INTRODUCTION

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

REVIEWS

ORDER

Introduction

In our modern lives, we have lost touch with the foundations of health -- those environmental conditions and practices that have guided and shaped our genetic evolution and which are inextricably intertwined with our health. They are the conditions essential for health. By ignoring these biological mandates we unknowingly precipitate profound physiological effects with disastrous consequences, the causes of which are invisible to us, although glaringly evident in the available research.

We find ourselves at the effect of their lack, but because we do not connect the health effect with the lifestyle deficit, we end up addressing symptoms of dis-ease in our lives at a superficial level, and never getting to the cause, which lies in the invisible foundations of health.Continually addressing symptoms while ignoring the cause results in the steady accumulation of toxins which eventually overwhelm the body's cleansing mechanisms, resulting first in degenerative disease, and then in death.

We all know we should get fresh air, sunshine, restful sleep, clean water and whole food -- though most of us don't. But since we don't really understand what all those "shoulds" do for our bodies, we tend not to think of them when we are sick, and instead of having a look at what has been missing, we head straight for the drug store, the health food store, or the doctor's office. Unfortunately neither drugs nor the doctor will restore what has been missing, but only add more stress to the body in the form of toxic drugs. Most herbs are only less toxic drugs. These medications usually do eliminate the superficial symptom. We gratefully accept the illusion of cure as we stray even farther from the biological mandate. In this way we increase our dis-ease, and find ourselves making increasingly frequent visits to the doctor's office.

The only real cure is to live right.

The doctor will test you and most likely find deficiencies or excesses that he can remedy with a drug or two. He will most likely not quiz you about your lifestyle much less suggest natural lifestyle changes to restore physiological balance. He will not suggest detoxification to ease the load on your liver and immune system. Nor will he tell you the cheapest way to accomplish your purpose. He may not know it. The drug companies control most of the doctor's education, and that education is product-driven. Most doctors are so busy they do not have time to keep up with research on their own. Also, educating the patient takes time and does not have a great monetary return for the doctor. Prescribing a drug, on the other hand, is quick and supports a lucrative practice.

For example, you may have osteoporosis, yet never notice that you don't get enough sunshine to make enough vitamin D to keep your bones strong. You have forgotten that vital piece of information -- information which is now essential as information, since instinct and tradition no longer dictate your lifestyle and thus protect your health. So instead of getting out in the sun more, you go to the doctor and he gives you Fosamex, a drug said to improve bone density. It makes you nauseous, stresses the liver, and actually doesn't work too well...and of course the process of testing, monitoring, and drug purchase will cost alot. And it does not correct the lack of sunlight. The doctor is not likely to mention that increasing your sun exposure or changing your indoor lights to full spectrum will increase your vitamin D production and thereby your calcium absorption and your bone density. Nor is he likely to know that the optimal effect on your vitamin D production comes from sunshine on your back. These light-based lifestyle changes, unlike the Fosamex route, will support the health and function of your liver, and also precipitate a cascade of positive effects in other arenas in your life.

Or, a parallel example for men. Have you noticed your libido is flagging a bit these days, and heard about testosterone patches? Your doctor will test your levels and give you a product brochure detailing testosterone's powerful impact on mood, bone density, energy levels, muscle mass, and sexual function. He may tell you that within 3 to 6 months of starting replacement therapy, men with subnormal levels increased their fat-free mass, boosted low red blood cell counts, and enhanced both energy and sexual function. Nice package! If you add Vitamin D and calcium supplementation, you can even strengthen the bones of your hip and spine, although that effect will take two to three years to fully materialize. (From Great Smokies Diagnostic Lab newsletter, September 13, 2000, Volume 10, Number 01. Source: Snyder PJ, Peachey H, Berlin J, Hannoush P, Haddad G, Dlewati A, Santanna J, Loh L, Lenrow DA, Holmes JH, Kapoor SC, Atkinson LE, Strom BL. Effects of testosterone replacement in hypogonadal men. JClin Endo Metab 2000;85(8):2670-2677.)

Your doctor will probably not mention that sunshine (UV) exposure raises your hormone levels naturally -- five exposures of increasing length, just enough to cause a slight reddening of the skin (about half an hour each), can double your testosterone levels. And, if the genitals themselves are exposed, testosterone levels can triple ! (See sidebar, and note that the effect holds true for women and estrogen, though not as strongly.) Your doctor also will probably not mention that increased exposure to sunlight (and/or full spectrum light) will improve the bone density problem as well. All this for free. No doctor's fee, no drugs, no monitoring. Hmmm.

"When researchers gave doses of ultraviolet to subjects in Boston, USA, they found that a course of five doses, of increasing duration, each of them sufficient to produce slight reddening of the skin, could double the male hormone output. [Myerson, A., and Neustadt, R., 'Influence of Ultraviolet Irradiation upon Excretion of Sex Hormones In The Male', Endocrinology: 25; 7, 1939.] .... Some increase could be achieved whichever area of skin received the irradiation, but while exposing the back produced a doubling in hormones, exposing the skin of the genitals could cause the hormone level to triple. At this dose level they also found that five treatments was the ideal number. The effect ceased increasing with further exposure. After this experiment, the rise in hormone levels took a fortnight or more to return to normal, and the beneficial impact on health, mental well-being and sexuality would of course take longer still to wear off. In other words, a week in the sun can make all the difference." Downing, Daylight Robbery, Ch 14.

Another example. You have gained weight this winter, and find yourself depressed with recurring bouts of bronchitis. Your doctor offers you an antibiotic for the bronchitis, and Prozac, or if he's alternatively oriented, St. John's Wort or 5HTP, for the depression. But he is not likely to tell you that low negative ion levels at your office and home plus the reduced light levels of winter can cause all your symptoms. More time outdoors hiking in the mountains, or an ion generator and a light box, or an early morning light and protein fix with some extra B12 (methylcobalamine) -- any of these will impact your weight, your depression, and your bronchitis with great benefit to your immunity to boot, without the risky side effects of Prozac.

Let's look at one more example. You aren't sleeping well, you are fat, sick too often, stressed, and you feel like your body is aging too fast. Your doctor may offer you an antidepressant or a sleeping pill right off the bat. Or he may explain to you that the slow wave sleep in your first nightly sleep cycle is crucial for the effective production of Human Growth Hormone (HGH), which repairs tissue and keeps it from sagging as well as keeping you from getting fat and tired, old before your time. This sleep stage is also crucial to immune function. So in addition to the sleeping pill (which will not increase your slow wave sleep!), he may offer you HGH injections. Your doctor is not likely to explain to you the ways that you can improve your sleep (and your immunity and HGH production) by altering your lifestyle and improving your circadian rhythm. But you can learn that in the section on sleep in this book. The process will be harder -- but lots cheaper! -- than taking some pills. It will also support and enhance every other arena of your life.

What kind of research are we talking about here? The small sample of eye-opening studies below offers insight into the powerful immune enhancement offered by just three of the mandates -- whole food, adequate sleep, and natural light.

• Whole food. Researchers at the Linus Pauling Institute studied the effect of different dietary fats on breast cancer incidence in mice. Using six groups of 50 mice bred for a genetic tendency to develop breast cancer, they exposed five groups to a known carcinogen. They fed all the mice the same diet but varied the fat source, which was either corn, safflower, flax, fish, or evening primrose oil. The sixth (control) group received normal mouse chow and no carcinogen exposure. At the end of the forty week double blind study, all fifty mice had died in four of the groups. But in the other two groups, only one and two of the fifty mice had died. When researchers uncoded the double blind they were surprised. They had expected to find that one of the two high survival groups was the control group (no exposure to the carcinogen). Not so. The fifty control mice (no carcinogen, normal mouse chow) were all dead! The two surviving groups had been fed either flax or fish oil, both Omega 3 essential fatty acids that are sadly lacking in our modern diet.
  The implications of this study are staggering. Genetically susceptible mice, not exposed to carcinogens, but without the protective fats, were all dead. Genetically susceptible mice, exposed to carcinogens, but with the protective Omega 3s, had almost all survived. Diet proved vastly more critical to survival than genetic predispositon.
• Adequate Sleep. Researchers at Johns Hopkins injected mice with common carcinogens while altering their sleep patterns, one group to a long night, and another to a short one. Using common household chemicals (window cleaner, bottle plastic, and antiperspirant) as carcinogens, researchers were able to induce cancer rapidly in the short sleeping mice -- so rapidly that they could not even tell which of the substances was the most carcinogenic. But even after testing many carcinogens on the long sleeping mice, they were unable to cause cancer at all! This astonishing piece of research highlights the profound immune enhancing effect of adequate sleep.
• Natural Light. Photobiologist John Ott got some truly stunning results when he looked at the effect of variation in lighting on life span of mice bred for high susceptibility to spontaneous tumor development. He compared the life spans of 2000 mice kept under various kinds of fluorescent lights versus those living under natural sunshine. Mice kept under daylight fluorescent lights lived only half as long (8.2 months) as those under unfiltered sunlight (16.1 months). Mice under UV transmitting plastic lived almost as long (15.6 months) as the unfiltered sunlight group. Full spectrum lighting containing the natural ultraviolet component doubled mouse lifespans compared to the standard indoor lighting which we use in our homes and offices.
  

These studies and a mountain of parallel research point to our unwitting neglect of the biological mandate as a major factor in our deteriorating health. But few of us are aware of this research. So instead of correcting or compensating for our devitalizing lifestyles, we turn to allopathic drugs (and herbs) to eliminate our symptoms. The drugs increase the burden on our detoxification systems. Worse, in eliminating one symptom, they cause side effects, new symptoms that are suppressed with additional drugs which lead to more symptoms, more drugs. The accumulating toxicity of the drugs and the uncorrected cause of the precipitating symptom drag the patient into a downward spiral of deteriorating health. No matter how "successfully" we chase our symptoms around, if we fail to address the cause, our overall health will continue to deteriorate

About the Author

Adeha M. Feustel, LMT/NMT received her BA in Social Psychology from the University of Michigan honors program, and did graduate work at Cornell University in the School of Human Ecology. She lived and studied with her spiritual teacher Osho Rajneesh for two years in India and four more at his ashram in Oregon, where she codirected the 55 acre organic truck farm. She is a founding member of Earthaven Ecovillage, an intentional community and permaculture education center in Black Mountain, North Carolina.

A licensed health professional in the field of bodywork and neuromuscular therapy since 1987, she has educated both herself and her patients in all aspects of health care in her Asheville, North Carolina practice. She offers workshops on using the biological mandates to improve health and on posture maintenance for aging baby boomers -- "Dump the Hump!". An innovative and integrative thinker, she responded to her own health challenges with an exhaustive study of the available research in sustainable health care. Her inquiry led her to health revelations that forever changed her understanding of the nature of health and disease and prompted her to write this book.

Adeha graduated from the Florida School of Massage in 1987 and is a Certified Neuromuscular Therapist. In 13 years of neuromuscular therapy practice she has seen how the right information can transform lives, and the lack of that information can cripple or end them. Her own health challenges prompted an exhaustive study of natural health research which led to health revelations that forever changed her understanding of health and disease.

The broad scope of her background in physiology, nutrition, lymphatic function, detoxification, the physiology of light and color, meditation, and organic agriculture provided a unique platform for integration of the research she encountered. This background also enabled her to make connections that other authors, whose vision is often limited by their specialized expertise or their focus on selling a product, have missed or ignored. She saw how all the areas she was studying worked together synergistically to either sustain or destroy health, and realized that this panoramic overview was sorely missing in the literature.As the pieces of the puzzle fell together, she realized the gravity of the situation: by discarding the natural foundations of health and trying instead to create health with drugs we are destroying our species and our planet. It really is that bad. And we can change it. Minding the Mandates is going to help.

When she is not researching or writing she stays busy in her organic garden and doing Chi Kung. She lives with her dog Zumo in the mountains near Asheville, North Carolina. She welcomes feedback at 828-683-1992 or via email.

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Copyright Adeha Feustel 2001. All rights reserved.