By: Chip Paul
We all want to be healthier and improve our health status. Whether we suffer from a disease, battle with daily discomfort, or are in pretty good shape and just want to be better, we all can benefit from improved human function.
If we are suffering from a disease like cancer, we need to understand the ways that we can work “with our bodies” to heal. Further, we need to understand the things we might do to unintentionally hurt our bodies’ abilities to heal. Just at a basic level, if you smoke cigarettes and eat alot of dietary sugar then you are fighting your body’s ability to heal. If you are willing to consider behavior and dietary changes and implement them, then you will be helping your body’s ability to heal.
In God’s system, every cell inside of you is always striving for perfection. If all cells are functioning at their optimal levels, then every organ and system inside you will also be functioning at optimal levels. When this happens, we will be an almost perfect expression of God’s intent as to our human function. It is a fact that every cell in our body wants to strive toward perfection. No cell is generated to purposely fail; or mutate. Our bodies are always striving toward perfect cellular expression and toward perfect function in every organ and system.
So what do we do daily that hurts our bodies ability to heal itself? It turns out ALOT!
Our bodies are not very good at trying to do everything at once. Throughout the day, and at different times of the day, the body will focus on different tasks. It might be building hormones, or purging the lymphatic system, or working on cellular structure, or many other tasks. These tasks happen in a symphony of resources and energy needs over the course of a day. At certain times our bodies will focus on specific tasks rather than trying to manage everything at once. The best way to illustrate this is melatonin, which we all know that if we consume will make us sleepy. But will it? If you consume melatonin at noon, it will NOT make you sleepy because it is not time yet. You have receptors which are tuned to melatonin and they are CLOSED during the day. They only open at night, so when you take that melatonin at night you feel it. This is due to the rhythmicity of the human system and it not being yet time to focus on sleep. Can we do things that disrupt this flow and natural symphony? Yes, we can. The most severe thing we do to disrupt our function daily is eat. When we eat, our bodies have to STOP the natural flow and rhythm of our daily tasks and focus on dealing with the nutrients that come from eating a meal. During this time systems have to be de-emphasized and de-energized so that the body can deal with a meal. What suffers when we eat? It is mainly our immune system. For example, our bodies normally have two ways we can kill cancer. Something called autophagy. This is a pac man like cellular response and will gobble up mutated and damaged cells. And a second mechanism which is a protein, and which will kill cancer directly, called P53. When we eat a meal we turn both of these mechanisms off for up to five hours. If you eat breakfast, lunch, dinner, and a snack before bed you effectively have turned off all of your body’s mechanism to fight cancer. When we eat, we drop our defenses and become an opportunist host for bacteria. This could be any kind of bacterial disease, fungus, or virus. If we eat as the USDA suggests, we basically have a very weak immune system and will be far more susceptible to pathogenic invasion and insult.
Intermittent fasting provides a mechanism to begin to allow our bodies to better tolerate “eating”. As we understand what times our bodies are “open” to eating and nutrient intake, we can better understand how to minimize the work our bodies have to do to deal with a meal. Before we intermittently fast it is critical to understand the second major thing we do to hurt ourselves and that is WHAT we eat.
Are you consciously aware of what you eat and how it provides your body with nutrients? I mean, do you REALLY understand how it works? Most of us don’t so let’s recap. According to the USDA, which we will treat with a skeptical eye, we need certain “essential” foods. These include dietary fats (saturated, monounsaturated, and polyunsaturated fats), essential amino acids, vitamins a,b,c,d,e,k, and trace minerals.
There are a few things wrong with that. First, you need gases (nitrogen, oxygen, and carbon dioxide). These have to be in a proper ratio, currently called AIR. You also need water. Do you need dietary fats? YES, but they have to be in a proper balance and ratio. Do you need amino acids? YES, but they have to be in a proper balance and ratio. So eating is more about WHEN you eat and WHAT you eat rather than HOW MUCH you eat. A failure to understand this and not eat the proper ratios of dietary fats or amino acids will lead to immune deficiencies, pathogenic invasion, and sickness.
From birth we are imbued with a need to be clean and a sense of cleanliness. Are there better ways to clean ourselves? Do we cause ourselves harm when we bathe? Water is a solvent and almost anything will be dissolved in water. When water washes over our skin it picks up ions and other water soluble micronutrients that are attached to our skin. It literally pulls the mineral and ions out of us. What protects us from this happening? A nice layer of oil that is usually present on our skin. This oil layer exists for protection against water and other insults. So what do we do? We wash off the protective oil with soap and then let the water wash over us. This is not optimal and results in minerals and ions being leached from our bodies that are important to the healing process.
It is looking like protecting the skin with oil BEFORE a shower may be beneficial. It is important to replenish the oils after a shower or bath.
Are you allergic to petroleum fibers? Synthetic fibers? Any kind of fiber can bring on a rash, but you’re more likely to get textile dermatitis from clothes made with synthetics such as polyester, rayon, nylon, spandex, or rubber. Any irritant will cause changes in your immune system which will take resources and energy away from fighting disease.
Anything that causes irritation such as smoking or fumes should be avoided. Any exposure to heavy metals should be avoided.
Lastly, we are ionic beings. Ions are passed from and between metals and are used to fuel reactions. In fact the “engine” in every cell is powered by ion exchanges. In order to produce energy, cells need ions. These ions come from metals, oxygen, and many other things in our environment. In order to facilitate ion exchange we need to provide a flow of electrons throughout our bodies.
We all understand the concept of a battery. That battery will store energy until a circuit is created. When a circuit is created then chemical reactions will start in that battery. The chemical reactions are designed to move ions. You are just like a big battery. In order to complete your circuit and start the chemical reactions needed to move ions you have to have a positive connection and a negative connection. Our positive connection is through our head and our negative connection is through our feet to the ground. It is important to be barefoot or wear shoes without rubber soles in order to facilitate this connection and help ionic reactions be at their best and full power.
In order to achieve our best health and be the beings that we were engineered to be, we must first understand how we work. By understanding our function we can optimize our behavior and diet. Understanding when we need to eat, what we need to eat, and the environmental exposures we subject ourselves to daily is critical to understanding health. By designing our behavior, our environment, and our diets around our understanding we can begin to strive for perfect health and perfect function. There is no disease that is beyond these principals.