Every so
often, I come across some well-written thoughts, penned by others,
that I feel compelled to share. Here are some things worth thinking
about.
Raw
Foods - A Perspective
By Nora Lenz
You
may have thought that discovering raw food was the answer to all
your questions about how to become truly healthy. However, if you've
done any reading at all on the subject, you will no doubt have noticed
that the raw world is filled with confusing and conflicting information.
When there are so many different opinions, philosophies and approaches,
it can be difficult to choose a path to follow.
The
extent of confusion in the general field of human health originates
from the idea that no set of consistent health truths is determinable.
Is this true? Can it be that the fundamental principles of life
are simple and straightforward for all the other "less intelligent"
species on earth but hopelessly unknowable for humans? No. The truth
is knowable and accessible to all. It may not be emblazoned on our
TV screens and newspapers like the falseness we've mistaken it for,
but it can be found.
As
we embark on a transition to a healthier lifestyle, we needn't proceed
on the basis of opinion or belief. Instead, we can be guided by
information that has been established with the highest standard
of scientific certainty.
This
information is not mysterious or complicated, it's just not forthcoming
from those to whom we have traditionally looked for such guidance.
For a couple of centuries now, our thinking about health and disease
has been influenced by industries which stood to make enormous fortunes
by promoting the idea that health can be bought and sold.
With
each succeeding generation those industries have become more prosperous
and their ideas more accepted. Today large numbers of people are
finally beginning to give up on the unfulfilled promise of conventional
medicine but are mistakenly seeking answers from "natural"
medicine, which has built itself upon the same flawed premise; namely,
that health can be acquired with pills and procedures. Medicine,
in all its varied incarnations, does not recognize that health can
only be produced by healthy living practices.
Re-education
and some "unlearning" must be part of any genuine quest
for health. It is very important for new raw fooders to have some
basic and plainly truthful principles to guide them through the
transition and beyond. Becoming healthy in a culture that supports
and encourages all the wrong practices requires a significant shift
in the way we think about health in general, and food in particular.
To become truly healthy, we must go far beyond just replacing our
drug of choice (cooked food) with a raw alternative.
Because
opinion, theory, and marketing gimmickry make up the bulk of what
is represented as truth in matters of human health, it has become
almost impossible to obtain truly reliable information. Making outlandish
health theories seem valid is a new art form created by "experts"
who urge us to ignore self-evident facts and indulge in practices
that are known to cause sickness. Most of what we hear about health
is not intended to inform us, but rather to manipulate or influence
us into buying something.
Conventional
wisdom tells us that the cause of disease is elusive and indeterminable.
Many people would even say that disease has no cause, and that it
chooses its victims randomly. This is not the case. The field of
human health is no different from any other area of scientific inquiry,
in that there are immutable, fundamental truths that can be known
and relied upon. One of those is that disease is subject to the
same laws that govern all life, including the Law of Cause and Effect
which dictates that where there is effect there must be cause, and
vice versa.
The causes of
disease ARE known, they just aren't known by doctors. People have
mistakenly come to expect guidance about how to be healthy from
doctors. If doctors were experts on health, one would expect them
as a group to be very healthy. Instead, they suffer from disease
even more than the rest of us, and die younger on average. The truth
is, doctors only study health from the very limited perspective
of learning how to suppress symptoms. Expecting them to know about
healing is like asking a car wash attendant to fix your transmission.
Although symptom
suppression is often confused with healing, the two are NOT the
same, and are, in fact, opposites. Acute symptoms, like those associated
with "colds" and "flu", are the outward expression
of body-initiated restorative processes. In other words, symptoms
are healing. Acute symptoms are the body's self-limiting emergency
system for eliminating accumulated waste. When we stop symptoms,
we thwart the body's efforts to restore optimal function. Drugs,
herbs and certain supplements appear to "cure" disease,
but in reality there are no "cures". The body, and only
the body, can heal itself. What we're really doing when we ingest
these substances is forcing the body to discontinue its healing
efforts in order to defend against the new threat: the remedy.
Stopping acute
symptoms with remedies allows the further accumulation of waste
that would otherwise be eliminated, which leads to degenerative
disease like arthritis, fibromyalgia, multiple sclerosis, diabetes
and cancer. Unlike acute symptoms, the symptoms of degenerative
disease are not constructive but are the result of actual physical,
long-term and slowly accumulated damage that has been done to tissues
and organs because the self-cleansing mechanisms of the body have
not been allowed to perform their life-preserving functions, or
have not been able to keep up with the cumulative burden.
That the very
harmful practice of symptom suppression is so commonly employed
illustrates the level of misconception that exists in our culture
concerning disease. The reality about disease is so far from what
we are taught, in fact, that it seems alien and unbelievable when
we first hear it. The Germ Theory, for example, which forms the
foundation of modern medicine, has never been proven, nor could
it ever be. In bacteria and viruses, doctors have found the perfect
scapegoat for disease, an unseen enemy who is never defeated and
can be relied upon to promptly show up whenever and wherever disease
is present. Even the theory's exalted progenitor, Louis Pasteur,
admitted he was wrong during the latter years of his career.
For the most
part, acute, constructive diseases are the ones that are said to
be "infectious." Chronic or degenerative disease is thought
to be inherited. All diseases fall into one of these two categories
but the truth is that disease is never contagious, and it is never
inherited.
Like contagion,
the connection of disease to heredity is similarly taken for granted
as truth, but the closest it can come is that we inherit certain
physiological weaknesses that may determine where in our bodies
disease will form if we indulge in disease-causing lifestyle habits.
Whether we will become ill is not in the province of heredity except
in the sense that it is from our families that most of us learn
the harmful diet and lifestyle practices which cause disease. We
are the creators of our own health, and we are the creators of our
own disease, through our very own choices.
Medicine promises
healing but delivers only lifelong management. And it not only does
NOT cure disease, it always adds to the harm done by the original
causative agents. This includes so-called "natural" or
naturopathic medicine, which operates on the same false premise
that equates symptom suppression with healing. For those who have
come to understand that symptoms are just the effects of unhealthy
lifestyle choices, medicine has little to offer. What we need is
practical instruction on how to remove the cause of disease and
build health in its place. It has become very clear that the health
care industry is not the place to look for that information. If
we want to get well and stay well, we need to look elsewhere.
As you will
discover, what one needs to know in order to live healthfully is
not complicated or difficult to understand. The principles of health
can seem overwhelming at first because in many ways they are opposite
of what we are taught. One of the biggest challenges in getting
healthy is UN-learning all the ideas we have about health that are
based on belief rather than correct knowledge. The truth always
leads to simplicity where health is concerned, unlike medicine,
which only gets more contrived and complex as one looks deeper into
it.
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