One thing farming has taught me is that everything in creation works together in order to maintain balance and harmony. When one nutrient or microorganism or plant or animal becomes too predominant, there are compensatory mechanisms that come into play to restore balance. Predation is one of these mechanisms. The weak or injured or dying – not the strong and healthy – are the targets of predation and decomposition. This is survival of the fittest. This is the balance of herbivores and carnivores and decomposers. This is how populations thrive.
Our bodies are no different. The health and wellness of our body depends on the interplay of water, nutrients, microorganisms, cells, tissues and organs, all interacting with our thoughts and emotions and the environment around us. And love binds it all together. Our tissues get damaged by injury, by lack of nutrients or by toxin exposure. These damaged tissues need to be cleaned up, recycled and regrown so the body can be restored to health. There are two processes whereby this happens naturally, starvation (here I mean absolutely no caloric intake) and microorganisms.
Starvation (think fasting) induces both apoptosis (a programmed cell death that happens after about 16 hours of water fasting) and autophagy (literally “self-eating”, a pruning process during which the body identifies damaged and unhealthy cells to consume and recycle, that begins after about 36 hours of water fasting). Autophagy is followed by a reactivation of stem cells to then regrow the tissues that have been consumed. You can research all this much more in depth by following the fasting links on my resource page.
The role of microorganisms is much more controversial. Everyone pretty much accepts that there are beneficial microorganisms in our gut that digest the food we eat and make nutrients available for us to absorb. I would argue that all microorganisms are beneficial and that none are pathogens, capable of attacking and destroying healthy tissue (here, I am talking about bacteria and fungi – I no longer accept that viruses exist since not one single example has ever been identified, purified, isolated and grown – “viral” illnesses are likely due to toxin exposure – follow the link to Dr. Tom Cowan’s website on my resource page to research this more). In short, when a cell is damaged or weakened by injury or lack of nutrients or toxins, microorganisms are there to clean up that cell.
The symptoms that we experience during these cleaning up processes are what our body is doing to make this happen. Inflammation occurs to increase blood flow to the area so more nutrients are available and waste products can be removed. Runny nose, coughing, sneezing, sweating, vomiting and diarrhea are all mechanisms to remove waste and toxins from the body. Fever (think infrared heat) helps to re-structure the water in our body, promoting gel phase water formation to improve blood flow, facilitating detoxification. We want all these things to happen so health can be restored. If we prevent them with pharmaceuticals, the symptoms go away and we “get better” but the damaged cells remain in our body and show up down the road as chronic illness and cancer.
Bottom line is that dis-ease is what our body does to heal, repair and restore. We can choose to live in harmony with this created purpose, support our body and embrace the pain of healing and be restored; or we can disconnect from it, choose to be at ease now and endure the consequences down the road.