Series: The Quest for Health and Why we Fail. Part 1.
Our world has drastically changed in the past 200 years. Even more extreme changes have happened since the Second World War. Take a moment and think about how much life has changed in your lifetime. We are rapidly changing the planet by deforestation, mining, building, and pollution from all of the name of “progress.” We are on a course of ruination that has put us on the brink of irreversibly devastating the balance of the ecosystem and destroying the planet we call home.
Our modern lifestyle is far removed from nature, it’s synthetic. Roads connected ancient civilizations, vastly improving trade for resources, but it was a lengthy and costly process. Today we tear down forests to herd animals, build buildings, and can distribute these resources quickly and with little cost due to our vast land and air transportation systems. Humankind seems to focus on the immediate gain of financial resources over the devastating loss of natural resources. But what will happen to the financial cache if we use up our natural resources?
The main resource we should be looking to protect is one that we are taking for granted, health. It’s is a resource that can’t be bought, not TRUE health that is. How can I say this? True health is when balance can be easily restored when an imbalance occurs. If we constantly bombard life with unhealthy habits, it gets harder and harder for life to return to homeostasis.
Homeostasis is the scientific term that means obtaining a harmonious balance within a system. For instance, the air we breathe is not pure oxygen; it’s mostly nitrogen but full of many other elements and particles. They all work in balance for the planet to survive. Animals breathe in the oxygen and use it as fuel, then expel out the byproducts such as methane and carbon dioxide. In small amounts, the air can convert elements that are harmful to life into the essential resources we need, like oxygen.
However, in today’s world we release astronomical amounts of toxic elements into the air. Many of these elements can’t be processed by plants and unfortunately are killing them. When we destroy our planet’s significant sources of oxygen production, which are ocean algae and trees, we are left with a major imbalance that will throw off homeostasis to a degree where the earth cannot repair itself and return to true health.
Think of it, we have lived our entire lives in a synthetic world. From the moment of our birth everything we have ever experienced is not natural. The planet has been denatured so significantly that what we view as “natural” is actually so far removed from it’s natural state it’s hardly recconizabke. What’s scary to think about is that we have become so accustomed to our unnatural comditions that if we were able to time travel two-hundred year’s ago it would be difficult for us to survive.
Everything from the air we breathe to the food we eat, nothing can be considered natural any more. We sleep on beds and use pillows and blankets. We take showers with soap and shampoo and brush and floss our teeth. We eat processed, cooked, and denatured foods that are poor in nutrition. We wear clothing, including shoes, hats, and makeup. It’s no wonder why we see so many health problems today; we live in an environment that is not suited for maximum health. With this in mind many would look at living a natural lifestyle as difficult and hard… But has modern advancements honestly made life easier or harder than it was 200 years ago?
If you take a fish from the ocean and put it in a fishbowl, it will have a shorter lifespan and won’t be healthy or happy because it can’t adapt well to the new unnatural environment. If a fish hatches in a fishbowl, it wont grow as large as it naturally should, and its lifespan is will be shortened; but it will never truly know what living in the ocean was like so it accepts the fishbowl as the only reality that exists. It’s the same with all animals, including Homo Sapiens. We were born in a “fishbowl,” this synthetic world. We’ve never known the health benefits of proper natural health; how could we?
I’m not advocating a return of human life to its natural environment; that’s not realistic. The best we can do individually is make lifestyle changes that will allow our minds and bodies to function the way is should in a natural environment. If we were to upgrade our “fishbowl” to a more natural lofestyle, including our diet exercise and social surroundings, we would have the best opportunity for optimum health during our lifetime.
Since it’s not possible to return to a completely natural way of life, we need to find ways to adapt to the environment we are forced to live in bringing us as close as possible to homeostasis. If we remove just a few of the majorly destructive habits we do every day, we will have significant physical and mental health benefits. For instance, many don’t know what modern lifestyle choices cause health problems such as cancer, diabetes, arthritis, ADD, etc. If we remove the cause of our illness, we allow our body the energy it needs to correct, repair, and maintain itself.
Would you rather spend the rest of your life suffering from ailments and debilitating chronic problems, or one where you are healthy, happy, and thriving? This is the practice of Orthopathy, replacing destructive habits with those that help our minds and bodies maintain maximum health. Is having a long happy life free from major health problems worth making a few lifestyle changes; or would you rather keep living the same lifestyle that wears your body down allowing illness and a slow painful death? What seems more reasonable, preventing health issues or having to suffer through them and then read out for help when your body is too worn down to care for itself? If I had the choice I would chose precention.
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Dr. Robert Green, N.D. 
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