Imagine a world without non-infectious diseases, a world with no arthritis, cancer, depression, diabetes, diseases of malnutrition like starvation, scurvy, gout and obesity. What would the world be like? Would we be healthier? Yes, of course. but, that’s not going to happen any time soon…
In the early 1900s, most diseases were caused by infectious. Times have changed. We’ve beat most infectious diseases. Today, most disease causes are non-infectious. The top ten causes of death in the USA are heart disease, cancer, unintentional injuries, chronic lower respiratory disease, stroke and cerebral vascular diseases, Alzheimer’s disease, diabetes, influenza and pneumonia, kidney disease, and suicide. Only one, influenza and pneumonia, has an infection cause. Nine of the ten are non-infectious.
All non-infectious diseases are incurable. Due to an absence of a test of cured for non-infectious diseases, none can be proven cured. On the above list, only pneumonia, the only infectious disease, is curable.
Conventional medicine studies disease causes and treatments statistically. When cures are seen as impossible, as in the current paradigm, we study statistical causes. When cures are seen as not possible, there are no cures. Let’s look at a some common non-infectious diseases.
Arthritis is often caused by injuries. We cannot totally prevent arthritis without eliminating injuries – which we have seen is an unhealthy goal. Can arthritis be cured? Sometimes? Never? All the time? Injuries are cured by healing (not a medicine). There are many claims of arthritis cured. Arthritis cure claims are ignored. There are no tests for arthritis cured, in whole or in part, temporary, or permanent. Once you have arthritis, in the current medical system, you have arthritis forever. Is it possible for arthritis to be a healthy disease? Can anyone be healthy, once they have arthritis?
What about depression? Most signs of depression are not considered to be diagnosable cases of depression disease. The DSM/5 (the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) doesn’t say so directly, but it recognizes that depression can be an important aspect of healthiness. When we lose a loved one, due to their death or the death of a relationship, we might suffer depression. In our depression, we examine the past situation with intensity. We work to understand what we might have done, what we forgot to do, what we might do about it, and we heal. Depression is only cured by natural healthiness. We can become stronger and healthier, as we learn to accept the realities of life and of death, even our own.
There are many claims of depression cured. But, like arthritis, depression cure claims are ignored. There are no tests for depression cured, in whole or in part, temporary, or permanent. Once you are diagnosed with depression, in our current medical system, it is never cured. You might no longer show signs and symptoms of depression, but there is no test for cured for any mental disorder. Can we be healthy when we have incurable depression?
We don’t understand non-infectious diseases. Most non-infectious diseases are easily understood. This image is a model of a non-infectious illness cause by a health factor.
A health factor is any measurable aspect of health of diet, body, mind, spirit, community or environment, that when out of balance can cause illness and disease. Normally, health factors are in the healthy range – no illness is present. As we drift away from healthiness, signs and symptoms of illness appear. At first, minor in most cases. Often only growing slowly.
Vitamin A status is a health factor. In most cases, our Vitamin A status is healthy, only causing disease in cases of deficiency or excess. When deficiency or excess occurs, there is often no disease – until it is extreme or chronic. Vitamin A deficiency disease is rare, because our bodies store a reserve. However, Vitamin A deficiencies are common. According to the World Health Organization, “an estimated 250 million preschool children are vitamin A deficient.” Vitamin A is rarely consumed in excess, but disease can occur when people consume large quantities of liver – which contains Vitamin A.
Because there are no tests for cured of non-infectious disease, Vitamin A deficiency disease and Vitamin A toxicity disease are technically incurable. There are medical treatments for Vitamin A diseases, but no cures – because the cure is not a medicine.
Are Vitamin A diseases healthy? When they occur, of course not. But Vitamin A diseases – like all non-infectious diseases, point the paths to health. We need to consume sufficient Vitamin A, but not too much. How do we know if our actions are unhealthy? We get sick. That’s the healthiness of Vitamin A diseases. It’s the same for many non-infectious diseases.
We might eat a lot of junk-food (diet), neglect to exercise or rest well (sleep), suffer from over-planning (mind), over excitement (spirit), or deficiencies of community (loneliness) for short periods with no disease. Our health contains many factors that support us and compensate for minor deficiencies or excesses. Life is about balancing, not about balance, not about perfection.
Health is slow and steady, honest and true – the Healthicine Creed
Often, unhealthiness and disease come slowly as well. We’re good at living. Most factors that affect health improve healthiness. Most non-infectious diseases are slow – our medical systems mistakenly call them chronic: the cause is chronic. The cure is the cause.
When we have a non-infectious disease – we are suffering from an excess or deficiency of a non-infectious cause. Addressing the excess or the deficiency before disease – is the only preventative. After the disease occurs, addressing the excess or deficiency is the cure. Sometimes, it’s more complicated. Sometimes, the cause of the cause is present, also an illness that must cured. When an illness is present – and the cause of the illness is also present, two cures are necessary. If someone is deficient in Vitamin A because they are too poor to buy healthy foods, giving them Vitamin A cures the current illness, but not the poverty illness that caused it. That cure is temporary when another cause is present. Two cures are needed.
When a disease causes other complications, injuries and diseases – each requires an additional cure. Sometimes, the cause is temporary or transitory, like malnutrition in winter. We might take a higher-level view, and see the cause as a failure to store sufficient food for winter – an ongoing cause that needs to be addressed every year. When we learn to store food, to prevent starvation, our healthiness increases.
Some diseases are on-sided. The healthy level of most poisons is zero, so there are no deficiency diseases of cyanide or arsenic. Disease only occurs with excessive consumption. However, most – perhaps all – nutrients, like Vitamin A, and even water and oxygen are poisonous in excess.
Non-infectious diseases point the way to cures – point the way to healthiness. Unfortunately, we study diseases, but not healthiness.
The medical view of disease is different. When we are on the mountain top, we see valleys everywhere. When we are in the bottom of the valley, we are surrounded by mountains.
If you are healthy, you don’t want to see the doctor, and the doctor doesn’t want to see you. Doctors and nurses live and work in the valleys of disease, surrounded by disease. Doctors treat diseases patients. When they are cured, they disappear, they are no longer patients. Doctors don’t study cured patients, and don’t study cures. Even the exceptions, infectious diseases cured by a a medicine, are only half-studied. That’s why “there is no cure for the common cold (influenza, measles and COVID-19)”. They’re cured by health. But health cannot be recognized as a cure. Our conventional medical paradigm cannot see, much less study, the healthiness of disease.
Disease only arrives when we ignore the warnings when we fail to act in time. Is the disease “unhealthy”? No. It arrives when the patient, their actions, and their communities are unhealthy. The disease is a state, not a thing. The cause is found in ourselves, in our lives, not in some bottle of pills that poison the disease.
Of course not every aspect of a disease is healthy. Diseases are a blend of healthiness and unhealthiness causes. When we only study disease, and ignore healthiness, we only see half of the picture, and miss many important realities. Our conventional medical systems view non-infectious diseases as incurable because no medicines can cure them. We treat signs and symptoms, ignoring both cause and cure, ignoring the healthiness of disease.
This post is based on part 3 of the chapter: On the Healthiness of Disease in the book: COVID-19 from Causes to Cures.
The two previous posts are:
Part 2: On the Healthiness of Injuries
Part 1: On the Healthiness of Disease: Species Healthiness
In the next post, I will discuss the healthiness of infectious Diseases.
to your health, tracy
Author: The Elements of Cure
