Changing Health
At the beginning of the last century, heart disease and cancer were relatively rare. Only 8% of the population had heart disease. Now, 45% of the population has heart disease and it has long been the number one cause of death in the United States. At that time one out of thirty-five people developed cancer. Now, if you are a man, there is a one out of two chance that someone, sometime during your life, will look you in your face and tell you that you have cancer (If you are a woman, it is one out of three).
Chronic degenerative diseases in general are growing at an alarming rate. Diabetes rose 40% between 1990 and 1999. Adult onset diabetes is now occurring in 8 year olds. Autism was 1 in 10,000 a little over a decade ago. Now, it is 1 in 150. Alzheimer’s is estimated to increase 300% in the next 50 years based on trends. Asthma, lupus, M.S., fibromyalgia and arthritis are all growing at rapid rates. What’s going on here?
Obviously, something changed with regards to our bodies’ abilities to retain normal health. Modern science would have us believe many of these conditions are based on genes. I find it hard to believe that the entire population is developing genetic defects this quickly. Even if this were the case, the next question would be – Why? What has changed is our environment, our lifestyle, our food and most importantly, our approach toward health. It’s this last point that I want to talk about now.
At the beginning of the century, the popular approach was what we now call natural or alternative. Doctors who gave drugs were the alternative doctors. Homeopathy was the leading method of handling health problems at the time. The model that was used at this time with regards to the development of disease (as proposed by Dr. Reckeweg) was that disease progressed through stages. What follows is a short description of this natural viewpoint on the progression of disease.
The first stage is Excretory. When a body has a foreign material, toxin or irritant, the first thing that it tries to do to handle it is to excrete it, expel it, wash it out. In other words, if you breathe in something that’s bad, you cough or sneeze or spit it out. If you eat something bad, you may have diarrhea or vomit to get rid of it. If the body is unable to excrete it, it has no choice but to go to the second stage of handling – Inflammation. In the Inflammatory stage, the body literally tries to eat the offending toxic matter. It sends in white blood cells and enzymes to break it down and get rid of it and then expel it or render it harmless. If the body doesn’t have what it needs to accomplish this, the body then moves into the next phase which is Deposition. During this stage, the body gets the toxins out of the fluids and deposits it into the tissue. It is basically putting the toxins in storage until the body has the proper nutrients and ammunition to take them out of storage and handle them. The important thing to note is that when this toxic matter is deposited out of the fluids and into the tissues, your symptoms disappear. Now, if toxins and foreign matter continue to enter the body at rates greater than the body can deal with them, the toxins are deposited deeper into the tissues and cells. This is the Impregnation phase and tissue function starts being disrupted. As this worsens, the Degenerative stage is entered when large disruption of function occurs. This is the heart disease, lupus, auto-immune disorders, diabetes, etc. stage. It is at this stage that death can often occur. If this trend continues and the body fails to receive what it needs to reverse this accumulation of toxins, the final stage is entered called De-differentiation. This is regression to immature cells. This is cancer.
The point behind all this is that the natural method of handling disease was and still is, to help the body to do what it is trying to do to remedy the problem. If the person breathed in something, you give the body help to better cough or expel it. If the person ate something bad, help the digestive system to excrete it. If there is inflammation, help the body to break down the toxin and expel it quickly and efficiently so that the body heals quickly. With the modern method of healing, a drug is given to stomp out the symptoms. If a person has breathed something in and is coughing, a drug is given to stop the coughing. If a person has diarrhea, a drug is given to stop the diarrhea. Unfortunately, now the body has no choice but to move into the next phase which is Inflammation. Now, the person develops bronchitis and lung inflammation or inflammatory bowel diseases. Next, a drug is given for the inflammation and the body has no choice but to go to the next stage which is Deposition. At this stage, the symptoms disappear. However, the problem toxins are driven deeper into the body where they eventually will cause deeper problems with organ dysfunction and degeneration.
If this model is true, then what we would expect to see is that with the higher incidence of using drugs to handle our symptoms, we will also see an increase in degenerative diseases and cancer. This is exactly what we are observing. I don’t think it is fair to say that this is the only reason that this is occurring, our diet is extraordinarily lacking in the nutrients necessary to handle toxins when compared to the early 1900’s for example, but in my opinion, this symptom-oriented approach is one of the major reasons.
The proper approach to disease involves working with the body’s natural ability to heal, humbly as an assistant, by giving the body what it needs to rid itself of these interferences so that healing can take place as it should. The attitude that we can do better than nature by giving scientifically derived artificial chemicals, besides being rather pompous, is actually causing long-term problems for short-term gain. If you or someone you know is suffering from a chronic problem or is simply interested in a natural approach to disease, have them contact our office at (260) 459-6160 (Ft. Wayne) or (773) 929-3964 (Chicago).
David A Murdock D.C.
