{"id":2675,"date":"2015-10-07T06:43:49","date_gmt":"2015-10-07T06:43:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/healthicine.org\/wordpress\/?p=2675"},"modified":"2015-10-28T13:58:52","modified_gmt":"2015-10-28T13:58:52","slug":"healthicine-creed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/healthicine.org\/wordpress\/healthicine-creed\/","title":{"rendered":"The Healthicine Creed"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Healthicine Creed<\/strong><\/p>\n

Health is wide and deep.
\nHealth is a noun. A healthiness is a measurable component\u00a0of health.
\nHealth is a verb<\/a>. Healthing is making someone healthier.
\nHealth encompasses all of life\u2019s processes.
\nHealth is whole. Health is slow and steady.
\nHealth is honest and true.
\nAn illness is a hole in your health.<\/a>
\nEvery illness has a cause.
\nEvery illness\u00a0is caused by\u00a0imbalance.<\/a>
\nDisease can attack from the environment.
\nDisease can arise from unhealthiness.<\/a>
\nChronic diseases have chronic causes.
\nSymptomicines facilitate chronic disease.
\nCausal cures stop the progression of a disease.
\nExternal illnesses are cured by addressing or removing causes.
\nInternal illnesses are cured by raising healthiness.
\nEvery illness has internal an external components.
\nHealing defends against disease and repairs damage.
\nHealing cures aid recovery and promote healing.
\nHealthicines improve healthiness.
\nEvery disease can be cured.<\/a>
\nHealth is the best preventative.<\/p>\n

Health is the best cure, the only true cure.<\/a><\/p>\n

The goals of healthicine are\u00a0to understand, create, and improve healthiness.
\nHealthy foods, actions, and communications move us towards healthiness.
\nHealthy people are moving towards healthiness.
\nEveryone has a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of healthiness.
\n\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Healthicine: The Arts and Sciences of Health and Healthiness.<\/em><\/p>\n

A person’s\u00a0health is their current\u00a0life status, including\u00a0physical status of body, mind, spirit, and community as well as the status of their physical, mental, spiritual and community processes. It includes ongoing nutritional statuses, exercise and resting statuses, growth and reproductive statuses, of body, mind, spirit and community.<\/p>\n

Health is a rich and complex, interrelated, interdependent, hierarchical web of life extending from the past into the future.<\/p>\n

\"Healthicine\"<\/p>\n

The hierarchy of healthicine<\/strong>\u00a0diagram illustrates\u00a0this complexity.<\/p>\n

Each layer of the hierarchy, from genetics and nutrients through cells, tissues, organs, bodily systems, body, minds, spirits and communities is founded\u00a0on components of\u00a0from prior\u00a0layers.<\/p>\n

Each layer contains many individual wholes, each of which is more than the sum of their component parts. Every component, in every layer interacts with other components in that layer and in other layers, contributing to overall healthiness.<\/p>\n

The sciences of biology, and the practices of medicine study and have given names to most\u00a0of the primary layers and many of the secondary layers of this hierarchy.<\/p>\n

Healthicine is the arts and\u00a0sciences\u00a0of health and healthiness.<\/p>\n

Health consists of the many living\u00a0things, processes, and interactions that are life.\u00a0Health is deep and wide, rich and complex. The complexity of health arises from the complexities of genetics, nutrients, cells, tissues, organs, bodily systems, body, minds, spirits, and communities and also the complexity of all of their interrelationships and interactions. Individuals in communities interact and reproduce, entering\u00a0the hierarchy again with the new genetics of their progeny.\u00a0Health benefits from richness, complexity, from time, and from freedoms. Health is not simple.<\/p>\n

Health is a noun: health status. \u00a0Health is also a verb: to improve health.<\/p>\n

Health encompasses\u00a0all of the physical aspects and all of the \u00a0activities and\u00a0processes of life. A healthiness is a specific, measurable aspect of health. No-one can be perfectly healthy, because the many interacting wholes, and many interacting processes of life must maintain active balance, not perfection.\u00a0Healthiness can always be improved, but it can\u00a0never\u00a0be optimized. Optimization’s focus on specific components leads to imbalances and unhealthiness. Strong attempts to optimize health increase\u00a0risk of unhealthiness and disease. Health is improved by actions that strengthen the ability to maintain balance and continually move forward, into the future, in the face of stress. Health\u00a0has physical, mental, spiritual and community components. \u00a0Community healthinesses exists in each individual\u00a0– each member of the community, and also in the community as a whole.<\/p>\n

Life processes begin with growth and reproduction, which require sensing and reacting to environment, exercising choices and deciding, choosing to cooperate and communicate with other life processes inside and outside of the self. The self is a whole, in the environment.<\/p>\n

\"HealthisWhole-min-text\"<\/a>Health is whole.\u00a0<\/strong>Illness is hole in your health.\u00a0Wellness is the absence of illness.<\/p>\n

Stress illnesses\u00a0<\/strong>arrive from external sources, when a person or a community\u00a0is attacked and\u00a0damaged by environmental sources.<\/p>\n

Unhealthiness illnesses<\/strong>\u00a0arise when healthiness drops so low that illness surfaces.<\/p>\n

Sometimes healthiness drops, allowing\u00a0a stress illness to\u00a0take opportunistic advantage and attack successfully – whereas it was not able to attack that person in a healthier state.<\/p>\n

Illness can strike, or creep. \u00a0Illnesses that creep are more likely to be caused by unhealthiness. \u00a0Illnesses that strike are more likely to come from external sources. However, an illness that creeps often reaches a crisis point, when it strikes. \u00a0Health is slow, and often not powerful enough to be of much value when an illness strikes – emergency treatments\u00a0are often required. Health, and improvement in health is needed afterwards to repair and recover from the damage.<\/p>\n

Illness should not be confused with signs or symptoms, which might\u00a0indicate illness, healing, healthiness or more. \u00a0An illness should not be confused with deficiencies, disabilities, aging, or other natural attributes of a healthy person. Illness is active. It has active causes.<\/p>\n

Health is not the opposite of illness. Illness can eat away at your healthiness. Because of the interconnectedness and interdependencies of health, an illness in one area can affect health in many areas. Wellness is the absence of illness.\u00a0As you become more well, your illness fades.<\/p>\n

Health is whole. It includes the current status, and also the potential for improvement. Health is the best preventative. Health is the best treatment, for non-critical illness. Health is the most effective cure, perhaps the only true cure. Healing grows from\u00a0healthiness.<\/p>\n

Healthy foods, actions and communications move us, and our communities, towards healthiness. Actions that\u00a0prevent illness, truly prevent illness – are actions\u00a0that improve healthiness. Actions that cure illness, truly cure illness – are actions that improve healthiness. Healthy actions, that improve healthiness, are also the best way to fight aging. Aging is a natural process of life, a natural\u00a0gradual deterioration of faculties, that proceeds more slowly when we are healthier, and faster when we have less healthiness\u00a0and\u00a0when we are ill.<\/p>\n

The best treatments for illness are health, the improvement of healthiness. <\/a>\u00a0When a treatment works, it improves your health. A treatment that does not improve your healthiness is flawed, risky, and may need to be undone. Treating symptoms does not improve healthiness, although it can assist the body’s natural healing and healthy processes, by providing rest and relief. But, if the aim is not to cure, the aim is off target, too low.<\/p>\n

Every disease, every illness can be cured, by definition. Of course it is not possible to cure every case, it is not possible to cure every patient, but every disease can be cured as long as it\u00a0and the causes are\u00a0detected in time.\u00a0If it cannot be cured, it is not a disease.<\/p>\n

Illnesses caused by external stress are cured by removing the stressor, or by improving health such that the body can handle the stress. Both are healthy actions. Unhealthiness illnesses are internal illnesses, that can only be cured by raising healthiness.\u00a0Is there any other way, any other path than health, to cures? Once an illness is cured, healing works\u00a0to repair damaged areas.<\/p>\n

The common cold is easily cured by the body’s healthy immune system. A healthier immune system, and a healthier body, cures a cold faster, a less healthy body needs more time. Searching\u00a0for a medicine to cure a cold ‘faster’ can be\u00a0foolhardy and risky. Treating the symptoms of a cold can help the body to cure faster, but it can just as easily enable activities that do not help the cure.<\/p>\n

It’s easy to confuse remission and\u00a0re-emergence with\u00a0cure and recurrence. Remission is remission of symptoms, not remission of illness. If the illness is not cured, remission of symptoms can only\u00a0lead to their re-emergence as the illness progresses. Cures stop and\u00a0remove the illness, by addressing causes. Recurrence is a new illness, of the same type – and does not invalidate the cure. You get a cold, your body cures the cold, you might get a new cold at a later date. You might even have two different colds, at the same time.<\/p>\n

It is important to separate the concept of cure from the concept of healing. Cures are attained by removing or inactivating causes, stopping the progression of an illness. Healing is repairing the damage done by an illness. The healing process is active before the illness arrives, when the illness is present, and after the illness has been cured.<\/p>\n

Healing comes from health. Healing is an active, ongoing, ever-present process in every\u00a0living entity arising through the healthy, natural processes of growth and aging. Damage occurs continually from the environment and from normal life processes. Healing repairs the\u00a0damage. \u00a0When we are ill, damage increases and can even accelerate. Healing cannot keep pace. Once the illness passes, healing is the process of recovery. Sometimes, full recovery is possible – sometimes not.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"ToYourHealth\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

We all want to live healthy lives.<\/p>\n

We will all die. That is an\u00a0inevitable fact of
\nevery individual’s life.<\/p>\n

No one wants to die from a lingering, debilitating illness.<\/p>\n

We all want to die healthy.<\/p>\n

to your health, may you die healthy, tracy<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

ps.<\/p>\n

Since originally publishing this blog post, I have spent many hours refining the concept of the Healthicine Creed, preparing a small book to present the creed in detail. \u00a0Today, I updated this version of the creed to match the version in the draft book. \u00a0Oct 7, 2015.<\/p>\n

 
\nTracy is the author of two books about healthicine:<\/p>\n