I thought I’d write a blog today about the Holy Grail of health – the greatest tip or ultimate secret that so many people have quested for, over a period of at least thousands of years if not many more. . . And like most of the greatest tips in life, it will turn out to be simpler than you might have imagined.
You might think I am going to suggest a formula, a herb, a concoction, a pill, a potion, a brew, a nutritional recipe, a magic energy point on the body, an emotional management tool, an allergy desensitization method, a potent yoga exercise, a prayer, mantra or affirmation, or perhaps even some sort of special esoteric ritual. . .
But rest assured, it is none of these! I have a proposition for good health which is far more powerful than any one of these, or than all of these put together, and I feel confident in presenting it to you in these terms because I know that there are five thousand years of empirical tradition behind me in the medical field from which I am drawing this concept – Traditional Chinese Medicine.
But what is this ultimate secret?
Worry not, read on and all will soon be revealed. . . And then, most importantly of all, after laying up this “secret” for your consideration, I’d like to open the floor to hear your views too.
Part of the reason for this article, in fact, is that I sometimes grow tired of hearing of the latest and greatest claims of some sort of product being touted – just as much by alternative practitioners as by orthodox ones – as “the” magic new solution for some disease or symptom, or even just for general health. When I look back over the years that I have been involved with the healthcare profession, I see that over 90% of the input that has flowed in my direction from books, colleagues, teachers and therapies is product-orientated. This, in fact, is the part – the great river current – which I do my utmost best to avoid being sucked into. Instead I try to seek out each oasis of wisdom and common sense that I can which lies outside of these general misled currents in the river.
Let’s call a spade a spade. It is like an avalanche of misinformation which threatens to suck any of us under at any time. For any of you who are swimmers, let’s call them whirlpools, hidden rocks and rip currents. For any readers who are working as healthcare practitioners, I would say – beware of the “latest products”!! This single piece of advice will outlast the very “best” known medicinal products on the marketplace today.
The “folks” and “experts” are out there, and despite many apparent disagreements, they all seem to be agreed on one thing – the Great Unwritten Rule of modern alternative and conventional medicine: that the solution to health consists in one or more products – usually of a type that is taken orally, but not necessarily. Consequently, since almost everyone buys in subliminally to this collective delusion that products are the key – like some kind of perilous ‘groupthink’ – the only question that remains is: which product(s) is/are the best one(s)?
Now is the moment to proudly declare that you will see no mention of any product at all from beginning to end in this article! Am I over-dramatizing this topic? Maybe, but if so, then it’s because I mean to drive the point home before introducing the deeper TCM concept of health. That is because I don’t want to suck you into the avalanche described above. I would much rather steer you in the direction of true health solutions.
‘What is all this nonsense he’s raving about?’ I hear you thinking! ‘Everyone knows that to turn a screw you use a screwdriver, and to fix a health problem you use a pill or similar product!’
Alas, but this is one of the greatest deceptions not only of modern conventional medicine, but, equally, of the majority of alternative therapies too. Even my homeopathic colleagues are sometimes guilty of the same pitfall, although Dr Samuel Hahnemann, the founder of homeopathy, cannot be blamed for the misunderstanding of his work in this respect. Yet even so, it is not to homeopathy that I can turn first when I am seeking a true understanding of the ultimate secret of health. For this, the greatest insight of all, I prefer to turn to the oldest healthcare system that I know of, and one of my favourites – as mentioned above already: Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM).
Most people think of TCM as being a matter of acupuncture – i.e., sticking needles into points. They have no idea how much more there is to TCM than needles. Others are aware of other ‘tools of the trade’ used in TCM – such as herbs, acupressure and special techniques known as moxibustion, cupping and Qi Gong.
But again, it is true to the ‘technique-oriented’ mentality that we mostly have in the West that when we look at TCM, we perceive it in terms of the tools – and not the concepts behind their use. As a parallel of this, imagine that you were to describe car mechanics on the basis of the raw materials used in a car design – with no credence given to the complex process of how those materials are used together to propel passengers across vast distances in a motor vehicle. Surely the way parts work together is far more important than just the raw materials being used? This, to be sure, is one of the key tenets of systems theory, and therefore of the Living Systems Revolution which this blog is about.
When we consider the human body as a complex living system, and begin to look at the ways all the ‘parts’ fit together and function, it is a journey of unceasing amazement. Our bodies are quite literally an astounding invention or manifestation of nature. They are exquisitely finely-tuned, and incredibly sophisticated and subtle in functioning. No surprises, then, when in this context I say that the insertion of a particular molecular substance into the mouth is emphatically not going to be the secret to good health.
How could it possibly be? This would be like saying that in order to optimize the weather, the best thing one can do is to point a small drinking straw at the sky and blow into it. Or that in order to raise the level of the sea, all we need to do is add one or two drops of water to the ocean. The sheer extent of complexity, depth and diversity of function in our internal organs defies imagination, and yet every day there is someone new trying to get my attention via some email or newsletter selling a new biochemical product that is supposed to be of primary importance to my body! I would laugh, if it weren’t so absurd!
But let’s press on and get right to the heart of the matter – what is the secret of good health, say I, according to TCM?
In a word, it is balance. That’s all.
This is at the same time an incredibly simple yet powerful concept of health. Diseases as such are not recognized in TCM. Instead they are called “patterns of disharmony.” Health, in contrast, is a state of harmony or balance. All treatments in TCM – whether via acupuncture, acupressure, herbs or other methods – are aimed at helping the body towards a more optimized balance. Specifically, it is the internal organs (the sub-systems within the overall system) which maintain this balance, and which are therefore the target of TCM treatments as energetic organ “adjustments.”
Let’s face it – health is a balancing act. Life itself is, in fact, a balancing act.
Systems science demonstrates that there is no such thing as true equilibrium. In other words, a living system is never closed. It never reaches a stage where we can say, “Here is a permanent balance, a final plateau of perfect health.” Not until it is dead – and then yes, we can say that balance has finally arrived, but by this time, the living system itself has ceased to exist as we knew it.
Instead, life and health exist on a spectrum between balance and imbalance – between harmony and disharmony. We can never reach absolute balance, but we need to continually strive in its direction, to prevent being pulled down in the other direction towards chaos. And eventually, for all living systems, disorder prevails, and gets the better of us, and the system is then recycled into the larger system from which it was generated – the earth, or should I say Earth. At that stage, upon death, when chaos or disorder “undo” the delicate balancing act of life, it is only now that – paradoxically – we sink into a state of complete stability.
So prior to that, life is a tumultuous, exciting, ever-changing landscape of activity. Even when we sleep, the cells in our body are constantly busy. The more our organs manage to maintain relative balance and stability, and the longer this can last, the healthier we feel and the longer we live.
How, then, can our bodies maintain and optimize balance, and therefore health?
First of all, there is much that the human body occupies itself with on its own. It is largely autonomous. There are many mechanisms for self-management. The most famous example is homeostasis – the wonderful system of feedback loops that can be found in various sub-systems of the body, which function in a way analogous to the thermostat on your heater.
So, by way of unfurling this “ultimate secret” to health, the more we can understand balance – and how the body achieves it – the better. As mentioned above, we never achieve absolute balance, but in a dynamic sense, we are able to maintain relative balance, from which is derived a relative state of stability which allows us to feel the “normality” and vitality that we associate with health. Imagine it like a war which is never won, but is never lost either. The enemy forces are never going to put up their white flags in surrender, i.e., the body is never going to exist in a bubble in isolation from external influences. There is a constant flow in and out of the body, and that is why we call ourselves open systems.
At the primary level of health optimization, then, come the methods which we can call the “co-operative” ones, because they enable us to co-operate with the human body’s own self-managing balance mechanisms, in order to (a) understand them as best we can; and (b) help to optimize their work as best we can.
To act at this level, prioritized individualized information-gathering is key, i.e., there is no way of assisting the body without first understanding it on its own terms. The most direct method of achieving this is via bio-resonance testing, as in Field Control Therapy (FCT), because this allows a direct dialogue with the body’s internal organs at the deepest levels in order to find out exactly what is going on in a prioritized fashion.
Other secondary methods also exist, and probably the second-best (but equally important) consists of good old-fashioned case-taking. Contrary to popular belief, TCM diagnosis, for example, does not normally rest primarily on either tongue or pulse diagnosis, which are more like additional tools: the central tool used in TCM diagnosis is case-taking. The same is true of classical homeopathy. The same is true of FCT. The same is true of some of the best aspects of conventional medicine, and of course naturopathy too.
These various traditions go about case-taking in very different ways, but the underlying principle is that by understanding more about how the body has gone wrong, and “what it’s trying to tell us” via the signs and symptoms, this can help us to understand the situation better. To help a friend, first we need to listen to what he or she has to tell and show us.
The key, though, is not to interpret the symptoms as by-products of an inanimate chemical conglomerate, but as meaningful signs of intelligence reflecting the human body’s efforts to self-manage.
Therapeutically, then, by far the best approach at this primary level of optimization will be the one which allows us to assist the body’s own self-managing balancing mechanisms. Now we are moving right out of the area of the majority of both conventional and alternative therapies, most of which are based on altering body mechanisms, rather than assisting them. In my view, the three approaches which I have the highest respect for and which specifically focus on assisting the body in this way are FCT, classical homeopathy and TCM. There are others, too, but these three systems take this approach in a particularly broad and systematic fashion.
The great majority of therapeutic “products” which are touted by everyone from medical institutes to health gurus to marketing groups to enthusiastic individuals don’t fit into the above model. That doesn’t mean I’m rejecting them entirely. It just means that they will always remain peripheral to my primary vision of what healthcare should be focused on. They simply aren’t the magic items that most people think they are. Each time I hear about a new formula of some sort, and I’m supposed to get excited about it, the opposite will tend to happen instead – if I feel that I’m being pulled away from these central secrets of health.
But there is more. . . What else can the principle of balance teach us?
It stretches far beyond either diagnosis or therapeutics, as described above. Next we move into the wide territory of lifestyle. For now, I’m only going to touch on this area in passing, but I’m certain it will crop up again and again in future blogs.
There is no pill in the world which can replace a balanced lifestyle. And of all the healthcare trainings I have done, it is my training in TCM which has taught me this concept in the profoundest fashion. This does not mean that any of us lead perfectly balanced lives, either, myself included. We all stray away from balance at various times in life. Yet understanding this principle can help us to restore balance when it’s most needed, and this also gives us the best possible tools to understand what is pushing our patients either in the direction of illness or health.
Work too much? Maybe you should cut down. Work too little? Too little stress? Maybe it’s time to get out and about. Play too little? Or too much? Not enough nourishing emotional, psychological and social contacts, or too much of it? Humans are communal beasts – we literally depend on bonding with each other. Starve us of that, and our health will suffer. Overwhelm us with it, or traumatize us emotionally, and we will start longing for some peace and quiet in which to recuperate – ‘Let me out of here!’
Sleep too little? Time to catch up. Sleep too much? Remedy that hangover with a more balanced sleep cycle. Or perhaps there are other factors disturbing your sleep cycle, and preventing you from balancing your days with your nights? Electro-magnetic fields (EMFs) in the bedroom are a major culprit, in my experience. In TCM, daytime is a Yang time of day, i.e., a time of activity in which we push our energy outwards. Night-time, then, is a Yin time, i.e., a time when we come home to our centre, and move our energy back inwards – and thus a time of recharging the batteries. Disturb this essential diurnal balancing act on a sustained basis, and you’ll be propelled on the road to ill health before long.
Eat too little? Or too much? Eat too much of one sort of food, or too little of another? Not enough diversity? How balanced is each meal on your plate? The wonderful thing about Chinese Food Energetics is that, to my mind, it goes a lot deeper than Western Nutrition. Instead of talking only in terms of balancing the macro- and micro-nutrients (e.g., too much or too little protein, fat or minerals?) – which is in itself a useful dimension to nutrition – the discussion moves into the realm of the energetic qualities of each food in its effects on the human body. Do you need to eat more foods to revive Yang, or nourish Yin? Warming or cooling foods? Do you need more of the white, black, green, red or yellow foods? Do you need purging foods, or tonifying foods? Bitter foods, or pungent foods? And all of the above is then linked to the state of your various internal organs.
Is your body able to balance the toxins coming in (the ones we’re exposed to from our mercury dental fillings, food, air, water, buildings, lawns, golf courses, fireplaces, medications, etc.) with the ones going out (in our urine, stools, sweat, air and other discharges)? This “equation” is an absolutely essential component to the secret of “balance” which I am presenting here – and it is precisely this “toxicity” equation which has grossly failed for most people living today. In presenting balance as the ultimate key to good health, it is “toxicity imbalance” which has become the Number One cause of ill health in our era, particularly due to the wide prevalence of one of the most balance-disrupting poisons of all – mercury.
Too much sex? Laugh if you will, but you may be squandering your “Jing” (essence)! Too little sex? Well, to be honest, I’ve never heard this mentioned in TCM, but based on the general principle of balance, as well as common sense, we all know that while sexual needs are a very individual question, many people can and do suffer from too little sex. However, TCM places a higher emphasis on too much of it! How much, you may ask, is too much? Well, correlating this with our knowledge from FCT and western physiology, we know that excessive sex may be a significant endocrine drain. I would think that the average person, though, in his or her prime years, can easily manage sex once or twice a day with no ill effects (not counting unwanted pregnancies), and quite possibly many beneficial ones!
Beyond sex, of course, let’s not forget the many other “intimacy needs” that we also have as human beings – the need for affection, understanding, companionship, friendship, conversation, stimulation, etc.
Too little exercise? We all know about this one, and its link to various prevalent conditions including colon cancer, one of the most common cancers in men. Too much exercise? This, likewise, can put the system – including especially our powerhouse, the adrenal glands – as well as sometimes our structural columns, the skeletal system – under too much strain.
This has not been an exhaustive list, but you get the picture. . . This has been only a whirlwind tour of what is implied by the essential systems concept of “balance” which underlies everything that is done in TCM, and which has consequently greatly enriched my understanding of health and disease – as well as helping to make me a bit more immune to those “latest pills” that have been discovered for the miracle treatment of some disease ;-)
By the way, Kevin and I have prepared many future blogs for you already. Some are meaty ones, such as an article I have prepared for my slot next week, entitled, “Mark Twain and Homeopathy,” in which I will be moving away from TCM, and instead taking a closer look at the history of homeopathy; or such as a wonderful series of blogs by Kevin in which – starting from next Thursday – he will be looking at the key concept of “information fields” in terms of what they are, how they relate to health and disease, and why this is such an important groundbreaking area of medicine – and going from there on to a fascinating examination of the vaccination debate in light of this.
We will also, of course, be posting playful blogs, reflective blogs and maybe even some confessional blogs! The bottom line is that we have quite a diverse line-up for you over the coming weeks and months, and will also be introducing some other exciting authors as bloggers on this website in time. Don’t be shy to let us know what you think about things, which blogs you have enjoyed most, or if you have any suggestions for future blogs. Let us know what you would like us to write about. You can also rate each blog out of ten stars, and, even better, you can add your own comments at the bottom of any blog. Our objective, in what we write, is to make this service as useful as possible to our readers.
In the meantime, what do you think is the ultimate secret of health?
Do you feel convinced about my presentation above? How would you put it? What do you consider the most important health tips or concepts? Our understanding of health is always evolving, so this conversation is never a closed book. So we’d love to hear from you too! Add some comments below if you have any thoughts to share, whether or not you agree with the thrust of my argument.