On the latest episode of The Glen Merzer Show, Glen welcomed Paul Nison—a raw food chef, educator, and author with 30 years of experience on a raw food diet. Paul's transformative journey began with a life-altering diagnosis of ulcerative colitis at just 19. After years of ineffective treatments and debilitating symptoms, he decided to take control of his health in an unconventional way. His mantra? "Do the opposite of what doesn’t work.
Paul discovered the raw food lifestyle serendipitously after moving to Florida, where a chance encounter with the Hippocrates Health Institute changed his life. Embracing raw, living foods immediately improved his condition, setting him on a path to wellness he hadn’t thought possible.
Paul’s philosophy extends beyond just what we eat. He emphasizes the when and how much. "The main issue isn’t the type of food but overeating," Paul says. "Our stomach is the size of a fist; eating more than that causes stress on the body." His insights on fasting—practicing water fasts for up to a month and advocating weekly fasting—highlight his commitment to giving the body rest and rejuvenation.
But why raw food? According to Paul, sprouting beans and seeds, like lentils and sunflower seeds, unlocks their full nutritional potential—up to 50 times more nutrients compared to cooked versions. "It’s all about eating food that’s alive," he explains, believing this approach boosts vitality and healing.
Paul’s story inspires both plant-based and non-plant-based individuals. Whether you’re curious about raw foods or simply seeking better health, his journey proves that transformative change is possible with discipline and an open mind.
Listen to the full interview on The Glen Merzer Show and explore how raw foods can elevate your health—because, as Paul reminds us, “True hunger is rare; most of us just have habits to break.”
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DISCLAIMER: Please understand that the transcript below was provided by a transcription service. It is undoubtedly full of the errors that invariably take place in voice transcriptions. To understand the interview more completely and accurately, please watch it here: Paul Nison's Unique Journey and Diet
Glen Merzer: Welcome to the Glen Merzer Show. You could find us across all your favorite podcast platforms. You could find us on YouTube. And please remember to subscribe. You could find us at RealMenEatPlants.com. My guest today I'm looking forward to talking to because I'm just starting to get to know this fellow. He's a fascinating guy. Paul Nison is a raw food chef, educator, author of eight books and podcast host who's been eating a raw food diet for 30 years. His podcast, the raw life health show has over 100,000 subscribers. His websites are raw raw life health.com and raw life.com. No, raw life health show.com and raw life.com. Paul, welcome to the show.
Paul Nison: Thank you so much for having me. It's so great to be here.
Glen Merzer: Thanks for being here and tell us your story. You came to this diet decades ago after you seem to have learned the lesson to do the opposite of what your doctor told you. Is that right?
Paul Nison: Well, basically when I was 19 years old, I was experiencing some health challenges. And after going to the doctors many times, I was diagnosed with something called ulcerative colitis, which is inflammatory bowel disease, inflammation of the colon and here I was working on Wall Street, going into subways and just moving about, but I couldn't go without maybe 15 minutes when I happened to run to a bathroom. The thing is most people, when they have to go to the bathroom, their body gives them some kind of signal, hey, in the next hour or so you better find the bathroom or even a half hour. Well, when you have ulcerative colitis, it's about, the signal's about one or two minutes maybe, if not even that and so you can imagine just driving the subways in New York where there are no bathrooms and so on, how my life was just going down the drain and I didn't know what to do. And then somebody introduced me to a vegan diet and I asked my doctor if this will work and she said there's no connection between diet and my condition. But I eliminated some animal products and I started to feel better. And I eliminated meat, I started to feel better. Well, then I got wise and I eliminated my doctor. She wasn't helping me. So I ended up moving to West Palm Beach, Florida. I never heard of raw food in my life. The only raw food I had up to that point was maybe some guacamole or salsa in some dish. And I ended up running into a fellow named Brian Clement at Hippocrates Health Institute at a health food store. And I learned about the raw food diet and learned that it would help me from what he told me. So was like 99 % sure I was going to do this, but I don't do anything until I'm 100 % sure. I still had to hear from one more person that this was going to work. So I called my doctor up in New York and I said, a raw food diet, is this going to help me? And she said exactly what I needed to stay on his path. She said, no. So I went on the raw food diet, that was 30 years ago, and right away I was better.
Glen Merzer: Well, it's just wonderful to always have someone you can consult and do the opposite of what she says.
Paul Nison: Well, you learn a lot from people, you know, it's yeah, don't believe them. Get some get some advice from somebody you don't trust and do the opposite.
Glen Merzer: There you go. So and was it just a coincidence that you had moved to the neighborhood of the Hippocrates Institute?
Paul Nison: Well, I want to escape the stress from New York. never heard of Hippocrates. I kept seeing the van past my house. And then one day I was at a health food store and I saw the van at the parking lot of the health food store And I still didn't know what the place was. And that's the first time I heard about the place, what it was and what they do.
Glen Merzer: Right. Now, one thing they do at Hippocrates is is fasting, right?
Paul Nison: They do. They they have one day of fasting a week. They really don't practice fasting. It's not a fasting place. And but so they do one day of fasting a week or they recommend one day of fasting. But they teach people it's a three week program and they teach people all about health and everything we need to know and how it's related to not just diet, but everything. But when it comes to the food, they make the living foods right there for you for three weeks and teach you how to make it when you go home.
Glen Merzer: Right. And did you incorporate fasting at all in your recovery?
Paul Nison: Not at the time in my recovery, but now I'm very much into fasting and I think it's a really important part. And when I know somebody who's suffering from ulcerative colitis, I definitely incorporate fasting into my recommendations for them. So I had a fast. I was forced to fast when I was sick because I couldn't eat anything or I'd be going to the bathroom. But I didn't do it from a healing standpoint, but now I definitely do and I recommend it.
Glen Merzer: And how much fasting do you do yourself and do you recommend?
Paul Nison: Well, I fasted a good amount over the years. I think each person has to look on an individual basis of how much they need based on their overall health condition and also based on what their goals are and what they're trying to accomplish. I think the biggest problem we have when it comes to diet is not just what we're eating, but it's how much we're eating. And I think just about everybody's overeating and it's a big problem. I interviewed William Esser who had a fasting retreat here in South Florida and I said, how much do you fast? He goes, I never fast, I don't need to because I don't overeat. You know, so if we get control of our eating, which most people don't, because they have an addiction to food and things like that, they don't need to fast as much. But the body can always use a rest. So at apocrates, they recommend fasting at least one day a week. Now there's different types of fasting. There's water fasting and there's, there's juice fasting, but water fasting is the only really true fasting. And one day a week would be a good practice for people to do. However, I mean, I fasted up to a month myself on just water. And I fasted a week at a time, many times over the years and easily could fast one or two days a week if I desire to do so.
Glen Merzer: OK. Now, on the raw food diet that you've been practicing for 30 years, there are foods that I eat that I don't think you can. Potatoes. Sweet.
Paul Nison: You can you can eat sweet potatoes raw. You could shred them up and put them in a raw recipe.
Glen Merzer: Do you do that?
Paul Nison: It's more on the starchy side. You can make a sweet potato pie. You can make a lot of things with rough food recipes, but the starchy root vegetables, I wouldn't necessarily recommend on a regular basis on a raw diet, but it can be done.
Glen Merzer: Okay. Beans.
Paul Nison: Beans I eat all the time. I eat sprouted beans, beans, and you can make them into micro greens or you could sprout them. So I eat on a regular basis lentils and mug beans, azuki beans, and these you could sprout. That's the whole point of the Hippocrates diet. It's changing something that's not easily digestible to something that's more easily digestible and a living food. So some beans will grow into a microgreen, which is like a little grass, for example, peas, for example, I make into pea sprouts. Sunflower seeds, I make it the sunflower sprouts. So those are microgreens. Then there's what you do with the lentils and the mug beans, which you soak them overnight and then rinse them off for a couple of days. They grow little tails and they become soft. So I eat beans. We're all all the time.
Glen Merzer: Now are you eating just the sprout or the whole thing?
Paul Nison: Well, you're either eating the micro green or the sprout is both. There's two different things. So if you take a lentil, for example, and you soak it overnight, it'll grow a little tail and make the whole lentil bean soft. And you could just eat it just like that. But if you let it grow longer, they grow little green shoots. And now you're eating, you could do beet sprouts and they're micro green. So there's sprouts and there's micro greens. All right.
Glen Merzer: Explain to us why they offer more health benefits when they sprout than if they're not allowed to
Paul Nison: an example with broccoli, example. Broccoli, many people know how powerful and healing broccoli is and have anti-cancer fighting things in them. So if you take a broccoli and take it into a sprout, It might be 50 times more nutrition in a sprout than it would be in just a broccoli. It's just waking everything up and it becomes a living food. And that's what everything, every protein, every nutrient that a bean has, if you eat it in a sprouted form, it's 50 to a hundred times more of what it had just in that regular form. Now, if you cook it, you know, there's the benefit is you can maybe digest it. It's soft the way you could chew it. But you've depleted whenever you heat a food over a certain temperature, you deplete many of the nutrients, not all of them, but many of them, and you kill all the enzymes, making it actually harder to digest, even though it's softer. So there are some beans that like soybeans and black beans are really difficult to digest when they're cooked. So I wouldn't recommend, if you're going to eat beans, which I do recommend sprouted would be the way to eat them.
Glen Merzer: Okay. I have always had a high regard for the philosophy of the late great Dr. John McDougall who advised a starch-based diet. And there's starch in potatoes, in sweet potatoes, in beans, in whole grains. Are you getting the starch in these sprouted forms of the grains and the legumes?
Paul Nison: No, I'm not. And I don't want to get the starch from it. Every diet is going to work out there with the understanding that they all have something in common, and that is they're leaving something out. So that's why all diets have a lot of success. I don't need the starch. And it does slow down a lot of healing benefits that I see. There are people that, like natural hygienists out there, that will and eat a mostly raw food diet, but have sweet potatoes in their diet or even baked potatoes and having a small starchy vegetables in their diet. That's a great diet. Nothing wrong with that diet. I believe taking it to the next level would be to eliminate all the starches and just having the fruit and the vegetables. But again, the key to health, their main key to health is really, or disease is not overeating. So if somebody eats and they don't overeat on starchy vegetables, they're to be fine. Even raw food, somebody can overeat on raw food and they're not going to thrive the way they should. Overeating is one of the main issues that people need to address. There's no diet that's healthy if people are overeating. And of course we come to the question of what is overeating? Because that number might be different for everyone. But clearly we have to understand the stomach is the size of our fist or at least supposed to be. And when we look about how much we eat and think about how our digestion is working, most people are overeating. We don't need to eat as much as we eat and people are eating way too much. And overweight is just an example of the problems that it's creating.
Glen Merzer: Well, people overeat, I guess, in part because they find different foods delicious and in part because they feel hungry. Do you eat every time you feel hungry or do you sometimes feel hungry and say, well, I'm a little hungry, but that's okay?
Paul Nison: Well, this is a topic that I discuss often and study often. People are never really hungry. True hunger is something very few people, at least in this country, ever experienced. What we experience is something called a habit hunger. We create it in a place where we need to eat four or five times a day and we need to eat certain times at nighttime and so on. We don't need to eat that much. And just as we created that habit, we can create a healthier habit where we don't desire as much food. But the main reason people eat is because they get a joy from food and a pleasure from food that they're not getting from somewhere else in life. And that joy comes from the food. And I do believe something is missing in many people's lives where they have to run to food for that temporary pleasure that they're getting from food. So do I get hungry? I I am a very disciplined person. But do I suffer from habit hunger? Not really. mean, I can go, like I said, can go days without eating. I can go weeks without eating any food. All eating when it comes to the amount we're eating is a mental thing. And being accomplished a hundred percent vegan or an all raw food diet or any type of diet, it's a lot more difficult from a mental standpoint than it is from a physical standpoint. People could eat just about anything, but mentally and emotionally, that's a real trap and people overeat and that's the issue. And I don't care what type of diet somebody's eating, if they, we can say systematically under eat or not overeat, they're gonna be much healthier as if they overeat. So it's probably better to under eat on the worst food than to overeat on the best food. When you look at the way things are going in today's world, because the body is truly amazing and it doesn't need much food, especially if you give it food with the highest amount of nutrients, it only needs very little but people are eating way too much, way too often. And I wrote a book called The Daylight Diet that talks about the worst time to eat is at nighttime and people are eating too late. Eating right before you go to sleep and eating too much before you go to sleep are two of the biggest causes of disease today.
Glen Merzer: And tell us why. Why is it so bad to eat, let's say an hour before you go to sleep?
Paul Nison: Well, because we got to understand digestion is what our creator gave us to take the food that he provided for us and assimilate those nutrients and get rid of the waste but he has a time clock and it works in rhythm with everything in nature. So when the sun is at its highest, our digestion organs are gonna be working the most and the best. At nighttime, when the moon is out, we're not nocturnal animals, that's when we should be resting and all the waters of the earth are moving and cleansing and our body's mostly water. So when the moon is out and when it's nighttime, that's when we shouldn't be giving our body food, we shouldn't be in a digestive mode. At that time, we should be in a cleansing mode. When you eat right before going to sleep, You are slowing down or even stopping that cleansing mode and making your body have to work to digest. I would say four to five hours before going to sleep, we shouldn't be eating anything. And also we shouldn't be eating when it's dark outside because our body can't digest well when it's dark outside as when it's light outside.
Glen Merzer: the fact that we're not nocturnal animals, although sometimes I have to confess, I live as if I am. The fact that we're not nocturnal animals, could that be used as an argument for why we're not meat eaters?
Paul Nison: I mean, people can argue a lot of things. I don't really like to argue or debate, but I would say that there are certain that the ideal foods for our body are the foods that give our body the most while using the least amount of energy to get them out. They get the waste out. And meat is one of the foods that will give our body the least while using the most energy to get rid of the waste. There are so many reasons ethically, nutritionally and so many reasons why a carcass of an animal shouldn't go in our mouth but or anywhere in our body in any way but again people aren't eating for nutrition they're not eating for common sense they're eating for emotional reasons and they were trained that it's okay to eat this and you know you're not going to get people to stop eating meat by teaching them nutrition you're going to get people to stop eating meat by teaching them the emotional and the real aspects of why they're eating it because they were trained as little kids to think it's okay. No kid on his own standing would go and eat his pet. But when you see it on the news a million times and you think it's okay, it just makes no sense that even a grown man who loves dogs would go and eat animals. It makes no sense, but that's what people do.
Glen Merzer: Let's dive into that. You say it's hard to convince people not to eat meat for the, from nutritional reasons, health reasons. And you think it's easier to convince them based on emotional reasons?
Paul Nison: That's why people are eating dead animals. They're eating them for emotional reasons. I mean, you can teach somebody and tell somebody anything about nutrition. People are very naive out there and they don't know much about nutrition at all. And the fact that people are eating carnivore diet, a perfect example of this. We know, you and I know that it's absolutely unhealthy to eat meat and it's healthier to eat vegetables. Well, if that's the case, why are people still eating meat?
Glen Merzer: Because well, but but but I thought the answer would be because they just don't know. Well, they've been conned by the protein myth and all that.
Paul Nison: Well, there you go. They've been conned and they've been brought up to say meat is OK. It's comfort reasons. It's what they're used to and all these other reasons. The way people usually stop eating meat, usually not all the time is you give them some meat substitute that reaches their own comfort levels, the same comfort level. So now they feel like they're doing what they've always been doing. But have to, it's a mind thing, it's a mental thing. Even like a raw food diet or a vegan diet or something else, it's much more challenging mentally than it is physically. With social standards and what to eat and who you're eating with, it's much more easier to physically pick up a fork and eat a carrot than it is mentally to think, am I gonna get enough? The world says I won't get enough and am I gonna fit into society if I just eat carrots and all this stuff?
Glen Merzer: So let's say you have a friend who's 50 pounds overweight, a big meat eater. Now he's being told he's got heart disease. And he says, Paul, talk to me. What should I do? How do you explain to a person, you've got to change your diet totally and you got to stop putting carcasses in your mouth. What's your argument to-
Paul Nison: Well, mean, it depends on who it is in the situation, but I know a lot of friends and loved ones that won't listen to me about health in general seen me help people and they just won't make the changes. But I would look at somebody and before I even got into the meat thing, I would might tell them they need to stop overeating. That's the number one big issue when it comes to their health. They need to stop over consuming food. And then I would have them make some smaller changes if they had time. If they were in the hospital, then I might speed up, speed it up. But I would also send them to a place like a Hippocrates Health Institute. And if they're really interested, they'll go there. If they're not really interested. Well, look, don't eat late. I got a friend like that right now. say, look, don't eat late at night. And he's, he doesn't want to give up eating his carcasses. He's not interested in that. You know, cut back. How many times do you eat a day? Three times a day cut back to one time a day and don't eat late at night. Then when they start seeing the health improvements, now I could say, then they, then they get, I get the ear and then I could say, you know what, go for a month without meat, see how you feel. And then they'll try that. And then when they feel great, then now they're listening. So, you gotta meet people where they're at If not everyone, unless they're doing it from an ethical standpoint, which we should be doing it from that standpoint, most people aren't going to just stop meat overnight. So you gotta meet them where they're at and let them see the benefit of not eating meat. And also when they stop eating meat, most people that are vegetarians are not healthy because they don't have any education of how to eat vegetarian. like they eat, if you're switching from meat to a junk food vegan diet, you're not often going to do better. Often you're going to do worse. And that's not going to help convince people to get off meat. So you have to really think about what people are willing to do. Most people that I tell this to, they're not willing to do it. They're not, you know, even vegans out there, I tell them, you know, cooked food has an issue. There's an issue with cooked food. But just like the person wouldn't give up meat, you're not going to stop eating cooked food. mean, it's just a...the way the world works here today, but I've seen it, I lived it, I've gotten over a common disease myself, and people that are listening are getting better.
Glen Merzer: Well, I do eat cooked food, but I try to eat it without oil. We don't cook with oil at home, and I try to go to restaurants as infrequently as possible. In your case, on a raw food diet, you're not really encountering free oils at all, right?
Paul Nison: Well, there's many different ways to eat a raw food diet, just like there's different ways to eat a vegetarian diet and so on. So there are many people that eat a raw food diet and they'll have cold pressed olive oil as a dressing or something like this. for myself, currently I decide not to eat external oils, but I have for years. I've had salad dressings with maybe avocado oil or something else, but I've currently gotten away from that. But There are many people that will consume oil and be on a raw food diet and it's okay. I mean, if that's what they're choosing, that's where they're at. It's, they're doing a lot better off than a lot of the other people out there. Canola oil and these other oils that are highly processed and definitely not raw. mean, the whole oil industry is just crazy. And I don't trust any oil out there that's in a bottle, but, still, if somebody needs olive oil in a cell to get into the salad, I'd much rather than do that than eat the salad dressing from the store.
Glen Merzer: Right. Now, do you have any sense of how many calories per day you eat?
Paul Nison: I have a sense, and it's probably less now than I've ever eaten before in my whole life. But I would say consistently for the last many years, it's probably been around between 1000 and 1500 a day, even though I don't count calories. I would say on average I would guess it was around that, but I don't count calories, but now I'm eating less than I've ever eaten before.
Glen Merzer: And that would seem to be a pretty low number compared to most people.
Paul Nison: Well, I'm a very active person. My best friend or one of my good friends, Dr. Fred Pishy, he's 95 years old and he's been eating a raw vegan diet now for 60 years. And he could eat very little now and sustain himself. If I ate the amount I ate now 30 years ago when I started, it would not have been enough because I was just getting into this and I was used to eating a lot more and I needed more. But there comes a point where your body will get used to what you're doing. And after your detox, your body will balance out and do better with eating less. But you have to understand cleansing, detoxifying, and also how long you're doing this.
Glen Merzer: So if you ate the same types of foods, but ramped it up to 2000 calories, do you think you would gain weight?
Paul Nison: 100 % of a gain weight. As a matter of fact, I'm eating less now and doing experimenting now with testing different types of raw food diets out. I've been primarily on a Hippocrates diet for all these years, including fruit. They don't include fruit in their diet. Fruit is the main source of many people's calories that are on a raw food diet. But I realized I was overeating on fruit. So I cut back on the fruit. And I did lose weight, but I needed to lose weight because I was overweight.
Glen Merzer: So, so you were overweight. Could I ask overweight at how many pounds?
Paul Nison: I was a five, seven, about 150 pounds.
Glen Merzer: Okay. And now how much do you weigh?
Paul Nison: Now I'm 140 pounds.
Glen Merzer: Okay. Now I'm, I'm five, eight, about 140 pounds. and so, but I probably eat two thousand or twenty two hundred calories per day how do you explain the difference?
Paul Nison: Well I don't count calories because calories you know it's not a really good measurement of how much food you're taking in because one calorie is not the same as another calorie there are empty calories somebody could say I'm getting all these different empty calories all I know is I was overeating on fruit tremendously I'm not against fruit I think fruit is a great food but I have a hundred fruit trees in my yard and when it's mango season and I'm sitting down and eating a bunch of mangoes, it's too much. you cut back on that and then you find, but my weight consistently over the years has been between 140 and 150 over the years. But I could tell when I'm eating more fruit, it goes up and that's not necessarily the good thing. I know a lot of people, when they first go raw, they lose a lot of weight. You know, a lot of people are, you know, I don't count the calories. It's just not a good measurement of it. So I would look at a person's waist and see how their waist is more than their weight. Is your weight, is your gut, do you have a gut? Is it coming out, you know, past your chest or something like this? And your exercise, fitness is tremendously important. So somebody can get more calories and exercise more and be less or vice versa. So it's not just about calories. So what if somebody eats Twice the amount of calories I do, but they're running 10 miles a day versus if I ate twice as less and I wasn't exercising. So there's a lot more factors into just how many calories we're eating, but I don't necessarily recommend counting calories. I recommend eating the foods we need in the best form possible, not eating late, not overeating, and monitor your blood work every now and then and see if it's working for you.
Glen Merzer: Right. Well, I absolutely agree with that and I don't count calories. I was just estimating, but I'm sure I'm eating far more than 1500 per day. Let me ask you this, how big a part of your diet is nuts and seeds?
Paul Nison: That's another thing I've been overeating on over the years. But not much, not much. I would say maybe it's hard to estimate, but I don't eat much of it now at all.
Glen Merzer: Well, what a lot of the leading plant-based doctors like Dr. Greger, the late Dr. McDougall, probably Dr. Esselstyn almost avoids nuts completely. They tend to say a handful of nuts per day. But a lot of people on raw food diets eat a lot more than a handful. So what about you?
Paul Nison: I completely agree. And why I say I was overeating, because I did overeat more than a handful. But now...I think a handful, I wouldn't even say a day, would say a handful some days when you are eating nuts, handful, but you don't need to eat nuts every day. But I do believe as a Hippocrates Health Institute teaches, when you eat nuts, it's best to soak nuts. They make them more digestible and much better for you. I also think there are some nuts in nature that we wouldn't eat the amounts we eat now for almonds and like filberts and things like this. Where it's excellent. You couldn't sit there and crack open and eat pound of nuts in one sitting. But there are other nuts like pecans and walnuts and pistachios where you could do that. I think this is a good sign of nature of what nuts might be more ideal than others. And just whatever nuts somebody eats, I think it's ideally to get it in a shell that'll help control overeating. And if you could soak it just like the animals in nature do before they usually eat them, that would be a good thing for your digestion as well. But raw vegans often make nut pete's and nut pizzas and all this other stuff. So they do use more nuts and you have to look at the big picture. What are they doing, but what are they not doing and how much are they eating overall and so on. But I do not recommend a diet high in nuts. right.
Glen Merzer: We're going to take a quick break and we'll be back with more of Paul Nison.
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Glen Merzer: All right, we're talking with Paul Nison, and we've been talking a lot about the optimal diet, but that differs, doesn't it, Paul, when somebody is in a disease state versus in a healthy state? So let's talk about how that differs when somebody needs to overcome disease.
Paul Nison: Absolutely. At Hippocrates Health Institute, when people come there to start the three-week program, most people that come there are very sick and have usually Doctors have given up on them, they're so sick. Unfortunately, disease is a great motivator and people come there as a last resort, not a first resort. But if somebody is just healthy or looking to avoid getting sickness, they just got to eat healthy. But if somebody has a specific illness, then it needs to be tweaked to get them better. For example, somebody with Ulcerative Colitis or Crohn's disease can't just start eating a raw food diet the way that would be...Made with salads and things like this because it's too much roughage anytime you have a digestive issue You might want to blend the food or go on juicing until your your your colons healed
Glen Merzer: Is that what you did in your recovery?
Paul Nison: I didn't because I didn't know about it back then but now I work with people and that's better for them to do I just didn't need it all because I couldn't eat but I could have done a lot better if I would have did it with the proper supplementation to heal me and also with the proper way to eat the food, blending it or doing a soup.
Glen Merzer: so- you manage just eating the raw food and not eating too frequently.
Paul Nison: Well, back then I wasn't eating many salads. When I was getting better, just did most. I didn't eat, either didn't eat, I did juicing. I did do the juicing and I did do some the fruit. So, but now there's so many more supplements out that'll help the inflammation go down. Then you got people with a fat or sugar related illnesses like diabetes or or something else that, a cancer or something else. So somebody with cancer or diabetes, I would definitely recommend them be careful with the fruit and not consume fruit as much as let's say a young athlete who was just trying to avoid disease and be healthy. Some diseases will feed off the sugar and fruit. So you wanna be not get somebody too high or not immediately. depending on what a person's dealing with, you might wanna gear towards that when person's healing.
Glen Merzer: What kinds of supplements help reduce the inflammation when healing from ulcerative colitis?
Paul Nison: Well, creator tells us in the scriptures that herbs are our medicine and healing and there are foods like cayenne and turmeric that'll help reduce inflammation. there's a great algae called acethanthin and acethanthin is the biggest inflammatory reducer of any food on the planet that they can find. how you know it's working is a CRP is a marker, C-reactive protein, which talks about the inflammation in the body from whatever it might be caused. But when people take this acetanthin, it comes down that marker to show it's working. There are five animals in nature that don't get cancer or these inflammatory disease, and they all have in common acetanthin in their environment and acid antin is
Glen Merzer: what it comes from. Seaweed, right?
Paul Nison: It comes from algae, not seaweed. algae.
Glen Merzer: That's right.
Paul Nison: Yes. It comes from the algae and a red algae that protects the lakes from the sun's heat damage and environmental pollutants. so everything in that lake that's going to be growing is going to benefit from it as well.
Glen Merzer: So which five animals have access to that algae?
Paul Nison: I believe there's the I know the mole rat. I know the Pink flamingo, is it the, I forget the other three. think, I know those are two of them. There are five of them. But they all have the acetantin in common that they don't get cancer. And now the problem is most people, if they take this thing called acetantin, it doesn't work because there has to be a way for it to get into the body, for the body to absorb it well. And I found a company called Valasta and the Valasta company has a patent approved situation with the way they get the acetant and they attach it to glucose and the cells love glucose. So it helps the body get the acetant and that's attached to the glucose. So it's the only form of acetant that I would take is called acetant and by Valasta and it comes like this and there's the acetant in a bottle and it comes in a pump. And I just pump it in my mouth, but some people want to If you want to put it in the capsules, you could pump it into capsules and take it that way. but, it does, it goes by how much you weigh in terms of the dosage. Now this acid, that's in, is pretty much all the same price, but it's interesting because Walmart or somewhere else will sell it. They'll sell a bottle of it for, I don't know, $30, let's say. And they'll say, well, take this bottle one capsule a month or whatever. And this, It's lot more money than $30. But the thing is, if you took the amount they recommend at Walmart, this will last you six months. So they recommend a much higher dosage and you're able to get that dosage in the drops where you wouldn't be able to do in the capsules. I have all this information, a bunch of videos on my website, but I have found this product to work. And the way I found it to work was Dr. Fred Bishy was telling me about it for years, but he's used it on his clients with cancer. But then I had a friend whose wife had mouth cancer or throat cancer. And eventually she started taking this. Sadly, she passed away and her husband contacted me later on and said, Paul, of all the things she did, there was only two things that I saw that was working. And I wish if we would have been taken this sooner, I think she would still be alive today. And that was the end of that. And so then I started giving it to my clients and great results.
Glen Merzer: And you make it available on your website, rawlife.com. We'll put that in the show notes. Yes. And I'm going to get a bottle for myself and try it and report back.
Paul Nison: Sounds good.
Glen Merzer: And do you have any stories of people who have overcome cancer or other serious Conditions with the astaxanthin?
Paul Nison: Absolutely. I have testimonials on my website, a bunch of testimonials on my website. Some of the people I personally know and some are just clients who have taken the product. It works great for inflammation. So, arthritis, there's one that's four. I know one guy who was taking it for something else and he couldn't walk because his knees were so bad and now he's jogging every day. He didn't even know that he was going to get that benefit from the astaxanthin. I have one lady whose CRP was like 70 or something, which is unheard of. It's really, inflammation's all over her body. She started taking this and inflammation would come down tremendously. And I try to get as many testimonies as possible, but on the Valasta website and my website as well, we have a mutual testimonials from people who say they've taken this. And when we use the word overcome cancer or something like this, it's It's very tricky because some people say, well, that's just remission or doctors will say people overcome it and everything else. But all these testimonials, people are just raving about.
Glen Merzer: Well, in fact, Samuel Shepherd, who created the Valaster product himself, overcame cancer.
Paul Nison: Absolutely.
Glen Merzer: And I believe he says he's the only one who overcame this particular type of cancer. It was a bone, a form of bone cancer.
Paul Nison: That’s Right.
Glen Merzer: And he overcame it taking asked his astaxanthin, but of course he didn't have the product at the time. how did he take it? In what form?
Paul Nison: I don't know the form, but I know the amount. He took it in a certain amount and he wasn't seeing results. And then he went back and he upped the dosage and he was taking it a massive amount. And when he did that, he started to see the results. And that's where he came to the idea that it wasn't easily absorbable. And then you had to attach it to the glucose to get it to be absorbable. And That's why this is the only astaxanthinI believe in in the market.
Glen Merzer: Okay. And you have studied something that I have not studied, the scriptures, and you've come to some conclusions about diet from those studies. So tell us about that.
Paul Nison: Sure. After I got healed from my illness, ulcerative colitis, and I was going around the country with my books and telling people how to eat and get well, somebody said, you think your book is a great health book? Here's one that's even better. And he handed me a Bible. And up to that time, I had never read the Bible, but I did have in my book, Genesis 1.29, it said the food for man is fruits and vegetables. That's the only scripture I knew. But he said it's a great health book. It has great health stories, and it has great testimonials and everything else. Well, I read it to search it out, honestly, to prove him wrong.
Glen Merzer: Did he give you the Old Testament?
Paul Nison: He gave me a Bible, and I didn't know where to start reading. So I asked somebody where should I start reading and they told me to start reading in the Gospel of John and So I started in the Gospel of John and not only was I healed physically But I accepted Jesus after reading that and I was healed spiritually as well Completely transformed my whole life But I ended up writing a book because so many people didn't want to hear about the Bible But I wrote a book called health according to the scriptures which pulled out all the health scriptures from the Bible in one book that talks about what to eat how to eat, when to eat, why to eat these things, and all the healing that takes place is from the eating these things that are all found throughout scripture. There's so much health information. I do agree with that fellow. It's the greatest health book ever written. And when I hear stories about people that say, well, the oldest American was 115 or whatever. Well, there were people in the Bible that lived a lot longer than that. And we know they were real, characters. So I'm going to go with our creator and what our creator wanted. And it's very interesting. Man's life. before the flood, they were living up to hundreds and hundreds of years. And then when they started eating meat, their lifespan decreased dramatically. So it's meat and when we started eating meat and how we started eating meat was not a reward for man's good behavior. It was actually a curse because man was sinning and sinning and sinning. And it just went right along with everything I had learned up to that point and confirmed everything. And I would recommend everyone, if you're looking at it as a health book or you're just looking at it to prove me wrong, check it out because it's a great, great insight on how we can be as healthy as possible.
Glen Merzer: Well, are there certain passages in the Bible that you could point to that have health information?
Paul Nison: Absolutely. The whole story we got in Genesis, in Genesis 9.3, where God allowed man to eat meat, but he said, don't eat the blood and explaining that whole situation, how the lifespan of man decreased from Genesis 1.29 to Genesis 9.3, and when they started eating the meat, and how in the scriptures, when they talk about the longevity of certain people and how they ate and how long they lived, and there were certain people in the scriptures like Daniel, who didn't want to eat the king's food, the king's meat, when he was in captivity. He said, just give me pulse, which was basically vegetables and water. And he was smarter, stronger and outlived all of the prisoners and everyone else. All right. So many scriptures throughout that talk about this.
Glen Merzer: But let's get back to that first advice. Don't eat meat, but don't eat the blood. How do you do that?
Paul Nison: Well, in Judaism, they called kosher food. But our creator in the Bible says it's clean and unclean food. So we didn't just tell us to eat animals. He told us how to eat them. And he told him, if you're going to eat animals, drain the blood because there's a big significance of blood in the scripture.
Glen Merzer: don't you and I agree that we shouldn't be eating animals at all?
Paul Nison: You and I agree completely. our Creator had to come up with these rules and these guidelines and instructions for us to people who are just living a sinful life and just living terribly. Yeshua and John the Baptist and all these people, I believe, promoted the original diet of our Creator, Genesis 1.29, that we should be vegetarians and vegans But people twist the scriptures out and completely go around this. However, there's what our creator called in his word, clean and unclean animals. So to say, and I'm not talking about from an ethical standpoint, I'm talking about from a health standpoint. To say a pig is unclean, but a cow is clean from an ethical standpoint, that's terrible because we should never eat an animal or kill an animal. From a health standpoint, pork is a lot worse than cows meat. So that's the standard of understanding it from that standpoint.
Glen Merzer: OK. I would still think that the idea of eating meat without the blood, you know, wouldn't be healthy advice.
Paul Nison: Well, there's a way to do it. There's a way to there's a way to definitely take out the blood. And I would say if we follow our creators guidelines,
Glen Merzer: but it still wouldn't be healthy. Right.
Paul Nison: Well, from a physical standpoint and ethical standpoint,
Glen Merzer: No, I disagree with you. You think eating bloodless meat could be healthy?
Paul Nison: I think if people are going to eat meat, it's the only way they should do it.
Glen Merzer: but wouldn't it be better advice? Don't eat animals?
Paul Nison: Like I said earlier, it depends where a person's at. Not everyone's ready to go or wanted to go on a vegan diet for many different reasons. I support ethically and also from a diet standpoint, a vegan diet. But people that aren't ready to go there, as I said, somebody eats a small amount of animals and eats it in a biblical way and not overeat and not eat late at night might actually have less health problems than somebody who over eats on a junk food, vegan diet and overeats.
Glen Merzer: we're, we're, we're, we're agreed that we're not advocating the vegan junk food.
Paul Nison: I'm not advocating you to animals. I'm trying to get people eat less and less and less,
Glen Merzer: but can you eat a small amount of animals and be healthy?
Paul Nison: Yes, you can. You know, there are, there are, different, plant-based advocates who take a different approach, who each take a different approach to this because we all face the problem that the overwhelming majority of people eat animal foods. So some people, like for example, Dr. Esselstyn will take a, and he's dealt with heart patients a lot, takes a strict line. No animal foods, no foods with a mother and no oil. And even for his heart patients, no nuts and seeds. Others like Dr. Furman emphasize the nutrient dense foods and don't particularly go out of their way to say no animal foods. The emphasis is on eating the healthiest, most nutrient dense foods. And Dr. Ornish on his program, it's You might want to call plant strong, but he includes some low fat dairy, I think, in his protocol. It isn't vegan. I think he includes some eggs or egg whites or something like that. And I've always viewed those doctors who are not very restrictive about saying vegan, not saying 100 % plant food. I've always viewed that they probably themselves are vegan and eating 100 % whole plan food diet, but they're just just taking the approach that they don't think the audience will follow them if they say that. So they they are adapting their argument to their audience.
Glen Merzer: And it seems to be that what you're saying is that's what the Bible did to
Paul Nison: well, well, the two separate i would say from a diet standpoint like the doctors you're talking about, it's not pleasing their audience. They got to meet people where they're at or where they're willing to be. Hippocrates Health Institute has a strict stance on you're not going to get better from your illnesses if you're doing the things that cost the illnesses. As for the Bible, depending what view you're looking at it, the Bible doesn't call eating animals a sin. It's not a sin to eat animals, according to the scriptures. There are consequences for not living according to the ideal plan of the Bible, which is plan A of our Creator, which is a diet of fruits and vegetables. But clearly they were living in Israel at that time. They were eating, they lived near the sea and fish was a big part of their diet. There were fishermen in the Bible and so on. So the Bible doesn't necessarily promote a vegan diet or a vegan lifestyle even. So it's not that the Bible's trying to appease or appeal to people. It says in the afterlife, the lion and the lamp shall lay next to each other and there will be no violence or no death. So the ultimate goal of our creators and in future, we would all be vegans. But we have to understand. if we do look at biblical astrology, here's what we are now. And this is what's allowed. And this is what isn't allowed according to scriptures. But ultimately our creator says when the lion and lamp shall lay next together, it tends us to believe it will go back to the way he initially intended it for it be at the beginning where we would all be vegans.
Glen Merzer: Did it make you a more religious person to come across this information that was first given to you for health reasons when you were given the Bible?
Paul Nison: It reduced the stress in my life and stress is a big cause of disease. And even if somebody's eating healthy and dealing with stress, it's going to create a problem. So by me accepting and believing in Jesus, Yeshua as my Messiah and living the way he talks about living, It definitely on a daily basis reduces the stress and also helps me be more disciplined in eating healthier. So it makes a big difference because I can't do this on my own, but I could do with him and I eat much healthier because I don't have to rely on food. See, this is the thing and here's the problem. The reason why people overeat all the time and they just, they're just looking for something from food. They're looking, whether it's for pleasure, for comfort, whatever they're looking for food. Me personally, I find it through prayer and my relationship with my Creator. So it definitely makes a difference.
Glen Merzer: Okay. Now, of course, some people believe in Jesus as the Messiah and some don't. Some people believe in him as a historical figure and some don't. But for you and you are a believer, what do you believe was Jesus's diet? Do we know what it was?
Paul Nison: Yeah, we know exactly what it was. We know the foods that they ate at that time. We know the history around it. And but we also know that He wasn't, he came down.
Glen Merzer: But, what was it? What was his diet?
Paul Nison: He ate exactly what they were eating back then at that time.
Glen Merzer: Which was what?
Paul Nison: Which was more like a Mediterranean diet.
Glen Merzer: Okay. So he ate fish and, and, plant foods and probably not a lot of, other meats.
Paul Nison: There's one time in the scriptures that record him. It said when he came back and descended and came back to earth that he was cooking fish that he was cooking fish for them. But when you look at the idea behind it to show them he's real, he's back and he's here and meeting them to what they were doing, he multiplied fish and bread at another time. It didn't record him eating it, but he multiplied it. I believe he didn't even need to eat anything. And he might not have eaten anything because there weren't many recordings and scripts of him eating at all. There were only very few of him making a certain food or multiplying the food. But… If he was going to be he wouldn't have eaten separate than what the people were eating at that time Unless of course they were eating unclean food, which would have been a sin. So he definitely wasn't eating animals or blood All right.
Glen Merzer: Well, it's been a pleasure talking with you paul and people can find you at raw life.com And also your podcast at raw life Healthy show.com is that
Paul Nison: no raw life.com is my web store And Raw Life Health Show is my YouTube channel and also my member website, healthshow.com is my member website. And that's where they can find information about me and so on.
Glen Merzer: OK, so we'll put that in the show notes. And you have some books that could be found both on your website and on Amazon.
Paul Nison: Yes, yes, we have several.
Glen Merzer: All right, it's been a pleasure talking and I'm going to get myself some astaxanthin and report back to my audience of multi millions.
Paul Nison: Sounds good. Thank you for having me.
Glen Merzer: Thank you, Paul. Good talking to you.
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