principles of disease

Diseases, infectious as well as degenerative, are not incomprehensible mysteries, nor are they inevitable.

The condition of our cells and the state of our immune systems determine how our bodies react to the myriad toxic agents they are continually exposed to.

From the moment we are conceived, the processes of life are carried out following the blueprint contained in our DNA. The DNA holds the genetic code for our life, health, and the physical features of our bodies. DNA, unless it itself has become mutated, conceives our body in a perfected state, and our cells are always striving to achieve that perfection.

Acids and Free Radicals

Free radicals and acids are virtually the same in that they both have the same effects on the body.

Free radicals are atoms or molecules (groups of atoms bound together by shared electrons) which have lost electrons and have unpaired electrons in their outermost orbits or shells, and which, while in that unbalanced state, are seeking to gain electrons in order to become stable.

Acids contain positively charged hydrogen ions (protons), while free radicals can be positively charged ions of any element or molecule, although not all positively charged ions are free radicals. In order to be free radicals, they must be unstable in addition to being positively charged. For example, the ion of calcium is positively charged (Ca++). but the outer shell is composed of 8 electrons with no unpaired electrons, so the ion is stable and not looking to replace electrons and therefore not a free radical.

The positively charged oxygen radical is called Super-Oxide. It is the most plentiful, aggressive and damaging free radical of them all. "Antioxidant" is the term that was originally coined to delineate a substance that can neutralize the oxygen radical, although the term is used to indicate any substance that can neutralize any free radical.

Basically, both acids and free radicals are ions with positive electrical charges, atoms missing electrons. In a balanced atom, the number of electrons with negative electrical charges equals the number of protons with positive electrical charges. When stable atoms lose electrons, they are forced to seek to neutralize their inbalanced condition by taking electrons from other atoms. Most commonly this occurs near the DNA of the cells. Once an electron is taken from an atom or molecule, that formerly stable atom or molecule is now a positively charged free radical, which in turn will be compelled to neutralize itself by taking electrons from aother stable atom or molecule.

The free radical process repeats as a chain reaction which, if not corrected, will result in the death of the body.

The damage that occurs from free radicals is due to the fact that whenever an atom or molecule is split apart, energy is released. This is the same principle our body uses to produce energy from the breakdown, or splitting of the molecules in the food we eat, but that is done in a controlled way within the mitochondria of the cell, and the energy released is channeled for use by the body. But the energy released when electrons are torn from atoms and molecules due to acids or free radicals produces tiny, uncontrolled atomic explosions which damage or kill cells. If the cells live they probably will mutate, and when the mutated cells replicate themselves, the daughter cells will have the same genetic defects as the mother cells - a process that leads to cancer and other degenerative diseases.

One can see the damage done by free radicals in a live blood cell analysis under a microscope. Red blood corpuscles, normally round, after free radical damage, look like cookies with big bites taken out of them. live-blood-cell-analysis.shtml

Damage associated with acids does not come only from direct attack on cells. When the body fluids become acidic, the ability of the fluids to absorb oxygen is severely compromised, while every cell of the body needs abundant oxygen continually.

The immediate cause of all disease is oxygen deficiency, which is brought about by other causes such as the acidosis mentioned above, which is brought about by free radical damage which is allowed by diets deficient in anti-oxidants.

When nutrition is consistently and correctly applied, all functions will fall into place. Acids, free radicals, bad bacteria, viruses, yeasts, and funguses will be neutralized, oxygen and other essential nutrients will be provided to the cells in due measure, and wastes will be eliminated effectively.

When a person has a heart attack it is because the cells that make up the heart muscle have been deprived of oxygen and can no longer function, and when the cells making up a muscle cannot function, the muscle cannot function.

The same continuous oxygen requirment applies to every single cell in every single organ, gland, muscle, nerve, and bone in our bodies. You can go without food for months. You can go without water for days. But no matter how healthy you are, if you stop breathing for several minutes, you die. And that is exactly what happens with acidosis, except it happens slowly over an extended period of time. The deficiency of oxygen caused by an acidic environment combined with the direct damage due to the acids causes a negative spiral called degeneration that will continue to get worse until it kills you - unless you make the changes necessary to correct the condition.

Acids will deteriorate just about anything they come in contact with, even metal. They do this by ripping electrons from the atoms and molecules that make up the substance. If you were to take battery acid and pour it onto the palm of your hand it would burn right through your skin and then right through your flesh. What exactly is that burning? It is billions of electrons being torn from billions of atoms and molecules with billions of tiny atomic explosions - all that energy released as intense heat.

Free Radical and Acid Damage

It is known that free radical damage is the leading cause of cancer, whether it be from smoking (one puff of smoke introduces 375,000 free radicals into the body), overexposure to the sun, eating burnt meats, heated oils, or the effects of any toxic substance acquired from diet, air, or absorption through the skin. Also, acids and free radicals are produced by the body's own metabolism. For example, the carbon dioxide that is formed during the metabolic process yields carbonic acid when dissolved in the blood. Exercise produces lactic acid in the muscles due to the breakdown of glycogen, which causes muscle pain. A by-product of meat metabolism is uric acid, which causes problems if not neutralized - gout, for example.

Super-oxide (the oxygen radical) is the number one free radical produced by the body, but the body also produces super-oxide-dismutase to couteract its effects - provided we have enough of the proper minerals that are used to make super-oxide-dismutase available in our systems. The metabolization of all foods produces an acidic substance of one kind or another. Proteins are broken down into amino acids, fats are broken down into fatty acids, and sugars and other carbohydrates go through the citric acid cycle before the fuel for energy (ATP) is finally produced. These acids are necessary to life. Even DNA is an acid, deoxyribonucleic acid. Stress is the most acid-forming element in our lives, due to the extreme acidity of hormones released by the fight-or-flight reaction.

The body has a system in place to deal with free radicals and acids - but only when sufficient amounts of the proper minerals and other nutrients are available. If they are not, the body will pull the minerals it needs to survive out of the bones and the cells of organs and tissues.

If you take a mild acid such as vinegar and place a chicken bone in it, after a while the acid will draw the minerals out of the bone (the electrically imbalanced atoms making up the acid need the minerals from the bone as electron donors in order to achieve balance), leaving the bone flexible, and when it dries out it will be brittle. Acids have the same effect on the bones in our bodies — and it is called osteoporosis.

I'm sure it will sound crazy to a person suffering from that disease, but osteoporosis is a good thing. Why this is so is because the leaching of minerals from the bones has actually saved their lives, because if they didn't have a "buffer reserve" of minerals in their bones to draw from to neutralize the acids, their pH would have fallen below the level necessary to support life, and they would have died. The body's fluids must remain between 7.0 and 7.8 pH in order to be healthy, and the levels of the blood must remain between 7.35 and 7.45 pH or else you die. It is a narrow range with very little tolerance.

In order for the body to be healthy, the body fluids, with the exceptions of stomach acid and urine, must remain alkaline, not an easy thing to accomplish when we are constantly bombarded by acids and free radicals from our environment, and nearly everything we do and everything we eat causes acid wastes to be produced in our bodies.

Osteoporosis saving a person's life is not to be confused with the body healing itself. Osteoporosis is a degenerative disease. The body is giving itself a disease as an alternative to dying. The body is prioritizing its use of minerals to keep the body alive. It is more important to neutralize the acids even at the expense of the bones than to lose the entire existence, and your great subconscious is wise enough to make that distinction and that decision. But keeping a person alive is vastly different than healing that person and bringing him or her to real health.

The body has the miraculous ability to heal itself
But only when internal conditions are correct and the proper nutrients are consistently available to it.

Suppose you cut your finger. It wasn't too bad, so you didn't bother bandaging or even washing it. Under normal cirumstances, the body will clean, disinfect, and heal the wound so completely that even the fingerprint will be restored to exactly the way it was before it was wounded. The code for your perfect finger is stored in your DNA, and when your immune system and other cells go to work to repair the damage, they restore the part to that perfection. It is a wondrous healing plan!

But suppose you have heart disease. Is that not a wounded heart? Why doesn't the same healing process apply? Why doesn't the body heal itself of that disease? Doesn't the DNA include the code for the perfect heart? The fact is the same principles do apply to heart disease and all degenerative diseases. But the reason we don't just heal is because the degenerative disease is maintained by continual wounding. For example, if every time the cut on your finger began to heal you cut it open again with a knife, it could not heal. You have to eliminate the cause of the wound before healing can take place. The same is true for heart disease and every other degenerative disease, which are being maintained by the continual wounding by the acids.

The body is trying to regenerate the damaged areas of the heart, but the acid is also busy destroying the new cells that are being created, and the heart cannot heal. There is not a single drug, therapy, or treatment that can bring about the healing or regeneration of the heart - and there never will be. The heart can only regenerate when the internal acidic environment is corrected and the body is provided with the necessary nutritional building blocks.

The body is regenerating every minute you are alive, but if the wounding or destruction of the cells occurs at a faster rate than they can be replaced, you have degeneration. Degeneration means you are dying. And it is the direct effect of acids on the cells of your body.

Some people tell us they don't need nutritional supplements, because they're doing well enough without them. Yes, they admit, maybe they do have a little arthritis or whatever, but they're not concerned about it. They should be concerned! They should realize they don't just have a little arthritis or whatever. What they have is the beginning of the disease that is going to kill them eventually, and they should be concerned now, when it's in the early stages, when they can more easily do something about it. Later it will be much more difficult. Furthermore, the same acid process that is destroying their joints is working on all their organs, muscles, nerves - every cell in their body.

All drugs are acid. If you become dependent on drugs, the very acidic condition that is causing the disease in the first place will be increased by the drugs themselves, the body will stop functioning, and death will result.

The cause of the disease must be removed and that happens only through proper nutrition and maintenance of the pH balance of the body's fluids.

Take cancer for example. What they call cancer is not the disease, it is the symptoms, the effects, the mutated cells, the tumors. When they kill all the cancer cells or remove all the tumors with surgery, you still have the same body environment conditions, so the symptoms are likely to return, and you will have to live in fear of that. Until the cause is eliminated, the disease will persist, even if the symptoms have been alleviated or removed completely. It is quite common to have them send patients home from tumorectomies, telling them, "We got it all," only to have them back months later with the same problem all over again.

Acids and free radicals are what initiated the cancer in the first place. The acids and free radicals damaged the cells and caused them to mutate, and the immune system was not strong enough to detect and destroy the mutated cells before they replicated out of control, until there were enough mutated cells to be detected by science and given the name.

Now they go in and attempt to destroy the "cancer" cells with chemicals and radiation, and sometimes the treatment does destroy the cancer cells, but it also destroys other cells in the body, healthy cells, necessary cells, especially cells of the immune system. Now you're back with the same acid condition to start the process all over again - but with a weakened body and a weakened immune system. Many oncologists will not use chemo or radiation on a second occurrence of cancer because they know that the devastating effects of these therapies on an already weakened body often result in death.

When we are lucky enough to get a second chance, we should do everything possible to change the situation that led to the problem in the first place. A second chance is a real blessing - and it is also a message that we have got to make changes in our lives.

The correct approach is to strengthen, balance, and nourish all systems of the body simultaneously. If your circulation is poor, the effects will be that the oxygen, nutrients, hormones, and components of the immune system, which use the blood for the transport of their lifegiving substances to the cells of the body, will fail to deliver properly. What good does it do to eat the best nutrition in the world if you cannot digest it, and the nutrients cannot get to where they are needed?

Any disorder leads to more disorders until your health is deteriorated to the point where there is just not enough energy to initiate healing. That's why we need to start making corrections as soon as possible, at the onset of any problems, or even better yet, before any problems develop.

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Leaves S. Garnett
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