Factors to dis-ease
Greetings, seekers of holistic wisdom and well-being! Today, let's embark on the factors that contribute to illness or dis-ease in the body. It is important to be aware of the affect of our environment and what we put into our body. Below is a list of the top TEN causes of physical illness.
1. Nutritional deficiencies
Most people eat an unbalanced diet consisting of processed foods and artificial substances. The common foods of today lack the nutritional needs of the body. In addition, most foods contain stimulants (e.g. caffeine, refined sugars, trans fats, artificial preservatives etc.) that put the body under strain. Most foods today have toxins that the liver has to first detox and then the body needs to get rid of it.
2. Sleep deficit
Getting about 8 hours of sleep a night is crucial. The body uses the time to repair itself. Waste removal continues even more efficiently, since tasks that are normally done during waking hours have been set aside. Vital functions such as heartbeat and respiration slow to a minimum. Even the brain is working to restore itself and promote memory retention.
Illness, nutrient starvation, and irregular lifestyle habits can all contribute to a lack of sleep. Conversely, when we don’t get enough sleep—and especially if sleep deficit continues over a period of days, months and years—we lay the foundation for vastly reduced functioning and even illness.
3. Oxygen Insufficiency
Oxygen scarcity for long enough will result in death. Not only would we die without it, but our tissues require oxygen for regeneration and maintenance.
Most pathogenic microbes thrive in an anaerobic(oxygen-deprived) environment. Although so-called oxygen therapy is used to help ease conditions such as asthma and emphysema, the modality is much more sophisticated in other forms. Alternate oxygen therapies consist of pure medical grade ozone, food grade hydrogen peroxide, and hyperbaric oxygen chambers.
4. Chemical Toxicity
Toxin means “poison.” Substances that stresses the system’s biochemistry to the extent that cell structure and organ function are adversely impacted, may be considered a poison.
There are literally tons of chemicals (that are toxic to the body) that are so commonly used, many people do not regard them as dangerous foreign agents. These agents enter the body through the skin, respiratory tract and gastrointestinal tract.
5. Electromagnetic toxicity
When people hear the word “toxin,” they think of environmental pollutants, and drugs and other dangerous chemicals or even radioactivity. All of these toxic substances overburden the body with wastes and often prevent it from functioning properly.
Electromagnetic fields are another hidden source of environmental pollution. Electromagnetic fields can have either beneficial or detrimental effects on the body, due to their ability to alter the polarity and voltage of the cells.
6. Injury
Infl ammation is the body’s way of dealing with irritation—regardless of whether the irritation is caused by microbes (infection), chemicals, friction, heat, or toxins.
Infection, on the other hand, is a pathological, diseased state of the tissues involving microbes. The microbes force their way into various cells in the body and, as a byproduct of their own survival functions, introduce waste materials into the cells and tissue that don’t belong there.
Any debris—no matter what its cause—that remains in the system without being cleared, can cause inflammation and eventually infection. Injury can have long-lasting, sometimes permanent negative effects on the body. What begins as a mechanical stress can quickly become biochemical in nature, due to the secretion of stress hormones and the accumulation of white blood cells in the area.
7. pH Balance
Another important contributor to becoming ill is a disturbance in the body’s pH, or acid-alkaline balance. Although a disturbed pH results from nutrient deficiencies, the converse is also true. When the acid-alkaline balance is awry, it can either augment a problem that already exists,or create new problems.
Sometimes a seriously ill person can become well just by correcting his or her acid-alkaline balance. However, this procedure is not as simple as it might seem, because different areas of the body, at optimal function, have different levels of acidity and alkalinity.
8. Profilerating pathogens
Pathogenic microorganisms are probably the most obvious component of illness. Since bacteria, viruses, parasites and fungi thrive in an unbalanced pH environment, the same factors that cause tissue deterioration also allow microorganisms to proliferate.
9. Toxic bodily responses
Illness can also occur as a result of noxious biochemicals, non-beneficial hormones, or other endogenous substances—produced by the body itself—in response to these mycotoxins.
A cyst, for example, is a sac containing liquid that forms around foreign material in the body to contain it and prevent the rest of the system from being poisoned. Western doctors often perceive the cyst as the medical condition itself rather than an expression of a deeper disruption. Put another way, they call the cyst the cause of the problem rather than the effect.
The body’s attempts to protect itself, while not always convenient or efficient, do demonstrate an attempt to achieve equilibrium. The holistic approach recognizes that the body’s tendency to form cysts is intricately related to an impaired waste removal function.
10. Emotional states and belief systems
A very important, component to becoming ill is one’s emotional state and belief systems.
Emotional states consist of joy, anger, love, rage, sadness, excitement, etc. “E-motion” is really energy in motion; and this energy corresponds to both electrical and chemical messengers in the body. Electrical messengers are the charge that energizes the nervous system. Chemical messengers are the minute amounts of hormones that circulate throughout the body—for example, fear and depression occur simultaneously with the outpouring of the fight-or-flight corticosteroid adrenal hormones.
