Not surgery, not radiation, not a drug, not a vitamin, not a mineral, not a salve, not an herb, not a thing. While the statement may sound ridiculous at first, it is nevertheless true. We are taught to believe that "taking something" can cure a problem in the body as if the "something" knows what to do and how to do it. When we look at the most obvious elements that participate in the curing process, we can only find one thing that "knows" what is going on and that is the body itself.

The body uses many diverse resources and most of them come from what we ingest. Each individual cell in the body makes the distinction as to what it is going to use and how to use it. It decides what to allow into itself, what to use, what to avoid and what to get rid of. If it didn't, there would be no such thing as immunity. This is the basis of all immunological function to the point of the cell being overwhelmed by a substance or event that exceeds its resistance to being changed. This phenomena is called Gene Amplification and it is the determinant factor in the cell’s resistance to being stressed by anything harmful to the cell’s function. The cell will initially resist any attempted change or alteration to the point of being overwhelmed. The information regarding the surviving cell’s resistance is passed on in the genes of the a new cell following cellular division. The new generation of cell is more resistant to the stress because of the information passed on to it, and this is how cells basically become stronger and more resistant to challenges to their well being. We call it immunity. Collectively, the cells work as a team (holistically) creating what we interpret as an "immune system". You can see that something external to the cell’s function can not cure anything because the so called cure can only be induced by the cell/cells and not by the tool the cell uses. The cell is alive, it breathes, eats, excretes waste material and replicates itself. The “universe” it does this in, along with all its friends and relatives, is called the body.

The body developed from a single cell contained within an egg about the size of this dot "." and to presume that it doesn't know what it is doing at any given moment is to deny the body's very act of self creation. The body always knows what it is doing and it has always known how to do it even from the time it was as small as that dot. It created itself in all directions simultaniously. It created the blood, heart, brain, eyes, teeth, skin, bones, hair and everything else ....and when it started, none of those "things" existed.

Also, that the body makes mistakes is a misinterpretation. If the body was prone to mistakes, its evolution would have ceased long ago. The body can and does malfunction however. The question is, what is contributing to the malfunction? Throughout the life of the body, almost without exception, it is subject to the availability and quality of the raw materials used in its construction. It uses this material in order to recreate itself from moment to moment. We (that which is not the body) may not understand what the body is attempting to do, and all to frequently, we misinterpret what it is attempting to do or communicate. But given the raw materials it needs to heal and to minimize, or more desirably, eliminate what interfered with its health in the first place, it heals itself according to its own priorities and methodology. After all, the body is recreating, replacing, healing, repairing and maintaining its own status to various degrees and from moment to moment anyway. The weakest link in its ability to maintain its health is us. Or put in a more philosophical way, the personality or being which occupies the body. A clue to this is that we cannot even talk about the body except as a possession of ours. If, in fact we possess it, then "who" is the "we" that is doing the possessing? It begs the question, who is it that is responsible for supporting and helping maintain the body that we use? Something to think about!

The body relies entirely on "our" ability to gather the raw materials and resources it ultimately needs to function qualitatively. To the extent that is denied or ignored, the body suffers. The quality of the raw material makes a difference. The body is made out of what we eat and drink (ingest), and the old engineering phrase "quality in, quality out," applies in the most literal sense. How safe would we feel if the next time we flew on a jet plane we found out that the nuts and bolts used to put it together were purchased at our local hardware store instead of being custom made to the exceptionally high standards for the specific purpose for which they are used.

The same reasonable expectation of quality should apply to what we eat and drink, but when you look around and see what most of us are using for raw materials in the ongoing rebuilding of our own body, it explains the advanced degeneration of health and rapid proliferation of disease in most industrial societies today.

When it comes to health, as well as human behavior, can we deny the influence the quality of raw materials being used in the ongoing recreation and maintenance of the body has? Are we being respectful of what nature has so exquisitely presented and made available to us?

What happens when we introduce deficient, denatured processed food, food substitutes and other unnatural substances in quantity into the body and for long periods of time? How does it interfere with the body's ability to follow it's own rules of health?

How does it effect our own thinking processes? How does it influence our behavior and our emotions? What effect does it have on reproduction? What genetic effect does it have in our children? Are we being as responsible as we could be?

Can we do better than we have been? Do we want to do better? Do we have what it takes to do better? Are we too lazy? Do we want someone else to do it for us?

"Let the government do it" is a frequent answer, except history has shown that putting our well being in the hands of others hasn't worked very well.

When we look around to see who is ultimately responsible for the job, there is no one else but us--the individual that occupies the body. If we own and drive a car, there are certain inherent responsibilities in maintaining the car to a qualitative standard in order to provide ourselves with a sense of security when driving it. We also want to provide that sense of security to any passengers. If we want the sense of security, we have to take the time and spend the money to produce the result we want. As there are always choices available to us, we can also pretend that we are secure and ignore the needs of the car. If we don't pay any attention to the brakes, we may eventually pay a price for our neglect. If we don't maintain fluid levels such as engine coolant and oil, the engine may be damaged by overheating or ultimately be destroyed by seizing completely. If we don't keep it fueled, it will eventually stop.

Abuse and neglect can shorten the life of a car, sometimes substantially. With the body, as well as the car, we are free to cheat and think we're getting away with it. But eventually somewhere down the road there is a higher price to pay.

And it is usually our children who eventually get the bill.