Terrain vs Germ theory and the food war

This is something else rolling around in my brain these days...I tell ya, its dangerous to let me read! Anyways its about 'terrain' or our base really. And like all these food discussions and gluten arguments, vegetarianism etc that are being blogged about, whats the connection, whats the big picture? Take a gander at this blog..it was a good summery of what I wanted to start to share. Germ Theory vs. Terrain Theory Apr 20th, 2011 by Stephen Sounds interesting, huh? On this day in 1862, French scientist Louis Pasteur, with Claude Bernard, completed the first test of a process that is known to us today as pasteurization, which is based on certain presuppositions regarding germs: Enter the Germ Theory. You are walking down the street on a sunny day, when suddenly, out of the wild, blue yonder, you are attacked by deadly germs/bacteria! The only way for you to escape is to kill the bad guys! Just one problem. God created those so-called germs for a reason. They are micro-turkey vultures, going around cleaning up messes. The only reason you would be attacked by them is if they thought you were dead. What you may not know is that Pasteur had a contemporary named Michael Beauchamp. Beauchamp acknowledged that the germs were out there, but articulated that the “bad guys” could only win if the protective defenses allowed them access to the victims. This is what’s known as the Terrain theory. Terrain encompasses many things: hygiene, stress, immune response, lifestyle, etc. You are back walking down the street, and there are germs all around you. However, you are not afraid of them because you live a fairly regimented lifestyle: you exercise regularly, you get good sleep at night, you eat three meals a day, and you are on your way home to kiss your mom (or your wife/husband, if you’re married). Now the above was probably a horrible attempt at analogy, but the point is, we have a responsibility to create an well defended terrain to keep the “bad guys” out. Since the human nature is to choose the path of least resistance, and because we like to think of ourselves as victims, Pasteurs’ theory has been widely accepted and Beauchamps’…who has ever heard of him? The entire western world has bought into the Germ theory. Ironically enough, on his deathbed, Pasteur rose on an elbow and gasped: “Beauchamp was right. It is all about the terrain”. However, Beauchamp’s theory has fathered the wellness movement, which is essentially anything the western world calls old fashioned (homeopathy, etc.) Germs or bacteria have no influence, whatsoever, on live cells. Germs or microbes flourish as scavengers at the site of disease. They are just living on the unprocessed metabolic waste and diseased, malnourished, nonresistant tissue in the first place. They are not the cause of the disease, any more than flies and maggots cause garbage. Flies, maggots, and rats do not cause garbage but rather feed on it. Mosquitoes do not cause a pond to become stagnant! You always see firemen at burning buildings, but that doesn’t mean they caused the fire… (source) It really brings into question alot of modern day practices regarding our food. Take pasteurized milk. It was originally processed so that farmers could ship their milk into the large cities unspoiled (raw milk lasts about a week before becoming buttermilk). Did God intend for milk to last longer than a week? I don’t think so. There’s alot to be said for fresh food. Oh, I know it’s awfully inconvenient, but I cringe when I see our military eating those MREs. There ain’t a whole lot of nutritional value in those things. Our supermarkets’ offerings aren’t much better. “Fat-free” is not necessarily a good thing. God made fat for a reason. That goes for all the other “insert word here- free” food. So, as I was saying...the terrain. The base. Like our kungfu, we are only as good or as strong as our base--how well we know our basics. What has food got to do with it? Its our base--our health, our strength. And even more 'base' or terrain than that is our soil itself--if we kill the microbes and bacteria in the soil that keeps our food healthy with chemicals how do we expect to be healthy? If we corrupt a plant by injecting animal dna that NEVER would have become a part of that plant in nature, what have we done to that plant, the soil and ourselves again? We can medicate all we like, but alot of our problems are coming from a diseased or lacking base--no medication in the world can make up for that kind of a problem any more than all the speed in the world or flashiness will make up for poor technique in kungfu. We need to heal at the lowest levels to heal the top. Health starts with the very basic--whats going in your mouth and where did it come from? Is it healthy too? So let this month start a journey for you--a search for knowlege, and ultimately health. I dont know about you, but I want to be enjoying my health to the very end and I'm willing to do what I can to ensure that and enjoy myself too:)