The Detox Mono Diet: The Miracle Grape Cure and Other Cleansing Diets

Introduction

The Grape Cure, the lemon cure, the maple syrup cure . . . the apple mono diet, the rice mono diet, the carrot mono diet . . . the separate foods diet, Dr. X’s diet, and so on—patients who seek healing by following a health regimen have an embarrassment of riches to choose from. Health cures are numerous and their promoters offer guarantees of exceptional, sometimes miraculous success even for illnesses often considered incurable (such as certain kinds of cancer).

With numerous examples of successful healing combined with advanced theoretical arguments to demonstrate the solid grounds of whatever cure is in question, many people are inspired to follow such cures. However, lively polemics often erupt between the partisans of one cure and those of another. Every cure boasts its adherents and ardent defenders, but also its opponents.

The novice cannot help but be thrown off balance by the conflicting advice he will hear when considering a wide array of cures. How is one to choose from among so many options? And what to make of the fact that, despite their glaring differences, they all arrive at the same result: healing the patient?

The novice will be even more unsettled to learn of cures that were carefully followed and yet a patient’s health did not improve but instead grew worse, requiring weeks to recover from the effects of the cure itself.

Faced with situations like these, doubts emerge concerning the effectiveness of cures in general, and a person may reject all health cures. But rejection is unjustified. Unsatisfactory results do not derive from the failure of the cure itself, but rather because the patient erred in the choice of a cure. In other words, the cure in question was not adapted to the needs and characteristics of the patient, and circumstances required a different cure.

Health cures are, in fact, different methods to attain the same goal. Each possesses distinguishing characteristics that make it more effective for certain patients and certain temperaments. But beyond their differences, the healing processes triggered by these cures are the same and function identically.

The purpose of this book is to show this unity so that patients can be fully informed when choosing an appropriate cure. More than that, this information can enable motivated patients to design their own cure and modify it over time to meet new situations and new problems that arise.

To realize the many benefits of health cures, patients must understand exactly what processes are triggered and why these processes encourage healing. Rather than presenting this information in a theoretical and abstract manner, I offer it through the example of one cure, perhaps the best known and most practiced in our time: Johanna Brandt’s Grape Cure.

The first part of this book thus discusses the Grape Cure in the context of natural medicine, according to concepts of health and sickness as laid down by Hippocrates in the fourth century BCE and, more recently, by Dr. Paul Carton.*1 We will then examine various procedures in detail (fasting, mono diets, raw food diets, cleansings, and so forth) that are aspects of the Grape Cure, allowing the reader to grasp where the effectiveness of each cure resides and what curative factors they all share.

The complex and challenging moments of the cure (healing crises and detoxification crises) are also presented with care, so the person using the cure can correctly interpret reactions that are triggered within the body and avoid complications and problems. The first section of the book ends with a practical summary of the important points to consider during a health cure.

The second section consists of Brandt’s book The Grape Cure, in which she recounts her discovery and describes how to follow this cure. Shining through each line is her enthusiasm for the benefits of a cure so simple yet effective—even for acute illness.

Her original book comprised several articles and texts assembled into one work. To avoid excessive repetition and to regroup the information she provides, the original text has been lightly abridged and reorganized.

In effect, what the reader holds before him is actually two books: the first explains the why of health cures; the second, Brandt’s book, explains the how.

Part One

DETOXIFICATION AND REGENERATION

1

The True Nature of Illnesses and Therapy

Johanna Brandt was born in South Africa in 1876. Her father was a Dutch pastor; her mother was of French descent. During the harsh Boer War, which raged in South Africa during the early 1900s, Johanna became deeply involved in volunteer nursing. Not without danger to herself, she was able to conduct important resistance operations such as transmitting messages and providing supplies to the combatants, as well as providing them shelter and even hiding them when necessary.

She, too, married a pastor, with whom she raised seven children while continuing to lead an active life. During the course of World War I, she was diagnosed with a severe stomach cancer. In 1921, her doctors gave her only six weeks to live. Her desire to survive was so strong that even this somber news did not overwhelm her.

She refused all surgery and courageously set out in search of a cure. She had heard high praise for the benefits of fasting; tangible progress was rapidly achieved when she tried it on herself. By experimenting on her own body this way, she discovered the marvelous healing properties of the grape.

She attributed her complete recovery from cancer to the periods of fasting she practiced at the beginning of her regimen and to the Grape Cure she followed later. The extensively researched and progressive food diet she perfected enabled her to live and enjoy excellent health for another forty years. Until her dying day, at the age of eighty-seven, this amazing woman maintained total vitality.

This was how Mira Dunant-Brandt, Johanna Brandt’s daughter, recounted her mother’s life to us.

The cancerous tumor that afflicted Brandt was diagnosed clinically and radiologically. Based on the diagnosis, every doctor consulted advised surgery as soon as possible. There was no doubt the tumor was present. The fact that doctors gave her only six more weeks to live testifies to the seriousness of her condition.

And yet Brandt recovered without an operation, using her own means, and lived for another forty years. The simple and natural means she discovered to address her illness gave birth to the Grape Cure, a cure that is now known throughout the world. Thousands and thousands of patients since then have followed her prescription and been cured.

Considering its simplicity and the amazing results it procures, one cannot help but wonder: Why is the Grape Cure so effective? What makes it effective not only against cancer but against numerous other illnesses as well? Routinely, a remedy will work well against a specific disease but not against others. With the grape, the opposite is true; the possibilities for effective action are varied and extensive. This raises the question: Are we dealing with a remedy that has numerous effects, or do these illnesses have a common nature?

Just what is this mysterious and powerful property of the grape? And why is it the grape that works this way and not some other fruit or vegetable—or, more pointedly, a medicinal herb? Brandt speaks of a mysterious healing substance that the grape must contain—something yet undiscovered in her day that remains unknown even now. But here again, if the identity of this substance were to be discovered, a mystery would remain, because at present we know of no product with such a wide and diverse range of action: destruction of cancerous cells, reduction of painful inflammation in the joints, cure of tuberculosis, prevention of tooth and hair loss, treatment of anemia, regeneration of necrotic or dying tissue, and so forth.

The Grape Cure is disturbing by the number of questions it raises. It calls into question so many medical concepts regarded as certain and definitive. Frankly, why does the grape succeed where more sophisticated remedies fail? To be sure, we can agree that with modern medications, while they provide relief to cancer and rheumatism sufferers, for example, they rarely cure them!

Any attempt to deny the reality of the Grape Cure must ignore the factual evidence. For example, tens of thousands of patients have been cured of a host of illnesses with its help. Tens of thousands more could be cured by applying it sensibly. The results are observable and reproducible and should, therefore, be scientifically acceptable.

Rather than deny the cure’s effectiveness, it would be better to find out why it is effective. This would open new vistas, new ways to understand how the body functions and the role played by illness in this function. Therapeutic science—in other words, possibilities for the art of healing—would be enriched with new methods for positive treatment of the sick.

On many occasions, Brandt spoke of toxic substances that make us ill, whereas many people believe that germs make us sick. So, which is it? What is the actual cause of illness, germs or the poisons about which Brandt speaks?

ARE GERMS THE CAUSE OF ILLNESS?

First we must note that many illnesses are known to have no microbial cause—germs are not involved in these illnesses either directly or remotely. Furthermore, any attempt at therapeutic disinfecting (such as the use of antibiotics) will have no effect on the course of these illnesses.

Examples of such diseases are: diabetes, asthma, cancer, heart attack, anemia, rickets, migraine, allergies, depression, digestive disorders, circulatory disorders, hormonal disorders, nervous disorders, and the majority of rheumatisms.

Clearly, many illnesses do not involve germs and many serious illnesses are among their number.

Of course, germ activity is evident at times. Their presence is visible in bronchitis, pneumonia, colds, flu, cystitis, gonorrhea, hepatitis, AIDS, nephritis, and so forth.

Because observation repeatedly confirmed the presence of germs in so-called infectious diseases, an apparently logical conclusion was that germs cause these illnesses. In other words, it was enough for germs simply to enter the body for illness to establish itself.

This may come as a surprise to some, but this deduction contains an error. Of course germs can trigger illness; they can do it, but it is not inevitable that they will do it. Furthermore, even those germs that do cause illness will not do so in every case. History has shown that during epidemics of the flu and other diseases, not everyone who comes into contact with the disease will contract it. If the mere presence of the germ were enough to trigger illness every time, then epidemics of typhus, cholera, plague, yellow fever, Spanish flu, measles, polio, and so on would have long since wiped the human race off the face of the globe. In actuality, during any epidemic, only a portion of the population is stricken. Others resist the infection; their physical defenses prevent the germs from surviving inside their bodies, where the microbes would otherwise develop and demonstrate their destructive capabilities.

So it appears that germs are not the only factors to be considered. The body’s state of receptivity and resistance must also be taken into account. The relative strength of these two factors—the strength of the germs and that of the body’s power to resist them—determines whether or not an illness can take hold. The weaker the body’s defenses, the easier it will be for germs to gain a foothold and multiply, thus causing illness. In contrast, the more resistant the body’s internal cellular environment is, the harder for germs to survive and take action in an environment they find unfavorable.

The body’s internal cellular characteristics—whether positive or negative—are not only the determining factors in whether or not a disease will take hold; depending on the germ involved, this internal environment may also determine the form an illness will take. In other words, the nature of an illness that appears may be more dependent on the body’s weakness than on the attacking microbe. A great many microbes are not specific; for example, a streptococcus can, depending on the internal cellular environment it has penetrated, cause an angina, internal inflammation, blood poisoning, scarlet fever, or a skin infection. A pneumococcus can cause a herpes vesicle as well as pneumonia or meningitis, all depending on the state of the cellular environment it has entered.