Why I Write About Holistic Health: The Story Behind the Research.
Most health writers come from clinical backgrounds. They hold degrees, run practices, and build authority through credentials. My path was different. Radically different.
I write because I spent decades learning what most people never get the chance to learn, and because the knowledge I gathered over more than fifty years is too important to keep to myself.
A Life That Demanded Answers
I was born in an Austrian refugee camp and given the name Marjan. Two months later, my parents immigrated to America. I was a rebellious child and spent a significant portion of my young adulthood living as what I can only describe as an emotionally dysfunctional outlaw. I dealt marijuana in my early twenties, then graduated to working as a personal assistant for a Corsican smuggler who operated at an international level. My life intersected with mobsters, conmen, federal investigations, and a U.S. senator who hired me to infiltrate a man the FBI had labeled the world’s greatest con artist.
That chapter of my life is fully documented in my memoir, 600 Devils, which is currently under consideration for a miniseries adaptation. The story spans war-torn WWII Europe, the jungles of Burma’s Shan State, and a shadowy Senate subcommittee hearing in Washington. Until that book was published, I had never told anyone about those years. Not even my wife knew the full story.
I share this not to be dramatic, but because my background shapes how I write. I have always gone where most people would not. That instinct carried into my health research just as fully as it carried into everything else.
The Decision That Changed Everything
Forty-five years ago, I walked away from the criminal underground and moved to Montana. It was not just a change of location. It was a complete transformation.
For the next thirty years, my wife and I raised five children in the wilderness. We cultivated an organic garden, maintained a 36-foot greenhouse, and wildcrafted in the forested mountains surrounding our home. That life gave me a working laboratory for everything I had been studying about health, food, and the natural world since the late 1960s.
Today I am 77 years old, still married to the woman I met 56 years ago, and surrounded by 18 grandchildren. My most recent annual wellness checkup returned near-perfect blood work, which improved from the previous year. My doctor noted that results like mine are uncommon for someone my age, given that nine out of ten adults over 60 are on at least one pharmaceutical drug.
I am not a licensed medical professional. What I am is a meticulous researcher with over fifty years of personal experience applying what I study.
What I Actually Write About
My work focuses on a cluster of interconnected problems that I believe are driving a serious and underreported public health crisis.
The Systematic Poisoning of Our Environment
Our planet is being continuously loaded with industrial pollutants, glyphosate, pesticides, plastics, genetically modified organisms, synthetic food colorings, and more than 350,000 synthetic chemicals, the vast majority of which have never been meaningfully tested for their effects on human health.
Two billion tons of plastic waste enter the environment annually, along with approximately 2,000 new chemicals. Microplastics are now detectable in nearly all ocean life, in soil, in drinking water, and in the bodies of most humans, animals, and plants. This is not a future concern. It is already embedded in the food supply and in our bodies.
What makes this particularly insidious is the cocktail effect, as researchers refer to it. When synthetic toxins combine, they produce outcomes that individual exposure testing cannot predict. These chemical mixtures have been linked to cancer, diabetes, obesity, ADHD, reproductive dysfunction, impaired neurological development, and a range of conditions that often go undiagnosed or misattributed. The concerning part is that these effects can occur even when each individual chemical is present at concentrations considered safe on its own.
The National Institutes of Health and organizations like the Environmental Working Group have published research on cumulative chemical exposure that is worth reading if you want to understand the scope of this issue.
The Food, Beverage, and Chemical Industries
I write to expose the corruption embedded in these industries and the regulatory failures that allow it to continue. The companies profiting from processed foods, synthetic sweeteners, and chemical-laden products have significant political influence. The politicians and lobbyists who enable them are, in my view, direct contributors to preventable illness on a massive scale.
This is not a conspiracy argument. It is a documented pattern visible in lobbying expenditure records, class action litigation, and the ongoing weakness of labeling regulations which I have covered at length in other articles.
The Case for Fasting and Detoxification
As we age, synthetic chemicals accumulate in organs, fat cells, tissue, and blood. The body is a remarkable machine, but it has limits. When the accumulation exceeds the body’s processing capacity, it tends to break down at its weakest point. This explains, in part, why aging so often correlates with chronic disease, even in people who consider themselves reasonably healthy.
The health practices I follow and write about are not experimental. They are ancient, well-documented, and backed by a growing body of modern research. Fasting one day per week, eating primarily organic whole foods, and completing three-day cleanses seasonally form the foundation of my personal regimen. My bloodwork validates the approach as well as anything I could cite from a study.
My book, Fasting Firepower, covers these practices in depth. It draws on scientific research, historical precedent, and the documented fasting practices of philosophers, inventors, and spiritual leaders across cultures and centuries. Fasting is not a trend. It has been a cornerstone of human health practice since before recorded history, and the research on its benefits continues to build.
What I Believe About Western Medicine
I want to be clear on this point because it matters. I am not anti-medicine. Western medicine has produced interventions that are genuinely life-saving. Antibiotics alone are estimated to have saved up to 300 million lives. Insulin, vaccines for polio and smallpox, and analgesics like aspirin represent real and meaningful advances in human health.
What I discourage is the reflexive reliance on pharmaceuticals for conditions that can be addressed through lifestyle and prevention. Synthetic drugs do not cure. They manage. Many carry significant side effects. The goal of the health regimen I practice and write about is to reduce the conditions that make pharmaceutical dependency necessary in the first place.
Prevention is the most undervalued principle in mainstream health culture, and it is the one I return to most consistently in my writing.
Why This Information Matters Now
No one is immune to environmental chemical exposure. The question is not whether your body is carrying a toxic load, but how significant that load is and whether your body has the capacity to manage it.
The information I share across my articles, books, and videos is not designed to alarm. It is designed to equip. The answers to many of the chronic health problems people accept as inevitable are more accessible than most people realize. They do not require expensive interventions or pharmaceutical prescriptions. They require knowledge, commitment, and a willingness to question what the food and health industries have spent decades telling us.
That is why I write. And it is why I intend to keep writing.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who is Marjan, and what qualifies him to write about health?
Marjan is an author and independent health researcher with over fifty years of personal study in holistic health, fasting, detoxification, and natural medicine. He is not a licensed medical professional, but his work is grounded in scientific research, historical documentation, and decades of direct personal application.
What is 600 Devils about?
600 Devils is Marjan’s memoir documenting his extraordinary early life as a criminal operative, from drug dealing to working for an international smuggler, and his eventual transformation into a family man and health advocate living in the Montana wilderness. It is currently being considered for a miniseries adaptation.
What is Fasting Firepower?
Fasting Firepower is Marjan’s book on the health benefits of fasting and detoxification. It combines scientific research, historical examples, and personal experience to make the case for fasting as a foundational health practice.
What does Marjan mean by the “cocktail effect”?
The cocktail effect refers to the compounding toxicity that occurs when multiple synthetic chemicals interact inside the body. Research suggests that these chemical combinations can produce harmful health effects even when each individual compound is present at concentrations considered safe on their own.
Does Marjan oppose all pharmaceutical drugs?
No. He acknowledges the genuine value of antibiotics, vaccines, insulin, and certain other medications. His concern is with the overuse of pharmaceuticals for conditions that lifestyle changes, prevention, and detoxification practices could address more effectively and with fewer side effects.
Where can I read more of Marjan’s work?
His articles, books, and videos on holistic health, fasting, toxic environments, and detoxification are available at marjanbooks.com.
Conclusion
The health challenges facing people today are not random. They are the predictable result of decades of environmental contamination, regulatory failure, and an industry structure that profits from illness more than it profits from wellness.
Understanding that reality is the first step. Acting on it is the next.
Whether you are dealing with a chronic condition, trying to reduce your chemical exposure, or simply trying to age with more vitality than the statistics suggest is typical, the information in these pages is meant to help you do exactly that. Not by following a protocol designed by someone who has never lived it, but by learning from someone who has spent more than half a century doing precisely that.
Health is not a product. It is a practice. And it is never too late to start.
