The wisdom of the body

Click on the link below to find out how evolution has provided us with ways of dealing with disease without recourse to dangerous surgery or drugs (or radiation).

http://health-and-wellbeing.blogspot.com/2007/02/cancer-and-wisdom-of-body.html

Whom can we trust?

http://health-and-wellbeing.blogspot.com/2007/02/breast-cancer-research-and-conflicts-of.html

Health and conscious living - Part I

In several earlier posts (eg some of the very earliest ones - as well as in a few more recent ones), I tried to explain what I had in mind when I used the phrase "conscious living", as well as related concepts like "becoming conscious". See, for example:

http://andrewreiner.blogspot.com/2005/11/what-is-conscious-living.html

http://andrewreiner.blogspot.com/2005/11/reclaiming-our-humanity.html

http://andrewreiner.blogspot.com/2005/12/further-thoughts-on-being-conscious_08.html

http://andrewreiner.blogspot.com/2006/03/spirituality-and-unconsciousness.html

http://andrewreiner.blogspot.com/2006/03/spirituality-and-unconsciousness-part.html

http://andrewreiner.blogspot.com/2006/03/spirituality-and-consciousness.html

http://andrewreiner.blogspot.com/2006/07/spirituality-and-consciousness-again.html

http://andrewreiner.blogspot.com/2006/07/spirituality-and-consciousness-again_04.html

http://andrewreiner.blogspot.com/2006/07/spirituality-and-consciousness-again_05.html

http://andrewreiner.blogspot.com/2006/07/spirituality-and-conscious_115208476137191378.html

http://andrewreiner.blogspot.com/2006/07/spirituality-and-consciousness-again_07.html

http://andrewreiner.blogspot.com/2006/09/spirituality-and-consciousness-again.html

I created a new blog specifically dedicated to what I called, simply, "health and wellbeing", assuming that these words were familiar to everyone and easily understood. I also created a blog dedicated to vaccination issues, recognising that there will be many who will experience considerable resistance to the ideas expressed in this latter blog. I also created blogs dealing with the nature of science and with economics and politics, even though, for me, all of these are about what I call "conscious living". While one can take a purely scholarly, academic or rational approach to these subjects, I reccommend a personal, passionate, involved approach, feeling strongly that our very existence as a species, as well as mere individuals, is in the balance. I am not at all convinced that either the human race or the planet have a future, unless we take these matters seriously.

At a purely selfish individual level there are many things that we can do to enhance our personal chances of survival to old age without serious sickness or unnecessary suffering. Ultimately, however, if the steps we take to ensure our own personal survival and health hurt other people, other sentient beings or the very planet that is our home then we are all doomed. In reality, the two go hand in hand however. Since we are all connected at the level of consciousness or, to put it somewhat differently, at the level of energy, everything we do has consequences for everyone and everything, ourselves included.

To look at the (apparently) purely personal first; There is reasonably widespread agreement about many of the necessary conditions for personal health and wellbeing. These include a diet containing the necessary vitamins and other nutrients (which can mostly be found in fresh fruit, vegetables and legumes) and low on animal fats, sugar, fizzy drinks, white flour and other toxic substances, moderate exercise, exposure to fresh air and (moderate amounts of) sunshine and strategies to minimise and deal with stress. Noone actually reccommends a high fat, high carbohydrate or high sugar diet. None suggests that eating greasy takeaways, drinking coca cola and other fizzy drinks or smoking cigarettes or consuming large quantities of alcohol or other drugs is good for us. Noone recommends obesity, being overweight or sitting in front of the TV all day long. Nobody suggests that exposure to severe, continuous stress is good for our health [To be continued].

Health, politics and consciousness

If you want to understand why it is that becoming conscious requires knowledge and information as well as "personal growth" before it translates into physical and mental health, the following may interest you:

http://health-and-wellbeing.blogspot.com/2007/02/on-early-detection-of-breast-cancer.html

Fundamentally, becoming conscious entails learning to trust yourself rather than "the experts" in government, science or medicine. What we read in the newspapers and watch on TV is mere noise, dressed up as scientific fact. We need to learn to turn down the volume of this racket so we can hear our own inner voice, our own inner wisdom, our own inner physician. This is a lifetime task for all of us.