A ‘manual’ is defined as a small book of instructions. The value of any manual is that it be useful and simple to understand. The trick is to explain the problem and then offer solutions. That is what we have attempted to do here.
I don’t want the subtitle, The Complete Compendium of Natural Health, to over-promise. The subject of health is simply too vast to try to cover completely in one book. What you will find, however, is a concise overview of some of the proven methods of creating and maintaining bodily well being. And guess what? Most of these methods are found freely in nature.
We are still in the process of asking questions and gathering facts about ways in which to think about healthiness. But what we have already discovered is that health is far more complex than the scientific reductionists would have us believe.
What stands out in my research is that while there is almost universal dis-agreement as to what constitutes a state of “good health” there is general agreement that there are certain lifestyle choices that can lead to a consistent state of well being. Choices that can add years to our lives and life to our years. And this is precisely what we will be covering within these pages.
One thing that you will quickly note is that I choose to write to you in a conversational manner rather than lecturing. I will try not to sound like a nutritional scientist, even though I will rely on scientific evidence to help explain most of my points.
I sometimes make up words and create weird sentence structures. MS WORD’s spelling and punctuation tools will hopefully take care of anything that I missed almost eighty years ago in Mrs. Grundy’s English class. However, I fully believe that despite any mistakes in spelling or punctuation, you’ll be able to understand the message. For example, try this:
The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mind in undnatnrding what yu are reding is amzanig.
See what I mean? I trust that you, the reader, will be quite able to grasp the concepts I’m sharing with you. Whether you agree with them is another matter.
Very little of what you will read here bubbled up new-born from the depths of my mind. It is information, factoids and research gathered and edited from many sources. Let me be perfectly clear. I have been told that I should not talk or write about health … because I’m NOT a medical doctor. I’m not a PhD nutritionist, either. In fact, I cannot claim to be any kind of “expert” in the field of health. What I CAN do, however, is share some startling facts with you about what I have learned that can help you to help yourself become healthier and live longer.
I don’t claim to have all of the answers, or to even imply that what I have discovered should be adopted by other people. There are, in fact, very few shoulds and oughts to be found in this presentation. There are simply no cookie-cutter recipes for healthiness that apply to everyone. And yet there are a few basic similarities in all of humankind in terms of being able to achieve a state of good health.
There are shared lifestyle patterns that lead to optimum health and resistance to disease. Once we know the common qualities that define these, we can apply the strategies and technologies that are known to enhance and enrich our lives and those of our loved ones.
In doing so some readers will be helped to improve their lives, well being and level of health. Others will not. It all comes down to making personal lifestyle choices. So sit back, take a deep breath, and let’s get started on a journey of discovery.
Let us begin by revealing one of the medical profession’s most closely guarded secrets. It is one that your personal physician will probably never admit. It is this: The incredibly complex biological ‘machine’ that we call our body keeps itself operating and functioning just fine on its own …. if left alone to do so.
The body is self-healing and self-rejuvenating if given the proper fuel and environment in which to thrive. This life-fuel comes from raw materials such as air, water, minerals, water, vitamins, and various chemicals, which it largely gets through nutrition. Add to this Prana or Chi, as other cultures call the vital life-force which animates our bodies.
The body’s own inherent intelligence operates in continuous mode 24 hours a day to insure that it runs at an optimum level. This means keeping in perfect balance the thousands upon thousands of biochemical reactions that take place every single second from the cellular level to the major organs of the body.
This is a process of continual creation, which your body does all by itself so long as it can ingest and assimilate the various chemicals, minerals, vitamins, and enzymes it requires to keep itself going. In other words, if the fuel requirements of the body are properly met, this alone will keep the body in a state of balance, or what modern medical science calls homeostasis.
So let me ask you a question: Is this something that you have ever been told by your medical doctor? Didn’t think so.
The problem, dear reader, is that it has become increasingly difficult to find the kind of nutrition our bodies need in this modern age of factory farming and industrial food processing. Add to this the toxicity of our environment and the stress in our lives and we can easily see why the body needs all the help it can get to “do its thing”.
It is my hope that we can provide you with an easily understandable, state-of-the-art guide that can help you to restore the natural harmony of your body through the proper use of a toxin-free diet and its nutritional components. Such a diet is NOT the typical postindustrial Western one, that I can assure you. Diet, by the way, refers to our intake of nourishing foods rather than a way of controlling weight.
This is not, however, another diet plan book. Instead, what I intend to do is present enough nutritional background information to enable you to make informed choices that will best suit your individual needs in achieving the maximum level of health of which you are capable. Sometimes, it is as simple as deciding what not to take into your body.
It is the proper quality (and quantity) of our nutrition that we must seek if we are to attain a higher level of healthiness.
This is an invitation to you to explore the possibilities of making better, healthier lifestyle choices. These choices come not so much from scientific research as from common sense, tradition and the innate wisdom of our women-folk. The research tells us why. Our mothers, aunts and grandmothers tell us how. We merely need to remember their teachings.
