Alternative Paths to Wellness

Healing the body is getting it back in balance - through mind, body and spirit. One has to make up their mind to commence a healing process and know with their spirit that it will happen by changing the body's habits. One may have to first tip the scales heavily in the opposite direction to counteract the years of abuse the body has taken.

Cancer, heart disease, rheumatoid arthritis, allergies, diabetes, lupus, rheumatism, depression, etc, do not just suddenly appear one day. They have a symptom-free history, with contributing stress factors (nutritional, mental, and toxins) that have been eroding the body's strengths for a long time and which come to a head when the body can't cope any more.

In order to bring the body in balance, so that it may aid in its own healing process, or for the body to help prevent disease, there are certain steps that should be taken. The human body after all, as with all animals, is self-healing and does not need outside help unless there are blocks that prevent it from applying its own talents to the task at hand. I am not referring to broken bones, which conventional medicine does a great job with, I am referring to the body's natural functions and innate immune system. These include eliminating outside burdens or stresses on the body and improving the natural functions of the body. We are constantly inflicting damage to our body, many times without even being aware of it. Our environment has changed greatly in the last 100 years. Our ancestors, grandparents, and our parents (in the case of some us older individuals) never had to cope with factors that are now bombarding our body. Just to start with, the literally millions of man-made chemicals and toxins are primarily of this last century. Many that were considered "safe" were later found to be deadly. Chemicals and toxins that are used and considered as "safe" herbicides and pesticides (that kill plants and insects) are being supplied to our bodies through our consumption of the food we eat, the water we drink, and the air we breathe.

Most of us have been to a conventional medical doctor to find out what is wrong with us. Medical diagnostics reveals much useful information on the situation in a person's body at the time of testing and it does this with numbers that can be monitored later. We must decide at this point how we want to approach the healing process. Whatever path we choose, be it conventional medicine, integrated, holistic, naturopathic, or other variety of alternative medicine, the following steps should prove beneficial to the body and it's natural healing functions. Most natural therapies, that I have come across, seem to include the following:

• Improve nutrition so that there is more energy available for the body to use its own healing abilities.
• Improve the gastro-intestinal tract so that it's many functions work properly which includes the often overlooked small intestine, where more than 70% of the bodies nutrients are absorbed from the food we eat.
• Improve the body's eliminative functions (the main ones are lungs, kidneys, colon, skin) so that toxins can be removed more easily and the body unburdened as a result
• Improve the lymphatic system and the connective tissue matrix which are responsible for delivering toxins to those eliminative organs
• Improve Liver function, so that the "detoxification" process can proceed more effectively. The Liver is responsible for breaking down toxins produced internally into "safe" metabolites that can be eliminated easily. Nowadays there are also many toxic chemicals, heavy metals and other negative factors in the environment such as harmful radiation and electromagnetic stress, which have been created in "civilized society" in recent decades. The Liver has difficulty in detoxifying many of these, making it difficult or impossible for the body to eliminate them, and they often remain, stored in the body.
• Eliminate Stress - "In general, both stress and depression are associated with the decreased cytotoxic T-cell and natural-killer-cell activities that affect processes such as immune surveillance of tumours, and with the events that modulate development and accumulation of somatic mutations and genomic instability." (1)

(1) Stress, depression, the immune system, and cancer. The Lancet Oncology , Volume 5 , Issue 10 , Pages 617 - 625, E . Reiche , S . Nunes , H . Morimoto