A1 Natural Health Online
A1 Natural Health Online
This is a website on nutrition and food, healing foods, natural health, herbal remedies and homeopathy.
There is no single-factor formula for health.
Food, no matter how good, is not the complete answer. Other factors, such as pure air, pure water, sunshine, exercise, recreation, sleep, cleanliness (outer and inner), and wholesome mental and moral influences — all these factors are of the greatest importance in helping us to retain (or regain) good health.
Food, important as it is, is of value only in its physiological connections with all the other factors, each of which is indispensable to the needs and, therefore, to the health of the body.
After all, food is powerless, of itself, to build flesh, blood, hones, and nerves. Only a living, breathing organism can convert it into living tissues. Food is subordinate to life — to the Life-force inherent in every living creature. It is this mysterious Life-force that decides which and how much of the foods supplied to the body shall be built up into body-tissues.
It is, therefore, one thing to eat and drink the right body-building foods, but quite another to get the body to absorb and to utilize them. The body’s power to do this depends upon the power of its innate Life-force. When this is at a low ebb, as in illness or when it has been sapped by excesses and other foolish expenditures, it is then futile to stuff the body with food — even the right kind — in the hope that this will cure the nervous exhaustion and build up the strength. It won’t. What the body needs at such times is simply rest — nothing else. The power to digest and absorb food (lost, temporarily, through unwise expenditure of energy, or through illness) can be renewed and increased only by rest.
Just as the supply of a large pile of timber to a carpenter does not increase the productive capacity of that carpenter, so a large quantity of food, however good it may be, does not increase the digestive and assimilative capacity of the body. The living organism uses only what it can use of the foods given to it, the rest it discards. To eat, therefore, is not necessarily to absorb.
Nearly every day we see the truth of this statement. We see thin people eating lots of fattening foods without gaining an ounce in weight. We see invalids being fed with good healthy foods and getting no better in consequence. We see anemic people taking iron tonics and deriving no benefit from them. Indeed, the world is full of unfit people who have tried many diets, preparations, and special foods, and who have failed to derive benefit from any of them, partly because their digestive powers were feeble, but partly also because of their emotional and mental make up. Temperament plays havoc with the powers of the body to absorb and digest food properly, but it is something with which we are born, and unfortunately there is very little we can do about it, except to realize that it does influence bodily health to a tremendous extent. It is also the deciding factor in the kind of ailments from which we suffer.
|
Natural Health Newsletter Unlock the secrets to true health... Subscribe Today and receive FREE articles on how to stay healthy - the natural way! |