Dr. Henry G. Bieler's Approach to Medicine

By David L. Duffy, MD

Henry G. Bieler, MD, wrote the book "Food is Your Best Medicine" (Ballantine Books, New York 1992, originally published in 1965). In this book he presents his clinical experience in treating patients primarily by changing their diets and letting the body heal itself. As a medical doctor he gives insight into how the body functions to stay healthy. In the next several articles we will examine his insights and observations and discuss how much they overlap Ehret's "Mucusless Diet Healing System".

Henry Bieler as a young doctor suffered from asthma and kidney disease. He was also greatly overweight. He was in the habit of putting extra salt on his food. He was taking various medications to treat the symptoms. He met a doctor who steered him away from over stimulating foods and medicines. He lost weight from 210 to 137 pounds and subsequently stabilized at 155 pounds. By changing his diet he healed himself, in a way similar to Arnold Ehret.

Dr. Bieler's rejuvenating diet is very similar to Arnold Ehret's Mucusless Diet Healing System. Dr. Bieler uses vegetables, particularly zucchini. He would give the patient a digestible source of protein such as raw goat's milk or yeast. He would eliminate stimulating foods such as salt and coffee. Here is how he describes the healing process:

The patient goes to the doctor not only for preservation of life but for as much freedom from pain and disability as it is possible to give. But when the patient will not cooperate at all, the doctor is powerless to function. When, however, a patient will cooperate, I always warn him to the beginning of the crises he will go through when he starts on his rejuvenating diet. His body undergoes a "physiological housecleaning." This was impossible while he was surfeiting himself on foods that originally created the toxemia in the fluids and tissues of his system. So he must excrete this toxic load of accumulated debris. During this preliminary fast (either of just water or of diluted vegetable broths and diluted fruit juices) he may experience more or less severe headache, nausea, vertigo, biliousness, etc., for many days. The amount of unpleasant symptoms will depend on the condition of his body. Deprived of his stimulating foods and beverages, he will experience a mild type of "withdrawal symptoms" somewhat similar to those suffered by a narcotics addict who takes the cure. The disagreeable symptoms then give way to a sense of well‑being as the healing processes of the body become activated. Finally, I tell the patient that the compensation of health through judicious eating will reward him in the ratio in which he applies it. (p. 24)

Bieler and Ehret agree that in order to get better you need to allow yourself to be sick, while the body eliminates waste. With Ehret, fasting is used to cleanse the body. A transition diet is used to put the brakes on the elimination process when it is too severe. Both Bieler and Ehret recommend what amounts to a long‑term transition diet.

Dr. Bieler gives a detailed description of the person who is unwilling to change his diet:

The average person is mightily disinclined to curtail the diet he has followed all his life. He is not aware that nearly all bad food habits are stimulation habits: that is, the body has almost automatically found out what makes it feel better for a half hour or so and what will mask the depression and fatigue symptoms momentarily. Some people will eat a good deal of salt others large amounts of meat washed down with cups of strong coffee, while still others rely on sweets or combination of foods which prove harmful in their individual cases. When I take the stimulation away, the individual feels weak and depressed and headachy temporarily while the body adjusts to the new regime and the toxic matter is eliminated. Without taking this into consideration, though, many patients decide that dietary reform just isn't for them. They came to the doctor for immediate relief and instead they feel worse. So they return to their stimulation habits. It is a tragic decision I cannot fight. (p. 25)

Whereas Arnold Ehret was a layman who taught healing principles, Dr. Bieler was a trained medical doctor. Ehret thought that the fundamental disease process was "" or a "clogging up of the entire pipe system of the human body". Dr Bieler gives us added medical insight into the nature of disease and healing.

Illness, then, as we know it is nothing more or less than a terrific attempt on the part of the body to rid itself of morbific (toxic) matter".

The body's "terrific attempt" to burn up these waste products results in fever. And it is the changes (usually destructive) in the organic being used as avenues of emergency vicarious elimination which constitute the pathology, or conditions and processes of a disease.

The liver and the kidneys are important elimination organs. For the liver, the natural avenue of elimination, of course, is through the bowel; for the kidneys, through the bladder and urethra.

However, when the liver is congested and cannot perform its eliminative function, waste matter (toxins) is thrown into the blood stream, Similarly, when the kidneys are inflamed, toxins are also dammed up in the blood. Toxic blood must discharge its toxins or the person dies, so nature uses vicarious avenues of elimination or substitutes. The lungs, therefore, will take over the task of eliminating some of the wastes that should have gone through the kidneys, or the skin will take over for the liver. It stands to reason that the lungs do not make very good kidneys. From the irritation caused by the elimination of poison through this "vicarious" channel, we can get bronchitis, pneumonia, or tuberculosis, as is determined by the particular chemistry of the poison being eliminated.

Thus we can say that the lungs are acting vicariously for the kidneys or are being called into play, under duress, as substitute kidneys. In the same way, if the bile poisons in the blood come out through the skin, we get the various irritations of the skin, resulting in the many skin diseases, or through the mucous membranes (inside skin) as the various catarrhs, or through the skin as boils, carbuncles, acne, etc. Thus the skin is substituting for the liver, or a vicarious elimination is occurring through the skin.

Following this line of thinking, the name of disease is based upon a description, macro‑and microscopic, of the changes in the organs being used as emergency avenues of elimination. After the cells have been damaged by toxic wastes, it is easy for bacteria, as scavengers, to attack and devour the weakened, injured and dead cells.

Disease, then, as I see it is an unnatural elimination process. In order to speed along or facilitate the natural elimination process of the toxic material & return the patient to health, I found necessary, either (1) complete abstention from food (fasting for a few days or longer) or (2) abstention from those foods which created the patient's toxemia.

In summary Dr. Bieler has rediscovered the same concepts that Arnold Ehret taught. In an acute illness such as a cold, pneumonia, or skin infection, the body tries to eliminate waste. Dr. Bieler made his observations before modern medicine discovered the details of the immune system. The immune system serves as a mechanism to create inflammation, breakdown foreign material, and wall off infections. The immune system is an active participant in "vicarious elimination". Next time we will examine Dr. Bieler's view of the role which the intestines, liver, and endocrine glands play in defending the body against disease.

A Club member Ogniana Masser was doing so well as she said on "Ehret's diet" I asked if I could put her remarks in the Newsletter to help inspire others. These are her remarks:

(March 01, 2009): "I'm doing great with the Ehret diet. Finished the 8 week transitional diet and feeling great. I'm doing weekly 24, 36 or 44 hours fasting on lemonade, depends how I feel and the results are amazing. Feel very energetic; lost 11 lbs. in eight weeks, my skin is glowing. I feel light and moving with ease. My arthritic hands are able to clench completely into tight fists, that before I couldn't bend them or hold a glass. So, I'm continuing with as much as I can with fruit and mucus‑less food. Sometimes I have fish, like twice a month, with steamed veggies. Try to almost completely stay away from sugar and substitute the craving for sweets with dried fruit and nuts. Sometimes I go off, but then immediately do a fast and get back on the Mucusless diet.

(March 3. 2009): "After the Transition Diet I already did for eight weeks, I'm going to continue the Mucusless‑Mucuslean way of eating; adding more fruits, more fasts, etc. is that right?” (My answer; yes you are in the right direction.)

(March 5. 2009): Hope you are doing well. Thank you for helping people like me, who're looking for a true cure and way of life close to Nature. I always knew that there must be something like that. It took me years to discover Prof. Ehret and his Mucusless Healing Diet!!! By the way my arthritic joints are doing so much better just after eight weeks on the transitional Diet. And I lost 11 lbs. too!!! Is there somebody not happy with such results?!!!.

Ogniana's e‑mail address is; ogniana@ogniana.com. You may write her c/o Ehret Health Club P.O. Box 24, Dobbs Ferry, NY 10522‑0024,

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Dr. Henry G. Bieler's Approach to Medicine
BY David L. Duffy, MD

Mucusless Diet Healing System

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