"Over
the past 50 years our unhealthy living habits have grown into a gigantic new
disease that kills 7 of each 10 people. The biggest killers
today-heart disease, cancer, and stroke, along with cirrhosis of the liver,
bronchitis, emphysema, and asthma - kill 76 percent of the 2 million Americans
who die each year. There are no vaccines to prevent such threats to life.
Cleaning up our life-styles is the cure. Ironically, rather than improving,
lifestyles are getting worse."
"Changes
in diet, smoking, exercise, and alcohol consumption, and a reduction in
physical and psychological stresses of our environment would do more to improve
health than doubling outlays in medical care."
Before
I give you any more quotations, perhaps I should reveal the source of this
information. The American Natural Hygiene Society? A chiropractic brochure? A book from a
health food store?
No.
All of these quotations come from a booklet put out by none other than one of
the largest insurers of medical care in the country, Blue Cross.
Now
let me provide you with a few more quotations from this Blue Cross booklet.
"The
next major advances in the health of American people will come from the
assumption of individual responsibility for one's own health and a necessary
change in the lifestyle," according to Dr. John H. Knowles, president of
the Rockefeller Foundation.
"It
has become clear that only by preventing disease, rather than treating it
later, can we hope to achieve any major improvement in the nation's
health," according to the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare.
"By
switching from a bad lifestyle to a healthier one, a person can figure on
adding about 14 years to his life," said Dr. Lester Breslow,
Dean of the School of Public Health at the University of California at Los
Angeles.
Benjamin
Lipson, an insurance consultant, said, "Bad lifestyles are such a threat
to health that the so-called average healthy American with a self-indulgent living
pattern is a far worse insurance risk than a mild adult diabetic who watches
his diet."
Health
experts are beginning to realize that crisis medicine has become a bottomless
pit. No matter how much money is put into it, it has not improved the health of
the people. H. Robert Cathcart, chairman of the board
of trustees of the American Hospital Association, has said. "In the last
few years we have come to recognize that the demand for our services is
infinite. We can begin now to act on the lifestyle issue and join others in
helping individuals to modify their lifestyles, to lead healthier lives, and
thus to reduce the use of the expensive services that we offer."
Natural Hygiene
Have
natural hygienists been successful in obtaining recognition of their philosophy?
I believe the answer is a resounding Yes. The public,
government, and even the medical establishment are opening their eyes. It's
true that there is still much education that needs to be done, but never before
have more people had more information available about how to get and stay
healthy. Concepts relating to prerequisites of health have been well accepted.
Natural
hygienists have long stated that the prerequisites of health include good diet
and environment, appropriate activity-including rest, work and play-a sound
psychology and functional homeostasis, or balance. As for diet, they recommend
that the diet should be a vegetarian-oriented diet emphasizing fresh raw fruits
and vegetables. They advocate regular exercise and rest as well as productive
activity, and they emphasize the importance of the environment, not only in
broad terms of air and water quality but also in terms of work conditions and
aesthetic beauty.
Natural
hygienists have long recognized that a sound psychology is predicated on self-awareness,
self-acceptance, and self-responsibility. These components are becoming
accepted, mainstream, popular. This is good-and about
time.
But
there are still some concepts that have not gained widespread understanding or
acceptance. Natural hygiene offers a unique view of the very nature of health
and disease. Currently the average person's concepts of health and disease have
been manipulated by the economic interests of the food industry, the drug
industry, and, perhaps most of all, by the pseudoscientific proclamations of
the medical industry, abetted by the popular media.
Modern Medicine
The
modern medical establishment would have you believe that the 300-plus billion
dollars a year that are spent on so-called health care is buying an ever-increasing
standard of health. In recent years there has been an outcry even from
individuals within the scientific and medical community.
Rick
Carlson, in his book, The End of Medicine, states that current medical practice
has very little to do with health. Although
the medical establishment attempts to take credit for decreased incidence of
specific disease processes and claims responsibility for an increase in life
expectancy, Rene Dubos, an eminent bacteriologist and
holder of a chair at the Rockefeller Foundation, published a book entitled
Mirage of Health in which he states that modern medicine's purported
achievements are not all they are cracked up to be. He points out that it was
the social reformers-that is, the early natural hygienists who campaigned for
purer water, better sewage disposal, and improved living standards-who were
chiefly responsible for the reduction in mortality from so-called infectious
disease.
As
for increased life expectancy, Thomas McKeown, in his
book, The Role of Medicine, explains that the
statistics purporting to show a great increase in life expectancy have been
misleading. The increase has largely been the consequence of higher living
standards and a decrease in infant mortality. Life expectancy for those who
have reached adulthood is little higher today than it was at the beginning of
the century. Ivan Illich, in his book, Medical
Nemesis, says that the medical profession concentrates almost all of its
resources on treatments for which they get paid-rather than on prevention,
which, if effective, would reduce their income and status.
In
The Diseases of Civilization, Brian Inglis quotes Halfdan Mahler, director of the World Health Organization,
who states that there has been a mystification in medical care, which has
continued, almost unchecked.
Absorbed
in its own preoccupations, the medical profession has allowed the gap between
health care and medical care to continue to widen. At the same time it has
exploited its monopolistic position to create an unnecessary dependency of the
population upon the holders of these mysteries.
Inglis
also reminds us how adept the medical profession is at abusing statistics to
try to prove its case. Hardin Jones, a professor of Medical Physics at the
University of California, Berkeley, bluntly told his colleagues that patients
whose cancers were inoperable were being used by surgeons as the controls or
comparisons in trials, giving the false impression that those patients who were
being treated for cancer with surgery and radiation were benefiting. Correcting
the statistics to allow for this bias, Jones calculated that the life
expectancy of untreated cancer patients was longer than those receiving
treatment.
Patients
are often told by medical practitioners: "Learn to live with it"...
"What do you expect at your age?"... "There is nothing that can
be done." If patients question their doctors about alternative approaches,
they are often told: "We don't know what causes your problem. We don't
know what will help you. We are not trained in natural therapeutics-but they
couldn't possibly be of help." And if you are a woman and your test
results come back negative, you may be told that "It's just your
hormones"... or "It's all in your head."
When
patients who have recovered their health through natural means go back to the
medical practitioner who made the original diagnosis, patients are often
greeted with hostility for daring to go outside what Robert Mendelson,
M.D., describes as the church of modern medicine.
In
his book, Confessions of a Medical Heretic, Dr. Mendelson
states, "I believe that despite all the super technology and elite bedside
manner that is supposed to make you feel about as well as an astronaut on the
way to the moon, the greatest danger to your health is the doctor who practices
Modern Medicine." He contends that the treatments for diseases are seldom
effective and that they are often more dangerous than the diseases they are
designed to treat.
What Is Health?
The
single most important problem with the modern medical profession is its
misconception about the very nature of health and disease. Dorland's Medical
Dictionary defines health as the absence of signs and symptoms-that is, the
absence of any evidence to the doctor or patient. In fact, even if there are
symptoms, if they are not much worse than the symptoms of the other patients
seen by the doctor, he may still pronounce you healthy. This is a kind of
health by default. But health is not merely the absence of symptoms. It is a
state of vitality where the human organism has the capacity to successfully
adapt to the stresses of its environment.
What
about disease? Disease is defined in the medical dictionary as a definite
morbid process having a characteristic train of symptoms. If you look up
morbid, you'll find it defined as having to do with disease. That's what you
might call a circular definition.
Modern
medicine has defined disease as both the degeneration and death of the cells
that are the building blocks of tissue, as well as the processes that precede
this degeneration. In other words, they believe that the reactive processes of
the body-such as fever, inflammation, vomiting, diarrhea, etc.-and the death or
degeneration of cells are bad. Those who study health realize that this is a
serious misconception. While we all agree that the degeneration and death of
the body's tissue is a bad thing that must be prevented, we strongly disagree
with the concept that the self-healing mechanisms of the body-such as fever,
inflammation, etc.-are negative. We recognize that not only are these
"disease" processes natural, but they are essential if the body is to
restore balance and prevent damage.
It
is absolutely essential to understand that the body generates disease processes
in an attempt to restore normality. Fever, vomiting, diarrhea, and inflammation
all have very important functions in the recovery of health, if these processes
are interfered with through the indiscriminate use of drugs, surgery, even
"natural" therapeutics, this interference with the body's
self-healing mechanisms may prevent it from making a complete recovery. The
invasion treatment may be successful in eliminating the symptoms, but it may
actually make the individual less healthy.
For
example, fever is the word we use to describe an increase in the body's
temperature. If the organism needs to increase its metabolism to fight off the
effects of unfriendly microorganisms, one of the many responses of the body is
to increase its basal metabolism. This increases the rate that chemical
reactions take place in the body. This increased metabolism helps the body
regain balance. It has also been noted that many microorganisms have difficulty
synthesizing certain essential nutrients at increased temperatures and that the
fever of acute illness is important in giving the body the upper hand.
The
increase in temperature also creates some side effects, such as increased
perspiration, headache, etc. A doctor practicing modern medicine may see fever
as an enemy, since it makes the patient uncomfortable, and the doctor may
proceed to "attack" the fever by poisoning the body with a variety of
toxic substances.
If
the doctor is "successful," the patient may feel more comfortable for
a while. Unfortunately, the cause that created the need for the fever has not
been addressed, and the symptoms often return at a later date, occasionally in
a different form. Instead of working against the body's natural healing
mechanisms, we must learn to support the body and allow it to restore its
natural balance.
Fortunately,
medical doctors are becoming aware of the tremendous damage they have inflicted
on too trusting patients, and they are now beginning to avoid the
indiscriminate interference with fever.
Care of the Sick
Natural
hygienists do not claim that the body is always successful or always capable of
overcoming each and every obstacle. Neither do they claim that there is never a
role for drugs or surgery. Their recommendation is to avoid the causes of
disease and, in cases where intervention becomes necessary, that conservative
techniques should be used whenever possible, and that every attempt should be
made to support the body's inherent healing mechanisms. The human organism is
very well designed. And when the body is provided with the prerequisites of
health and is not stressed beyond its inherent capacities, it is self-healing,
self-regulating, and self-directing.
The
critical issue is: What is the best way to avoid damage to the body? Obviously,
the first choice is prevention. But once an injury or problem develops, what is
the best way to resolve it?
Modern
medicine generally takes an overly invasive, aggressive approach that often
poses more risk than the process being addressed.
Drugs
and surgery are often directed at the symptoms of problems rather than the
actual problems. The important question to always consider is: What factor or
set of factors is responsible for this set of symptoms? What can be done to
remove the causes? What can be done to support the body's healing mechanisms?
Most
of us realize that the symptom-oriented quick-fix promises of modern medicine
are on the way out. But what will replace them? Recently "natural"
therapies have come into vogue. However, most of these are nothing more than
allopathic medical practices minus the toxic (drug) substances, or with less
toxic ones. The philosophy is still the same. Although therapists may talk a
lot about natural healing, it is, in fact, merely a game of words. The ancient
concept that a special substance, vitamin, potion, or treatment is needed to
allow the body to be healed is still being promoted. Instead of the potent
pharmaceutical drugs of modern medicine, the "natural" therapists
utilize milder herbs, homeopathics, and other
exogenous agents.
Nothing
but the body can heal. All healing is generated by the body. The body requires
the prerequisites of life and the opportunity to heal. No drug, herb, or
treatment can speed up, increase, or allow healing except in that it provides
the body with a needed raw material or removes an interfacing factor.
In order
to heal itself the body often generates such processes as fever, inflammation,
etc. It is important to understand the role of these healing crises. When the
various stress factors of life-physical, chemical, emotional, etc.-exceed the
body's ability to maintain optimum health, the body will attempt to restore its
natural healthful balance. It may generate what can be called a healing crisis.
This is not to say that healing crises are desirable. In fact, we want to learn
to live so that the need for a crisis is eliminated. But when one is required,
we should support the body and not interfere with its efforts.
For
example, if a toxic substance is introduced into the intestinal tract-whether
it is from food, microorganisms, or any other source-the body will attempt to
eliminate the poison before it can be absorbed. Vomiting and diarrhea may
ensue. Attempts to interfere with these may actually increase the amount of
toxin absorbed. If the body is unable to keep all of the poison from being
absorbed, it may increase its metabolism (fever) and mobilize its defense
mechanisms (white blood cells, etc.) to isolate and remove these poisons. These
processes of the body, though uncomfortable, are both natural and necessary for
our health. They would collectively be termed a healing crisis.
Choosing Health
Health
is the optimum state of well being. Disease processes are attempts by the body
to heal itself. Degeneration is the alteration of
tissues that takes place when the body is unable to overcome stressors. Avoid the
indiscriminate use of the practices of modern medicine that interfere with the
natural mechanisms of the body. Support the body by providing it with the
appropriate quantity and quality of the prerequisites of health and by limiting
the stress factors of life within your control. It is important that everyone
understands how health can be regained and maintained. Each of us must be
allowed the opportunity to construct a rational model of health that is
consistent with reality.
You
now have this opportunity. The question is: What will you do with this
information? You have a choice. And that choice will determine to a large
extent the quantity and quality of your life.
