Apple Cider Vinegar

The Apple-Cider Vinegar way to health

Keywords: Apple Cider Vinegar, Apple as a vibrational remedy, Apple, Crab Apple, Malus sylvestris, Malus domestica, Malus communis, Wild Apple, Rosaceae, British Trees, Native British Trees, Apple Medicine, Medicinal Actions of Apples, Apple Pips and cyanide, Constituents of Apple, Constituents of Apple Bark, Alternative remedies, Folk medicine, Tree medicine

In traditional home, garden and kitchen medicine Apple Cider Vinegar has always been a trusty friend, but this was taken to new heights after the publication of “Folk Medicine, the honey and cider-vinegar way to health” by D.C. Jarvis, M.D. in 1958. * (D.C.Jarvis Folk Medicine 9^th printing 1965, Pan Books)
The book sold millions of copies, which may have been a sign that its advice was relevant to countless people who had conditions, which defied conventional diagnosis and treatment. The author was a General Practitioner for over fifty years in the mountainous state of Vermont, U.S.A.
Dr. Jarvis was a man with a great respect for the many things he learned about folk medicine from his fellow Vermonters, which presumably comprised the accumulated wisdom from generations of pioneering families as well as traditions brought in by immigrants from all over Europe to the ‘new’ country.
His book describes many health-promoting gems, based on natural living and the study of animal behaviour. But what makes it stand out amongst other folk medicine books was the Doctor’s deeply held belief in the relationship between sickness and alkaline urine.

The alkaline-acid body chemistry

This conviction was based on many studies Dr. Jarvis carried out with the help of what he called his “human guinea pigs”, as well as “by going to school with the cows”!

In order to understand his endeavour, we need to recall some basic body chemistry:
“Sodium in the blood enables it to maintain a normal, weakly alkaline reaction by neutralizing an excess of acid coming to it from the activity of the body cells as they burn food intake and from the use of the body muscles in work or play. In their vital activity, body cells manufacture lactic acid, carbonic acid, phosphoric acid, and sulphuric acid.

The mechanism, which regulates the body’s chemical balance between acid and alkaline, consists mainly of the blood, lungs and kidneys. When the secretion of acid in the stomach is at its height, directly after a meal, the blood is more alkaline. The kidneys, being spill-over organs used by the blood to rid itself of material it does not wish to keep, allow the sodium to pass through them, with the result that the urine changes from its normal acid to an alkaline reaction. Later, when food leaves the stomach and enters the bowels, it is absorbed into the blood-stream, and as the acid reaches the blood the sodium content of the blood is lowered. Now the blood wishes to get rid of the acid. As the acid passes through the kidneys it returns the urine to its normal acid reaction.
The lungs represent another means by which the blood may get rid of acid. Blood, when flowing through the lungs, gives off carbonic acid, which helps the blood to maintain its normal weakly alkaline reaction.”

Dr. Jarvis’ research

His two-year study and other observations made Dr. Jarvis suspect that the alkaline urine reaction was a danger sign for being prone to disease. My interpretation of this is that a constant alkaline reaction indicates somehow a blockage in normal elimination processes.

Different people get different conditions because there exist different biochemical targets, (or weaknesses) in their body. “When one of these targets is hit, an alarm reaction appears in the form of symptoms. Since the underlying cause is the same, regardless of which target is hit, treatment is similar. The importance of making a diagnosis is thus lessened. For the indication is to restore to normal the chemistry and physiology of the body.”

Dr. Jarvis had an enquiring mind and executed many more small studies, which showed that physical fatigue and prolonged mental exertion also caused the acid to alkaline shift. He also observed children’s love of sour drinks and the natural inclination of grazing animals to prefer acid vegetation. He bought equipment for analysing the cattle’s food and spend days studying herds of animals and their herbage as they were grazing the fields.

The Honey and Cider-Vinegar prescription

Eventually the good doctor reached the conclusion that there is an extremely simple prescription, rooted in Folk Medicine and based on the acid/alkaline research, which will help to prevent and cure many different kinds of diseases!
His advice was to take two teaspoons of honey and two teaspoons of cider vinegar, mixed in a glass of water one or more times each day, depending on how much mental and physical work is done. This mixture tastes like a glass of apple cider. The Apple Cider Vinegar helps to restore the acid urine reaction, as well as being a tonic with an important mineral content. The vinegar also has the added advantage that it helps to destroy pathogenic bacteria. The honey was chosen because it is a virtually pre-digested sugar, which the body can utilise straight away. Unlike all other sugars, including white, brown and maple sugar, it does not cause an alkaline urine reaction. It also contains useful substances including potassium and other important minerals and has anti-biotic and sedative qualities.

Additional recommendations

In fairness we need to mention that Dr. Jarvis gave lots of other advice in addition to taking the Apple Cider Vinegar and Honey regime!
We cannot mention them all here, but an interesting example is that Dr. Jarvis recommended many of his patients to take a kelp tablet with every meal. Kelp is the common name for a seaweed, known botanically as Macrocystitis pyrifera. It contains more than sixty different minerals. Dr. Jarvis argued as follows:

“We would naturally suppose that when we eat products of the soil we should secure an amply supply of them (minerals). That is no doubt what Nature intended. But Nature did not foresee that man would remove the trees and other growth, allowing the rain to erode the soil, leaching out essential minerals and, by means of our creeks and rivers, carrying them down to the sea. The result has been mineral-starved soils, in turn producing mineral-starved foods. The obvious result is that humans, who depend upon these mineral-starved foods for our supply of minerals, are literally starving in the midst of plenty.”

Doctor Jarvis also learned from a dentist colleague, who had studied the condition of the teeth of tribal people all over the world, that some of the folk living in the Andes mountains habitually carried a little bag of kelp, which they treated as a great treasure. These people lived at altitudes of as much as 16.000 ft, a height where few can survive without oxygen cylinders. The dental scientist asked them why they used this seaweed, as it would have taken immense effort, a journey of a least a month to take the trip to the coast, to obtain it. The Andes people explained to him that it guarded their hearts. Of course Dr. Jarvis henceforth recommended kelp to his heart patients with good results!

Internal and external uses of Apple-Cider Vinegar

In his book Dr. Jarvis discusses a whole range of complaints, which may all be helped by taking the Cider Vinegar and Honey treatment. They include: The Common Cold, Hay Fever, Arthritis, Kidney Trouble, Digestive Disorders, Obesity, High Blood Pressure, Chronic Fatigue, Diarrhoea and Vomiting, and many more.
He also relates various external uses of Apple Cider Vinegar in Folk Medicine. We shall include many of these in his own words, as they are ‘time-pieces’ as well as interesting information. People in those days did not have bathroom cupboards full of cotton-wool and tissues. “Dipping the fingers in” was still a standard practice.

• Liniment to relieve Lameness
  ”Beat up yolk of one egg with one teaspoonful of turpentine and one tablespoonful of apple-cider vinegar. Apply this to the skin surface, rubbing well in, to relieve lameness.”
• Poison Ivy
  ”Use equal parts of apple-cider vinegar and water. Dab on the affected part and allow to dry on the skin. Apply often.”
•  Shingles
  ”Apply apple-cider vinegar, just as it comes from the bottle, to the skin area where the shingles are located, four times during the day and three times during the night if you are awake. The itching and burning sensation in the skin will leave in a few minutes after the vinegar is applied, and the shingles will heal more readily with this treatment.”
• Night Sweats
  ”If the skin surface is given a cupped-palm hand-bath of apple-cider vinegar at bedtime, the night sweats will be prevented.”
• Burns
  ”Undiluted apple-cider vinegar, just as it comes from the bottle, if applied to a burn on the surface of the body, will remove all smarting and soreness.”
• To Shrink Varicose Veins
  ”This is not only a remedy of Vermont folk medicine but, I learn from patients, is also a remedy of folk medicine in Scotland, England, and Germany. Apply apple-cider vinegar, just as it comes from the bottle, to the varicose veins night and morning, by means of the cupped-hands treatment. Shrinking of the veins will be noticed at the end of the month. In addition to applying the vinegar to the veins, two teaspoonfuls of vinegar in a glass of water are taken twice a day.”
• Impetigo
  ”Undoubtedly, impetigo is the ‘catchingest’ disease in the world. …Indeed, unless a patient strictly keeps his hands of his sores, he may have crop after crop, indefinitely. …… In treating impetigo, use apple-cider vinegar just as it comes from the bottle. Dip the finger in it and apply to each affected part of the skin. Application should be six times a day, beginning on rising in the morning and at intervals to bedtime. As a rule the impetigo will have disappeared in two to four days.”
• Ringworm
  ”…… Apply apple-cider vinegar with the fingers to the ringworm area six times a day, beginning on rising in the morning and continuing through to bedtime. Apple-cider vinegar is an excellent antiseptic.”

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Apple as a vibrational remedy

Mother Nature’s Celtic Tree Remedies
Mother Nature's Celtic Tree Remedies are made by Anna Fraser, who wrote these pages and is the webmother of this site. They are different from all the other vibrational remedies below in so far as they have been made on the living tree, rather than with harvested material. In all humility I believe that my simple inspirational insight (received through meditation with the trees) to do this, is a great breakthrough in vibrational medicine, because living vibrations are obtained, rather than decaying vibrations. This is of course a truly staggering difference. 
See also "Vibrational Remedies", which explains further how and why these remedies work. 

Keyword: Sexuality.
The Apple Remedy helps to open us to following beneficial  energies:

• The Quintessence of Life: Partaking in the One-ness of all things and beings.
• The joining of complementary forces, which liberates spontaneous creativity.
• The conjunction of spirit and matter, of “spirit and the flesh”. It helps to align head, heart and sexual organs.
• Resolving the paradox of life by being joyfully and attentively in the moment. This mode of being allows us to get in touch with the essence of our deepest being, which is love!
• Zest for life and therefore Rejuvenation.
• With cultivation and care, the Apple essence leads us to spiritual initiation and sacred knowledge.

Negative Indications:

• Frigidity and other problems caused by negative conditioning towards bodily functions.
• Dualism in our thinking and feeling: Perceiving things as opposites or hierarchies, rather than as complementary forces. Examples: Female-Male; Spirit-Body; Life-Death, Black-White, and so on.
• Feeling unworthy, unclean, left out, passed by.
• Afraid to grow old and unattractive.
• Infertility due to psychological causes.

Bach Flower Remedies:
Crab apple is known as ‘The Cleanser’ and its main indications for use are:. Self disgust/destestation. Ashamed of ailments.
It is the cleansing remedy for those who feel in some way unclean, contaminated. Often minor ailment assume great importance in the mind of sufferer causing despondency and self-disgust. Applicable to physical or psychological condition, wherever there is something repellent to the self. The remedy restores a sense of proportion. Symptoms may include skin ailments, poison in body or a wound, unwholesome habits, smelly feet, dislike of physical contacts, such as. Breast-feeding.
(from: Julian Barnard “A Guide to the Bach Flower Remedies”, 1979, C.W. Daniels Co. Ltd.)

Findhorn Flower Essences:
“Apple: Higher purpose. Helps us to integrate our desires and our will-power to realize our goals and visions. By aligning with the higher or divine purpose we channel these powerful energies into the right action: will-to-do good.”
(Clare G. Harvey & Amanda Cochrane, “The Encyclopaedia of Flower Remedies”, 1995, Thorsons/Harper Collins Publishers, ISBN: 0 7225 3096 X)

Green man Tree Essences:
Key: Detoxification; Balance of Purpose; Motivation; Lust for Life; Self-worth; the Heart of Things.
“With Apple there is an increased balance of purpose, a clarity and ability to express needs precisely. With this influx of discrimination it becomes apparent which aspects of life are not productive, or that are even damaging. Choices can then be made to abandon inappropriate patterns in favour of those that will allow a growth of happiness and fulfilment.”
Simon and Lilly, the creators of the Green Man Tree essences also note that tobacco smokers have commented several times that “it helps to reduce the need for nicotine, or actually reduces the enjoyment of smoking after taking the apple essence into the auric field.”
(Simon &Sue Lilly “Tree: Essence of Healing” 1999, Capall Bann Publishing, ISBN 186163 0816)

Master’s Flower Essences/Yoga Flower Remedies
“Apple: ‘Healthfulness’. For inharmonious states of mind, including hypochondria, worry and doubt, and recurring negative emotions such as anger and fear. Helps bring clarity, receptivity and joy. Restores a sense of well-being to one’s thoughts and outlook on life. Unlocks the spring of true health and vitality, providing motivation to take better care of oneself.”
(Clare G. Harvey & Amanda Cochrane, “The Encyclopaedia of Flower Remedies”, 1995, Thorsons/Harper Collins Publishers, ISBN: 0 7225 3096 X)

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