Natural Health is the Natural Option
I’d like you to get thinking about your natural health. The information I share is based on the experience and knowledge I have accumulated over the years in running a natural health shop and is my personal opinion only. Do ensure that you consult a health professional before making any changes to your health regime.
Some people say “I don’t believe in vitamins’. But it doesn’t have to be about belief: it’s about facts. Mostly, it’s about plain common sense. This article has been inspired by a number of world-wide influencers such as Philip Day, Dr Dan Rogers and Don Tolman who are well-respected speakers on the subject of nutritional healing. In particular, the recently launched Food Matters DVD has contributed much of what I’d like to say. Please do watch it.
In this information age Natural and Nutritional Health are becoming widely accepted. People are now looking on the internet and seeing the side effects of medications and finding natural alternatives. More and more doctors are also looking in to nutritional health. Way back in the 1930s Dr Linus Pauling said ‘optimum nutrition is the medicine of tomorrow’. Tomorrow is still coming.
Hipprocrates laid down the foundations for modern medicine. First do no harm “Let food be thy medicine and thy medicine be thy food”. Since Hipprocrates time however, our approach to treating illness has changed. Hippocrates is considered to be the Father of Modern Medicine. He believed that the human body had an innate capacity for self healing. You only need to scratch yourself to know that!
Unfortunately modern medicine is no longer what it used to be. I’d be interested to know whether there are any Doctors who feel that the modern medicine has deviated from the Hippocratic Oath still recited. It seems to me that modern medicine now revolves around a pill for every ill!
Many people call Natural medicine alternative medicine. I find this quite strange as natural medicine has been around as long as man has. Drugs have only been around in the last century. Most drugs originate from plants and most plants have some medicinal use. Take cashew nuts. Did you know that 2 handfuls of raw cashew nuts per day is the therapeutic equivalent of a prescription dose of Prozac? Without the side affects.
Science and medical advancement has created huge leaps in our evolution – we can stitch, mend, repair following trauma, and sustain life that was not possible before. With all things there is balance, and with all things there are positives and negatives. With opportunity to serve others, and to heal, there is opportunity to take advantage, to increase personal gain – the medical industry is one of service to others, and is also one of the greatest accumulators of wealth in the world. Good health makes a lot of sense but it doesn’t make a lot of $.
The pharmaceutical industry is a huge business and like any other business, it has a duty to its shareholders. It is a multi-billion $ movement. The problem is with the way it is regulated. The bodies which are required to research, license and test a drug are all paid for by the drug companies. This is like a restaurant hygiene inspector being paid for by the restaurant owner. It needs to change.
Also most of the medical journals are supported by drug company advertising. If we check the medical literature for the past 65 years there are thousands of papers showing that high doses of nutrients cure disease. However many of these papers are not even written in the medical journals. It is illegal in most countries in the world to treat cancer patients with nutritional therapy yet the survival rate for cancer has not improved in the last 20 years.
Please don’t get me wrong. We do need drugs. A lot of us would not be alive today if it weren’t for antibiotics, they are just overused. We live in a society where if a little is good then more must be better, and end up with a drug for everything. A pill for every ill! We tend to focus more on symptoms, not the cause. If all you do is treat symptoms you are not going to treat the disease.
In the last 23 years there have been an alleged 10 deaths from vitamins. Compare this with the average 106,000 people each year who allegedly die due to adverse drug reactions in the US alone. And this figure does not include drug abuse, only prescription drugs taken according to recommended allowances.
The idea that all drugs are based on evidence and all natural therapies are hooha just doesn’t stack up to examination. In order for a drug to be licensed it has to show that it is more effective than a placebo in two trials. It doesn’t mean that the drug company can’t do lots of other trials which show it is not effective, it just doesn’t need to publish those. This drug is then licensed and given to perhaps millions of people all with different reactions to that drug. We all have different make ups – different blood types, different metabolisms and different genetic coding – then why would we all react the same way to a drug. The same of course goes for natural medicines. That is why we treat the person – not the symptom.
Our body is naturally working towards attaining good health. It is always on our side. It conspires for our success, not our failure. This is our natural inheritance.
What is Illness?
Let’s take a look at what illness is. Illness is the body’s mechanism to tell us that something isn’t right, and also to go through a process of healing itself. When we have a stomach upset we are sick, when we need additional energy to recuperate we lose our appetite, when we need to burn off a virus we run a fever. Taking in unnatural chemicals, may mask the symptoms, and may appear to eliminate the problem, yet we have postponed the bodies need to get rid of, and to rebalance.
Looking at the problem simplistically, taking stomach relief drugs may push the problem to the skin, applying chemicals to our skin, may move the imbalance elsewhere. A tumour, a dumping ground of toxins, is an indication that the body is attempting to go through a healing process. It is still working for our survival by putting the diseased cells in one place. Modern medicine will remove the dumping ground, but it is likely to return because we have not dealt with the real issue. The tumour is the symptom of an imbalance in our natural health, it is not the problem. How we treat our bodies is.
Some say we get all our nutrition from a good diet. However even the freshest fruit and veges in the shops are at least 4 days old and for whatever reason they have been sprayed with herbicides, fungicides and pesticides. Also a major problem is what we do to the soil and the air and the water. Soils have been used over and over again and the nutrients have been used up. So – we put fertilizers in our ground. These are made up of mainly 3 minerals NPK – Nitrogen, Phosphorous and Potassium. The problem is that the soil requires approximately 52 different minerals, so where is the zinc and magnesium and iodine and manganese and all of the other important minerals. When of course the soil is deficient, the plants are deficient and they lose their defences. The bugs and fungus etc arrive and various diseases attack them. The chemical companies are of course happy to sell us pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, growth stimulating hormones and other various chemicals.
So even if we eat good fruit and vegetables we are eating deficient, toxic food, so we can not help but be deficient and toxic.
To prevent disease we need to be doing everything we can to build the body up not break it down i.e. build the immune system nutritionally and use vitamins and minerals to help the body fight disease. We are lucky that vitamin and mineral supplements are readily available. If we take large enough doses of vitamins and minerals we can use them to prevent and treat illness. One nutrient is so good for so many things ie. Vit E is good for heart disease, healing burns and scarring, plus many more, Vit C is an anti toxin, anti histamine, anti viral, helps regulate blood sugar levels and elevates mood. So one nutrient is so good for so many things just as the deficiency of one vitamin or mineral can cause illness. The medical idea is one drug for one disease. This is not true with nutrition where you can not heal selectively. You can not heal one disease and keep two others. It just doesn’t work like that. When the body heals it heals everything. You nourish the body and the body fixes it. The body has its own healing mechanism. Taking vitamins and minerals simply enables the body to heal itself.
This knowledge has drawn people to superfoods – spirulina, bee pollen, wheatgrass, goji, noni, raw honey, maca, raw cacao, acai to name a few. Spirulina is the highest source of protein in the world, The raw Kakao bean is the highest source of Chromium, iron, zinc vitamin C and all the other co factors needed for a healthy metabolism. It also has the highest antioxidant content. Antioxidants protect us from DNA damage, viral damage, skin damage etc . Yet most of us would rather spend our money on a good night out than the best superfoods that have ever been discovered. I believe we should invest our money in to our families health by buying the best food and supplements ever. Mineralising and alkalizing the body is the key to good health. It has been shown time and time again that disease cannot grow in an alkaline environment.
Regardless of the natural versus modern medicine debate, we can focus on doing what we can to ensure that we live balanced and healthy lives. If you can accept that you are a natural being, that has a natural connection to the earth’s resources, you can appreciate what the natural health industry is attempting to do – restore this connection and bring forth a natural balance.
At the Bethlehem Health & Tea Shop, we want to support you in restoring your natural healthy balance by using nature’s resources and the wisdom collected over the ages. Discovering your natural health is a lifelong journey. Ask questions, gather information and develop experiences. Most of all, assert your right to know what you are putting into your body.
I hope I have given you some food for thought. If you would like to know more on this subject please go to www.foodmatters.tv
Jude
