Disclaimer: This article is provided for educational purposes only and reflects a Natural Hygiene (Terrain Model) perspective on health and nutrition. It is not intended to diagnose, treat, or cure any condition, and does not constitute veterinary or medical advice. The views expressed are independent of the conventional medical or veterinary industry, and all decisions regarding animal care or personal health care are the responsibility of the owner/individual.
Did you know that there is only ONE disease? The medical industry calls various symptoms diseases, but this does not align with biological reality.
Central to the terrain model of health, also called the science of natural hygiene, is the knowledge that there is only ONE disease. We call this disease toxemia. Toxemia can also be referred to as acidosis or cellular malfunction, although it is more accurate to say that cellular malfunction is a symptom of toxemia and not the disease itself.
All of the “diseases” of allopathy are actually symptoms of the singular disease of toxemia, which is an over-acid state of the body. This state of toxemia is caused by a backlog of acidic cellular waste and debris, which results from chronic dehydration of the lymphatic system.
Acids burn. Acids trapped in the body exist in the same intercellular fluids that the cells exist in and therefore damage the cells that are exposed to them, eventually leading to cell malfunction. Disease starts as a backlog of waste, due to the body accumulating more waste than its cleaning systems can clean. The start of disease comes before the symptoms. The symptoms begin when the backlog becomes urgent enough to impair function, at which point the body creates an expulsion event, or healing crisis/healing event.
The body may use many different techniques to prevent the acids from burning. For example, the body may use cholesterol to buffer acids. The body may use water to dilute acids, which we notice as swelling and inflammation. The body may promote bacterial activity to break down the acids, resulting in fever, or heat at the area of injury. The body may also build tumors to store the waste. The body may use alkaline minerals (i.e. calcium) to neutralize the acid. When the body must pull alkaline minerals to neutralize the acids, this leads to osteoporosis, prolapses, sagging skin, and weakened tissues if the body is not receiving enough usable alkaline minerals to replenish what it is using up.
Acids burn and bases (alkaline) neutralize acids.
There are two types of symptoms:
1. Cellular malfunction, as a result of the acids damaging the cells responsible for a particular function.
2. Expulsion/repair symptoms. These are symptoms created by the body itself to clean and repair damage.
Disease, or lack of ease, within the body comes in stages. Through years and decades of wrong foods and exposure to other toxins/poisons through the environment, on our skin, the air we breathe, etc. we build upon our mistakes.
The most impactful are the daily choices you make. The three (or more) meals we eat each day.
When we ingest only those foods that are biologically and physiologically appropriate, then the natural state of health is maintained throughout life, and no disease is experienced.
When we stray from the natural foods that are appropriate to our physiology, disease grows by degrees based on how many mistakes we are making.
A few minor mistakes create only minor, occasional symptoms like fatigue, sneezing, coughing, rashes, and the occasional short fever. The further we stray from our natural foods, the larger the purge requires, leading to bigger healing events, such as colds or flu detox events, rashes, severe fatigue, and even pneumonia in more advanced states of disease.
If we attempt to suppress these early cleaning symptoms by the use of drugs, herbs, natural remedies, colloidal silver, ointments, or salves, then the body never finishes cleaning and is forced to retain the toxic material, and the waste load internally grows deeper.
The longer we suppress and kick the can down the road, the more serious the condition becomes, until we shift from expulsion symptoms, or constructive, useful symptoms of cleaning, to the symptoms of cellular malfunction. Conversely, if we have already put the body into a state of malfunction, such as heart disease, asthma, or diabetes, then we must experience those cleaning symptoms, such as rashes, colds, flu, fever, or what medicine calls an infection, to heal. The “infection” and the inflammation are the healing process; the coughing, sneezing, mucus, vomiting, diarrhea, etc, are the way the body expels the materials it must expel to return to a state of health.
Disease is not an on/off switch. It is in varying states of dirtiness or cleanliness. Much like the cleanliness of a floor can be on a scale of dirty to clean, from absolutely filthy to shining spotless, and every stage in between.
Dis-ease begins with minor warning signs and slowly progresses into major and chronic illness. For example, body odor, bad breath, acne, liver spots (brown spots on the skin, often on the face), dark circles under the eyes, a crease or creases in the forehead between the eyebrows, temperature sensitivities, sun burns, cavities in the teeth, wounds that are slow to heal, swollen hands, feet or ankles, swollen face/head, allergies, wrinkles as we age, and headaches are all signs of the toxic conditions growing in the body and all signs that our inner terrain is not clean and our cells are operating in a state of distress. This distress is often felt in the form of anxiety, depression, inability to handle stress, erratic emotions, and in more severe conditions of disease, we will see delusions, hallucinations, or extreme swings from manic to depressive.
If left unchecked, if the person does not return to their natural, highly alkaline, fruit-centered, plant-based diet, or the animal to their biologically appropriate diet, then the waste continues to grow, little by little, year by year, until the symptoms grow into an unbearable state and chronic disease is the result.
Luckily for us, our bodies are remarkable, brilliant, intelligently designed organisms that can take a tremendous amount of abuse before getting to such an extreme state of disease, and this means that we can work in reverse to eliminate the disease conditions by eliminating the acids and removing some of the burden on the body. Often, just small changes in the diet are enough to bring someone back from the brink because our bodies are built to survive.
Unfortunately for us, this also means our bodies have an extreme tolerance for abuse, which allows us to develop many harmful habits that do not cause immense pain and suffering immediately, but if continued over time, they will cause real harm. Our body warns us with small symptoms first, but we have been largely trained to ignore these symptoms, and so we continue on in our damaging habits until the symptoms become large enough to cause real discomfort. Only then do we attempt to seek correction. Sadly, most seek help in the hands of the poison salesman, who supplies their various poisons, be they herbal or pharmaceutical. These substances provide only a temporary relief, if any, and are followed by a further worsening of disease or an alteration in symptoms. You cannot poison a poisoned body back to health, no matter how much the disease-for-profit industry tries to convince you otherwise.
This symptom suppression route is why it is so easy to trick people into following unhealthy diets or taking supplements or other harmful substances and then hope for a magic cure, instead of building and maintaining their health over their lifetime.
The body heals when we remove the causes that led to the disease conditions growing in the first place. If you shift from a diet with 20 things wrong to a diet with 15 things wrong, the act of removing those 5 things will alleviate some symptoms and allow the body to clean a little bit more waste out. This is why less-than-ideal diets alleviate some disease symptoms but do not maintain a state of pristine health long term.
This leads to a temporary reduction in uncomfortable symptoms or a shifting of symptoms to less bothersome symptoms, and so the individual thinks that they are on the right track. Any reduction in the cause of the disease will lead to some reversal of symptoms. However, for the body to truly function at its peak, there must be no obstructions to healing and no habits that build disease. This requires a complete return to the natural species-appropriate diet, along with rest, and for some, it may also require periods of therapeutic fasting to allow the backlog to be cleared efficiently.
