Designed by Nature, it’s the culmination of all that Nature has learnt with every species, through its years of evolution and wisdom. Three and half billion years of inhabiting and navigating this world has yielded ‘us’!
Engineered for health and harmony, all the functions coded into our blue print keep homeostasis within the body. Ill health is therefore a disruption of this state of balance, leading to dys-function or dis-ease.
How does this imbalance occur? What can make this feat of remarkability fall ill? If there are mechanisms created within to heal, to regulate, to sustain, illness should be unheard of. And yet, our everyday reality shows an ever increasing rise in diseases and afflictions.
The biggest killers world over have been slated as heart disease, cancer, respiratory diseases, stroke, and diabetes. With worldwide revenue of $1057 billion, the pharmaceutical industry grows daily, reflecting the growing status of ill health. Having been labelled as the diabetes capital of the world by 2020, India has been promised a bleak future when it comes to health!
Let us re-examine the three commonly held myths on ill-health and their role in keeping or wearing away harmony and balance in the body.
Myth 1: Degeneration is caused by ageing
If ageing causes degeneration, how can the Redwood tree be the strongest inspite of living for 2000 years? How is it possible that the tortoise lives for 400 years with its mortality rate the least at the peak of its age? Plants like agave, hypericum, borderea, become more and more fertile with age.
What Nature has given its species is a unique blueprint of rhythm in growth and maturity. This rhythm is given by Nature as per the function and structure it has decided for each one of us. A rat doubles its weight in three to five days and lives not more than two years. A human doubles weight in six months, matures into an adult only by 15–18 years and lives on an average for 82.6 years. The faster we grow, the faster we perish.
Degenerating with age is seen in humans and not in Nature. All species in Nature follow their natural unique rhythm of growth and they do not show degeneration. We have lately begun to believe that the more proteins and supplements we consume, and the harder we push our bodies, the faster we can grow. We tend to forget that a cell that grows faster will also live shorter. Could it be that early onset puberty and early onset diabetes are indicators of faster growing bodies? Could the multitude of cancers being seen today earlier and earlier in our life span, only be cells that have expended themselves too soon?
The point is that the design that Nature has set for us, which is slow and rhythmic growth, is for longevity. Here’s how we can use Nature’s gift of slow growth to create longer and healthier lives:
Age is no bar to being stronger and healthier.
Myth 2: Germs and viruses attack our body
Microscopic life forms-bacteria, fungi, viruses, and the likes are capable of striking terror in our hearts. Unseen, unheard and therefore unavoidable, the medical world has waged a war against them since their discovery.
After several decades of propagating antibiotics, the world has woken up to the fact that our body houses ten times more bacteria than cells. At this very moment, there would be at least a billion on our skin, about 20 billion bacteria in our mouth, nearly 100 trillion in our gut. Before we get disgusted with the idea of being a living petri dish, realise that these bacteria are beneficial. They have a symbiotic relationship with our bodies, one that is vital to physical and mental health. We rely on these microscopic passengers more than we give them credit for.
Inert oxygen inhaled into the lungs turns into life carrying haemoglobin only in the presence of the tuberculosis bacteria. Bacteria in the human digestive system help us break down food, and also supply us with needed vitamins like biotin and vitamin K. The bacteria on the skin dominate the environment of the skin and its resources, keeping other bacteria from being able to establish a foothold. Exposure to bacteria has been shown to be an important part of the development of our immune systems. It is what primes the immune system to respond to pathogenic invaders later in life.
What changes this friendly community of peaceful cells into disease causing invaders? Garbage attracts scavengers – rats, cockroaches, insects and invisible scavenging microbes. Likewise, it is toxic residues accumulated in our body (through chemical laced foods, high synthetic cosmetic use, an over dependence on stimulants like caffeine, nicotine and alcohol) that attract and allow disease causing microbes to proliferate.
We live in a bug’s world. Bugs are meant to live within us for us to function at optimum. To accept them as our friend is what will lead us to health.
Myth 3: Genetic predispositions determine my diseases
Nature codes everything for posterity. It’s the aspiration of Nature that made the amoeba evolve into us humans. If we were to examine the DNA of the more than 80 lakh species that we share this planet with, we do not actually find the degree of variation that we would expect to see in each! Though structurally and functionally diverse, all species seem to share the basic code of life that each carries. Only 1.5% of our genes make us uniquely human.
Nature allows for sharing of genetic material so that every species has inbuilt, the instructions to preserve, protect and enhance life. Evolution’s biggest contribution is our immune system that can identify and fight against every disease causing pathogen that has ever been around. Can the code that creates, maintains, enhances and passes on the instructions for life, be so fragile that pollution or stress can damage it?
Like the germs of health and disease that breed in different environments, the DNA switches on and off based on the environment it’s put into. The amoeba navigated this world by moving from the less favourable to the more by suspending all function till the environment changed. The DNA is coded for the same action. When the environment of the cells within our bodies becomes less favourable, they suspend function, awaiting the right conditions of life to occur.
Switching on the code for health then is quite simply a process of participating with life.
It’s seen that in the Savannah Grasslands, when all is gutted in fire, a single blade of grass grows after the ash has cooled. The indestructible life force in this blade of grass is chlorophyll, life giver to all. The composition of chlorophyll matches that of haemoglobin in our blood, except for the one iron molecule, that is replaced by magnesium in chlorophyll. The capacity of indestructible health therefore resides in our structure. All it needs is the right environment to express its unique quality of health.
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Shilpa Chawla
Shilpa Chawla has armed herself with THAC experiences from the age of 15! With a Bachelors in Naturopathy (Sydney), she has integrated experience and information and is now Counsellor and Research Scholar at THAC. Her time in Sydney allowed her to experience multi-cultural ways of life and the unique commonality between them. Her experiences fortified her belief in the body and its innate capacity for Wellness. She realised early on that though most people want to live healthfully, most do not know how to![/column]