Nutrition has always been an important part of Body Electronics. Quite simply, experience shows that people on inadequate diets do very poorly in the body work (pointholding) sessions. John Ray, its founder, always stressed a programme of what he called nutrient saturation. It is appropriate for many people wishing to enter into Body Electronics to book an hour's session for general nutritional advice where the diet can be assessed and pointers given to any inadequacies.

For optimal sessions in body electronics the diet John Ray would state was ideal was comprised mostly of:

  1. Plentiful organically grown foods
  2. Fats and oils only heated to a temperature where damage does not occur
  3. Only sun-dried salt
  4. Fermented grains / sourdough breads
  5. Fresh vegetables and fruits, raw or cooked
  6. High enzyme foods (ones that contain an excess to that which digests itselt)
  7. Plentiful natural sources of fat soluble vitamins
  8. Raw protein sources
  9. Live fermented foods containing bacteria natural to the digestive system
  10. A high percentage of raw foods (50% or more), which are correctly prepared by soaking or sprouting where appropriate
  11. An emphasis on an alkaline diet, although body electronics pointholding seems to require plentiful protein to be effective
  12. Clean, filtered tap water, or bottled spring water, preferably also acted upon to change its structure or energy imprints

Additionally John Ray always stressed that the diet should be mostly vegetarian with perhaps a little fish when needed, although some teachers, most notably Doug Morrison have focused more on the traditional diet research of the Weston Price Foundation and included meat in the diet.

Ideas on nutrient saturation from the diet have progressed since John Ray was speaking on it. I would suggest now that feeding our gut microbes is imporant in this respect. We can get much more nutritional value from our food than we think if our gut microbes are both plentiful and wide-spectrum. If we feed them what they want, they in turn multiply and do more digestion of other foods as well as being more effective in keeping harmful microbes in check. Sources of resistant starch (RS) and complex indigestible sugars such as inulin are prime feeders of microbes in our gut as they reach the colon intact. Although we get RS from grains and beans, many of these sources seem to have a detrimental effect also due to the presence of gut adhering lectins. Our prime sources of RS are raw potato starch, raw green bananas and plantains, tiger nuts, cooked and cooled white potatoes and possibly cooled white rice. Although these are carbohydrate foods, our gut bacteria work on such things to produce butyric acid - the fat in butter - rather than predominately sugars. Inulin occurs in many foods, but notably the onion family. Yacon syrup is I would say the ideal sweetener as being indigestible it does not affect the blood sugar, only feeds microbes. One warning though, such foods for microbes can make people with a pre-existing poor balance of gut microbes feel worse, with pain and bloating and need to be avoided.

My Nutritional and Naturopathic Background and Approach

I was brought up in a family that valued naturopathic advice above anything else. From an early age I had a diet which included raw milk, butter, plenty of veg and restricted junk. Herbal medicines were used alongside some pharma-chemical ones. When I was 13 years old our family stopped eating meat and fish after some time of happily leaning that way, though we had been taken in by the margarine and soya industry claims of the day. In my mid-twenties I started to learn naturopathic nutrition and iridology and experienced being almost vegan for some years due to food intolerances. I started to practice nutritional therapy at age 29 in 1994. At age 34 I learnt the nutritional and naturopathic approach taken by adherents to body electronics, on a 6 week course in Australia. At 35 I tried being raw food vegan with plenty of green juices and sprouts and very little in the way of sugars. Despite vitamin D supplementaion this was the first time in my life I experienced any tooth decay, as the diet depleted my nutrient reserves. I became much thinner and physically less robust. As I added more eggs, raw cheese and some butter I regained some of my strength. At this point I started deeper naturopathic cleansing and found that a building diet interspersed with shorter periods of a raw vegan with a strongly naturopathic approach worked for me. At age 37 I was reminded of the Weston Price /  traditional diets approach which had been touched on in my orginal nutrition course. This approach helped me to build muscle and bone mass to an optimal body weight. Although still a vegetarian, I gained a physical stamina and resiliance I had never had.

I now feel I have experience of the benefits and pitfalls of the various nutritional regimes and through using many, many sorts of herbs and supplements with myself and others I have a decent overview of what actually helps.

My approach covers my experience to date:

  1. Raw food vegan, both the benefits and problems.
  2. Weston Price / Traditional Diets of exceptionally healthy cultures, both the benefits and problems.
  3. Low lectin, paleo type diet (and GAPS diet) principles including use of resistant starch and other foods for the gut microbes. Personally I am still vegetarian while applying these principles as best I can.
  4. The Naturopathic approach using its various techniques.
  5. How to piece it all together and fit it into a true and individual holistic approach.