in your body, so work with the Holy Spirit and the wisdom the Lord has given you to apply these supports in the best way for your life.

A Loose Healing Plan

  1. Week 1: Build the foundation. Start your Foundational Program (Superfood and juicing, Echinacea, and bowel cleansing with LBF). Start the Female Formula, timed before your problem times, with a bedtime dose for night sweats. Begin cutting caffeine, sugar and alcohol, and notice what sets off your flashes.
  2. Week 2: Flush the liver. A week of liver flushing, then an ELF once or twice a week until the symptoms clear.
  3. Weeks 2 onward: Calm and protect. Add the sleep and heart supports if you need them, the Calcium formula with Superfood for the bones, and daily walking and sunshine.
  4. After a month or so: Take stock. If hot flashes, night sweats or mood swings persist, add Changease to the Female Formula. Weeks of kidney flushing can be alternated with the liver work.
  5. About 3 months: Most women are steady. Three months is the average time to bring the hormones into balance. Keep the Female Formula going through the change, easing down as the symptoms fade, and return to the supports whenever a rough patch comes.
  6. All along: the inner work. Make friends with yourself. Face what has been waiting behind the curtain, and give yourself the care you have given everyone else.

Stories from the Work

Dara’s Story: My Own Change

Menopause came for me in the middle of some of the most turbulent years of my life. Our move to Mountaindale, New York, had been a time of real growth, with all the drama that comes before growth. Our move to Hendersonville, North Carolina, gave us a little time to recover before our own family drama began, and perimenopause began right in the midst of it.

My hair started falling out by the handful. I had always had very thick hair, which was a good thing, because at that rate I was soon going to need a wig. My hairdresser suggested vitamins for stress. They helped a little, but nothing fixed it.

During those same years I was discovering the herbal cleansing programs and the herbs that support the female system. I began the Female Formula around 1997, when I was 37, with excellent results. My hair stopped falling out. My cycles improved, and the clots from the heavy bleeding that had been my lot for years were gone.

That was the beginning of a perimenopause that lasted about ten years. At 46 I began skipping cycles, and for several years I had one cycle every three months. In my 48th year, after 11 months without a cycle, I had one last one. It began with a feeling of emotional free fall, and my body seemed determined to make up for all 11 months: I was passing huge blood clots. I took a full tablespoon of the Female Formula three times that day and kept up that dose until the cycle ended. By midafternoon of the first day the bleeding had slowed to a normal flow, and my emotions felt steadier after that first large dose. The bleeding lasted five days and stopped. I kept taking the large dose for several more days. The last thing I wanted was to see that bleeding return.

During those twelve or thirteen years, I wrote my biography, recovered a marriage that was all but dead, and discovered who this woman really was.

The regular dose of the Female Formula is 1½ teaspoons a day. A tablespoon three times a day is the dose for controlling heavy bleeding, and the same approach handles breakthrough bleeding or a cycle that won’t end: kick it hard and get it done, then return to the regular dose. See Feeding the Female System.

A Member’s Story: Calming the Heart Through Perimenopause

A member in North Carolina shared how perimenopause brought what she called “panic attacks”: waking dizzy and lightheaded, her heart racing like a freight train, over and over. Every night she made herself a hot tea with 3 droppersful of cayenne (working up to it gradually) and 6 droppersful of hawthorn, and took 2 droppersful each of the General Nervine and NF (now NFX) formulas to fall asleep and stay asleep. When she woke with palpitations, she took the cayenne and hawthorn every five minutes until it stopped, usually just once. She used these supports at bedtime for years with great results; the only time the supports failed her was when she had overdone the caffeine or sugar.

Off the Hormones and Sleeping Through the Night (from Dr. Christopher)

A woman in Vancouver, British Columbia came to Dr. Christopher “climbing the wall” with nervous tension. Her hot flashes were driving her almost insane, she threw off the covers all night, and her husband was losing sleep and patience. She was taking estrogen but felt it was doing her more harm than good.

He put her on the three-day cleanse and the mucusless diet. She suffered for a time coming off the commercial hormones, but took the female corrective formula and the hormone formula (now Changease), each three times a day. A short time later she told him her whole life had changed: she slept all night without throwing off the covers, the nervous screaming jags were gone, and her husband fell in love with her again. She said it was worth every bit of the change in diet and the effort of taking the herbs.

More on the Female System

This information is for education only. It is not meant to diagnose, treat or replace care from a qualified health professional.

1 Corinthians, Bible Studies, Spiritual Healing

Until It Is No Longer New

Dara Dietz

Reflections on 1 Corinthians 11:2

A long brick walkway under a pergola, its white pillars wrapped with old vines

“I praise you for remembering me in everything and for holding to the traditions just as I passed them on to you.” (1 Corinthians 11:2, NIV)

The Remedy says it warmly: Paul is so pleased with them for remembering all he taught them and holding firmly to the truth he shared. The word “traditions” here is the Greek paradoseis — things handed over. Paul received the gospel from Christ and handed it on (1 Corinthians 11:23; 15:3), and these believers were holding on to what had been handed to them.

The Hard Part Is Keeping It

Paul recognized the effort it took to stick with the changes they had taken on while he was with them. He understood how hard it is to accept something new, to learn it, and then to keep doing it until it is no longer a new thing. The science of the brain wasn’t available then, but observation and wisdom could see how the mind works.

Think about who these people were. The society they came from was different in every way from the truths they had embraced into their hearts and minds. It was an entirely new way of living — and they learned it and kept living it without leaving the city and community they lived in. They changed their gods. They took a new foundation to build their lives on, right in the middle of the same society. That is truly huge.

A Perfect Storm

A change like that could not have happened if society had been at rest, with nothing stirring the heart to go looking for somewhere to rest. The Roman world was that storm. People were weary of the drama — of leaders, of politicians, of a military that could turn on itself at any moment. The more affluent Roman culture became, the more corrupt its leaders grew, and the decay was already in public view when Christ was born. A single ruler could give an order and every boy in a town would be killed, as Herod, Rome’s appointed king, did in Bethlehem (Matthew 2:16).

Brain science shows the mind holds hard to its old foundational ways of thinking until something strong enough — a crisis, an epiphany, a force — pushes it to look for something new. Into that weary world, Christ brought something new.

The Imprint That Remains

Two thousand years later the whole world carries the imprint of what Paul and the disciples of Christ left behind. Slavery, once ordinary everywhere, has been abolished by law nearly everywhere. The life of Christ is known in every corner of the earth — not accepted by every culture, but known well enough that some fight against it. It began with ordinary people like those Corinthians, holding fast to what was handed to them.

So Paul’s praise is for us too. What Christ hands us is new at first, and it is hard. But we keep at it, day by day, until it is no longer new — until it is simply who we are. And then we hand it on.

1 Corinthians, Bible Studies, Spiritual Healing

Follow Me as I Follow Christ

Dara Dietz

Reflections on 1 Corinthians 11:1

A man walking ahead on a leaf-covered woodland path

“Follow my example, as I follow the example of Christ.” (1 Corinthians 11:1, NIV)

At first it sounds bold, maybe even a little proud. Who would tell a whole church to copy him? But read it again. Paul is not calling for followers of his own. He is saying, as long as I am following Christ and you can see Christ in me, let me be your example, just as Christ is my example. The condition is built right into the sentence. Phillips puts it plainly: copy me, as I copy Christ himself.

The Remedy adds what that example looks like — following Paul in reaching others in love. That fits the verses just before it, where Paul says he seeks not his own good but the good of many, so that they may be saved (1 Corinthians 10:33). The chapter break was added much later; this verse is really the closing line of Paul’s thought in chapter 10.

We Cannot Imitate Someone We Do Not Know

We cannot imitate or follow someone we do not know. When a person first comes to Christ, they don’t yet know Him well. So the one who pointed them to Christ becomes the example they follow, until they meet Him and develop their own relationship with Him. That is a sobering place to stand.

It is our duty, through daily time spent with Christ, to allow His character, His mind, His Glory and His Love to envelop us, fill us and saturate us, until we have the mind of Christ (1 Corinthians 2:16). By beholding we become changed (2 Corinthians 3:18).

It Is Not Us

Each morning I need to remember that it is not me, my talents, or anything in me that draws these lost and hungry souls. No, it is the mind and heart of Christ we have become. The mind and heart of Christ in us will draw those seeking truth.

Then we are a useful tool in the hand of Christ — no longer a raw recruit, but a soldier He can place anywhere in His ranks and count on to carry out His orders as He would (2 Timothy 2:3–4), a worker in His field (Matthew 9:38), His light on a hill (Matthew 5:14). And to us He continues to be a lamp unto our feet and a light to our path (Psalm 119:105), the Good Shepherd (John 10:11), a friend that sticks closer than a brother (Proverbs 18:24) — our closest and dearest friend, our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

We Do Not Stand Alone

Because Christ is our example, we can say with Paul to those newly come to Him: you may follow my example, because I am following the example of Christ. And as soon as their own relationship with Christ is strong, they will begin to bloom, the Love of Christ flowing from them as they show His Love to their world. Then they become the example for someone else, and the chain goes on — each link pointing past itself to Him.

A wooden boardwalk winding through green trees
1 Corinthians, Bible Studies, Spiritual Healing

The Quiet Change

Dara Dietz

Reflections on 1 Corinthians 10:33

A wooden boardwalk winding through green trees

“Even as I try to please everyone in every way. For I am not seeking my own good but the good of many, so that they may be saved.” (1 Corinthians 10:33, NIV)

The Remedy says it this way: remember to be winsome in dealing with others, not promoting your own agenda but spreading the Remedy of Jesus Christ, so that many may be eternally healed.

What does this look like, trying to please everyone and not looking out for your own advantage? It begins with keeping your word, whatever the personal cost (Psalm 15:4). It means noticing the little things that would make someone else’s day, and doing them when wisdom allows.

Balance is the key. An organized life leaves you free to do the little things. A cluttered life keeps you so busy with your own mess that you never notice anyone else. Living an open, other-focused life does not mean you stop living your own. It means you become organized and responsible, aware of how your own growth affects your ability to bless others.

Start at Home

Start with your family. Clean up your world, and really notice each member of your family. Do it for yourself; they don’t need to know you are doing it. Do special things to draw them out, so you can know them better. Start growing your loving muscles at home with the ones closest to you. As kindness and the little extras become your habit, they will naturally spill over into the rest of your life.

Start small: one choice, one day. Learn to be consistent with your new habits. It takes time to heal and change a lifetime of how you react and speak to those around you. Some people will not approve; they were comfortable with the old you. That is fine. Paul was not seeking approval but the good of others. Growth is never easy or completely painless. Stay with your plan, and stay with your time with the Lord. You will find your life expanding. You will become more.

Making close companions of your family is a true gift to yourself. Enjoy them, let them in on the new you, and see if they don’t jump on board and begin working on themselves too. And so the wave of Love and Light moves out from you, first to those your heart is bound to most, then out into the world around you.

Don’t Announce It

It all begins with one person making one choice to change. That choice, made alone between you and Christ, gathers strength in the currents of Love and Truth flowing through the universe, on into eternity. You are not alone in it. You are standing with the God of all creation, and all heaven is ready to help you in your new life.

These are not changes you announce. This is a new life you begin quietly, one observation at a time. When you notice one thing you can do, just do it (Matthew 6:3–4). The reward is greater when someone asks, “What has changed about you? You seem different.” Then what you share is not just words, but a real answer to a real question, from someone who truly wants to know (1 Peter 3:15).

People are drawn to Christ because they are drawn to the winsome way you have begun treating them.

A clear mountain pool below small waterfalls
1 Corinthians, Bible Studies, Spiritual Healing

Every Movement in the Water

Dara Dietz

Reflections on 1 Corinthians 10:32

A clear mountain pool below small waterfalls

“Do not cause anyone to stumble, whether Jews, Greeks or the church of God.” (1 Corinthians 10:32, NIV)

The Remedy puts it this way: do not knowingly act in ways that confuse others about God, or lead them astray, whether believers or non-believers.

Be open and caring toward everyone, regardless of who they are or how they affect your life. Every soul born into this world is a child of God and deserves to be treated with the wisest, most interested concern. No one is beneath your notice.

We cannot be aware of everyone we affect. The wave each choice creates travels far past our ability to follow it. Picture it this way: we are all living under water. Every movement, no matter how small, shifts the water around us. You cannot pass by anything without changing it in some way. You cannot even come close enough to notice another person without having an effect on them. Water carries every twitch, every slight change in us, out to everything around us. Nothing we do is of no consequence.

This is why Paul tells us to put no stumbling block in anyone’s way. We never know how far the ripple of a careless act will carry, or whose faith it may unsettle.

God created the water, and He sees all of its movement at once. He is with us in everything we do, yet He is not tied to physical reality as we are. He lives in eternity, but He chooses to participate in linear time with us. In eternity, past, present, and future are one before Him (Psalm 90:2). He can see everything without being pushed around by any of it, and when He chooses to act in time, He acts with perfect control.

We cannot do that. We affect each other on every level. So move carefully through your life, not with fear but with understanding, aware that what you think, say, and do reaches far beyond yourself. Live in the moment, aware of all that moment holds and all you can do to better your own life and the lives of everyone sharing it with you.

And never stop learning. Knowledge ennobles us, empowers us, and lifts us above the life we were born into. The more we understand, the better stewards we become of ourselves and of everyone our ripples touch. The more you know, the more you are.

Fresh green fronds growing out in front of older leaves
Bible Studies, Romans, Spiritual Healing

I Do Not Want to Be a Pardoned Sinner

Dara Dietz

Reflections on Romans 4:3

Fresh green fronds growing out in front of older leaves

“What does Scripture say? ‘Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.’” (Romans 4:3, NIV)

One modern paraphrase renders this verse to say that because Abraham believed, God “canceled his sins and declared him ‘not guilty.’” When I read that, my heart cried out. I want my sin condition healed! I want God to create in me a new, clean heart that no longer wants to be sinful and selfish. I do not want to be a pardoned sinner!

The Remedy captures what I long for: Abraham trusted God, “and his trust was recognized as righteousness because the distrust caused through Satan’s lies had been removed, and through trust he was endowed with a new heart, right motives and Christlike principles.”

How sad that anyone could believe God would do only a halfway job of healing His creation, that all through eternity we would have to keep arguing with our fallen natures.

A Clean Heart

The Lord will create a clean heart in us (Psalm 51:10). This means we will be free from the inclination to want to sin. The inner man of sin will be removed. In our walk with the Father, we will have crucified these sinful attributes of our characters. This is done by refusing to agree with, accept, or think on selfish, evil things. We starve the man of sin in us to death by refusing to feed him.

Every time we shut down the inclinations, thoughts, or actions to be selfish or sinful, we weaken this part of our nature. We don’t have the emotional or spiritual strength to wage this war alone. This is where the Father promises all the power of His throne to aid even the weakest member of His family who is choosing to wage this war. Any movement or choice in this direction floods our life with power from heaven.

When we begin this war, our ability to recognize and take in this heaven-sent Grace and power will be small. Each day, as we make our will subject to our wishes, along with the growing connection with the Father that comes from spending time with Him, our ability to take in more of His saving, healing power grows, as it does its work of healing and restoring us to the mind of Christ.

Our wishes are His wishes when we have His heart and mind in us. We truly want to do well; we are just running our new life on the old sinful platform in our brains. As we do the good, we change our inclinations, until our knee-jerk reaction is the mind of Christ acting first, not something we have to catch and redo.

Learning to Absorb

When our physical bodies are sick, it is all but impossible to absorb the nutrition from the good, healthy food we eat. One of the most energy-consuming things our bodies do is produce the hydrochloric acid bath the stomach uses to break down our food and release its nutrition. When the body is sick, this creates a downward spiral. We flood our body with good, nutritious food, but most of it passes through unabsorbed, because the body is too weak to make the strong bath needed to break it down.

So it goes in the spiritual life. The Father floods our hearts and minds with His healing Love and Grace, but we do not have the spiritual strength to absorb all He sends. In the beginning, only a little is taken in. Each day that we take time to commune with the Father, spend time in the Word, and meditate on His Love, our ability to absorb grows, and our connection to heaven grows with it. We are able to feast on and absorb greater and greater amounts of the healing nutrients sent straight from the throne of God. This is our spiritual healing journey.

Junk Food for the Mind

You must control your mind; there is so much power for good or evil in our thoughts. Keep your mind away from sinful, evil, selfish subject matter. Learn to feed on the beautiful, healthy, and uplifting. Close your mind to negative subject matter. Turn off the news and the TV. All the material pouring into you from every direction is destroying your connection with the Father and dwarfing your mind.

You would never knowingly let junk food cross your lips if you understood what it does to your body. Even one candy bar’s worth of sugar can weaken your immune response for hours afterward, leaving you open to whatever virus is floating by. Junk food throws open the doors of your body to invaders.

Junk food for the mind does the same. It breaks your connection with the Father and dwarfs your mind, making it harder for the healing power to enter and heal. And feeding your mind and heart on junk is addictive, just as junk food is. Choose to disconnect from the garbage media.

The more time you spend with the Father, the more you will want to be with Him. Your heart and mind will expand. This is your choice.

The sun glowing behind gray clouds and bare branches
Bible Studies, Romans, Spiritual Healing

Why God Waits

Dara Dietz

Reflections on Romans 4:2

The sun glowing behind gray clouds and bare branches

The Remedy puts Romans 4:2 this way: “If Abraham was somehow healed by his own efforts at keeping a set of rules or performing certain rituals, then he would have his own healing formula to promote and would not need trust in God.”

If our strength of will to do good things could heal the sin-sick condition in us, why did Christ have to come and live the perfect life, so He could provide the healing antidote for a sick race? If anything we could do would heal our bent toward selfishness, we would save ourselves and would not need a Redeemer. The truth is, we have no power to create the changes in our DNA, to heal the sin condition Adam passed on to his children.

Children in Grown Bodies

Adam and Eve were emotionally very small children. They had fully developed bodies, but they were not given the time to grow up emotionally. They sinned, and fell from Grace, as small children, knowing nothing of life, completely immature. That was all they had to pass on to their children: a lot of blank, unlearned DNA, nothing good to hand down, only the blotch of sin. How sad for humanity.

We pass on to our children what we have developed in ourselves. Parents who have grown in character, skill, and self-control give their children a richer start than parents who have children before they themselves have grown up. Adam and Eve had strong, perfect bodies, but they had not had time to develop the inner life, and sin damaged what little was there. The DNA they passed on to humanity was damaged and nearly empty. They had nothing in themselves to bless their offspring with.

Why Healing Has Taken So Long

How long it has taken for a people to develop to the place where God will be allowed to heal the living. God, with all His wisdom, power, and Love, has been unable to effect a healing in humanity, because no one understood enough to allow it, or even to understand what that healing was. Until we are able to accept it with our minds, and agree to take part in the process by an understanding, conscious decision to be healed, God is unable to heal us, because we would no longer be us if He did.

We all need to understand this point. If God were to heal us completely from all sin and selfishness, from our desire to sin, our inclination to selfishness, all the traces of evil lurking in our minds and hearts, without our agreement, we would cease to exist. We would no longer be who we are. There would be someone else, with a pure heart and mind, full of joy and all the great stuff, but without the person known as me. I would be gone, replaced by a perfect clone of myself.

Unless I agree to and want the healing changes God is able to make in my heart and mind, He cannot make them without wiping me out and making a new me that is not me. This is why He has taken so long to heal this sin infection. We must understand and trust Him enough to agree intelligently to the process. For God to heal our sinful self while we continue to be us, we must agree, understand, and cooperate, allowing His strength and Love to fortify us in our choice to do well.

My Choice, His Power

I can choose to do well. I can choose to stop a bad habit. I can choose to be kind and loving when I feel ratty and prickly. But my will and emotional strength to do what I choose is not enough. In my own strength I fail every time. It is when the healing Love and Grace of God flows into me that my will becomes stronger.

I choose it. Then, in the power of God’s Grace, I truly want it. Then, as I move forward in the direction I have freely chosen, I find I have the strength to persevere and become the person who honestly is this new way. The choice has become me. I am no longer drawn to the old way; the new way is who I truly am. It has been made a part of me, and now I am free to move on to my next better choice, onward and upward.

The power comes when we apply our will, as weak as it may be, to our choice. We choose, we apply our will, we move one little inch in that direction, and He fills us with all the power we can hold to get up and march forward.

It is all us, and it is all His healing Grace. We could not do it alone, and God cannot do it without us.

The Toe Slid Forward

This is how we are re-created in His image while we live, so that we will be ready to meet Him when He returns. “We shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2). This is a true miracle of Grace and Love.

All heaven, all the power in heaven, is just waiting for the weakest soul to make a choice and slide that toe forward just a bit. Then they will find they have the strength of Samson. That one choice, along with the action of the will, is all the permission God needs to fill us with power straight from His throne.

This is Love: His eyes constantly roaming through the earth, looking for the very beginning of a choice, so He can fill the human heart with strength to stand and be strong (2 Chronicles 16:9).

I have seen this miracle in my own life so many times through the years. Looking back, I see His healing flowing into me as soon as it was my choice to change. Just as soon as it was me who truly wanted healing, He was right there with the strength to move forward. It is all in the mind; we must control our minds.

Ripe red raspberries and green raspberry leaves on a sunlit bush.
Herbal Healing, Women's & Men's Health

Endometriosis

Dara Dietz

Photo: Mirek Kielar / Pexels

When the Lining of the Uterus Grows Where It Doesn’t Belong

Understanding the Condition

The uterus is a strong, muscular organ about the size of a pear, sitting low in the pelvis. Its inner lining, the endometrium, is a living, blood-rich tissue that renews itself every month. Through the first half of the cycle, estrogen from the ovaries builds the lining up, thick and full of tiny blood vessels, ready to nourish a baby. If no baby comes, the hormones drop, the lining breaks down, and the uterus contracts to push it out as the monthly flow. It is one of the body’s regular cleansings: the old lining leaves, and a fresh one begins.

Endometriosis is what happens when tissue like that lining begins growing outside the uterus. It settles most often on the ovaries, on the ligaments and in the pouch behind the uterus, on the outside of the bowel and on the bladder (see the picture below). Wherever it lands, it still answers to the monthly hormones. Each cycle it swells and bleeds just as the lining inside the uterus does, but that blood has nowhere to go. It sits and irritates the tissue around it, the area becomes inflamed, and over months and years scar tissue forms. The scarring can glue neighboring organs together (adhesions), and on the ovaries the trapped old blood can form cysts, called endometriomas or “chocolate cysts.”

Side-view diagram of the pelvis: on the left a clear bowel leaves the uterus room; on the right a swollen, packed colon presses on the uterus, pushing it forward and down, with spots of endometriosis behind the uterus, on the ovary, on the bowel and on the bladder.
The bowel and the uterus are close neighbors. Simplified diagram drawn for H.E.A.L. (not to scale).

How It Develops

Medical science does not have one answer for why the tissue ends up where it does. The leading explanations are that some of the monthly flow travels backward through the fallopian tubes into the pelvis, which happens to most women at times; that the immune system, which normally clears that stray tissue, fails to do its job; and that the tissue is fed by too much estrogen and a body full of inflammation. What all of these have in common is a body that is overloaded and not clearing what it should.

That is where the bowel comes in. Look at the picture above: the colon loops right over and behind the uterus, and the rectum runs down its back. A bowel packed with old waste swells and presses on the uterus and its neighbors. The waste sitting there putrefies, and that poison is picked up by the blood and the lymph that serve the whole pelvis. Constipation also works against the hormones. The liver packs up used estrogen and sends it out through the bile into the bowel, to leave with the stool. When the stool sits, much of that estrogen is taken back into the blood, and more estrogen means more fuel for the misplaced tissue.

What Dara Has Seen

“It is completely preventable. I have found from my own observations that every woman I have supported with this issue has had a lifetime of chronic constipation. The bowels have putrefied the uterus.”

Dr. Christopher taught the same thing: many diseases, including disorders of the female organs, begin because the bowel and the bloodstream are filthy, and the first task is to clean them up and keep them clean. He shared Dr. Henry Bieler’s observation that when the diet overloads the body with wastes it cannot handle, the body pushes them out monthly through the uterus, using it like a garbage filter, until over the years the uterus breaks down. Dr. Christopher also counted the inorganic estrogen of birth control pills among the great contributors to female troubles.

What it feels like. Endometriosis affects roughly one woman in ten during the childbearing years, and many go years before they are diagnosed. The signs are periods that grow more painful over time, pelvic pain between periods, low back pain, pain with bowel movements or urination during the period, pain during intimacy, heavy or irregular bleeding, bloating, constipation or diarrhea that comes and goes with the cycle, deep tiredness, and trouble conceiving. How much it hurts does not always match how much is there: a little can hurt a great deal.

The only sure way medicine confirms endometriosis is by looking inside with a small camera (laparoscopy). An ultrasound can show cysts on the ovaries. The usual medical answers are hormone treatments that stop the cycle, surgery to remove the growths and, in the end, removing the uterus and ovaries. The growths often come back after surgery, which tells us the cause has not been touched. Dr. Christopher urged women to at least give the natural alternatives a try before surgery.

The Emotional Side: the Energy Work

Healing the whole person. We are body, mind and spirit, and all three must heal together. When one part is neglected, the other two cannot find complete healing. A person can follow a perfect herbal program, but if she stays in a life that keeps wearing her down, or never makes time to care for herself, the body will keep losing ground. Healing the body often means facing what is happening in the heart and spirit as well.

The female organs hold our feelings about being a woman: whether we feel safe, valued and cared for, and whether we care for ourselves. Louise Hay, in her book Heal Your Body, describes these patterns:

  • Endometriosis: feeling insecure, disappointed and frustrated; turning to sugar in place of loving yourself; blaming others. Turn it around: I am strong, and I am worth loving. Being a woman is a gift. I love myself, and my life is full.
  • Female problems in general: denying yourself; rejecting your own femininity and the feminine side of life. Turn it around: I am glad to be a woman. I love who I am, and I love my body.
  • Fibroids and cysts (endometriosis often forms cysts on the ovaries): nursing a hurt from a partner; a wound to your sense of yourself as a woman. Turn it around: I let go of the pattern in me that drew this hurt. I choose to bring only good into my life.
  • Constipation: refusing to let go of old ideas; stuck in the past; sometimes holding back and holding on. Turn it around: As I let go of the past, what is new, fresh and alive comes in. I let life flow through me.

Emotional patterns paraphrased from Louise Hay, Heal Your Body (Hay House).

Areas Affected & Opening the Way to Healing

Endometriosis involves the whole neighborhood of the pelvis: the uterus and its lining, the ovaries and fallopian tubes, the ligaments and pouch behind the uterus, and the outer walls of the bowel and bladder. Behind them all stand the liver, which must break down used hormones and clear the waste, and the kidneys, which carry it out. The work is to get the bowel moving and clean, open up the circulation in the pelvis so the stagnant blood and old tissue can be carried away, feed the female organs so they can rebuild, and keep the liver and kidneys clearing.

First, the Bowel

The bowel comes first and stays first the whole way through. Nothing else on this sheet can do its work while a loaded bowel is pressing on the uterus and pouring waste into it.

  • LBF (Lower Bowel Formula). Take 1 capsule with dinner the first day, 2 the second, 3 the third, and keep adding one a day until you have good, easy movements. Most people land at 3 to 5 a day; some need many more. There is no limit: the goal is two to three good movements a day. Once the bowel is moving, add the fiber blend so the bowel can be cleaned out as well as moved.
  • Water and food. Drink plenty of distilled water, and move toward Dr. Christopher’s mucusless diet: fresh fruits and vegetables, whole grains, nuts and seeds, with little or no meat, dairy, sugar, white flour or processed food. The diet that keeps the bowel clean is the diet that keeps the uterus clean.
  • High enemas. In the Focused and Incurables levels, a high enema with distilled water every other day, followed by a soothing implant (8 oz. aloe vera gel with 8 oz. distilled water), helps wash out the old waste packed in the colon.

Opening the Way: Packs, Warmth and Movement

  • Castor oil packs, every night. Soak a generous piece of flannel (at least a foot square) in castor oil, warm it, and lay it over the whole lower belly, from the navel to the pubic bone and from hip to hip. Cover with plastic wrap and a towel, add a hot water bottle, and leave it on all night. Castor oil draws circulation deep into the pelvis and helps soften and move congested tissue and old scar tissue. Don’t be stingy with the size or the oil. Baking soda with soap takes the oil off in the morning.
  • Hot and cold. A hot and cold sitz bath (sitting in hot water, then cold) or a hot and cold shower aimed over the lower belly and lower back, one minute hot and one minute cold, seven times, brings fresh blood in and carries the stagnant blood out. Massage the area as you go. Twice a day is ideal.
  • Abdominal massage. Gently knead the lower belly in the direction the colon moves (up the right side, across, and down the left) for 10 to 15 minutes a day, to help the bowel and to work the pelvic organs. Massaging while lying head-down on a slant board takes the weight of the bowel off the uterus.
  • Move. Walking, bouncing on a mini-trampoline or light jogging tones the bowel and the pelvic organs and moves the lymph. Start small and build up; never exercise to the point of exhaustion.

Drawing Out What Has Settled: the Vaginal Bolus

The bolus is an internal poultice. It works right where the trouble is, feeding and strengthening the female organs and drawing out the toxic waste that has settled there. Dr. Christopher reported many women clearing cysts, tumors and infections with this routine.

  • What goes in it. Equal parts of eight powdered herbs: squaw vine, slippery elm bark, yellow dock root, comfrey root, marshmallow root, chickweed, golden seal root and mullein. Work them into coconut oil until it reaches a pie-crust consistency, roll it into sticks about as thick as your finger, cut them about an inch long, and keep them in the refrigerator.
  • How to use it. Insert one at bedtime and wear a sanitary pad, not a tampon. Leave it in through the next day; a little coming out in the morning is normal. In the evening, douche with a pint of warm water and 2 tablespoons of fresh lemon juice or raw apple cider vinegar before inserting the next one. Six nights a week, resting over the Lord’s day. Pause the bolus during your period and start again once the flow has stopped. Not for a young woman who has not yet been sexually active.

Feeding the Female System

Dara keeps three formulas for the female system, each with its own job. For endometriosis, the Female Formula and Nu-Fem are the pair to use, and Nu-Fem is the one that rebuilds.

  • Female Formula: food for the female system. Chaste tree berry, wild yam, dong quai, damiana, licorice and hops. It gives the body the raw material to make and balance its own hormones and calms the nerves. The everyday dose is 1½ teaspoons a day, stopping the week of your cycle. Three months is the average time to bring a cycle back into balance; it is not unusual to skip a cycle the first month.
  • Nu-Fem: rebuilding the female organs. Dr. Christopher’s female corrective: golden seal, blessed thistle, false unicorn, red raspberry, squaw vine, cramp bark, uva ursi, ginger and a little cayenne. This is the formula that rebuilds the uterus, ovaries and tubes for endometriosis, cysts and fibroids, and it is added to the Female Formula. ½ to 1 teaspoon in a cup of distilled water two or three times a day, six days a week. Dr. Christopher saw many severe cases of years of suffering cleared up in 90 to 120 days.
  • Changease: hormonal food, only if needed. Black cohosh, sarsaparilla, ginseng, licorice, blessed thistle, squaw vine, shatavari and vitex. Not a regular part of the endometriosis program. Add it only when there is a clear need for hormonal food, such as the shifts of the teen years, after childbirth or around menopause: ½ to 1 teaspoon three times a day.
  • Red raspberry leaf tea. A cup or more a day. It has always strengthened the female organs, and it is the gentle start for young girls.
  • Potassium broth. Dr. Christopher taught that cysts and tumors will not grow where there is enough potassium. One to three cups a day of broth simmered from thick potato peelings, greens, celery, onion and garlic (see the Liver Flushing e-book for the full recipe).

Relief for the Hard Days

  • For cramps: Lobelia extract, usually one good dropperful (up to two, depending on the size of the person and how bad the pain is), or cramp bark extract, ½ to 1 teaspoon, in a little water. Within 10 to 15 minutes a wave of relaxation washes through and the uterus lets go. For pain that is already severe, alternate cramp bark and the antispasmodic tincture every 15 minutes, adding lobelia on the hour, until it eases. Starting at the first twinge works far better than waiting.
  • For a heavy flow: Ex-Mens Formula (red raspberry, prickly ash, blue cohosh, wild yam and cinnamon), 2 to 4 droppersful three or four times a day as soon as a heavy cycle begins, setting the Female Formula aside until the cycle has passed. The flow usually slows within a few hours. If bleeding goes past 7 days, or comes back too soon, Dara uses the Female Formula at 1 tablespoon a day in hot water for a day or two past the bleeding instead.
  • A castor oil pack and warmth over the lower belly on painful days, and rest.

Using Comfrey With Care

Comfrey root is one of the eight herbs in the vaginal bolus, where it feeds and rebuilds tissue. Used this way, as part of a blend placed right where it is needed, it is not taken in by mouth. Use the bolus six nights a week, resting one, as described above.

When to Get Medical Care

Herbs are support alongside medical care, not a replacement for it. Pelvic pain has many causes, so have new or worsening pain checked before assuming it is endometriosis. If you are trying to conceive, work with your doctor as well.

Emergencies: sudden, severe pain in the belly or pelvis (a burst or twisted ovarian cyst, or a pregnancy outside the uterus, can look like this), pain with fever and chills, fainting or dizziness, or bleeding that soaks a pad every hour for more than two hours. These need emergency care right away. For hemorrhage, Dr. Christopher’s remedy while you get help is a teaspoon of cayenne stirred into a glass of warm water.

Level of Commitment

Endometriosis is not a quick fix. It took years of a loaded bowel and an overloaded body to build, and it takes steady work to clear. Dara has seen many women who want to be well but are not willing to do the hard work it takes. Be honest with yourself about where you are:

What Dara Has Seen

“I have known several women who have worked with endometriosis. Sadly, none of them really put in the time and effort. They did find relief, and their symptoms eased and cleared up, but I don’t know of anyone who was able to become pregnant and have children.”

Relief can come with less, but if you hope to carry a child, give the program everything it asks, for as long as it takes.

  • Gentle support (prevention). For young women and girls with painful periods or a lifetime of constipation, before endometriosis takes hold. Get the bowel moving every day with LBF and good food, red raspberry leaf tea, and the Female Formula. This is where endometriosis is prevented.
  • Focused cleansing. For painful, heavy periods and pelvic pain that are building, or a milder case. Add Nu-Fem to the Female Formula, castor oil packs every night, hot and cold, the bolus six nights a week, high enemas, and weeks of liver flushing alternated with weeks of kidney flushing so the liver keeps clearing the old estrogen and waste.
  • Incurables Program. For diagnosed endometriosis. In Dara’s experience, true endometriosis needs the entire Incurables Program, because flushing the liver and kidneys clears the waste while the herbal supports rebuild the female organs. Everything on this sheet continues, along with the cold sheet treatment once or twice a week and cleansing the bloodstream with HEAL’s Blood Purifying formula. Blood Purifying contains chaparral, which has long been regarded as one of the strongest blood purifiers in herbal use. It has had years of bad press, but used wisely it supports the body in clearing growths, and over the years many members have used it to eliminate tumors. Use with care: take Blood Purifying in courses, not continuously: two dropperfuls 4 to 6 times a day for a week at a time, in a few ounces of grape juice, while drinking 64 to 128 oz. of liquid a day. Avoid it during pregnancy or nursing and with existing liver disease. If the skin or the whites of the eyes turn yellow, the urine turns dark, or there is pain under the right ribs, stop and have the liver checked.

More Is Not Faster

These doses are set to what the body can clear. Taking more stirs up more than the bowels, liver and kidneys can carry out, and that is when cleansing starts to feel like poisoning. Healing the body requires steady, consistent nutrition and action, not a bigger dose.

People are different, and now and then someone reacts poorly to a particular herb. If that happens, stop it. What I offer here is a guideline. You are the one living in your body, so work with the Holy Spirit and the wisdom the Lord has given you to apply these supports in the best way for your life.

A Loose Healing Plan

  1. Weeks 1–2: Open the bowel. Start your Foundational Program (Superfood and juicing, Echinacea, and bowel cleansing with LBF). Build up the LBF until the bowel moves two to three times a day, drink plenty of water, and begin moving toward the mucusless diet. Nothing else works until this does.
  2. Weeks 1–2: Begin feeding. Start the Female Formula, and add Nu-Fem as soon as the bowel is moving. Red raspberry leaf tea daily. Keep lobelia or cramp bark on hand for the hard days.
  3. Week 2 onward: Open the way. Castor oil packs over the lower belly every night, hot and cold once or twice a day, and abdominal massage and gentle movement daily. Begin the vaginal bolus six nights a week, with the lemon or vinegar douche each evening, pausing it during your period.
  4. Weeks 3 onward: Flush. A week of liver flushing, then a week of kidney flushing, for as many rounds as your level of commitment calls for. For diagnosed endometriosis, this is the full Incurables Program, with Blood Purifying in week-long courses and the cold sheet treatment once or twice a week.
  5. About 3 to 4 months: Take stock. Most women see the cycle steady and the pain lessen within three months; Dr. Christopher looked for results in 90 to 120 days. Many need to repeat the 30-day Incurables cycle a number of times. Ease down to the Focused level as you improve, and keep the bowel moving and the Female Formula going for life.

Stories from the Work

A Tipped Uterus Set Right (from Dr. Christopher)

A woman of about 45 came to Dr. Christopher with serious female troubles. Her transverse colon had dropped so low that it had tipped her uterus and pinched her bladder; both ovaries were infected, and she had a vaginal discharge. A clinic had confirmed it all and wanted to remove her uterus and stitch up her bladder. Frightened of the surgery, she asked for another way.

She took the female corrective and hormone formulas, used the vaginal bolus six nights a week with the slant board routine and daily abdominal massage, did the three-day cleanse and mucusless diet, drank a gallon of distilled water a day with plenty of red raspberry leaf tea, and kept her bowels clean with the lower bowel formula and her blood clean with the red clover combination. Six months later she came back a different woman. With no operation, her colon had gone back into place, and her uterus and bladder had returned to their proper position.

More on the Female System

This information is for education only. It is not meant to diagnose, treat or replace care from a qualified health professional.

Sunlight filtering through a golden underwater kelp forest.
Herbal Healing, Organs & Glands

Parathyroid Ailments

Dara Dietz

Photo: James Collington / Pexels

Overactive and Underactive Parathyroid, High and Low Blood Calcium, and Healing After Neck Surgery

Understanding the Condition

Tucked against the back of the thyroid, at the base of the throat, sit four tiny glands, each about the size of a grain of rice. These are the parathyroids. They share the thyroid’s neighborhood but not its job. The thyroid sets the pace of the body; the parathyroids guard one thing above all: the calcium in the blood.

Calcium is far more than bone. Every heartbeat, every nerve signal and every muscle that tightens and relaxes depends on just the right amount of calcium in the blood, and so does clotting. The bones are the body’s calcium bank, holding nearly all of it in reserve. The parathyroids decide when to make a withdrawal.

They work like a careful banker (see the picture below). When blood calcium dips even a little, they release parathyroid hormone (PTH). PTH draws calcium out of the bones, tells the kidneys to hold on to calcium and let phosphorus go, and has the kidneys turn on vitamin D, the vitamin we make from sunshine, so the gut can absorb more calcium from food. When calcium is back where it belongs, the glands rest. Dr. Christopher noted that the thyroid works in cooperation with the parathyroids in regulating the mineral salts of the body, especially calcium.

Diagram: the parathyroids send PTH to the bones and kidneys; bones release calcium, kidneys hold calcium and turn on vitamin D so the gut absorbs more; when blood calcium is back up, the glands rest.
How calcium is kept in balance. Simplified diagram drawn for H.E.A.L.

How It Develops

Parathyroid trouble is quiet. Many people feel only tired, achy and foggy, and the first real clue is a calcium number on a routine blood test. It tends to go one of three ways:

  • Overactive parathyroid (hyperparathyroidism). Most often one of the four glands grows a small lump that is not cancerous (an adenoma) and keeps sending out PTH even when calcium is already high. Less often several glands enlarge together. The bones are drained to keep the blood loaded, and the extra calcium has to go somewhere. The old saying is “stones, bones, groans and moans”: kidney stones and calcium settling in the kidneys; thinning bones and fractures; belly troubles (constipation, nausea, heartburn, ulcers); and tiredness, weakness, low mood, poor memory and foggy thinking. Great thirst, frequent urination, aching joints and a rise in blood pressure often come with it. It is most common in women after menopause. Radiation to the neck earlier in life, long use of lithium, and family history can play a part, but often no cause is found.
  • Glands working overtime for a reason. Sometimes the parathyroids are healthy but are being pushed. Low vitamin D (too little sun), poor absorption from a troubled gut, a diet that robs calcium, or weakened kidneys keep blood calcium low, and the glands work harder and harder to make up the difference. Blood calcium may look normal while PTH runs high, and the bones quietly pay the bill. Here the glands are answering a need, not causing the problem, and the healing is in meeting that need.
  • Underactive parathyroid (hypoparathyroidism). The glands make too little PTH, and calcium runs low. By far the most common cause is surgery on the neck, most often removal of the thyroid. The tiny glands can be bruised, lose part of their blood supply, or be removed along with the thyroid. Often they recover over weeks to months as the tissue heals; sometimes the damage lasts. Less often it comes from the immune system or from very low magnesium, which the glands need to work. Low calcium brings tingling around the mouth and in the fingers and toes, muscle cramps and spasms (especially the hands and feet), twitching, tiredness, anxiety, brain fog, dry skin and brittle nails. Severe drops can cause throat spasm, seizures or heart rhythm trouble, which is an emergency.

The blood tests tell the story: calcium, PTH and vitamin D, along with phosphorus, magnesium and kidney function. A bone density scan shows what the bones have lost. These are the best way to know which direction the glands have gone and to measure your progress.

The Emotional Side: the Energy Work

Healing the whole person. We are body, mind and spirit, and all three must heal together. When one part is neglected, the other two cannot find complete healing. A person can follow a perfect herbal program, but if she stays in a life that keeps wearing her down, or never makes time to care for herself, the body will keep losing ground. Healing the body often means facing what is happening in the heart and spirit as well.

The body and the heart are not separate. Long-held feelings settle into the body, and the throat is where we speak up and express who we are. Louise Hay, in her book Heal Your Body, does not single out the parathyroids; they share the throat with the thyroid, and the same patterns apply to both.

  • The thyroid and its neighbors: feeling humiliated, held down, always waiting for your turn. Turn it around: I move past old limits and let myself express who I am, freely and creatively.
  • Throat problems (a lump, hoarseness, trouble swallowing): not speaking up for yourself, swallowed anger, stifled creativity. Turn it around: It is safe for me to speak up. I express myself with ease and I am willing to change.

Emotional patterns paraphrased from Louise Hay, Heal Your Body (Hay House).

Areas Affected & Opening the Way to Healing

Look at the picture below. The parathyroids sit on the back of the thyroid, close beside the windpipe, the food pipe and the nerve that runs the voice box. Anything done to the thyroid, a swelling, an inflammation or an operation, reaches them too. But their work reaches far beyond the neck: into the bones they draw from, the kidneys that must carry the extra calcium out or hold it in, the gut that absorbs it, and the nerves and muscles that need it to fire and relax.

Diagram of the front of the neck showing the thyroid with the four parathyroid glands behind it, the windpipe, food pipe, voice nerve, blood vessels and lymph nodes.
Where the thyroid and parathyroids sit, and their neighbors. Simplified diagram drawn for H.E.A.L. (not to scale).

Why the neighbors matter. When calcium runs high, the kidneys take the brunt: they are flooded with calcium they must carry out, and stones form. A constipated bowel holds waste the kidneys and liver then have to clear. When calcium runs low, the nerves and muscles complain first. So caring for the parathyroids always means caring for the kidneys, the bowels and the bones along with the glands themselves.

Opening the Way: Packs and Warmth

  • M&L Salve pack or Gland Formula fomentation. Dr. Christopher’s glandular formula, mullein and lobelia, is food for the glands, and a pack over the front of the throat reaches the parathyroids as well as the thyroid. Spread M&L Salve on flannel, lay it over the throat, cover with plastic wrap and a towel, and add gentle heat. Or soak a flannel in a hot tea of three parts mullein to one part lobelia, lay it over the throat, cover it and leave it on overnight. Six nights a week.
  • Gentle hot and cold. Alternating hot and cold compresses over the neck bring fresh circulation and nutrients into the area. Be generous with the warmth and keep the cold brief.
  • Keep the bowels moving. Constipation is common when calcium runs high. Bowel cleansing with LBF keeps the waste moving out so the rest of the body can do its work.
  • Keep the kidneys clear. With an overactive gland, drink plenty of water every day so the extra calcium is carried out instead of settling into stones, and include kidney flushing in your program. If stones have already formed, see Kidney Disease.

After Neck Surgery: Calming and Rebuilding

When the parathyroids have been bruised or their blood supply disturbed during an operation, the work is to calm the area first and then rebuild the tissue. Begin only once the incision has fully closed, and keep taking any calcium and vitamin D your doctor has prescribed while the glands recover.

  • First, calm the inflammation: Healing Salve. Comfrey root, marshmallow root and marigold with rosemary, lavender, frankincense and helichrysum oils, soothing and healing to inflamed tissue and a salve Dara uses over incision and biopsy sites. Make a salve pack over the front of the neck and leave it on overnight.
  • Then, rebuild the tissue: BF&C Salve packs. Once the soreness and swelling have settled, switch to Dr. Christopher’s Bone, Flesh and Cartilage formula, led by white oak bark and comfrey root, traditionally used wherever bone, flesh and cartilage need to be restored. Spread it on flannel over the neck, add gentle heat for 30 minutes to an hour, and leave the pack on overnight. Steady, ongoing use is what rebuilds.
  • Let the skin breathe. With any salve pack, leave the area open and clear of salves for at least 6 hours each day.
  • Rebuild from the inside as well: BF&C extract. The adult dose is 1 teaspoon three times a day, so the tissue is fed from within while the salve works from without.

Feeding the Body

  • Calcium the body can use. Dr. Christopher’s Calcium formula (horsetail grass, comfrey root, oat straw and lobelia) gives calcium that has already passed through plant life, so the body can assimilate it without leaving mineral residue for the kidneys. Dara regards ordinary calcium pills as ground-up rock. 1 teaspoon three times a day, taken with a good whole-food blend such as Superfood; it is a food formula and can be used freely. This is the first support when calcium runs low: after neck surgery, when the glands are working overtime, and for the cramps and twitching of low calcium. It is safe with an overactive gland too. The body builds its calcium from these herbs after they are taken in, so the formula does not dump a load of calcium into the blood; when the blood runs high but the bones are still lacking, it feeds the bones.
  • For cramps and spasms. While calcium is being rebuilt, the M&L Salve or Lobelia eases any kind of cramping. Rub the M&L Salve into the cramping muscle or lay a salve pack over it; the lobelia in it is the antispasmodic that lets a locked muscle go. Lobelia extract can also be taken by mouth: usually one good dropperful does the job; take up to two, depending on the size of the person and how bad the cramps are. Cramping that will not let go, or tightness in the throat, is an emergency (see the box below).
  • Parsley root tea. Dr. Christopher’s food for the parathyroids: the root brings calcium, B vitamins and iron that nourish the glands. Pour a quart of boiling water over a cup of firmly packed fresh parsley, steep 15 minutes, strain and refrigerate. Drink it through the day. Parsley also keeps the urine flowing, a help to the kidneys when calcium runs high.
  • BF&C for the bones. When an overactive gland has been draining the bones, the BF&C extract (1 teaspoon three times a day for an adult) helps rebuild them, and it has long been used to help move calcium deposits along.
  • Super Kelp and the greens. Super Kelp (Atlantic kelp, Irish moss and dulse) and daily dark greens bring the magnesium and trace minerals the glands need to do their work.
  • Sunshine. Vitamin D is made in the skin from sunlight, and without it the gut cannot take in calcium. Get out in the sun regularly, and have your vitamin D checked; if it tests low, ask your doctor how best to bring it up, since calcium cannot be put to use without it.
  • Stop the calcium robbers. Soft drinks, coffee, chocolate and junk foods draw on the body’s calcium and leave the glands working harder. Fresh fruits, vegetables, whole grains, nuts and seeds feed the body instead.

Using Comfrey With Care

Comfrey root, the great tissue rebuilder, is at the heart of the BF&C extract and salve on this sheet. Modern guidance cautions against long, heavy use of comfrey by mouth because of its natural alkaloids; the BF&C formula uses it in traditional proportions, as part of a blend.

  • BF&C extract: the adult dose is 1 teaspoon three times a day. More is not faster.
  • During pregnancy: in Dara’s experience the BF&C formula is beneficial, its nutrients helping the baby knit together well.
  • BF&C Salve: use it as an overnight salve pack, and leave the area open and clear of salves for at least 6 hours each day.

When to Get Medical Care

Herbs are support alongside medical care, not a replacement for it. Have a high blood calcium followed up with calcium, PTH and vitamin D tests. A truly overactive gland with a growth on it is a medical matter; it is usually treated by removing the one enlarged gland, and the supports on this sheet can be used before and after. After neck surgery, keep taking any calcium and vitamin D prescribed and keep your lab appointments; don’t stop or change them on your own.

Emergencies. Very high calcium: confusion, vomiting, extreme thirst, great weakness or an irregular heartbeat. Very low calcium: cramping of the hands or feet that won’t let go, tightness in the throat or trouble breathing, a seizure, or an irregular heartbeat. Either needs emergency care right away.

Level of Commitment

How much work the parathyroids take depends on which way they have gone and why. Be honest about where you are:

  • Gentle support. For glands working overtime because of low vitamin D or a calcium-poor diet, borderline labs, or a mild, temporary drop in calcium after surgery. The Calcium formula with Superfood, parsley root tea, greens and Super Kelp, sunshine, and an end to the calcium robbers.
  • Focused cleansing. For a diagnosed overactive or underactive parathyroid, or tissue damaged by neck surgery. Add the M&L Salve pack or Gland Formula fomentation six nights a week; after surgery, the Healing Salve and then BF&C packs with the BF&C extract; bowel cleansing; and weeks of liver flushing alternated with weeks of kidney flushing, so the body stays on top of the healing. Plenty of water when calcium runs high. Have your labs rechecked as you go.
  • Incurables Program. For parathyroid cancer, which is rare, or a long-standing, serious case that has already damaged the kidneys or bones. The supports on this sheet continue, while the full Incurables Program, which includes cleansing the bloodstream with HEAL’s Blood Purifying formula, is done hand in hand with your medical team. Blood Purifying contains chaparral, which has long been regarded as one of the strongest blood purifiers in herbal use. It has had years of bad press, but used wisely it supports the body in clearing cancer, and over the years many members have used it to eliminate tumors. Use with care: take Blood Purifying in courses, not continuously: two dropperfuls 4 to 6 times a day for a week at a time, in a few ounces of grape juice, while drinking 64 to 128 oz. of liquid a day. Avoid it during pregnancy or nursing and with existing liver disease. If the skin or the whites of the eyes turn yellow, the urine turns dark, or there is pain under the right ribs, stop and have the liver checked.

More Is Not Faster

These doses are set to what the body can clear. Taking more stirs up more than the bowels, liver and kidneys can carry out, and that is when cleansing starts to feel like poisoning. Healing the body requires steady, consistent nutrition and action, not a bigger dose.

People are different, and now and then someone reacts poorly to a particular herb. If that happens, stop it. What I offer here is a guideline. You are the one living in your body, so work with the Holy Spirit and the wisdom the Lord has given you to apply these supports in the best way for your life.

A Loose Healing Plan

  1. First: know which way the glands have gone. Have calcium, PTH and vitamin D checked, along with phosphorus, magnesium and kidney function, and a bone density scan if calcium has been high. The plan depends on the answer.
  2. Weeks 1–2: Build the foundation. Start your Foundational Program (Superfood, Echinacea, Vitamin C, and bowel cleansing with LBF).
  3. Feed the body. Begin the Calcium formula with Superfood, whether calcium runs low or high; it feeds the bones without loading the blood. If calcium is high, drink plenty of water. Either way: parsley root tea, greens, Super Kelp, sunshine, and no calcium robbers.
  4. Open the way. An M&L Salve pack or Gland Formula fomentation over the throat at bedtime, six nights a week, with gentle hot and cold over the neck.
  5. After neck surgery: once the incision has closed, Healing Salve packs to calm the area; when it has settled, BF&C Salve packs overnight with the BF&C extract by day (1 teaspoon three times a day), leaving the area open and clear of salves at least 6 hours each day. Keep taking what your doctor prescribed while the glands recover.
  6. Weeks 4 onward: Alternate. A week of liver flushing, then a week of kidney flushing, for as many rounds as your level of commitment calls for, with gentle-support weeks in between. The kidneys matter most when calcium has been high.
  7. About 3 months: Check your progress. Have your labs rechecked. If an overactive gland is still pushing calcium up, talk with your doctor about removing it, and keep the supports going before and after. After surgery, recheck as often as your doctor advises, since prescriptions may come down as the glands heal.

More on the Parathyroids

This information is for education only. It is not meant to diagnose, treat or replace care from a qualified health professional.

Sunlight filtering through a golden underwater kelp forest.
Herbal Healing, Organs & Glands

My Thyroid Story

Dara Dietz

Photo: James Collington / Pexels

Childhood Thyroid Issues

Dara Dietz age 16

My mother used to joke that when puberty hit it knocked me out. She was right. It seemed I could not get enough sleep. On a typical day I’d drag myself out of bed in the morning. Somehow I’d manage to get through school without falling asleep, come home, sleep on the couch until dinner, take a bath, and crawl back to bed, where I’d sleep until morning when I’d do it all again. Sometime during the fifth grade my parents took me to a pediatrician and discovered my low-functioning thyroid. The doctor prescribed thyroid medication, which she said I’d need for the rest of my life.

Life began to get interesting after I woke up. I faithfully took my little pill every day. I noticed even one day without my medication would bring on a brain fog along with the urge to sleep the day away. After giving birth to my daughter the brain fog was more dangerous. If I missed a dose I noticed I did not have the mental ability to keep up with my active toddler. She could wander away from me and I would not even know she had gone until a crash or some other heart-stopping noise made me aware of her whereabouts. It began to bother me that I was only me when I took my pill.

Discovering the Power of Kelp

Kelp came into my life through the suggestion of a trusted friend. She said kelp would safely provide me natural energy. I was very interested. Several years earlier I had experienced the consequences that follow overdosing on caffeine. The energy needed to maintain life as a single parent and full-time student was enormous. I would have done anything short of taking illegal drugs for more energy. My friend shared that she had used kelp pills freely for years. This sounded too good to be true, but also too good not to check out. I began taking four or five kelp pills a couple of times a day. Right away I noticed I did have more energy. This was great! I also did not experience the crash that usually followed after hopping myself up on caffeine.

After using kelp freely for over a year I experienced heart palpitations one morning after taking my normal thyroid medication. The emergency room doctor checked my blood levels and found my thyroid functioning within the normal range. This was shocking information; I had understood there was no healing my thyroid condition. At twenty-five years old I had taken my last thyroid pill.

Kelp has continued to be an important part of my daily food program. After founding HEAL Marketplace I experimented with combining the different kelps until I found a combination that suited me well. We call this our Super Kelp Blend, a mix of Atlantic Kelp, Irish Moss and Dulse. These herbs are excellent food for a malfunctioning thyroid; it does not matter if the thyroid is over producing or under producing. Kelp is God’s gift, His master herb for the thyroid gland.

More on the Thyroid

This is shared for educational purposes, from my own study and experience. It is not medical advice.