Parasite Cleansing

When Milken, a cancer patient returned home to Southern California, he invited an Ayurvedic doctor to come live with his family and guide them through a program similar to parasite cleansing. The man who regularly received upwards of a thousand calls a day began switching off phones in his house. Instead, he devoted hours each day practicing yoga, meditation and guided imagery and spending time in his new garden. You see, Michael Milken is the kind of guy who, when told by his oncologist to stop and smell the roses, goes out and builds himself a rose garden.

But Milken was having a tough time sticking with his spartan diet of steamed veggies. He found himself dreaming of chef salads, cheese steaks and french fries. So he dived into the nutritional research, including the pioneering work of David Heber, M.D., Ph.D., at UCLA, who introduced Milken to a European import, a soy-based "candy bar," which he recalls tasted awful but had great data supporting its cancer-fighting properties. More and more research pointed to soy as key in fighting prostate cancer, and Milken become a convert.

In the summer of 1995, he met a health-oriented chef named Beth Ginsberg and hired her to help him create fat-free vegetarian versions of his favorite's foods: Reuben sandwiches, Caesar salads, Mexican food and strawberry shortcake---only without the meat, dairy or fat. "I've come a long way from believing that soy is little lumps from the Chinese restaurant," he jokes. Not only has this diet revolution sated him--and helped bring his PSA levels to a disease-free zero--but it's gotten an enthusiastic thumbs-up from some mighty strong critics: old guard U.S. senators, inner-city school kids, unsuspecting diners in the ABC-TV commissary, a gaggle of visiting Brits and even Vegetarian Times' food editor, Kathy Farrell-Kingsley--perhaps the toughest of them all.

While some of his cronies think he's gone off the deep end, Milken says he feels like he's gotten his Ph.D. in nutritional science, having consulted with many of the top researchers around the world. Today, he oversees several companies, including CaP Cure, a nonprofit research institution aimed at finding a cure for prostate cancer, and preaches his message of eating right to save your life to anyone and everyone who'll listen. "The way to win over a larger percentage of the population is through their taste buds," he insists. That thinking was the impetus behind the cookbook he wrote with Ginsberg, called The Taste for Living Currently Milken's in the middle of some tough negotiations with Miss Piggy, hoping to do a family series on diet awareness with the Muppets.

For himself, Milken continues the healing journey he began six years ago. He still meditates and does yoga--"though not as much as I'd like to"--exercises, takes Chinese herbs and a supplement regimen similar to the one outlined on p. 84. He says he's found two things he wholeheartedly believes stimulate his own immune system--the smell of the seashore and pine needles--so he takes regular "aromatherapy" trips to the beach and to his home in Lake Tahoe.