DR HAZEL PARCELLS:
The Original Naughty Nutritionist
The incomparable Dr. Hazel Parcells (1889-1996)
Dr. Parcells was a feisty redhead with straight shooting advice. “Honey, if you are ever to be healthy and stay healthy, you’ll have to trade your wishbone for a backbone and get to work.” Excellent advice on many levels, including broth making! To those who would argue with her every recommendation, she replied simply: “If you like what you’ve got, honey, keep it!”
A total original with a talent for chopping and slicing through nutritional dogma, she had little patience with most health “experts,” saying that they were unteachable because their cups were already full. She broke the rules of establishment nutrition by recommending red meat, raw milk, butter, no soy and no margarine. And she understood body/mind/spirit medicine long before it became popular.
I am deeply grateful to The Doctor because I took her advice and became healthy. I noted that she earned several advanced degrees after the age of 50 and gathered the strength to go for my own PhD. I was so intrigued by her findings about the health problems caused by soy protein and soy margarine that I researched and wrote The Whole Soy Story: The Dark Side of America’s Favorite Health Food. As for her naughtiness, she set a high bar for wit and wisdom delivered with a wide smile, knowing winks and infectious laughs. I especially love her reply to a question about whether one could go to Europe and enjoy a healthy continental breakfast: “If it’s a roll in the hay with your honey, yes!”
Though her quotes are priceless, it is her story that I find most inspiring. The verdict Hazel Parcells heard in 1931 was not good. Incurable tuberculosis, a collapsed lung, a hemorrhaging kidney and an enlarged heart. Curable, said the learned MDs, only by death.
She responded by firing the doctors whose 18 years worth of efforts had left her with a deteriorated body and depleted bank account. “They told me there was nothing more they could do for me, and I took them at their word,” she said. Though only given a few months to live Parcells looked forward to the chance to experiment on herself and learn what her body needed. “One thing was certain, I wasn’t going to get any worse.”
Sixty four years later Parcells died in January 1996 at the age of 106 years young. She was, according to Joseph Dispenza, author of Live Better Longer: The Parcells Center Seven-Step Plan for Health and Longevity (Harper San Francisco, 1997) “vibrantly and vigorously alive.” A sharp dresser who favored bright colors, she was proud of her curly red hair and patronized a beauty shop just a few days before her death, enchanting all who were there.
When Parcells began her healing journey in 1931, she was very much on her own. Few alternative therapies existed and there were few health books to read. “Out of necessity, to keep myself well, I began to study the chemistry of food,” she told Dispenza. First, she tuned in to her own body.
Listening to her inner voices, and hearing the words “fresh” and “green,” she began eating the only green vegetable available in quantity in Colorado at that time -- spinach. Though her consumption rivaled Popeye’s she rejected the canned variety for raw, steamed and juice.d parsley and other greens followed and six months later Parcells was perky enough to report back to Fitzsimmons Army Hospital near Denver to show herself off to the doctors who had condemned her to death.
Her energy soaring and mind wide open to possibility. Parcells made it her life’s work to explore the field of health and healing. Drawn to many ideas that appeared -- and perhaps still appear-- improbable or impossible to establishment scientists, she ran her own laboratory and also explored homeopathy, light and color therapy, radionics, Bach Flower Remedies and other modalities. She earned four advanced degrees, including doctors of chiropractic and naturopathy and PhDs in nutrition and comparative religions.
In time, word of the Doctor’s unusual methods and miraculous healings spread. “From the first, I recognized her as a master healer and pioneer, far ahead of her time,” said Ann Louise Gittleman, author of Beyond Pritikin (Bantam, 1988), Guess What Came to Dinner: Parasites and Your Health (Avery, 1993) and other books. Parcells introduced Gittleman to many of the underlying causes of disease and malnutrition in the late 20th century, including parasite infestation, pesticide poisoning, mineral deficiencies, radiation sickness and aluminum and other heavy metal toxicities.
“I never heard of her methods not working,” said Sam Berne, O.D., the Santa Fe-based author of Creating Your Personal Vision: A Mind-Body Guide for Better Eyesight (Color Stone Press, 1994). “Her reputation was impeccable. She didn’t work with disease. She just cleaned up the body.” And she never spoke of “cures.” “Only taxidermists and undertakers do curing,” she told Dispenza. “As for miracles, no it’s just nature’s way.”
The doctor’s most frequently used methods included fasts and bowel cleanses, parasite riddance programs, therapeutic baths and food cleansing baths. Food cleansed using the Doctor’s special methods gain levels of freshness and energy that belie that reality of long transports and extended stays on supermarket shelves. According to Parcells’ measurements, untreated foods -- whether commercial or organic -- generally rate so low in life energy that they can scarcely support health The same foods cleaned with the Clorox bath, however, become health promoting. Parcells also designed special lights incorporating magnets that help clear foods of negative energies -- including the “fear” energy left in the flesh of slaughtered animals. Known as Thea Lites or Balancing Lites, they also raise the energy of foods -- such as milk, salt or Chinese takeout -- that could not survive a Clorox soak.
Radiation was another of her deepest concerns. She said she found it everywhere in America, even in remote, beautiful locations such as Sapello, NM, where she lived during the last few years of her life. Accordingly, she recommended that people clear themselves several times weekly with sea salt and baking soda baths and as soon as possible after X rays or plane trips. “She would say, “You can’t stay dry if you keep going out in the rain,” said Larry Martin, a friend and follower who worked closely with her during her last few years of life. “You clear it but it comes back because you are exposed.”
“Doing this work, you start to really know what the environment is like,” said Terry Kast, who followed Parcells for two decades learning her methods and who teaches workshops in Albuquerque. “She found high readings nearly everywhere of dioxins, arsenic trisulfate, cobalt 60, you name it.” In her final years, the doctor also began detecting mutant viruses, mutant fungi and other microbiological aliens. Night after night she worked in her laboratory seeking and praying for remedies, only to catch yet another mutation a few months later.
Over her 65 year career, Parcells recognized many of her peers but esteemed very few. She especially admired Dr Weston Price and illustrated points with the photographs in his book Nutrition and Physical Degeneration. Parcells was also drawn to another dentist -- Royal Lee (1895-1967) a nutritionist, inventor and forward thinker who exposed the adulteration and commercialism of our food supply.
Despite her long career and unquestionable success, Parcells was little known to the general public. One reason was that she preferred to work in peace. Another, she did not want to butt heads with the FDA, the AMA and other medical police. “She kept a low profile because of her unorthodox work,” said Gittleman. “She was very, very careful. She had students, not clients or patients. She didn’t want to be made a spectacle of like Ruth Drown, Max Gerson or Royal Lee.” All three were persecuted for their pioneering work.
Indeed when Dispenza first discussed a book, Parcells resisted saying that the world wasn’t read and her message would be misconstrued and mocked. She agreed to work with him, however, when her spirit guides told her to get the information out to as many people as possible. So glad that “no” became a “yes.”
© copyright 2008 Kaayla T. Daniel.
The Naughty Nutritionist™
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The following is excerpt from the book "Live Better Longer" by Joseph Dispenza.
MY OWN EXPERIENCE
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| “If you like what you’ve got, honey, keep it!” |
When I met Dr. Hazel Parcells I was a reasonably healthy fifty-year-old man who watched what I ate, exercised vigorously three times a week, and in general took care of myself. I used food supplements off and on. I had given up smoking cigarettes a few years before (it had been very difficult, and I lapsed back a few times). Every couple of months, to "tune up," I went to an acupuncturist for a treatment. I rarely suffered any illness more than an annoying cold, and when one came, it didn't last long. I had been hospitalized only once in my life, when I was nine, to have my tonsils out. Still, I was twenty-five pounds overweight-something I just couldn't shake all my adult life (I had been an overweight child). My blood pressure hovered in the "borderline-high" area. I used antacid mints a few times a week and a stronger antacid liquid if my stomach got really irritated. I drank a lot of coffee, took aspirins to calm down, and used sleeping pills to get to sleep at night. My energy level was just so-so; if I could fit in an afternoon nap, I would.
And something else: in the past two years I noticed that my skin had begun to turn progressively darker. In short, I was one of the "half-healthy."
Cleaning House
Dr. Parcells put me on a detoxification and rejuvenation program that lasted eight days, and amazing things began to happen. First, my skin cleared up, from a dark brown to a healthy glowing pink-at the end of the eight days my skin actually looked like the skin of a baby. My weight became manageable: I lost twelve pounds doing the week-long program. I gained back four pounds in the week after I was finished with the program, stabilized for a month, then began to lose an average of two pounds a month after that until I reached my proper weight.
My energy soared. My blood pressure measured normal. I found I could work for several hours at a stretch without wanting to take a nap and get through the day and night with no help from drugs of any kind-including those I had considered rather harmless ones like caffeine, indigestion candies, laxatives, and aspirins.
I also had a new outlook on life. I felt revived, eager for challenges, ready to start off in new directions. I felt that whole worlds of possibilities were waiting for me--doors that had been closed were swung wide open. A kind of expansion of spirit came over me.
What I had experienced was not only a physical cleansing, but also a deep emotional, psychological, and spiritual cleansing.
I had never felt better in my life. The cleansing program Dr. Parcells recommended for me literally "cleaned house," as she Said, and allowed my body to take over the work of healing itself-naturally, easily, and effectively.
In my case, the liver was congested and clogged with poisons, to the point where it wasn't able to do its best work of processing and purifying. The blocked-up liver had caused a slowdown of my ability to burn food, especially fat, thus keeping me overweight. Its decreased function also had caused accumulations of unassimilated foods, food supplements, and medicines to putrefy in me, further bogging down the liver's activity; the result was that a variety of aches and pains were surfacing from a number of places, my sleep was being hindered, and my skin had darkened to a complex-ion that looked turbid, congested, and unhealthy.
"If you take your foot off the brake, your car will go faster," Dr. Parcells said to me when we went over the results of my eight-day adventure. It was a lesson I learned by doing, and the outcome was more positive than I could have imagined.
DETOXIFICATION AND REJUVENATION AT THE CELL LEVEL
Dr. Parcells developed her cleansing program in the 1950s and 1960s. She recommended it to people who came to her sincerely wanting to turn their health around. It was always the first step for all her health-building plans.
The Parcells Detoxification and Rejuvenation Program works at the cell level. It is not a simple stomach evacuation or bowel cleanse. It is not a mere rest-from-food regime for the internal organs. It actually loosens and removes toxic wastes that have been stored in the body for years.
This program works on many levels to clean the whole person. Its impact on the physical level is the most obvious and the most dramatic, of course, but it also clears blockages on the emotional level (or the emotional body, as some are calling it) and affects many other aspects of a person's life, including one's psychological and spiritual sides. If anger and resentment have been stored in the body for many years, they are given the opportunity of leaving at this time. If some self-destructive psychological patterns have gotten stuck in the mind and have spilled over into the body, they can dissolve during this program.
106 Years!
To Your Health!
Gencho Ivanov
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