On the topic of the unconscious conflation of progress with evolution, and why that matters, you may want to refer to another post here:
The Unconscious Conflation of Progress and Evolution
I'm going to use the terms "the cause of health" in this post quite a lot. The first time I heard it was in a 6 part lecture series on the cause of health given by Dr. Doug Graham, a Chiropractor, athlete and athletic trainer, a raw food vegan, a water-only fasting expert who's fasted thousands of people from athletes who wish to achieve better performance to people with various health issues. Graham is best known perhaps for his book "The 80/10/10 Diet", which has been translated into several languages.
Looking back it seems odd to me now that I don't recall hearing the term the cause of health prior to that 6 part lecture series in 2012. It seems odd to me now because in the intervening years since I have come to see how a seemingly small shift in perspective can have a profound impact on how one manages their own health.
One of the more obvious ways we humans can be confused by the conflation of evolution and biology with progress and technology can be seen in the difference of two opposing concepts: allopathic medicine deliberately or unconsciously conflates "the cause of disease" with "the cause of health", but these two perspectives are not even remotely the same thing.
By the time you're sick enough to need a doctor you've already lost your health, but did the loss of health have to occur to begin with? This is the critical question modern medicine has ignored and obscured completely.
The cause of health occurs by giving your body the inputs it needs for optimal biological function, while the ingress of toxins to the body is simultaneously blocked.
These two conditions together make the likelihood of needing the help of a doctor exponentially lower.
The message isn't "don't go to doctors". Of course go to doctors when needed. But by understanding more completely the cause of health we can become greatly more informed users of modern medicine. For example, as someone who understands and practices the cause of health, you may already know how to "fix" certain issues that come up by changing certain patterns. That process may be enhanced by starting with an accurate medical diagnosis of the problem, or it may already be so obvious that a medical diagnosis is not needed.
But also keep in mind that accurate diagnosis may not be on the medical agenda. I hear people say all the time "I can't do that because I have (name the disease)". Or, "I can't eat greens because I'm taking statins". Meanwhile said "disease" is caused solely by toxic inputs to the body that can be completely avoided.
Take type 2 diabetes for example. Common as nails these day, and completely the result of toxic diet, which is typically greatly mitigated or completely reversed by changing certain "patterns".
I find the term "the cause of health diet" to be much more functional because "good diet" allows so much wiggle room bad habits are easily rationalized to the point "good diet" becomes a functionally useless term.
Unfortunately we simply are not taught the cause of health, and so it follows we also do not know that there is a specific "thing" called the cause of health diet.
Let's change that.
We fall in love with technology because in many ways it leverages biological potential. Modern medicine gives us life saving drugs and surgeries, but it also enables the notion this is all that's needed to be optimally healthy. Or that prescription drugs gets us the rest of the way there. So we take them to manage health problems caused by diets we have been taught to think of as "good". The demonstrable truth is if these diets were good we wouldn't have come down with conditions of poor health to begin with.
Yes, diet is that powerful. It is one of the more powerful influences on how your own life turns out. And the good news is you have control of what you put into your own body.
There is more to this than a lean athletic body into your 80's and beyond. There is also mental clarity and even healthy emotional functioning. The cause of health diet has been found to be more effective than antidepressant medications for most conditions. Consistent physical activity has also been found to be more effective than antidepressant medications. Together "the cause of health lifestyle" would be at least 2x more effective than psychiatric medications alone.
Resistance to contagious diseases is also exponentially greater when health is optimal, which is caused in large part by the cause of health diet and lifestyle.
So what are the conditions of the cause of health? In approximate descending order of priority they are:
1) clean air (we can only survive minutes without air)
2) clean water (we can only survive a few days without water)
3) sleep (we can only remain sane and functional on a daily basis by getting adequate sleep)
4) enjoyable physical activity to enable strength and balance (without which we become increasingly miserable)
5) constructive and loving social contact and interaction (we can only remain sane and functional on an ongoing basis in the enjoyment of constructive social interaction)
6) clean food (assuming availability of unlimited clean water, we can only survive a few months without food)
In practice clean food is higher on this approximate ordering of biological priority because what we think of as food is more conceptually distorted in these post industrial times. In other words, toxic substances we think of as food are the "dirtiest" input to the body for most of us.
Whole food minimally processed is "cleanest".
In conclusion: pharmaceuticals are not the cause of health, only biologically nutritious inputs are the cause of health, and pharmaceuticals are not nutritious. There is also a reasonable case to be made (backed by numerous studies) that "nutraceuticals" (supplements) are also not nutritious in the way whole foods are nutritious.
This is not to say there is no role for pharmaceuticals, which is self-evident, as they can be life saving, as can surgery. But neither are they the cause of health, because the cause of health is biological.
And that is because life is biological. We can intervene in biology technologically, but we cannot cause biology technologically. It is a pre-existent phenomenon due to causes that are complex and not well understood.
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