3. Toxemia Is The Universal Cause Of Disease
Actually, there is only one disease, no matter how it manifests itself. And the disease, which we call constructive disease, is occasioned by the body itself and is known as a crisis of toxemia or healing.
3.1 The Seven Stages of Disease
There are several stages of disease. The underlying cause of disease in all stages is toxemia. Although toxemia may arise from many sources, it basically exists because of insufficient nerve energy to sufficiently eliminate exogenous poisons and body wastes. Toxemia is not broad enough a term to cover the whole poisoning process for it means poison in the blood. Actually toxicosis exists. Tissues, cells and interstitial spaces are also toxic-laden. In short, the whole body is toxic.
Diseases present many different aspects because they evolve with the progressing deterioration of the organism that suffers them. Disease has seven distinct stages. These stages correspond to the distinct differences of each stage of evolution.
The first stage is not even recognized by physicians as a disease. Life Scientists call it enervation. Most people call it nervous exhaustion. Enervation is a state in which the body is either not generating sufficient nerve energy for the tasks the body must perform, or the tasks the body must perform may be greater than the normal nerve energy supply can cope with. In any event, the body becomes impaired, and an impaired body generates less nerve energy if the conditions of overwork or under-generation persist. Most people know when they are nervously exhausted.
Enervation can be caused by depletion of nerve energy in any of hundreds of ways. Sleep regenerates nerve energy. Obviously, insufficient sleep will not supply us with our needs. It will not fully recharge our batteries. We need sleep to regenerate nerve energy for the brain and nervous system.
Nerve energy is a form of electricity measurable in millivolts. Sleep laboratories have successfully substituted electricity in place of the body’s own. When this is accomplished it is called electrosleep. It takes only two hours out of twenty-four to fully restore nerve energy in this manner.
Demonstrating that nerve energy is electrical is easy. If you mashed your finger, a message would immediately go to the brain and back would come a command to remove the finger from that which applied the pressure. Moreover, the brain would command the entire balance of the body to cooperate in the extraction of the finger from the offending pressure. Only electricity is capable of such speedy transmission. No chemical process or circulatory process is capable of this dispatch. It occurs only through a network of nerves with conductive abilities, and electricity is the only form of energy it can conduct. If you take a weak voltage and hook up to it while holding someone else’s hand, the other person gets a shock immediately when you touch the live electrical source. I don’t think anyone can doubt that we do generate electricity, and that is the form of energy we use to conduct our physical and mental activities. Sensations are transformed into electrical stimuli and forwarded to the brain. The brain interprets these and sends out commands based upon the interpretation. Thus, if you put your finger to a hot object, the finger is commanded in a flash to withdraw from it.
The foregoing is to demonstrate that the body is primarily an organism that works on the amount of electricity it generates and which it has in its reserves. If this supply is depleted or otherwise insufficient to cope with the needs of the body, then body functions become impaired, including the processes of elimination of both endogenous metabolic wastes and exogenous poisons introduced into the body. This impairment begets further impairment including diminishing the body’s ability to restore depleted nerve energy. The body starts going downhill. The next stage of this decline is called toxemia.
3.1.2. Toxemia or Toxicosis
When toxic substances from whatever source saturate the blood and tissues, the lymph system and interstitial fluids, then the conditions of toxemia and toxicosis exist.
As functioning organisms, we generate a tremendous amount of toxic by-products. We generate enough carbon dioxide to kill us within a few minutes. If our lungs failed to function, carbon dioxide buildup and lack of oxygenation would overwhelm us quite quickly. We can accommodate only so much carbon dioxide. And this is but one of many waste products. There are trillions of cells in the human body. Tens of billions of these expire every day. They are replaced by new cells. The old cells are broken down by lysosomes, enzymes that reside in a little organelle within the cell itself. Upon cell death, these enzymes break the cell down into many smaller components for elimination. These components are cell debris. Some of these components such as iron, protein, and amino acids are recycled by the body. Some 95% of the body’s iron needs and 70% of its protein needs are met by recycling. Certain other of the body’s needs are met by recycling as well. This will give you some idea as to the immense providence and wisdom of the body in meeting its needs. Other components of the decomposed cell are the RNA and DNA. These are toxic while in the system. If they accumulate as they do in most humans in today’s society, a condition of intoxication (toxemia and toxicosis) exists. These are what medical people call viruses, and they mistakenly attribute to this dead debris the powers of life and malevolence.
Tissue and blood saturation with toxic materials can be caused by both internally generated wastes and pollutants taken in from the outside which the body has not been able to eject from the vital domain. Intoxication occurs when we overload the body with toxic materials from the outside, or we fail to observe our capacities, and overwork, get insufficient sleep, or are subjected to great stress, or when any number of other factors deplete the body of nerve energy or prevent its sufficient regeneration. For instance, stresses, emotional shocks, or traumatic experiences can drain our bodies of nerve energy very quickly. It’s just like shorting out the battery of a car.
At some level of intoxication we begin to experience the next stage of disease which is called irritation.
Irritation results from toxic materials being sensed by our nerve network. Most of us pay this stage little mind, and certainly physicians do not pay it heed. When we feel itchy, queasy, jumpy, uneasy, or when we have bothersome but not painful areas, irritation exists. Tickling of the nose is a form of irritation. Collections of mucus along the mucus membranes irritate, although irritation is not painful. It is a gentle prod that moves us to seek comfort, to establish freedom from it. For instance, the urge to urinate or defecate is a form of irritation due to accumulation of wastes greater than the body feels comfortable with. However, the urge is not painful unless it is ignored until it creates too much pressure in its area. Near painful irritation forces us to deal with the problem.
When a person drinks too much alcohol we say that he or she is intoxicated. That’s a good example of exogenous intoxication. While all alcohol intake is damaging to the organism, the body can speedily eliminate a small amount before much damage has occurred. Increase the intake, and the elimination is proportionately less and the damage proportionately greater. The first drink of alcohol occasions only irritation which we also call stimulation. But any toxic material, be it salt, caffeine, or condiments will irritate or stimulate. This is a condition wherein the body sets in force its defensive mechanisms and accelerates its internal activities. This might well be likened to an alarm aboard ship where all hands are summoned. A frenzy of activity results in a bout with enemy forces. Unfortunately, this often makes us feel good or hyper or even euphoric. It is distressing to see a euphoric condition arise out of a situation that is damaging to the organism.
If the causes of enervation/intoxication/irritation remain in force and the body can’t cope with it the body initiates a responsive crisis called inflammation.
This is usually the stage in which physicians recognize pathology. It is the stage where sufferers are keenly aware of a problem, for it involves pain. As well, it involves bodily redirection of vital energies. The intestinal tract is closed down. Energy that would normally be available for activity there is pre-empted and redirected to the massive effort to cope with a severe condition of intoxication. Lest the integrity of the organism be dealt a mortal blow or crippled, the body musters its all to the emergency.
In inflammation, the toxicants have usually been concentrated in an organ or area for a massive expulsive effort. The area becomes inflamed due to the constant irritation of the toxic materials. When inflammation exists we are said to have an “itis,” appendicitis, tonsilitis, hepatitis, or nephritis for example. Note that the “itises” just cited are all due to overburdening of four different organs of purification and elimination.
The names of “itises” are usually after the organ or tissue area that is inflamed. Thus if we have a cold we have rhinitis. If we have inflammation of the sinus cavities we have sinusitis. If we have inflammation of bronchial tissue we have either bronchitis or asthma. And so it goes. We have these peculiar pathologies because in each case the body elected to eliminate the extraordinary toxic load through the organ affected. For instance, asthma exists because the body has selected the bronchi as an outlet for toxic materials. The condition is chronic because the toxic condition is unceasing. While the sufferer continues to intoxicate himself or herself, the body continues to eliminate the overload through the bronchi or alveolar tissue.
Inflammation or fever is a body crisis response to a life-threatening situation. The body and the body alone creates the fever. It is an evidence or symptom of increased and intense body activities directed at cleansing and repair. The extraordinary energies employed for a fever are at the expense of energies normally involved in digestion, work or play, thinking and seeing, etc. Fever is a healing activity. The idea of suppressing it is equivalent to hitting a drowning man over the head so he’ll cease his struggles. For instance, if rhinitis or influenza sufferers are drugged it amounts to hitting the body’s healer over the head. Thus, the eliminative effort is suppressed, and the toxicity increases until other organs, usually the lungs, become saturated—not only with the toxicity but the drugs administered as well. When body vitality reasserts itself a condition known as pneumonia is likely to result.
Inflammation is the fourth stage of disease and is the body’s most intense effort to cleanse and restore itself. The next stage of disease is destructive and degenerative. It will result if the causes of general body intoxication are continued.
Ulceration means that a staggering amount of cells and tissue structures are, being destroyed. Physiological systems are wiped out due to the body’s inability to live in an unceasing toxic media. Where tissue is destroyed there remains a void. An example is a canker sore of the mouth. Lesions or ulcers can occur in other areas of the body also. These conditions are often intensely painful, for there are exposed nerves.
While the body may use an ulcer as an outlet for extraordinary toxic buildup thereby relieving itself, it will heal the ulcer if causes are discontinued, or if the toxicity level is significantly lowered. This process of repairing the damage is like patching up pants with holes in them. This patching up process is called induration.
Induration is a hardening of tissue or the filling in of tissue vacancy with hard tissue. Scarring is a form of induration. But in this stage of disease, there is direction and purpose in hardening. The space is filled, and the toxic materials that threaten bodily integrity are encapsulated in a sac of hardened tissue. The ulcer and the toxic materials are sealed off by the hardening of the tissue around them. This is a way of quarantining the toxic materials, often called tumor formation. It is this condition that is diagnosed as cancer nineteen times out of twenty when, in fact, no cancer exists.
Induration is the last stage during which the body exerts intelligent control. Should the pathogenic practices which brought matters to this stage be continued, cells and tissue systems go wild. They survive as best they can on their own. Cells become parasitic—living off the nutrients they can obtain from the lymph fluid but contributing nothing to the body economy. They have become disorganized. Their genetic encoding has been altered by the poisons. Thus, they are not capable of intelligent normal organized action within the context of a vital economy. When cells go wild in this manner, the condition is called cancer.
The endpoint of the evolution of disease is cancer. It is the last stage of disease and is usually fatal, especially if the causes that brought it about are continued. Cessation of causes and indulgence of healthful practices may arrest it, for they can so revitalize the body that they may even destroy the cancer cells. It’s all relative. Cancer cells live in a hostile environment but still divide and flourish as long as nutrients are available to them. Cancer cells may be regarded as cells that have become independent and have reverted to the status of uncontrolled primitive cells—cells that live entirely on their own as do protozoa.
These stages of disease are quite distinct in their characters, yet the lines are more or less arbitrarily drawn. This often happens in attempts at categorization where one form evolves into another. The dividing lines have no clear-cut delineation.
People sometimes ask when cancer begins. Hygienists or Life Scientists say that it begins with the first cold or rash of childhood. The first crisis a baby endures begins the pathological chain that leads to cancer. This evolutionary chain begins then because the phenomenon of life is one constant violation of the laws of life from beginning to end.
3.2. Viruses And Bacteria—Their Role In Disease
After reviewing the seven stages of disease it should be obvious that bacteria and so-called viruses do not cause diseases. Viruses do cause diseases if you call toxic waste materials of decomposed body cells viruses. Decomposed cell debris is precisely what virologists and physicians are calling viruses. They regard viruses as living entitities when, in fact, medics have not in all history observed any quality of life they ascribe to viruses. What is called virus is always dead. It’s never been observed to be alive. It doesn’t have the first prerequisites of life, that is, metabolic and control mechanisms. Even bacteria have that. I repeat that what is called viruses are nothing more than components of decomposed cells.
Some people insist that syphilis is caused by bacteria, more specifically spirochetes. Though the term spirochetes has given way to viruses called Herpes these days—that’s today’s fashion—it was easy to demonstrate that spirochetes were never responsible in the first place. When you ask a bacteriologist which comes first, the soil or the bacteria, he will answer that the soil must exist first for bacteria to thrive, for bacteria are presented a deadly environment by living cells. So, bacteria never exist in a proliferating state where there is no food or soil for their propagation. They multiply when there is feast, and they die off when there is famine or adverse environment, hence, bacteria no more create their food supply than flies cause garbage. The garbage must preexist the flies and, on the same order, the garbage or soil on which bacteria thrive in our bodies must preexist their presence and propagation. In other words, they do not cause the condition—they are there because of the condition.
When the body has a highly toxic condition such as inflammation, it will absorb bacteria from the intestinal cavity and transport them to the point where deadly materials have been concentrated. The bacteria then symbiotically assist in breaking up these toxic materials for elimination. Of course, the excreta of bacteria are toxic, too.
Ignorant physicians regard these bacteria not as our symbiotic partners in the process of combating disease, but as the cause of the disease. Koch destroyed Pasteur’s original theories by his four postulates. The first two state that if a disease is caused by a certain type of bacterium, then that form of bacteria must always be present when the disease exists. The other says that the disease must always be occasioned by the presence or introduction of the bacteria said to be responsible. Although these cardinal principles are self-evident, so many exceptions existed as to disprove totally the germ theory of disease-causation. Koch laid down his postulates in 1892; the medical profession never has given them credence. To this day the profession clings to the disproven germ theory except that germs in the form of bacteria are taking a back seat to an even more elusive entity called a virus.
Bacteria exist in a multitude of strains, forms, and metabolic capabilities. Bacteria are versatile and in many cases change forms and lifestyles in keeping with the character of the soil available to them. Round bacteria can become rod shaped and vice versa.
It used to be said that pneumococcus caused pneumonia. But it was noted that this type of bacteria was absent in nearly half the cases. Moreover, administering the bacteria to healthy organisms never occasioned pneumonia. The plain fact that bacteria are in the human body as they are everywhere else is not recognized by the medical profession. Bacteria are symbiotic partners of all creatures in nature. In order to come to exist in nature in the first place, humans had to establish a state of symbiosis with all natural forces.
In the second place, if bacteria invaded organisms and laid them low as they’re supposed to do—if the body could be laid low while in a state of health—then the impetus or momentum the bacteria had built up would become more pronounced and overwhelming as the organism receded in disease. It would be a one-way trip the same as vultures picking the bones of a cadaver. If bacteria and viruses cause disease, once they have overwhelmed the body and actually debilitated it, how does the much weakened body regain ascendancy? If you were to inquire into this deeply and pursue it to its logical conclusions, you’d find that, once a body has lost the battle while in a state of health, it’s going to lose the war after being disabled.
3.3 Disease Complicated by By-Products of Symbiotic Bacteria
At their strongest, bacteria complicate disease because the byproducts of bacterial fermentation or putrefaction are deadly poison. In fermentation the by-products are lactic acid, acetic acid or vinegar, and alcohol. Putrefaction involves nitrogenous foods or proteins. The by-products of rotting protein are ammonias, indoles, skatoles, purines, etc. They are toxic within organisms, although the body can normally eliminate these poisons. In fact, our feces and urine are loaded with the by-products of protein decomposition, both from our body decomposition and bacterial decomposition.
You’ve heard of the ideal of living in a germ-free environment. That is an impossibility, of course. Trillions of bacteria are in and on our bodies at all times. If we were free of these minute organisms, we’d soon die. They perform many essential services for us which will be discussed in a later lesson. Suffice it to say that we live symbiotically with bacteria.
Bacteria are wrongfully blamed for our own indiscretions. It’s the rare medic who doesn’t find a scapegoat for his client and remove responsibility for problems from the shoulders of the sufferer.
Medical logic is not very logical. According to medical thinking, bacteria or viruses invade our bodies and destroy our cells. It would seem that our body defenses permit this by their intimations. It would seem that once these invading entities have a headstart they would not stop destroying the rest of the cells of the organism, especially as the first strike has crippled the organism and lessened its ability to defend itself. By medical logic, the bacteria are there in greater numbers, for they proliferate astronomically when they’ve found a feast situation. How can the body reverse this situation and recover? ‘
The medics believe that they administer drugs that kill off the bacteria so that the body can have a chance to recover. Also, they have people believing that medicines are healing agents or that they assist in healing.
When you start asking deep penetrating questions into the causes of disease, the medical theories fall of their own weight. They cannot be sustained in the face of self-evident truths. So we have to find the rational basis for disease causation.
Disease has a sole unitary cause. It is instituted and conducted by the body itself. It is the only organized entity capable of coordinating the various processes of disease. Disease is occasioned when toxic materials that we have generated within or taken in from without are uneliminated due to the body’s inability to cope with them. These debilitate and devitalize the organism until, at a point where it can no longer tolerate the growing toxic load at its mean level of vitality, the body institutes a crisis, redirecting its body energies to the enemy within.
Let’s go back to pneumonia. Physicians worry that when a person has a cold or the flu, it will become pneumonia. It occurs so many times among their patients that they make “heroic” efforts to prevent this. They administer drugs galore. Yet, pneumonia occurs so frequently despite the drugging that doctors feel powerless in the face of pneumonia, one of the primary causes of death in our society. The question arises: what causes pneumonia then? Does pneumococcus survive the drug onslaught and cause pneumonia anyway?
If colds are, as we teach, a cleansing process, how does a body that is in crisis get yet worse? If the body is eliminating toxic materials profusely through the respiratory tract as in colds and flu, then how do the lungs also become contaminated?
All cases of colds and flu recover very quickly if the sufferer goes to bed in an airy room with lots of natural daylight. Almost total rest is called for. Total abstention from food but plenty of pure water is needed. Under these conditions debility ceases in from one to three days. But, if the sufferer refuses to rest and continues to eat the same bad food that contributed heavily to the crisis in the first place, the eliminative effort may be less than the continued toxic buildup, in which case pneumonia may be a concomitant. But, if the sufferer goes to a medic and gets drugged in addition, the body turns its attention to eliminating the drugs. It may cease the cold or flu altogether in face of the greater enemy. The continued toxic buildup spreads to the lungs. The drugs and toxic materials may concentrate so strongly in the lungs as to cause death or to set the stage for cancer. Many autopsies reveal people who have had pneumonia or who have smoked or lived in highly polluted air have tumors, indurated sacs of lung tissue which encapsulate toxic substances in the lungs. Many cases of long fasts have been conducted in which pneumonia had been suffered many years before. The drugs that had been given had been noted to make their exit from the lungs during the course of the fast as the body autolyzed the tumors and expelled their contents.
Yet, despite the obvious causes of pneumonia, medical professionals are still saying that pneumococcus causes pneumonia when, in fact, more than 25% of pneumonia cases never have pneumococcus. Now that medics are getting more and more away from the germ theory of disease causation they’re invoking viruses as the culprits. This is true only if by viruses we mean uneliminated metabolic wastes. But when you start probing into what viruses are and how they cause disease, you might call this the “evil spirit” theory of disease, for the medics imbue viruses with all the qualities of malevolent spirits.
Such blindness characterizes the medical profession. The purpose of disease is so evident that medics can’t see it. Just as with the guard in the concentration camp, they are looking for something that doesn’t exist and they overlook that which they see so plainly all the time.
Medical researchers have chronicled over 20,000 different diseases. They name almost every variation. They have multiple names because of the number of organs or tissue systems that exhibit symptoms. All of this is only one disease. And the disease, which we call constructive disease, is occasioned by the body itself and is known as toxemia or toxicosis.
- 1. What Is Disease?
- 2. Purposes Of Disease
- 3. Toxemia Is The Universal Cause Of Disease
- 4. Natural Hygiene Or Life Science Care Of The Ailing
- 5. The Character Of Disease
- 6. Questions & Answers
- Article #1: A True Perspective Of Health And Disease by Dr. Herbert M. Shelton
- Article #2: The Nature Of Disease: Its Cause And Purpose by Dr. Hereward Carrington