A Naturopathic Approach to Healing

I really want to share more info with you about the natural healing methods I’m applying to detoxify, strengthen and heal my body. I’ve studied various natural therapies and naturopathic nutrition and this period of illness is giving me a chance to put everything into full application. I’m using naturopathic practices, diet and nutrition, supplementation, essential oils and herbs. As a hypnotherapist I’m all too aware of the impacts of our thought and emotion on our health and our capacity to heal, and also want to share with you what I am doing to bring balance and healing at a mental, emotional and spiritual level.

This blog is just a short intro to the principles of naturopathic healing.

When I speak about health I mean it not in the sense of ‘absence of illness’, but in terms of functioning to our fullest potential at a physical, psychological, emotional and spiritual level. It translates to practical things such as, for example, sleeping deeply and waking refreshed, feeling the energy to get things done, thinking clearly, experiencing balanced positive emotions, having an easy well flowing digestion, maintain a healthy weight, good self esteem and faith in oneself and being able to fully relax. Many people would claim they are in good health but it doesn’t take much delving beneath the surface to see that most people are quite out of balance.

Pasteur and Beauchamp

The fundamental principle underlying all holistic natural health practices is that illness will only occur in the body when there is imbalance of some sort. Every ‘alternative’ health system, many of which have been in practice for thousands of years, is based on this principle – whether Chinese, Ayurvedic, herbal or homeopathic. Whilst the methods are different, the approach is to treat the whole person (holistic) uniquely, according to the specific imbalances shown through the symptoms revealed by the body. Many of these systems address the energetic imbalances of the body with as much regard as those shown in the physical meat and bones.

In contrast, our conventional medical and pharmaceutical system sees the cause of illness as something foreign and outside our control, in germs, bacteria and parasites and also hereditary weakness. This system is very much built upon the work of Louis Pasteur. Back in the 1885, Pasteur presented the ideas that it’s the germs around us, that invade us and cause disease. Each disease is the result of a specific organism and we are all equally at risk. Since we are vulnerable to attack at all times we must vaccinate to protect against them, and fight them with pharmaceuticals if they attack us.

Around Pasteur’s time, there were other views circulating within the scientific community. Antoine Beauchamp spent his life in dispute with Pasteur, critiquing his scientific methods and approaches. His view was that it is the biological terrain of the body that is the cause of the disease not the germ itself. He argued that germs and parasites can only survive in conditions which are favorable to them (i.e. weak immune system, acidic pH) and therefore mere exposure to germs is not enough to get sick. This is proven time and time again by the fact that injecting people with germs doesn’t make them ill, unless they are weakened. Beauchamp discovered that bacteria change form and that rather than being the cause of disease, actually arise from tissues, becoming pathogenic only when the health of the host organism deteriorates.

The primary cause of disease is in us, always in us. – Antoine Beauchamp, 1883

Claude Bernard, another opponent of Pasteur, was so convinced of this theory that he even drank a glass of water filled with cholera to prove it!

If  I could live my life over again, I would devote it to proving that germs seek their natural habitat—diseased tissue—rather than being the cause of the diseased tissue. The mosquito seeks the stagnant water, but does not cause the pool to become stagnant.- Rudolph Virchow

Despite these other views it was Pasteur’s germ theory that won out in the end. Why? For its time it was a simple approach that would have been attractive to people because it shifted responsibility outside of the individual. This approach also allowed the development of a grand pharmaceutical industry to manufacture and distribute (profit from) the artificial vaccines and medication now needed to fight these alien invaders. How would anyone have profited from a system built upon Beauchamp’s work?

But did you know that on his deathbed, after a life time of doing every thing he could to get to the top of his field, Pasteur admitted he was wrong. He admitted that it is the cellular environment that is important not the germ. By then it was too late.

The genius of Antoine Beauchamp lives on 

While the medical system pretty much ignores the work of Pasteur’s opponents, naturopathic medicine still very much based on Beauchamp (and peers) findings.  The aim is to improve the internal cellular environment so that disease is no longer able to develop or exist. We do this by reducing acidity, toxicity, nutrient deficiency, and increasing oxygenation, flow and movement and restoring cellular charge.

Had I been in good, balanced health (emotionally, mentally and physically) I wouldn’t have been susceptible to this inner ear issue. I was run down and pushed to the edge of my stress threshold.  Emotionally and energetically I was frazzled by being in a difficult relationship combined with dissatisfaction at work. Whether or not I’m able to completely heal myself, I don’t know. It is likely that the damage to my inner ear is irreversible. But whilst I’m at home with all this time on my hands anyway I’m going to apply every bit of knowledge and experience I have access to, to bring my whole self into its optimum happy health once again so that no more illness affects me in future. By the end of this I am going to have super shiny happy cells!  The natural approach does takes time and commitment…but I have plenty of both.

Following a natural health approach doesn’t have to be exclusive of conventional medicine; it should be complementary. Both have their merits and limitations and should be used intelligently side by side. In my case I’m fully applying natural approaches whilst still trying anything sensible that conventional medicine can offer me.  I’ve just spent 3 days having steroids injected into my eardrums to reduce inflammation so I don’t think it would be particularly intelligent to come home and stuff my face with inflammatory foods like Pizza and Beer. Instead I focus on reducing inflammation anyway possible so I don’t have to rely on meds.

The natural approach has worked for me before so I have faith it will work for me again. Still, its not a quick fix and since I have many years of accumulated toxicity, imbalances and emotional crap to clear, its not going to be over until the fat lady sings…and in my case I hear her 🙂