I learnt something important about health some seventeen years ago from a most unlikely source. It was in a Molue bus. Fresh from school then, I was just another bright eyed kid. I believed everything the textbook said about health. I still do. Almost.
On the day, I had just closed from work, tired, I approached Oshodi bus stop notorious then for its army of pickpockets; while mentally reminding myself not to let my guards down. I was not ready to allow some cheap crook meet his quota for the night.
“Abule-Egba straaaight!” I needed no second invitation. I spun into action. Years of growing up in Lagos had conditioned my reflexes. With several pushy passengers jostling for seat and insisting on extra elbow room in an already cramped space, I guarded myself. I even had luxury of a seat. I slumped on its uncomfortable hardness. I must have dozed off. I woke up just in time…..
The elderly fellow who got everyone enthralled was an unauthorized peddler of pharmaceutical products. I could not recall the names of the products he was peddling. But somehow, something he said to a passenger’s enquiry caught my attention. It didn’t mean much back then. But it did now. And it all did after reading a borrowed copy of Sick and Tired?: Regain Your Inner Terrain, a book by Dr. Robert Young.
The elderly man had explained with effusive arrogance that “with a pure blood, catching a disease was impossible; that no germ could survive in a healthy blood.” I almost had a fit.
How ridiculous!
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Of course he was selling some cheap heamatinic capsule and he needed a story to give it leverage- a bold face lie necessitated by hustle. But after I had read Robert Young’s book; that elderly man, the hawker of unauthorized pharmaceuticals in a molue bus, perhaps, may not be totally off track after all.
Let me begin with a quote with which Robert Young started the book:
“If I could live my life over again, I would devote it to proving that germs seek their natural habitat – diseased tissue- rather than being the cause of the diseased tissue; e.g., mosquitoes seek the stagnant water, but do not cause the pool to become stagnant.
– Rudolph Virchow (Father of Pathology)
Now, Rudolph was an eminent German pathologist widely regarded as one of the greatest and most influential physicians in history. As one of the founding fathers of “social medicine”, he developed the concept of pathological processes, and by drawing influence from the cell theory, analyzed the effects of disease in various organs and tissues of the human body. The world owes the understanding of the cellular basis for many diseases, such as cancer, to Rudolf Virchow. On Pathology, Rudolph was an authority.
This quote, when I read it, hit me like a brick. It placed a big question mark on the Germ Theory of Diseases, one of the corner stone of modern Medicine. If indeed germs really seek diseased tissues (just like mosquitoes seek stagnant water) then germs cannot, by any logic, be the cause of the diseases. Preposterous isn’t it?
Maybe not!
Let us try a little experiment:
Place a banana beside a piece of cheese on a counter. Cover the cheese so it won’t dry out too quickly. Observe both for a few days.
Soon, the banana becomes soft, turns black and the cheese begins to mold. Cut the cheese with a knife you will observe the inside is intact; it is still fresh. Cut the banana. It is rotten. Smell it. It is fermenting. You will notice that the banana rots from the inside whereas the cheese moulds from the outside!
Why?
The banana was alive and is now dead. The cheese was never alive to start with.
One important fact we all need to acknowledge here is this: every living thing comes equipped with his janitorial service, the germs, which go to work when it dies. They serve to clean up the mess our bodies left behind!
So what triggered the germs which, abinitio, were at peace inside every living thing? How did they now become the culprit, as it were, in the cause of diseases?
First, we need to understand that two internal factors are responsible for a healthy internal environment (homeostasis) which I supposed the elderly drug peddler alluded to as “pure blood” and Robert Young referred to as terrain. These factors are alkalinity and negative electrical charge. And contributing to a healthy terrain are nutrition, toxins and emotions.
Alkalinity is vital to health. For an understanding of pH values (alkalinity and acidity) to health, please read my earlier article in https://infotrust.com.ng/for-the-life-of-all-flesh-is-the-blood-thereof-leveticus-17-vs-4/.
Changes in pH (acidity or alkalinity) values alter virtually all body functions. The cells of a healthy body are alkaline while the cells of a diseased body are below a pH of 7.0 (acidic).
The more acidic the cell, the sicker we become. Our bodies produce acid as a by-product of normal metabolism. Since our body does not manufacture alkalinity, we must supply it from the outside- from what we eat and how we live life generally. Unfortunately, we are in a very toxic society. Our food, water, air is polluted. We poison ourselves with alcohol. We smoke. Even the way we cook our foods are all wrong- barbecuing, microwaving, garnishing with seasonings packed with excitotoxins etc. Our emotions also affect our terrain. You can be a judicious health freak, but if you have unchecked emotional issues, you will still be acidic and your electrical charge will change. You will fall sick. This is the body/mind connection, an emerging science of Psychoneuroimmunology.
An acidic terrain is an invitation to the clean-up crew to begin their work.
Do you still remember our little experiment with the banana? You remember the resident germs that ate the banana from the inside out? What triggered them?
Simply put, when our negative charge turns positive and our cells tend towards acidity, the clean-up crew, the germs, goes to work because they think WE ARE DEAD! Our acidic terrain and loss of negative charge is the beginning of disease. Disease does not start at the onset of symptoms.
Unfortunately, only nutrition and detoxification can heal an acidic terrain. No drug can do it. But do we need antibiotics. You bet we do. Our body is so much out of alignment; our immune system needs all the help it can get. Like Dr. Scott Hannen explained in Healing by Design: if I place a pile of garbage on the floor and leave it there for weeks; bugs will find it. If I spray insecticides on it, the bugs will die. If I don’t get rid of the garbage, the bugs will return. I have the choice of getting rid of the garbage or continue with killing the bugs each time with insecticides.
We are always killing the bugs but we never clear the garbage. That is why we fall sick now and then. Germs are a child of the Universe, just like us. They deserve their place. We cannot win the bug war! We were never meant to. The bugs are fulfilling a mandate!
Sola Adedeji is a Pharmacist.
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