Dr. Richard Schulze: Cayenne, First Aid and SuperFood

“All disease is caused by some type of blockage… Free the blockage, let the energy flow and healing begins immediately.” — Dr. Richard Schulze

The Man Who Rebuilt His Heart

When Richard Schulze was 11 years old, his father died in his arms of a heart attack. Three years later his mother died the same way. Both were 55. At 16, Richard himself was diagnosed with a heart deformity, and his doctors agreed that without major surgery and lifelong drugs he would be dead by 20.

He refused the surgery. Instead he changed everything about how he lived: what he ate and drank, how he moved, how he cleansed his body and what herbs he took. In three years, by his own account, he had rebuilt his heart. He went on to intern with the natural healer Dr. Bernard Jensen and to apprentice with Dr. John R. Christopher, and he later taught side by side with Christopher at the School of Natural Healing, continuing there for years after Christopher’s death.

For almost twenty years Dr. Schulze ran a natural healing clinic, first in New York and then in Southern California, working with people whose doctors had told them their disease was incurable. His book There Are No Incurable Diseases sets out the 30-day cleansing and detoxification program he used there. His company, the American Botanical Pharmacy in Marina del Rey, still makes the formulas he developed in the clinic. Since leaving clinical practice he has taught in the United States, Europe and Asia, and his Natural Healing Crusade seminars, recorded as an eight-part series, are the most complete introduction to his teaching.

When I studied at the School of Natural Healing, he was the teacher who shaped me more than any other.

His Teaching in Brief

Dr. Schulze’s teaching can be summed up in a few ideas, and you will hear all of them in the Natural Healing Crusade.

1. The body heals itself. Disease is not bad luck; it is the result of how we have lived, often for twenty or thirty years. Change the way you live and the body will heal. “Stop doing whatever it is that is killing you or making you sick, and begin doing what will heal you.”
2. Disease is blockage; healing is flow. Blocked bowels, blocked blood, blocked lymph, blocked emotions. Whatever frees the blockage and gets blood and energy moving starts the healing. That is why he loves cayenne, hot and cold water, exercise and massage.
3. Clean out first. The bowel, liver, kidneys and blood must be cleansed before the body can rebuild. His 5-Day Bowel Detox, Liver Detox and Kidney and Bladder Flush are taught in Do This, Detox That (Chapter 12), so they are not repeated here.
4. Use herbs strong enough to work. He calls his formulas “industrial strength.” Weak, old, dusty herbs do little; fresh, potent herbs in real doses do a lot. He uses the hottest peppers he can find, fresh-pressed echinacea juice, and tinctures many times stronger than store brands.
5. Hot and cold water moves blood. His Hot and Cold Shower Routine is simple: a minute of water as hot as you can stand on the problem area, then 15–30 seconds of cold, seven times, ending with cold in the morning and hot at night. He used it for everything from bruises to serious disease.
6. You are responsible for your own health. Doctors, herbalists and coaches can teach and support, but the person who changes their life is the one who heals.

Where Arukah parts ways. Dr. Schulze teaches a raw vegan diet and is wary of most vitamin and mineral supplements. Arukah honors his herbal and cleansing work but follows Dr. Weston A. Price on diet, with nourishing animal foods (see “Where I Part Ways with My Teacher” in Do This, Detox That, Chapter 1), and uses the vitamins and minerals taught in From A to Zinc. When you watch the Natural Healing Crusade, take his herbs, his cleansing and his courage; leave his diet.

Watching the Natural Healing Crusade

The Natural Healing Crusade is eight long seminar videos, about ten and a half hours in all. It is Dr. Schulze speaking to a live audience about his life, the clinic, the causes of disease, cleansing, food, exercise, hydrotherapy, emotional healing and his herbal formulas, with many case stories. As you watch, keep three questions in mind:

• What blockage is he trying to clear? Bowel, blood, lymph, emotions?
• What simple tool does he use? Water, heat, cold, food, movement, an herb?
• What responsibility does he hand back to the person?

Take notes on the herbs he names and the doses he gives, and look each herb up in Part Two of this book.

Featured Remedy: Cayenne

“When you think of blood, in any situation, use cayenne.” — Dr. Richard Schulze

Cayenne is the first of the three remedies Arukah keeps in every home. If you learn only one herb from this book, learn this one.

What It Is

Cayenne is the hot red pepper, Capsicum annuum and C. frutescens. Its heat comes from capsaicin, and heat is measured in Scoville heat units (HU). Ordinary grocery-store cayenne is about 30,000–50,000 HU; Dr. Christopher used 100,000 HU cayenne; Dr. Schulze blends habaneros and other peppers from 90,000 to over 500,000 HU. His teaching is simple: the hotter the pepper, the more medicine in it. His blend is about 40% habanero, 20% red savina, and 10% each of African bird pepper, Thai red, red jalapeño and cayenne.

Samuel Thomson built American herbalism on cayenne and lobelia, and both Christopher and Schulze call cayenne the most important herb they know.

How It Works

Cayenne is the great blood-mover. It is a stimulant that speeds the pulse and opens the blood vessels, so blood rushes wherever it is needed; the warmth and redness you feel are blood arriving. Herbalists call it a counter-irritant: it stings, but by bringing blood to an inflamed or injured place, it carries healing in and wastes out. “Cayenne does sting,” the old teaching goes, “but after the sting comes the cure.”

Christopher and Schulze taught that cayenne:

• Stops bleeding, inside and out. Christopher explained that it equalizes blood pressure, so instead of pressure building behind a wound, the blood is spread evenly through the body and the wound can clot.
• Feeds the heart. Christopher called it “the finest food for the heart,” teaching that most weak hearts are starved hearts, and that cayenne brings them nourishment rather than whipping them with drugs.
• Revives. A few drops in the mouth of someone who is fainting, weak or in shock bring blood to the head; Schulze says no one can pass out with a dropperful of his cayenne tincture in their mouth.
• Warms and moves cold hands and feet, sluggish digestion, congested sinuses and stiff joints.
• Carries other herbs. A little cayenne in a formula drives the other herbs into the bloodstream faster, which is why Christopher added it to so many formulas.

The Stories

Dr. Christopher told these stories at every seminar, and Dr. Schulze retells them:

• Christopher’s own arteries. At 35, Christopher was told he would be dead by 43. He had advanced hardening of the arteries, crippling arthritis and stomach ulcers, and no insurance company would cover him. He began taking a teaspoon of cayenne in hot water three times a day. Ten years later, two doctors examined him for a large life insurance policy; one said he had “the venous structure of a teenage boy,” and the other pumped up the blood pressure cuff five times because he could not believe a perfect reading in a man of 45.
• The boy who was shot. An eight-year-old was shot in the abdomen while playing with his father’s gun, bleeding from the wound and the exit wound. A neighbor who was one of Christopher’s students stirred a tablespoon of cayenne into a glass of water and poured it down his throat while they waited for an ambulance 18 miles away. When the surgeons opened him, they found the bleeding had stopped. Christopher treated four other gunshot cases that year with the same result.
• Heart attacks on house calls. Christopher said that in 35 years he never lost a heart attack patient on a house call. If they were still breathing, he gave them a cup of hot cayenne tea, a teaspoon in a cup of hot water.
• Wounds to the bone. Schulze has packed cayenne powder into his own leg wound, cut to the bone, and watched it stop bleeding in seconds. He says he has never seen cayenne cause an infection.

How to Make It

Cayenne tea. Stir ¼–1 teaspoon of cayenne powder into a cup of hot water (Christopher’s emergency dose was a full teaspoon of 100,000 HU cayenne). Hot water works faster than cold, because it opens the tissues. Drink it straight, or add lemon and honey.

Cayenne tincture. This is the form to keep everywhere, because it works in seconds and lasts for decades.

• From fresh peppers (best): blend fresh habanero, cayenne or other hot peppers (stems removed) with just enough 100-proof vodka to cover; or fill a jar with chopped peppers and cover with 100-proof alcohol. Steep 2–6 weeks, shaking daily, then strain and press.
• From powder: fill a jar about one-quarter full with the hottest cayenne powder you can buy and fill it with 100-proof alcohol. Steep 2 weeks or more, shaking daily, and let the powder settle before you pour off the clear red tincture.
• Wear gloves and do not touch your eyes. Label it “Hot!”

Cayenne capsules. For people who cannot yet take the heat, size “00” capsules of cayenne powder are a start. Dr. Schulze prefers his powder stirred into juice and “chugged,” because capsules delay the effect and the heat on the tongue is part of the medicine.

Cayenne oil and ointment. Warm cayenne powder in olive oil (about 1 part to 8) in a double boiler for a few hours and strain; thicken with beeswax for an ointment. Rub into sore muscles, stiff joints, cold feet and the chest. Dr. Schulze’s Deep Tissue oil adds wintergreen, peppermint, arnica, calendula and St. John’s wort.

How Much

Christopher’s long-term amount was a teaspoon in hot water three times a day; Schulze says some people work up to many teaspoons a day. If you have no cayenne in an emergency, Christopher said to use black pepper at three times the amount, or hot sauce.

When to Use It

• Bleeding, internal or external: take it by mouth and put it on the wound.
• Heart attack and stroke: while you call emergency services and start CPR.
• Fainting, dizziness, weakness, shock and confusion.
• Cold hands and feet, poor circulation, varicose veins and high or low blood pressure (Christopher taught that cayenne equalizes pressure).
• The first sign of a cold or flu, with garlic and echinacea.
• Sore throat: a gargle of cayenne tea.
• Sluggish digestion: a pinch with meals.
• Sore muscles and joints: cayenne oil or ointment.

Safety

• In an emergency, call for help first. Call emergency services, begin CPR if there is no pulse or breathing, apply pressure to bleeding, and give cayenne while help is on the way. Dr. Schulze teaches the same order: get help coming, start accepted life-saving measures, and use cayenne with them. Take a Red Cross course in CPR, rescue breathing and the Heimlich maneuver; Schulze tells every student to.
• Keep it out of the eyes. If cayenne gets in an eye, flush it with whole milk or a little olive oil and then plenty of water; water alone spreads it. Wear gloves when handling hot peppers, and wash your hands with oil or dish soap before touching your face.
• Start low. Cayenne burns going in and can burn going out. Build the dose over days.
• Heartburn and ulcers: Christopher used cayenne to heal ulcers, but in some people with reflux it causes heartburn at first. Take it with food, and start with very small amounts.
• Blood thinners: large daily amounts can add to the effect of warfarin and similar drugs.
• Children: a few drops of tincture in juice, or a pinch of powder, is enough. Never put cayenne near a young child’s eyes or face, and keep the tincture out of reach.
• Skin: cayenne oil can redden and burn sensitive skin. Never use it on broken skin except to stop bleeding, and never cover it with a heating pad.

First Aid and Home Trauma Care

Dr. Schulze’s Family First Aid and Home Trauma Care teaches families to handle the injuries that happen in every home: bumps and bruises, burns, cuts, broken bones and emergencies. His message is self-reliance. Most injuries can be cared for at home, well, and serious emergencies go better when someone at the scene knows what to do in the first minutes.

Three Kits

Make three first aid kits: a big one for the kitchen or bathroom, a smaller one in a zippered bag for the car, and a small one for hiking and travel. Each holds tools and herbal medicines.

Tools. Several pairs of tweezers (fine and blunt); magnifying reading glasses (+1, +2 and +3); blunt-ended scissors for cutting clothing and bandages, and pointed scissors; cotton swabs, gauze and cotton pads; tape that really sticks (waterproof, electrical or duct tape, which also makes splints with cardboard); butterfly closures (or homemade ones) to close cuts without stitches; a thermometer; a bright flashlight or headlamp; and a suction venom extractor for stings, bites, splinters and spines.

Ice. Keep a couple of bags of ice in the freezer at all times. Dr. Schulze says nothing works as well; gel packs and instant cold packs are poor substitutes, and frozen peas are better than those.

Herbal medicines.

If he could have only one herbal medicine in his kit, Dr. Schulze says it would be the anti-infection formula. You can make your own version as a tincture of echinacea root, fresh garlic, goldenseal root, myrrh gum, bayberry bark and a little cayenne, with a few drops of tea tree oil added after straining.

Bumps, Bruises and Blunt Trauma

1. Ice, immediately. Speed matters: the sooner the ice goes on, the less the swelling and bruising. Schulze’s ice bag: put five handfuls of ice in the middle of a dish towel, gather it and close it with a rubber band, smash the ice flat on a counter so it molds to the body, and wet the towel under the tap so it gets very cold. Hold it on the injury for 5–8 minutes, then off, and repeat for several hours, even through the night. Do not freeze the skin.
2. Cayenne and nerve tonic by mouth for shock and pain.
3. Deep tissue oil over the area once the ice has done its work.
4. After 24 hours, hot and cold. Alternate a minute of hot water with a minute of cold, seven times, in the shower, a tub or a sink. Hot draws blood to the surface; cold drives it deep; alternating pumps the circulation and clears the trapped blood.

Burns

1. Stop the burning. Smother flames with a blanket and remove smoldering clothing.
2. Ice water or ice wrapped in wet towels, for 10 minutes. Schulze teaches that ice applied within seconds stops the tissue from continuing to cook. (Conventional first aid uses cool running water for 20 minutes rather than ice on the skin; either way, cool the burn at once and keep cooling.)
3. Cayenne by mouth for shock; lobelia a few minutes later for pain.
4. Fresh aloe vera, split open and laid on in thick slabs. Schulze says commercial aloe products are nearly useless; only the fresh plant works.
5. Juices instead of food for the seriously burned, to save the body’s energy for healing.

Burns larger than the palm of the hand, burns on the face, hands, feet, groin or joints, deep burns with white, brown or leathery skin, electrical and chemical burns, and any burn on a baby need emergency care.

Cuts and Open Wounds

1. Stop the bleeding: pressure, cayenne powder or tincture in the wound, and cayenne by mouth.
2. Clean it. Once the bleeding slows, flush out dirt with water and then the anti-infection tincture. Use the lights, magnifiers and tweezers to get out every bit of glass and grit.
3. Close it with butterfly closures, pulling the edges together.
4. Seal and protect it. Paint on the anti-infection tincture and let it dry into its sticky seal, or cover with calendula or plantain salve and a dressing.
5. Watch for infection: spreading redness, red streaks, pus, fever or increasing pain mean the wound needs more help. Deep puncture wounds and animal bites need medical care, and anyone with a deep or dirty wound should know when their last tetanus shot was.

Fractures and Broken Bones

Immobilize the limb with a splint (cardboard and tape will do), give cayenne and nerve tonic, and get the person to a hospital for an X-ray and setting, because a bone that sets crooked heals crooked. Afterward, the herbalist’s work begins: comfrey poultices or ointment over the area (not over an open wound until it is clean) and Arukah Herbal Calcium by mouth to help the bone knit (Chapter 4).

Emergencies

Dr. Schulze’s emergency protocols always begin the same way: call for help, and start the accepted life-saving measures. Herbs go with them.

Take cayenne yourself. In an emergency, Schulze reminds helpers that their own fear can make them faint. A dropperful of cayenne keeps the helper alert.

Infections: Echinacea and Garlic

Schulze’s two great infection herbs are echinacea root and raw garlic, “in larger doses than you’ve ever used them before.”

• Echinacea tincture: at the first sign of illness, 2–4 dropperfuls every hour; for maintenance, 2–4 dropperfuls 3 times a day for 1–3 weeks, then a week or two off. Strong echinacea makes the tongue tingle and go numb; that is how you know it is good. Large doses of strong echinacea are his remedy for stings and swelling.
• Raw garlic: for infection, start with 6 whole cloves a day and work up; for daily health, ½–1 clove 2–3 times a day. Don’t use elephant garlic, which is a weak relative. Strong peppermint tea helps with the odor.
• Garlic oil for ear infections, athlete’s foot and skin infections (made fresh and kept cold; see Chapter 2), a few drops just outside the ear canal, never into an ear that is draining.

The Kidneys

For the kidneys and bladder, Schulze uses juniper berries (they should be blue to purple and smell like gin when crushed), parsley, uva ursi and corn silk. His Kidney/Bladder formula is uva ursi 20%, juniper berry 40%, corn silk 20%, burdock root and seed 10%, horsetail 5% and goldenrod 5%. His morning Kidney Flush is the juice of a lemon and a lime in 16–32 ounces of water with a pinch of cayenne. For a stone, he adds hard reflexology on the soles of both feet.

Featured Remedy: Arukah SuperFood

The second of Arukah’s three remedies is food.

Why SuperFood

Dr. Schulze created his SuperFood formula for his sickest patients. When people are very ill, he noticed, their digestion is often too weak to get much from ordinary food. He wanted a blast of concentrated, easily absorbed nutrition, so he blended the most nutrient-dense plants he knew: single-celled algae that “almost digest themselves,” young cereal grasses, seaweed, and fruits rich in vitamin C. He says it created more miracles in his clinic than any of his other formulas.

Arukah SuperFood is Dr. Schulze’s SuperFood without the nutritional yeast. The yeast is in his formula for people who eat no animal foods, as a source of B vitamins and protein. If you eat meat, eggs and dairy, as Arukah teaches, you do not need it, and some people do not tolerate yeast well.

A student of mine, Rivkah Jaton Maddox, wrote that my herbal calcium tea relieved her arthritis and heart palpitations, “and her super greens formula helped raise my iron and B vitamins.” That is what this green powder does: it fills nutritional gaps.

What Is in It

How to Make It

Buy each ingredient as a fine powder (the grasses and alfalfa as juice powders if you can, which are more concentrated), mix by volume, and store in airtight dark jars, ideally in the refrigerator or freezer, because green powders lose strength in heat, light and air. Arukah’s proportions:

• 4 parts spirulina
• 2 parts chlorella
• 2 parts barley grass juice powder
• 2 parts wheat grass juice powder
• 2 parts alfalfa juice powder
• 1 part blue-green algae (AFA)
• 1 part beet root powder
• 1 part spinach powder
• 1 part acerola cherry powder
• 1 part rose hip powder
• 1 part purple dulse powder
• ½ part orange peel powder
• ½ part lemon peel powder
• ½ part red palm fruit powder (if you can find it; leave it out if not)

Buy algae only from suppliers that test every batch for heavy metals and, for blue-green algae, for microcystins (toxins made by some wild algae). If you cannot find tested AFA, leave it out and use more spirulina.

How Much and When

Dr. Schulze’s morning drink: blend 8 ounces of fresh fruit or vegetable juice, 8 ounces of water and 2 heaping tablespoons of SuperFood, and add fresh fruit if you like. Many people take a second drink in the early afternoon. (It has no caffeine, but some people find it keeps them awake if taken late.) Another of his favorites: 12 ounces of carrot juice, 2 ounces of beet juice, 1 ounce each of beet green and wheat grass juice, and 2 heaping tablespoons of SuperFood.

• Start with 1 teaspoon and build to 1–2 heaping tablespoons over a week or two. Green foods are cleansing, and too much too soon can bring loose stools, gas or a headache.
• Children: ½–1 teaspoon in juice or a smoothie, more as they grow.
• When to use it: every day for nutrition; during cleansing, illness and recovery; for fatigue and low iron; during heavy work, travel and stress; and when fresh vegetables are scarce.

Safety

• Thyroid: dulse adds iodine. People on thyroid medication, or with Hashimoto’s or Graves’ disease, should know how much iodine they take in all (From A to Zinc explains iodine).
• Warfarin: alfalfa, spinach and the grasses are rich in vitamin K. People on warfarin need to keep their vitamin K steady from day to day, so take the same amount daily rather than starting and stopping.
• Immune-suppressing drugs and autoimmune disease: spirulina and chlorella stimulate the immune system.
• Phenylketonuria (PKU): spirulina contains phenylalanine.
• Kidney stones: beet and spinach contain oxalates; people who form oxalate stones should leave them out.
• Quality: only tested algae, stored cold.

The third of Arukah’s three remedies, Arukah Herbal Calcium, comes from Dr. Schulze’s teacher, Dr. Christopher. That is where we go next.

Sources and further reading

• Schulze, R. There Are No Incurable Diseases: Dr. Richard Schulze’s 30-Day Intensive Cleansing and Detoxification Program. Natural Healing Publications (biography, SuperFood drinks, Cayenne Tincture, Lobelia Tincture, Echinacea Plus, Hot and Cold Shower Routine).
• Schulze, R. Family First Aid and Home Trauma Care (video and transcript), Natural Healing Publications, 2010.
• Schulze, R., and Biser, S. “Curing with Cayenne” (the cayenne stories of Dr. Christopher; emergency doses; Heart Formula and Brain Tonic; kidney herbs; echinacea and garlic; aloe vera).
• Schulze, R. Natural Healing Crusade, an eight-part seminar series.
• Christopher, J. R. Capsicum. Christopher Publications, 1980.
• American Botanical Pharmacy, SuperFood Plus label (ingredients).
• Maddox, R. J., testimony in Vega, M., The Arukah Method.