“A critical example is a developing model of infectious disease that shows that most epidemics — AIDS, Ebola, West Nile, SARS, Lyme disease and hundreds more that have occurred over the last several decades — don’t just happen. They are a result of things people do to nature.
Disease, it turns out, is largely an environmental issue.”
Disease-modifying anti-rheumatic drugs (DMARDs) suppress patients’ immune systems, which can make them vulnerable to infection. Scrambling the immune system is a Bad Idea. You may see short term relief, but there are serious and potentially fatal dangers involved. Numerous treatment strategies exist that are safe, effective, less costly, and non toxic to patients and the environment.
Doctors and patients alike should be thoughtful about starting antibiotics—not only because of the well-publicized resistant bacteria that are proliferating thanks to overuse of those drugs, but also because, a new study illustrates, there could be serious consequences for the individual. As well as for, you know, humanity in general.
Scientists suspect our intestinal community of microbes, the human microbiota, calibrates our immune and metabolic function, and that its corruption or depletion can increase the risk of chronic diseases, ranging from asthma to obesity. One might think that if we coevolved with our microbes, they’d be more or less the same in healthy humans everywhere. But that’s not what the scientists observed.”
In order to prevent one from becoming ill one of the goal’s is to not harbor wind, cold, heat, dry, or damp within the body. In TCM one gets sick when they possess an internal element that resonates with an external; if it’s not there then you don’t get sick. This is a principle of physics called Resonance, and it is the foundation for preventative medicine.
“The best estimates suggest that fully half of antibiotic prescriptions may be unnecessary.” Based on my experience I would put that number closer to 70%.
“A recent study in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that doctors treat 71 percent of bronchitis cases with treated antibiotics. They know this is wrong because bronchitis is usually caused by viruses. Yet they prescribe antibiotics anyway, usually at the patient’s behest.”
A University of California, Berkeley, study, published in the journal Emotion in January, suggests that the feeling of awe we may experience during encounters with art, nature and spirituality has an anti-inflammatory effect, protecting the body from chronic disease.
The researchers found a correlation between feelings of awe and lower levels of cytokines, markers that put the immune system on high alert by triggering a defensive reaction known as inflammation. While inflammation is essential to fighting infection and disease when the body is presented with a specific threat, chronically high levels of cytokines have been linked to a number of health problems, including heart disease, Alzheimer’s, depression and autoimmune conditions.
