In his book Cancer is not a Disease: It’s a Survival Mechanism, Andreas Moritz argues for the revolutionary (with respect to mainstream Western medicine) idea that our view of disease is outdated and needs to be replaced with a more comprehensive and holistic understanding of health.
While his insights are revolutionary they are not new. A few years ago Bob Barefoot of Coral Calcium fame argued that our understanding of cholesterol and the role it plays in disease is backwards. Cholesterol is not the cause of heart disease but a survival mechanism, the body’s desperate attempt to heal itself as a last resort measure by trying to prevent the blood vessels from cracking and rupturing. The true cause of the disease is somewhere else.
Similarly, Moritz argues that cancer is not a disease but the body’s attempt to survive the real dis-ease by producing cells that don’t die. Cancer is a symptom, not the cause or origin of disease. He is a proponent of bridging the mind/body connection and elevating emotional and mental factors to a central role in the consideration of disease factors.
While the book is provocative and helpful in leading us to a greater understanding of disease, he says a [...]
In Paying A Price For Loving Red Meat (New York Times by Jane Brody, April 27, 2009), a new report published in the March 23 issue of The Archives of Internal Medicine examined the results of the National Institutes of Health-AARP Diet and Health Study, Directed by Rashmi Sinha, a nutritional epidemiologist at the National Cancer Institute.
The study finds that “men and women who consumed the most red and processed meat were likely to die sooner, especially from one of our two leading killers, heart disease and cancer, than people who consumed much smaller amounts of these foods . . . the increase in mortality risk tied to the higher levels of meat consumption was described as “modest,” ranging from about 20 percent to nearly 40 percent.”
The problem with this study is that it seems there is no clear distinction made between red, processed and organic meats. Was the red meat that was studied organically grown, free of pesticides and antiobotics? Would this have made a difference in the outcome of the study?
Isn’t there an important distinction to be made between fresh, organically grown* beef free of artificial coloring and chemical preservatives and meats that have been pumped full of [...]
A Kinda New Way of Thinking
In Beyond Medicine: Exploring a New Way of Thinking, Dr. Richard A. Dicenso attempts to integrate a new age spiritual awareness with medical science. Whereas traditional medicine only focuses on the physical realm of the body and confuses symptoms with disease, new age thinking aligns the mind, feelings and intentionality with health and the very creation of one’s reality.
He begins the book distinguishing between “physical”, “biochemical” and “virtual” modes of being. The virtual world stands opposite the physical realm, conjoined by biochemical processes that allows them to communicate and interact. Ignoring any individual realm will lead to health problems as they interact with each other on all levels.
Dicenso distinguishes 7 of what he calls “caveats.”
1) Anything can cause anything. The law of cause and effect exists only in the physical realm, not the virtual or biochemical, but symptoms can originate from any realm [ed: not very clear about this point - why no cause/effect in the biochemical realm? And if disease is "caused" by problems and imbalances in the "virtual" realm?].
2) For every action there is a reaction, but it is very difficult to determine the particulars of the reaction.
3) Everything works in a unique way. Procedures for treating symptoms [...]