In this book I offer examples of our cultural misalignment with the biological mandate in many areas: sleep, sunshine, enzymes, probiotics, essential fatty acids, negative ions, water intake, toxic load, etc... This misalignment is causing much of your illness and disease. You end up with a choice between allopathic treatment of a symptom with a supplemental drug, herb, or other medical treatment, versus addressing the missing biological mandate. If you choose the allopathic route the original symptom will disappear, and you will rest in the illusion of cure Meanwhile the original imbalance moves deeper and creates more seemingly unrelated symptoms which your doctor will happily and lucratively address in a similar manner. The toxic load in your body will increase. And you will have entered the vicious cycle of false "health" care and deteriorating health.

Addressing the conditions of the biological mandate has a vastly different effect on the quality of your life than taking drugs or hormones. As you will learn in this book, providing the fundamentals of biological health creates an interlocking web of protective effects that supports your health and the quality of your life in every arena. You won’t just be just increasing a hormone level, reducing stress, or addressing depression as important as all these may be. Instead, you will be working at a much more fundamental level. The changes you make will link hands, so to speak, boosting your health in many areas at once, working synergistically to strengthen and stabilize all your body's functions simultaneously.

Another difference is cost. Between the doctor's visit and your new monthly medication costs, plus monitoring your hormone or drug levels you will be out at least a couple hundred dollars a year. And this is just the beginning. Cascading symptoms will bring you back for more tests, more prescriptions, more monitoring. The doctors and drug companies thrive while your health continues to deteriorate. By following the biological mandate, you will gradually wean yourself off this "disease care" tread mill, freeing up more time and resources to support your vitality and not the medical industry.

And one more difference: by aligning yourself with your biological mandate, you will simultaneously move back toward alignment with the biological mandates of the rest of the species on the planet. The cascading beneficial effects ripple outward from your life, enhancing all life around you. By cultivating your own health, you cultivate the health of the entire planet. This is truly sustainable health care. What exactly am I talking about here?

Some Examples

Let's look at some examples.
You may have osteoporosis, yet never notice that you're not getting enough sunshine to create the vitamin D your body needs 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, who prescribes a drug said to improve bone density. It makes you nauseous, stresses your liver, and actually doesn't work too well. Buying the drug and monitoring its effects will cost a lot and it doesn't 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 mineral 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 drug route, will support the health and function of your liver, and also precipitate a cascade of positive effects in other arenas in your life. (If you have been avoiding the sun because of fear of skin cancer, be sure to read chapter 6.) Increasing sun exposure is just one of many "healthstyle" changes that will increase your bone density without drugs, and if you remain content with treating your symptoms with drugs, you are not likely to hear about any of them!

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 may take two to three years to fully materialize.

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 ! 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.

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 more complicated -- but lots cheaper! -- than taking pills or injections. And improving your circadian rhythms will also support and enhance every other arena of your life.

Copyright Adeha Feustel 2001. All rights reserved.