Every time I'm confronted with stories of the human body's capacity for self-healing, I find myself blown away.
From stories of the brain rewiring itself in the aftermath of traumatic injury, to cancer survivors, recovering addicts and people who dodged a terminal diagnosis - it's clear that the current understanding contemporary Western medicine has of the human sickness and health remains severely lacking.
Over the past year, I've found myself fascinated by the growing wealth of research and interest in maximising human health and analysing the ways in which modern lifestyles, diets and habits are detrimental to our wellbeing.
Contemporary Western Medicine
The current paradigm in medicine was born out of the Western scientific evidence-based approach to treating disease and illness. This allopathic approach is one that begins with the premise that the human body itself is defective, imperfect, and therefore subject to disease and sickness of both known and unknown causes. When sickness and disease occurs, it is resultant of the failures of the human body to to overcome aging, sickness and death. The allopathic approach counters this weakness of the human body by reifying the ingenuity of the human mind. It asserts that what cannot be overcome with the physical body can be overcome with scientific inquiry into the nature, form and impact of disease and believes that external treatments can be found to make up for the weaknesses of the human body.
This approach to human sickness has had undeniable benefits to our collective health as a species. From the era of enlightenment until now, we have seen an explosion in the human population, with our numbers on the Earth set to reach a staggering 9 billion+ in the coming decades. We've seen infant mortality decline and even the total eradication of diseases such as smallpox which had ravaged human populations for millennia.
The naturopathic way
Whilst there have been significant gains in human health from the discoveries of Western medicine, it's limitations have also become all to clear to me. First and foremost, the assumptions made are based in a claim to understand the workings of the human body which it is clear to me that Western science lacks the comprehensive understanding of the body to assert itself as an incontestable law of nature. Second, it's base assumption that human bodies are inherently flawed and must be "fixed" by external intervention is exceedingly damaging, both in the output of arguably barbaric treatments and the psychological impacts this way of thinking incurs onto humanity.
Naturopathy, at least in my interpretation of it which I interweave with Buddhist philosophy, begins with the premise that all created in nature exists already in perfection, and that aging, sickness and death are all essential parts of the experience of life. Illness is nothing bad, evil or wrong, it is simply a part of the condition of living in a corporal form. In this perspective, when illness occurs, there exists already in nature methods of supporting the body in healing itself. One of the major differences of this approach is the shifted focus to human health rather than human sickness and how the health of the body cannot be understood in isolation to the health of the internal spiritual world and external physical world in which the body exists as an intermediary conduit. The body itself is built in perfection with the full ability to fulfil it's function - to carry us from conception to old age and death. At the most base level, in order to complete this task, the body requires nourishment and fuel in the form of sunlight, food and drink.
However, the body does not exist in isolation from the internal environment (the mind) and external environment (the world) it finds itself in and therefore sickness of the body cannot be understood without considering the health of it's internal and external environment. Poor health in the internal environment, combined with factors in the external environment can lead to the poisoning of the body. For example an individual facing high levels of stress at work (sickness of the mind) finding themselves repeatedly spending hours after work in a local bar after being invited to drinks by a boss they feel they cannot say no to (sickness of the environment) may lead to repeatedly and excessive consumption of alcohol and then sickness in the body.
Sickness, illness and disease is something that lives alongside us - even within us - at all times, regardless of if we're aware of it or not. I've not had any major physical illness in my life thus far but I often think about the fact that almost every living human adult who has never been formally diagnosed with cancer has almost certainly had cancer cells living within their bodies at some point. We don't notice it because our bodies attack the mutated cells before they lead to further complication without us even noticing it. I wonder how many people live full lives never knowing that cancer has been living alongside them for decades undetected. Perhaps everyday our bodies fight and defeat cancer without us even realising it. If our bodies have shown themselves to be capable of staving off cancer for century or so that makes up the human lifespan at optimal health then surely the "fault" of illness lies in the internal and external factors preventing the body from being able to carry out the job it was built to do.
A holistic and naturopathic approach to health would take all three of these factors of human wellness into account and not just at the point of sickness, but for wellness to be considered as a consistent practice integral to our daily functioning. To me, I don't see this approach from the perspective of preventing disease, but from the perspective of prioritising the wellness of our minds, bodies and external environments as a fundamental factor in living a good life.
As I've spent the past year or so tentatively reading and researching a variety of perspectives on the meaning of human health, I've found myself developing an understanding of what "wellness" and "health" mean to me and the path I want to pursue in order to regain it.
From this perspective, I'm not seeking to reverse aging, prevent disease or stop death, but to achieve as optimal conditions as possible to enhance the wellness of my mind, body and external environment. To this end, I'm interested in pursuing a 90 day challenge to see just how far I'm able to push these changes and see the results.
