A form of Streptococcus bacteria killed as many as 25% of 19th Century women who delivered babies in
the hospitals of Europe and the United States. In the 1840’s, Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis, a physician who was practicing
in Vienna, hypothesized that doctors were somehow passing disease from their hands to their patients at delivery. Dr. Semmelweis,
after realizing that medical students were dissecting cadavers immediately before entering the delivery room, ordered all
medical caregivers to wash their hands using a chlorine solution before examining women in labor. Because of this practice
in his maternity wards, the mortality rate dropped to less than one percent.
Dr. Semmelweis became an advocate of hand washing
by physicians. This unconventional belief was met with criticism and even hostility from his peers. In his day, hand washing
was considered an unnecessary burden because of the lack of indoor plumbing. Dr. Semmelweis’ many critics were unimpressed
and unconvinced by his results despite the fact he was able to duplicate them in other maternity wards.
At Dr. Semmelweis’ death in 1865, hand washing
by physicians was still a mocked practice. In 1879, at the Academy of Medicine’s seminar in Paris, it was a subject
of ridicule and debate. Well into the turn of the next century, the idea of the need for hygiene by the medical community
was met with resistance.
“Society is always
taken by surprise at any new example of common sense.”
–Ralph Waldo
Emerson
Today, we accept the practice of hand washing
as just plain common sense. The United States Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has even recognized it as
“the single most important means of preventing the spread of infection”. [1], [2]
The health practices and concepts that
you are about to read are as common sense as hand washing was in the maternity wards of 19th Century Europe. They are
also as controversial. Despite their success rate and ability to duplicate these results, they are today met with resistance
and even hostility. For the sake of the millions who now suffer with autoimmunity, it is my sincere hope that these health practices will one day be recognized as “the single most important means of preventing
immune dysfunction”.
“Within each
of us lies the power of our consent to health and sickness … It is we who control these, and not another.”
–Richard Bach
The fact is that an autoimmune condition
doesn’t just “happen” to you. It is both passively and actively created by your lifestyle and the greedy
practices of food manufacturers, who lace your meals with toxins. You eat, drink, and expose your way to immune dysfunction.
With little exception, everything you put into your mouth, your surroundings, and even the air you breathe is either making
you healthier or sicker.
How much control can you actually have over
immune dysfunction? Let’s consider “the sunburn analogy”.
The Sunburn Analogy
When was the last time that you had a
sunburn? At that time, did you consider your sunburn a terrible disease over which you had no control? Of course not!
Most likely you accepted the sunburn as a natural consequence to prolonged sun exposure. Although painful, the burn was not
a mysterious malady of unknown origin, but your body doing exactly what it was designed to do under those particular circumstances.
I am sure you realize that the answer to
not walking through life with red, irritated, or blistered skin is protecting yourself from the sun’s damaging rays.
Keep your skin in a safe environment and you will avoid the pain that a sunburn brings.
Autoimmunity is a lot like a sunburn.
It is also a natural consequence brought about by certain conditions in the environment. Only in this case, I am referring
to the internal environment of the body.
The often painful result is the immune system
turning against the body’s own tissue. Controlling those circumstances is more complicated than simply avoiding
prolonged sun exposure, but the individual can control them. The goal is to change the internal environment and by doing
so, avoid the pain caused by the immune system turning against the body.
What you may or may not realize is that autoimmunity
occurs naturally in everyone to some degree. However, cells that are capable of attacking the body's own tissue are kept under
control by the body in an ideal environment.[3] Genetics can also play a role in whether or not the body is likely to attack
itself.
Genetics
“The information
encoded in your DNA determines your unique biological characteristics, such as sex, eye color, age and Social Security number.”
–Dave Barry
Just as your genetic make up can cause greater
susceptibility to burning in the sun, your genes can make you more susceptible to autoimmunity.[4] However, genetics do not
guarantee that you will develop any type of what the world calls autoimmune disease.
According to the researchers at the University
of Utah, genetics aren't everything. In the case of identical twins, when one twin develops MS, there is only a 30% chance
of the other (genetically identical) twin also being diagnosed with the disease. [5] A separate study showed the incidence
of lupus between identical twins even lower at 24%. [6] With Rheumatoid Arthritis, there is a 1 in 4 chance. [7]
Why does one twin get sick and not the other
the majority of the time? It is the same as one redheaded, fair-skinned twin who went out in the sun and got a sunburn, while
the other avoided sun exposure and did not get burned. The answer is the environment. The twins with MS, lupus, and arthritis
had allowed an internal environment that was conducive to autoimmunity.
You can’t do anything about your DNA,
so the focus of this book will be on what you can change.
The Terrain
“We cannot
solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
–Albert
Einstein
The need to protect the body’s
internal environment, more commonly known as the terrain, is outside the scope of traditional Western medicine and considered
very unconventional thinking, especially in the United States. Western medicine has assigned our immune system a job it was
not designed to do. Most of us have been taught that the immune system is the primary line of defense against disease.
This line of thinking is both untrue and making us sick.
The internal terrain, not the immune system,
was meant to be the body’s first line of defense against disease. By polluting the terrain, we are a population
who is operating on our backup system, the immune system. By ignoring the body’s terrain as the first line of
defense, “modern” Western medicine has seriously missed the mark of both disease prevention and treatment. [8]
“…the
terrain is everything." –
Louis Pasteur
According
to immunologist, Dr. Jesse Stoff, there are five key things that damage the body’s internal environment (terrain). They
are
-
poor eating habits
-
nutritional deficiencies
-
man-made toxins
in our environment
-
disease causing
organisms and the toxins they produce
-
trauma on the
immune system from things like x-ray radiation and cross country flights, and stress.
These five will
be the primary focus of the first part of this book. [9]
[1] http://www.accessexcellence.org/AE/AEC/CC/hand_background.html
[2] http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/blantisceptics.htm
[3] http://www.aarda.org/infocus_article.php?ID=28
[4] http://www.aarda.org/infocus_article.php?ID=28
[5] http://www.msaustralia.org.au/Demystifying%20MS%20Newsletter_Final.pdf - *NOTE: This is a PDF file.
[6] http://www.uklupus.co.uk/genetics.html
[7] http://www.ucl.ac.uk/~regfjxe/Arthritis.htm
[8] http://www.naturaltherapycenter.com/biological_terrain_analysis/
[9] http://netriceuticals.com/articles.asp?id=75
DISCLAIMER: We
are not doctors and nothing that we have written should be taken as medical advice, nor has it been evaluated by the FDA.
This information is for educational purposes only and is not meant to diagnose, cure, or prevent any disease.
