Author helps pets, people get 'back to nature'

Minden resident Ruza Bogdanovich discovered the health benefits of eating natural, raw foods and made it her quest to let other people know. Now she has extended that pursuit to pets.

She held her 2-year-old Chihuahua, Chiquita, explaining how her dog's health can be attributed to the fact Chiquita is the fourth generation raised on raw foods.

"The bottom line is because we're living beings and have living cells, we need to eat living food," said Bogdanovich. "Of all the creatures on this planet, only humans and pets have degenerative diseases."

Bogdanovich wrote the book, "The Cure is in the Cause," and will be available to sign her latest book, "Love Your Pet Let Nature be the Vet," at a multiple author book-signing event, 3-5 p.m. Sept. 8 at the Douglas County Public Library, 1625 Library Lane, Minden.

Bogdanovich also founded The Cure is in the Cause Foundation, with information at thecureisinthecause.com or by calling 782-7365.

Raised in a family with nine children in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, Bogdanovich's upbringing was more simple than most 21st-century Americans could visualize. The family had virtually no modern conveniences and lacked modern medicine, but they were rarely sick.

"We ate all natural foods," said Bogdanovich. "Nobody in my family ever experienced any diseases ever."

Bogdanovich moved to the United States in 1970, where she started college and raising a family.

When the paralysis her son developed as an infant was attributed to a polio vaccine, her frustrations with traditional medicine forced her to look for other ways to cure him.

"There were too many medications," said Bogdanovich. "He developed juvenile diabetes. The doctors wanted to cut his toes off. I went on a retreat. I decided we have to put him back on nature's path."

Bogdanovich noticed a big difference when her son began eating organic foods. She then switched him to all raw natural foods.

"The purpleness started going away in his legs," she said. "We saw he was getting better. He 100 percent cured himself and he's walking today."

Bogdanovich set out to further educate herself. She studied lymphology and became a lymphologist. She earned a doctorate at Clayton College of Natural Health in Alabama. She studied under her mentor Dr. Bernard Jensen, who told her one out of 100 people would be convinced after hearing her beliefs.

She learned about treating symptoms naturally and began giving lectures on the subject, and for 10 years has been lecturing around the world.

"I helped a lot of people get back to nature," she said. "My whole year is booked solid."

She said she has helped others cure their pets through eating raw foods as well.

"People would bring me dogs with epilepsy, cancer, and I would fix it in a very short time," she said.

Part of her lectures deal with why eating raw foods is so important.

"When you take the food and you process it and you heat it, the enzymes are gone," she said. "Live food has the enzymes that are catalysts to every function of every cell in our body. Plus our own enzymes are used up when you process cooked food. This is the main reason why we have so many problems today."

Bogdanovich also addresses the problems she sees with relying on modern medicine.

"Any time you go to the doctor, they always blame genetics on any disease," she said.

She talks about vaccinations, which she said actually inhibit human natural defense systems. She feels much of modern medicine is based on money and admits her opinions are often considered controversial.

"'The Cures and the Cause,' my first book in the U.S., became very popular," she said, "but it was controversial because nobody wanted to hear the truth about how to eradicate any disease, any health problem, by removing the cause. If you look at the cause and eliminate it, the symptoms go away.

"The truth is so simple."

Bogdanovich's books can be purchased on her Web site. For information on her book signing, call the Douglas County Public Library in Minden at 782-9841.