Dr. Herbert Shelton's lectures

[jts]

Dr. Herbert M. Shelton bashed alternative medicine just as much as he bashed orthodox medicine.

Hygiene (sometimes called natural hygiene) is simply the science of health, altho Shelton takes a whole chapter to define it. Most people never heard of hygiene as the science of health and they think hygiene is merely cleanliness. Hygiene includes the science of nutrition as part of the science of health.

As a science, not a religion, hygiene is open to advancement. Each generation of hygienists knows more about health than the previous generation of hygienists. Modern nutritionists have far more knowledge of nutrition than Shelton had. Dr. Alan Goldhamer knows more about fasting than Shelton knew. Dr. Russell Blaylock knows more about poisons and brain chemistry than Shelton knew. Every advance in nutritional science and physiology advances hygiene, the science of health.

Hygiene is not a cult and not a religion and did not begin with Shelton and is not Sheltonism. Shelton merely wrote more books about hygiene than any other one person and probably popularized hygiene more than any other one person and rescued a whole body of literature about hygiene from oblivion with the famous Shelton library. The modern hygienists, who know more than Shelton, acknowledge him as a great man and even as a legend and stand on his shoulders, but without being cultish.

Someone took the trouble to preserve some of Dr. Herbert Shelton's lectures on youtube for posterity. This is as close as you can get to meeting him in person. Click on the link and enjoy.

Shelton had his imperfections like probably every great person. He worked 100+ hours per week and never took vacations and wrote his books at night when he should have been sleeping and taught his patients the importance of rest and sleep. Dr. Cinque, who knew Shelton, had "no explanation for this madness".

 

[BaalChatzaf]

55 minutes ago, jts said:

 

Shelton had his imperfections like probably every great person. He worked 100+ hours per week and never took vacations and wrote his books at night when he should have been sleeping and taught his patients the importance of rest and sleep. Dr. Cinque, who knew Shelton, had "no explanation for this madness".

 

The good doctor was not practicing good hygiene.  Part of staying healthy is getting enough high quality  restful sleep. 

Staying healthy =  eating right,  exercising enough, avoiding destructive stress, not having unhealthy habits like tobacco and too much booze, and no dope. Keeping clean and avoiding  sources of infection are only part of the story. 

[jts]

2 hours ago, BaalChatzaf said:

The good doctor was not practicing good hygiene.  Part of staying healthy is getting enough high quality  restful sleep. 

You have a tendency to point out the obvious.

Sometimes people point to Shelton's health failing near the end of his life as proof that his health teachings don't work. But he did not fully practice his own health teachings.What his health failing proves or at least suggests is that the great health teacher himself was not exempt from the requirements of health.

One parallel with Shelton that non-cultish Objectivists might be able to understand is Ayn Rand did not always live perfectly consistently with her philosophy, for example she smoked. This is merely an imperfection in Ayn Rand, not an imperfection in her philosophy.

If we want to speculate about why Shelton worked himself into exhaustion and breakdown of health:  Maybe he was driven by a great mission (as he saw it) and only one lifetime to accomplish it in.

 

[Brant Gaede]

On 1/14/2017 at 5:37 PM, jts said:

You have a tendency to point out the obvious.

Sometimes people point to Shelton's health failing near the end of his life as proof that his health teachings don't work. But he did not fully practice his own health teachings.What his health failing proves or at least suggests is that the great health teacher himself was not exempt from the requirements of health.

One parallel with Shelton that non-cultish Objectivists might be able to understand is Ayn Rand did not always live perfectly consistently with her philosophy, for example she smoked. This is merely an imperfection in Ayn Rand, not an imperfection in her philosophy.

If we want to speculate about why Shelton worked himself into exhaustion and breakdown of health:  Maybe he was driven by a great mission (as he saw it) and only one lifetime to accomplish it in.

So--he'd still be with us--if . . . ? If he were like Jerome Rodale?

--Brant

[BaalChatzaf]

On 1/14/2017 at 7:37 PM, jts said:

 

One parallel with Shelton that non-cultish Objectivists might be able to understand is Ayn Rand did not always live perfectly consistently with her philosophy, for example she smoked. This is merely an imperfection in Ayn Rand, not an imperfection in her philosophy.

 

 

If you take  what she wrote in "Atlas Shrugged"  seriously and literally,  smoking cigarettes was an act showing Man's  mastery over Fire.  Perhaps it is, but smoking charges a large toll against our physical health.  Regarding smoking as filling one's lungs  with particulate filth  would not have been the Romantic view of the habit.  I have lived 54  years  w.o. lighting up a cigarette,  but I am still a Smoker.

[jts]

6 hours ago, BaalChatzaf said:

If you take  what she wrote in "Atlas Shrugged"  seriously and literally,  smoking cigarettes was an act showing Man's  mastery over Fire.  Perhaps it is, but smoking charges a large toll against our physical health.  Regarding smoking as filling one's lungs  with particulate filth  would not have been the Romantic view of the habit.  I have lived 54  years  w.o. lighting up a cigarette,  but I am still a Smoker.

[54 years without lighting up and still a smoker]   Some people would say you are silly and dogmatic. What's wrong with a smoke now and then? Live a little. Moderation. Don't go to extremes.

But I tend to be with you on total abstinence from bad things as much as practically possible. I don't believe in tempting temptation. If you tempt temptation, temptation will tempt you.

I am not a fan of moderation in bad things, only good things, but good things usually are self limiting and usually moderate themselves.

The road to hell is paved with moderation.

There are millions of alcoholics and drug addicts. How many of them set out deliberately, intentionally, on purpose to become addicted? How many of them set themselves a goal to become addicted and said my purpose is to become addicted? Probably not one. Certainly very few if any. Then how did they become addicted? The answer is the holy doctrine of moderation. The road to hell is paved with moderation in bad things.

Moderation in good things is probably not necessary because they tend to moderate themselves.

Abstinence from bad things makes one almost invincible against the powers of hell such a King Alcohol, King Tobacco, and a horde of other nefarious demons. AA says alcohol is cunning, baffling, powerful. But abstinence makes him and others like him totally powerless.

 

[BaalChatzaf]

2 hours ago, jts said:

[54 years without lighting up and still a smoker]   Some people would say you are silly and dogmatic. What's wrong with a smoke now and then? Live a little. Moderation. Don't go to extremes.

It took me ten tries to break the habit (cold turkey).  It is an insidious habit.  For seven years after I finally quit I had vivid dreams that I had smoked.  I could taste the tobacco in my dreams and they were so real that I looked under my bed for cigarette butts (maybe I sleep smoked?).   This habit would have killed me decades ago.  That is the extreme I set out to avoid. 

I will tell what is wrong with smoking.  Smoking a lot will shorten one's life. I is a deadly habit. Ayn Rand found out the hard way. 

[Brant Gaede]

3 hours ago, jts said:

[54 years without lighting up and still a smoker]   Some people would say you are silly and dogmatic. What's wrong with a smoke now and then? Live a little. Moderation. Don't go to extremes.

But I tend to be with you on total abstinence from bad things as much as practically possible. I don't believe in tempting temptation. If you tempt temptation, temptation will tempt you.

I am not a fan of moderation in bad things, only good things, but good things usually are self limiting and usually moderate themselves.

The road to hell is paved with moderation.

There are millions of alcoholics and drug addicts. How many of them set out deliberately, intentionally, on purpose to become addicted? How many of them set themselves a goal to become addicted and said my purpose is to become addicted? Probably not one. Certainly very few if any. Then how did they become addicted? The answer is the holy doctrine of moderation. The road to hell is paved with moderation in bad things.

Moderation in good things is probably not necessary because they tend to moderate themselves.

Abstinence from bad things makes one almost invincible against the powers of hell such a King Alcohol, King Tobacco, and a horde of other nefarious demons. AA says alcohol is cunning, baffling, powerful. But abstinence makes him and others like him totally powerless.

The time you discover what's the matter with a smoke now and then you're doing a pack a day.

--Brant

[Brant Gaede]

1 hour ago, BaalChatzaf said:

It took me ten tries to break the habit (cold turkey).  It is an insidious habit.  For seven years after I finally quit I had vivid dreams that I had smoked.  I could taste the tobacco in my dreams and they were so real that I looked under my bed for cigarette butts (maybe I sleep smoked?).   This habit would have killed me decades ago.  That is the extreme I set out to avoid. 

I will tell what is wrong with smoking.  Smoking a lot will shorten one's life. I is a deadly habit. Ayn Rand found out the hard way. 

I stopped smoking 48 years ago on my 25th birthday, this coming March. I simply puffed on little cigarette sized cigars for two months without inhaling. No real withdrawal to speak of, but in the few years I did smoke I never once woke up needing a smoke in the middle of the night. There are simply different levels of addiction apparently out of one's natural physical state or how much smoking one did prior to quitting. I was on one pack a day and coughed.

Nathaniel Branden once related how he just quit with little effort.

--Brant

[BaalChatzaf]

16 minutes ago, Brant Gaede said:

I stopped smoking 48 years ago on my 25th birthday, this coming March. I simply puffed on little cigarette sized cigars for two months without inhaling. No real withdrawal to speak of, but in the few years I did smoke I never once woke up needing a smoke in the middle of the night. There are simply different levels of addiction apparently out of one's natural physical state or how much smoking one did prior to quitting. I was on one pack a day and coughed.

Nathaniel Branden once related how he just quit with little effort.

--Brant

I was 26 when I finally kicked the habit.  over 54 years ago.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I just noticed this was in the Meet and Greet section of the forum.

Since this hygiene thing is not a new OL member  , I moved the thread to here. 

Michael