Positive Health Online

continued from part 1 ...

What have perspectives and perceptions got to do with nutrition? Wouldn't they be mental or emotional whilst nutrition is physical? The connection between them can be more easily understood if it is appreciated that every emotional state has a physical component, and every physical state (including digestion) has an emotional component. Human beings are integrated whole entities of spirit, soul (mind, will, emotions) and body, not separate compartments.

Nutrition – Food or Fuel Giving Support for Life

It is readily appreciated that stress overload, whether acute or chronic, or anxiety state or 'nerves' can cause lack of appetite, or conversely unhealthy eating choices, or eating to excess. Although unseen, but just as real, is the fact that stress or 'nerves' affect the digestion of food by interfering with release of digestive enzymes and resulting acid/alkaline balance.

Stress overload also causes circulatory imbalance as digestion is put on the physiological 'back-burner' to allow skeletal muscular activity anticipated by a heightened sense of alarm from increased adrenaline output. In long-term negative stress overload this might be dismissed as merely individual personality type, but the effects of unrelaxed physiology are still present whether acknowledged or not. This circulatory imbalance affects the body's water rationing system which can reduce available water rations to digestive processes, (slowing the passage of food through the stomach and intestines), resulting in either constipation, cramps and ileo-caecal valve (ICV) malfunction and/or sporadic bouts of diarrhoea and even vomiting, as the digestive system is unable to process stomach contents. An example of this state of physiological dehydration is one of the contributing factors of morning sickness in pregnancy.

ICV malfunction has many blurry symptoms caused by the backing up of large intestine contents into the small intestine, because the 'one-way' valve does not close properly after discharging contents into the large intestine. Symptoms are varied and can include nausea, headache, visual disturbances, 'psuedo' hiatus-hernia, shoulder blade pain; often stress overload (especially from long-term stresses) is not considered as a contributory cause of ICV malfunction. Toxicity from amalgam fillings can aggravate ICV malfunction symptoms and cause even more blurring of symptoms. There are also other contributory causes of ICV malfunction including parasites which have evaded destruction due to lack of a full complement of digestive enzymes, especially from the stomach and gall bladder.

There is nothing more important than being able to alkalize the acid stomach contents as only the stomach is able to withstand digestive acidity. Where water is reduced to gastro-intestinal function (from salivary production through to bowel elimination), the body toxicity level is equivalently increased by way of cellular dehydration. For instance, a relatively hydrated cell with 90% water and 10% toxicity[3] will be increased in toxicity relative to the amount it is dehydrated. The same cell containing only half the amount of water 45% but the same 10% toxic substances (which do not diminish with dehydration) will boost the apparent toxic load to over double, potentially leading to a detoxification crisis. And if the toxic material is embedded in the cell's 'self' identification, this could potentially result in an auto-immune crisis as the immune system attempts to eliminate toxins, but in doing so has to eliminate the cell at the same time. Such a state would automatically cause a pH balance in favour of acidity and have effects involving teeth, mucous membranes and cellular structure anywhere including the brain and mental/emotional (mood) environment. ICV correction (using acupressure points or abdominal massage), is made very difficult in a dry, acid prone state.


Most body processes are subconscious and run on 'automatic pilot' like installed computer software. The computer functions like the human brain, software is installed and runs until modified or deleted. The digestive system, emotional responses (which affect other body systems like digestion), and triggers such as sensitivities, anniversary records (trauma embedded in body structure/function replayed on a brain loop), are subject to the same system; this is why it is important to not see nutrition as purely an external physical issue separate from other components of integral human health. If the best possible nutrition is taken in, it has to get from mouth to cell and that involves navigating a physiological road map with many factors, not just the quality of the nutrition within the food.

Health is a whole person issue and foundations are laid at the beginning of life in infancy and childhood. This is why we need to look to the foundation of individual health issues from a whole person perspective; only then can we fully benefit from building good nutrition into the fabric of life. The subject of infant feeding[5] is extremely important in building good physical and emotional health.

There are many avenues of help available to address foundational emotional issues, but like a jigsaw they can all work together. Good nutrition is complementary to whole person integration just as whole person integration will benefit the uptake of good nutrition.

The triangle of good health is based on rehydration, nourishment and detoxification. Emotional 'spanners' (usually quite invisible and unidentified apart from the problems/symptoms[4] they cause) can interfere with any of these areas; hopefully this short article will provoke some questions about stubborn problems and repetitive patterns, and lead to examination of such issues.

Good Nutrition is about Quality, Intake and Uptake

Food quality is purely a physical issue about the best quality organic, replete, unprocessed whole foods, fluids and oils, cooked appropriately along with adequate intake of pure water and unrefined sea salt.

Intake of those foods and fluids is affected by the pre-existing state of the individual person who intakes the foods. This involves imbalances in structure and function dependent upon hydration and toxicity states which will affect the movement of nutrition from mouth to cell. These states are also affected by emotional states and 'software programs' which, once laid down in life, stay that way unless 'modified or deleted'.

Uptake of nutritional intake involves the deeper processes of preparing external foods to become the liquid gold of life, which is the only form of nutrition acceptable to individual cells. Raw food chewed in the mouth can become either the first stage of this transition to essential life-giving fluid, or the first stage of the deviation from what it should be.  For example, food becomes contaminated by mixing it with mercury from amalgam fillings during chewing, or by cooking it in tap water containing fluoride in an aluminium pan, enabling the fluoride to take the aluminium content through the blood-brain barrier.

Food intake and uptake include the involvement of physical and emotional factors, making the study of nutrition an all-important, all-encompassing field of discovery.

Notes

1. Examples of eustress are graduations, weddings, births, holidays, parties, paying off the mortgage, winning something, nice things happening which make people excited even though there might be stressful deadlines or things to do for the events etc.
2. Examples of distress are deaths, stress overload, looking after ill people, divorce, financial difficulties, long-term frustrations, rejections, loss or separation etc.
3. These figures are purely arbitrary, for example, only.
4. Problems/symptoms are important alerts/alarms (depending upon the severity level) to direct us to something which needs dealing with. Ignoring or suppressing them is not only leaving the problem there, but usually compounding the situation with suppressive drugs or other measures which will have to be dealt with further along the line; it is usually not as easy as taking notice at the first signs.
5. See Infant Feeding (Informed Choice Health Course (ICHC) article).