DISEASE AND IT’S CAUSES

Namaste🙏

Today in this blog we are going to discuss, what is disease according to Naturopathy??

HENRY LINDLAHR, in his book “PHILOSOPHY OF NATURAL THERAPEUTICS” described the disease as:-

“An abnormal or inharmonious vibration of the elements and forces composing the human entity on one or more planes of being, in conformity with the destructive principle in Nature applied to individual life. Simply we can say that anything which is abnormal and which hinders any normal functioning in our body is called disease.”

It’s complicated, I know. Let us try to understand it in a simple way. This definition of disease is not just any superficial definition; it is more at the constitutional level. We are aware of the fact that our body is made up of 5 elements (earth, water, fire, air and ether) and the life force. All together, combined in harmonious relation with each other, sustain us as a healthy individual. But due to violation of nature's law, the relation between the 5 elements within themselves and with the life force gets disturbed, and this will directly affect our health. Such abnormal conditions which hinder the body's functioning are known as disease.

Now let us understand what causes these abnormalities at such a gross level.

The answer to this question lies in the “Upas Tree.”

According to naturopathy, the primary cause of all disease is a violation of Nature’s laws, which is done mainly by four means (the roots of the Upas tree):

• Ignorance – When someone ignores the fact about the presence of nature’s laws.
• Indifference – When someone can’t differentiate between the acts which are violating and which are not violating the nature’s laws.
• Lack of self-control – When someone knows everything about nature’s law but can’t help himself to stop violating them due to lack of self-control. (Majority of times this is what happens with me)
• Self-indulgence – Someone with self-indulgent behavior, who gratifies himself in an excess and unrestricted manner. When a person doesn’t know where and when to stop, like we all have seen people who eat a lot or whose mouth is all the time filled with something and they don’t even think once about their body (we amongst our friends call such a person a food gutter).

Violation of Nature’s laws in thinking, breathing, eating, drinking, dressing, working, resting, as well as in moral, sexual, and social conduct, etc., results in certain primary and secondary manifestations of disease.

Primary manifestation of disease occurs in three different ways (forms the stem of the Upas tree):

1. Lowered vitality

Vitality is a life force also known as “prana” or “jivani shakti.” It’s a kind of force or energy that helps our body to perform its various functions by flowing to and fro inside the body and also helps to recover from everyday wear and tear. Due to the constant practice of an unhealthy lifestyle in this modern world, we are massively violating nature’s law, because of which more wear and tear occurs in our body on a daily basis. This increases the usage of vital energy in overcoming the daily wear and tear. This disturbs or imbalances the vital energy, as it increases its usage, and such lowered vitality decreases the cell's ability to fight and to heal itself, so eventually, it causes disease.

2. Abnormal composition of blood and lymph

Every cell in our body needs the proper amount of nutrition to perform its functions, and it’s also equally important to drain away the metabolic end products or waste products produced by the cell during its functioning. Both of these jobs are done through blood and lymph circulation. But due to constant unhealthy dietary intake, the amount of nutrition decreases in comparison to the amount of waste products. Improper food combinations create an over-abundance of waste and morbid matter in the system, which hinders the supply of positive mineral elements or organic salts which are necessary for the elimination of waste materials and systemic poisons from the body. This all causes abnormalities in the composition of blood and lymph.

3. Accumulation of morbid matters and poison in the system

Remember the example I gave in my previous blog of a week-forgotten garbage tin, which stinks horribly bad? The garbage starts to decay and creates an appropriate environment for parasites to grow and ruins the environment of the house. This is exactly what happens inside the body if the morbid matters or the waste products are not eliminated from the body properly. If they start to accumulate, they will become toxic to the body, releasing toxins which create a condition suitable for germs and parasites to grow, and this all will lead to various kinds of disease.

Accumulation of morbid matters and poison are related to lower vitality. Lowered vitality means lowered vibration, and this means lowered resistance to the accumulation of waste and morbid materials. This in turn obstructs the inflow and distribution of vital energy. Thus it becomes apparent how the primary manifestations of disease see-saw and aggravate one another.

Health depends upon an abundant supply of life force (vital energy), the unobstructed, normal circulation of the vital fluids, and perfect oxygenation and elimination of waste. Anything which interferes with these essentials causes disease; anything which promotes them establishes health.

This was all about the primary manifestation of disease, and now we will move towards the secondary manifestation of disease. The secondary manifestations resulting from these primary stages are mostly Hereditary and Acquired Taints. When one violates nature’s law, firstly our body shows its primary effects in the form of primary stages or manifestation of disease. If one doesn’t take care of it and keeps on violating nature’s law, it will lead to a secondary manifestation of disease, which is more chronic than the primary stage. So it’s better to step back immediately and improve our lifestyle as soon as our body shows us primary symptoms.

“Every human being is the author of his own health or disease.”

– Gautam Buddha