What a strange comment above…‘dig your grave with your teeth?’ I remember reading this comment in an article written by the great health educator Mr K. S. Jaffrey ND DC, he was a strong proponent for the practice of thorough mastication, that is chewing your food properly. You see this simple and often neglected process can mean the difference between a healthy digestive process (and tract) and the longevity this affords, or a life of digestive distress and ultimately a shortened life span…yes, that’s how vital chewing is! It’s time we discussed this often ignored process. Not only ignored by those who pay no heed to their health or the content of their diet, but also by those who profess to be health devotees, those who carefully select the highest quality foods for their diet. The importance of this simple process, mastication, in building health both digestive and structural, cannot be overstated and you ignore it at your own peril.
I will keep this discussion in simple terms for ease of understanding. However, I feel the need to digress a little so we can set the scene for best possible understanding. The metabolic functioning (life itself) of the organism includes those functions that deal with Anabolism- the building of cells and tissues, and Catabolism- the breaking down and eliminating of biological waste materials. So today we are going to focus on anabolism. The food that we eat is the substance that we build our cells and tissues out of. We perform healthy anabolism by eating the correct food for the human organism, that’s right we need to eat the ‘Human Diet’ to build a healthy human being. But actually being able to build healthy cells and tissues out of the food we present to the body, requires the digestive tract to perform two vital functions:
Digestion
Assimilation
Digestion means that our stomach actually competently, thoroughly and in a timely manner, digests the food we present to it.
Assimilation takes place mostly in the small intestine and the success of this function is highly dependent on the quality of the digestion that precedes it in the stomach. Assimilation is the process by which the body transforms the usable substances present in the whole food we have eaten, which have been digested in the stomach, and then absorbs them into the body in order to build new tissue to replace old tissue. The small intestine is supposed to be an organ of absorption, not an organ of contents! The ability of assimilation depends greatly on the efficiency of the preceding stages of digestion.
The quality of anabolism within the organism hinges upon not only the body being provided the right material but the material being presented to it in a state that it can competently work with. It is a fact that we can shovel any quantity and quality of food into our mouths, but what the body does with it really is a far more important consideration. The food we eat is merely the building blocks of nutrition…nutrition is a functional process of the living body. Never forget that the food (or anything else you swallow for that matter) does not act on the body, the body acts on it! The body is the living, vital being in this equation. So step one of ‘right action’ on the food presented to the body, is chewing it properly.
There is a dialectical law that states ‘Structure Governs Function’. This literally means the structure of a particular thing determines how it is meant to be used. When we look at the structure of a carnivore’s teeth, we can easily see that they have ripping, tearing teeth and thus we see carnivorous animals gulping down their food at a rapid rate. Sitting there chewing the particles of their food is not a necessity for them. The human animal, a plant eating animal, has a mouth full of crushing, grinding teeth. The structure of our teeth governs how we are meant to use them. The entire digestive process, from start to finish, requires thorough mastication for all subsequent stages to progress adequately. Your stomach does not have teeth, it does a poor job of mechanical reduction.
Let’s have a close up look at what goes on physiologically when we chew. When we put a portion of food into our mouth we immediately begin to chew it. This is pretty much a reflex action, we don’t need to think about it, we just do it…problem is we don’t do it long enough as a general rule! The process of chewing breaks down the solid food into an emulsion. The teeth achieve this mechanically and whilst they are hard at work crushing, grinding and pulverising, the salivary glands kick into action straight away and release saliva into the mouth. Saliva for your information is a chemical solution loaded with digestive enzymes. These digestive enzymes mix with the food as it is being mechanically broken down by the teeth and the enzymes begin the process of chemically breaking down the food as well. So in the mouth your food gets structurally (mechanically) AND chemically broken down. Food should not be swallowed until it has been transformed into this pre-digested emulsion.
Another thing that occurs when we chew, is the brain sends a signal to the stomach advising ‘food is on the way, get ready’! So the stomach prepares for the arrival of this food by releasing gastric enzymes. The gastric enzymes are extremely important if we want to have any hope of actually assimilating the nutriment from the food eaten. If the food has been mechanically broken down into tiny particles in the mouth, then it will be more intimately associated, intermingled with the gastric enzymes that perform gastric digestion and assimilation in the small intestine will proceed much more effectively. It is a well known fact that most people do not get the full nutrient benefit from the foods they eat…this I would suggest is the major reason why. You do not need a supplement, you need to spend more time chewing!!
From the above concise dissertation we can easily see the law of ‘Structure Governs Function’ in action – this being the whole process of mastication and its indispensable action on digestion and assimilation. This then directs us to the fact that it is generally not a good idea to drink your food. The practice of juicing and blending solid foods and reducing them to a liquid form (a drinkable mass), bypasses the mastication process, and has little application in the true practice of building health. In fact anyone with digestive problems should avoid these practices like the plague…for want of a better analogy.
To conclude I am often asked by my clients, “how many times should I chew each mouthful?” Throughout the Nature Cure literature written over the past few centuries there have been differing opinions on this point, but suffice to say they all agree the mouthful should be reduced to an emulsive state prior to swallowing. Professor Edmond Bordeaux Szekely advises chewing each mouthful 40 times…seems like a lot indeed, but chewing is a habit that you can easily develop. I do not like to give a definitive, prescriptive answer to this as each food really requires a slightly different amount. To thoroughly masticate a piece of ripe, soft mango requires a lot less effort than a piece of hard, crunchy apple. A bowl of fresh salad requires a lot of chewing, as does a piece of whole grain bread (because you wouldn’t be eating white bread now would you?) So in this, as with much else in Nature Cure, I say listen to the Voice of your Organism. Tune into your eating and take note of when the mouthful feels like a fluid emulsion, when there are no large segments left, and then swallow. Let this be your rule of thumb, something I have often said to my 12 year old son over the years and probably will do for many more…if you do not have enough time to thoroughly chew each mouthful, then you do not have enough time to eat it!!!
Victoria Mohren NCP, BOM Acc, B Bus
Published and Edited by:
Mohren Pure Naturopathy.
www.mohrenpurenaturopathy.com
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STATEMENT BY THE PUBLISHER:
The opinions expressed in this article are based on the naturopathic philosophy of health and do not coincide with currently accepted medical theories on health and healing. The publisher does not claim that any advice given represents a “cure” for disease. If the reader has any doubts regarding his or her health, it is the responsibility of that individual to consult a competent health practitioner.
1. QUESTION: So I understand that the body ‘raises’ a fever, we do not actually ‘catch’ a fever and that the fever is the innate, programmatic response of the organism. So what actually goes on when the fever is in process? What is the body actually doing?
ANSWER: Let’s take one step back so that we can understand this health-building phenomenon better.
When we live in a manner that does not align with the natural laws of life (as the vast majority of the inhabitants of the world are doing at this time in history = Building Corona Friendly Environments), after a time the body will not be able to keep up with it’s efforts of eliminating the waste material generated from living such a lifestyle. So basically these people are making toxins faster than they can eliminate them.
2. QUESTION: So what happens then?
ANSWER: When this happens, when the body does not have enough energy to eliminate all the toxic waste material that is being produced systematically within the body, then the body has no choice but to lay the waste material down somewhere inside the body at least for a while.
3. QUESTION: Why does the body have to ‘lay down’ the waste?
ANSWER: To maintain the best possible health it can (i.e. maintain homeostasis), the body must get this poisonous, toxic waste material out of the circulatory flow, so that it poses as little a threat as possible to the normal, essential functioning of the organism…the body in its infinite, innate wisdom will send this waste material as far away from the vital organs as possible.
4. QUESTION: Are there any other factors that affect where the body lays its waste down?
ANSWER: Excellent question, I can see you are really thinking now!
Yes indeed, the body will always lay waste into areas of weak tissue. So if you have a hereditary weakness OR have an area that has become weakened due to injury or trauma, then these areas are the number one areas that are going to hold this toxic matter. The medical industry is acutely aware of the fact that disease most often begins in the hereditarily weak areas in a person.
5. QUESTION: How do I know where my body is laying down waste?
ANSWER: Get a diagnosis done by a qualified Nature Cure practitioner!
6. QUESTION: So how does the fever affect these laid down deposits of toxic waste?
ANSWER: Always remember, fever is nothing more than heat and heat liquefies these hardened deposits of waste material, and another effect of the increase of heat is that heat increases molecular movement. Yep, when you have a fever everything is moving more rapidly within the body. So the heat liquefies the waste matter, which moves it back into the circulatory flow and from there is sent to the organs of elimination (which are also working more rapidly than usual) to be voided from the body. Simple and highly effective, and most definitely a health improving effort of the body.
7. QUESTION: Yes I am really starting to understand why we raise fevers and what is going on when we do. So what happens if we do something to interfere with or stop the fever?
ANSWER: It is a fact that under the current widespread philosophy of medical management of fever, most fevers experienced by most people worldwide are aborted or halted (stopped in their tracks) and this is actually the REAL threat to the body. So in its infinite and innate wisdom, at some point the body has identified that the load of toxic waste matter it is carrying has for some reason, become too much and it must offload some of this matter as the condition is now beginning to impede upon the life processes of the organism too greatly. Self-Preservation is the immutable law of life for all living organisms, the human body is no different and it will instigate a fever whenever it deems it necessary! So the body initiates a fever and now we see the solidified, unmoving toxic matter, being liquefied and is now floating in, even flooding into, the circulatory system, on its way to points of elimination for evacuation from the body…absolutely right action on the part of the organism! IF at this point you stop the body from finishing what it has started, the body will of course do its best for you…as it always does. If the person is young, not too toxic and has good vitality, the body will abort its healing effort and lay the waste back down, but this time it will lay it deeper into the cellular tissue. And so for many years this will go on, each time the body raises a fever, it gets stopped, the body is prevented from completing its job (its extraordinary cycle of elimination) and the condition progressively gets worse and worse…eventually the body starts to develop all sorts of chronic disease states as a result of this mismanagement of fevers, as a result of continually forcing the body to hold onto its biological waste products. The medical fraternity is well aware of the ‘progression’ of disease states, they just seem to lack the understanding of why this happens and how to prevent it.
HOWEVER, let’s take someone who is old and/or in a very chronic state of ill health, with low in vitality, then the following is a very likely outcome when you stop the fever:
The excess of liquefied poisonous toxins in the bloodstream will be rushed to the kidneys (one of our organs of elimination) BUT the kidneys will only be able to handle so much.
The skin (another organ of elimination) will send out as much as it can, but it too will only be able to handle so much.
Then the lungs (our final organ of elimination) will start to fill with this liquid waste. The medical term for this is ‘pneumonia’. When the lungs fill with liquid, you can’t breathe properly. When the lungs fill with liquid their capacity to take in oxygen is reduced. When the lungs start to fill with liquid you are heading into major organ failure.
When the amount of oxygen being supplied to the body is not sufficient for its needs, then the heart will start to pump harder and the heart capacity of an old and/or chronically sick person is not generally great. It will not be long until you have another major organ start to fail-i.e. heart failure.
And once one major organ goes down, all the others fall like dominos and life ceases rapidly.
8. QUESTION: Wow that’s dramatic!! I guess that’s why when people die from acute diseases (i.e. fevers), they pretty much always die from ‘pneumonia-like’ symptoms? It’s not the fever that kills but the suppression of it!
ANSWER: Nailed it! I can see you have been paying attention! The other often cited ‘cause’ of death from mismanaged fevers is septicemia. This is of course precisely what can happen from stopping the fever, the bloodstream has loaded with this toxic waste that it was trying to eliminate, but then was prevented from doing so and years and years and years worth of retained toxins now floating in the bloodstream, cause organ failure…no surprise there! Google the word ‘septicemia’ and you will find the definition is exactly what we are proposing here.
So I finish this discussion with a quote from the genius of Mr. Kenneth S. Jaffrey ND DC:
“There is no greater boon to suffering humanity than that
of the properly managed fever”.
And now hopefully you can also see that there is nothing more dangerous to the very processes of life, than suppressing, than mismanaging the fever!
REGARDLESS of the ‘cause’, when the body raises a fever, do not suppress it, let it run its course, the fever IS the healing process and it will abate as soon as the body has finished its ‘house-cleaning’ work.
For precise direction and understanding of how to safely manage fever, I implore you to seek the professional guidance of a fully qualified Nature Cure practitioner.
Victoria Mohren NCP, BOM Acc, B Bus
STATEMENT BY THE PUBLISHER
The opinions expressed in this article are based on the naturopathic philosophy of health and do not coincide with currently accepted medical theories on health and healing. The publisher does not claim that any advice given represents a “cure” for disease. If the reader has any doubts regarding his or her health, it is the responsibility of that individual to consult a competent health practitioner.
‘Choose your language wisely‘??? What does she mean??? You see the language we use supports the particular philosophy in which we believe. Those of us who actually understand the science that all of the Nature Cure philosophy of health is grounded upon, will understand this. As I have said before, to the point of monotony, disease is a PROCESS (and as such it has the capacity to progress or regress), it is not an entity nor a thing. It is a state of being at any given moment in time and as physics tells us, all matter is in motion, so this state can either improve or get worse, but is never static. This is what we refer to as the ‘unity of disease’, where one condition merely continues to degrade, alters, starts to influence more areas of the body, but is essentially of the one disease, that being Toxaemia. This theory adheres to the scientific Law of Unity, which states that ‘everything is connected and interconnected, nothing exists in isolation’.
We of the Nature Cure school do not use terms such as immunity, or immune system (these concepts underpin the germ theory of disease causation), nor do we speak in terms of deficiency or bodily levels of this vitamin or that mineral, neither do we ever say the body is ‘fighting’ something or has ‘caught’ something. The medical industry bases its philosophy and practices on the false theory of germs being the primary causative factor in disease and these are the words they use to support their erroneous beliefs. They say you ‘catch’ a bacteria or virus from someone else and that is why you are sick. Generally this pertains to disease in the acute state, i.e. fever present. But their theories drop off suddenly when we then ask them to explain what causes chronic states of disease, i.e. no fever and no improvements in the condition. In this department they hopelessly flounder for causes.
Nature Cure stands upon the theory of Toxaemia (literal meaning: poisoned blood) the tenants of this philosophy have been clearly explained elsewhere. The theory of Toxaemia explains precisely, and scientifically, disease in the acute state as well as disease in the chronic state. As I have said before ageing is not synonymous with developing chronic disease. One can age in excellent health depending on how one has lived one’s life. You see health is the sum total of what you do everyday.
RECIPE
“How to Make a Chronically Sick Person”
Take one healthy young person
Add incorrect feeding from day one
Add caffeine, alcohol, tobacco, pharmaceutical and recreational drugs, etc…
Add an excess or deficit of exercise (both are equally disease producing)
Keep the person out of the sun
Keep the person in poorly ventilated spaces (i.e. air-conditioned spaces, enclosed heated spaces)
Supply them with municipal tap water to drink
Add poor sleeping patterns
AND suppress the body every time it tries to off load its excess of poisonous waste matter via the fever mechanism, thus forcing it to hold onto all the built up toxic poisons and lay them even deeper in the bodily tissues…
Continue all the above steps for a period of time and…
VOILA you get one chronically sick older person…it takes time to build this state of health, or state of disease as it happens to be.
Not rocket science really, but it seems the medical industry has yet to work this one out??
So right now we are being told that people are dying because of one particular germ, a particular coronavirus. Stand back, I ask you, and have a really good look at exactly who is dying or even having anything other than a ‘mild’ reaction?? To this might I add at this juncture, that dying is indeed part of the human condition. Cessation of life is going to happen to all living things at some point. So right now we are seeing people who are already chronically ill, or as we are being advised by our good politicians and doctors, people who already have one or more ‘comorbidities’, dying. Great word that, co-morbidity…morbid = death…so at least one condition is already present that will lead to the person’s death, at some point, take your guess as to when.
Now let’s take a little side step. IF germs are THE cause of a particular disease, then by necessity they must cause it whenever they are present. This is scientific really, I mean if the germ is the cause, then it must therefore cause the disease whenever present in the body. Not so as it turns out to be however, and to conveniently sweep this little anomaly (actually this glaring flaw in their theory) under the carpet, the medical industry refers to these people as carriers, people who have the particular germ present but are not sick from it…oh mystery of mysteries!
Now what do we know about germs, bacteria, viruses, whatever name you choose? They are all parasites, all scavengers and they live off decaying organic matter…both inside and outside the body. Notice how quickly bacteria get to work decomposing a rotting carcass? Unless a particular germ is able to cause the specific disease without the aid of an unnatural environment (i.e. the toxic internal conditions of an already chronically sick person), then it cannot rightly be considered as THE cause of the particular disease, although it may certainly be considered as a contributing factor. You see in Nature Cure we know well that it is never one singular cause that can be identified as the specific cause of ANY disease state, the causes are always plural. Germs must find certain essential conditions existing in the bodies of those they enter before they can do even the slightest harm…end of story!
You decide. Do you fear the germ or clean up your health??? Vaccinate (against this and every other microorganism possibly heading your way), or improve the quality of the tissue, the quality of your body?? Either way please choose your words wisely as they will always reflect your understanding of health clearly to those who are listening. And just for the record, the body does not fight, it responds.
Victoria Mohren NCP, BOM Acc, B Bus
DISCLAIMER:
The opinions expressed in this article are based on the Nature Cure philosophy of health and do not coincide with current medical theories. Mohren Pure Naturopathy does not claim that any advice given here represents a cure for disease. If you have any doubts regarding your health, then it is your responsibility to consult a competent health practitioner.
