Around 2500 years ago, Hippocrates stated that "All disease begins in the gut." Before that, Aristotle said "Let food be thy medicine."

If only we would have listened back then, we wouldn't be where we are today...

The Misconceptions of Health

This could very easily be a ridiculously long post, but instead of talking about the details, I'm going to talk broadly about health and what people think versus the reality of it. I can't go too much into detail at once, but perhaps this will be a good introductory. This will mostly likely be a three part-er

First, lets go back to when we started getting it all wrong. Let's take a step back into the original conceptualization of what the human body was. and how that affected the progression of history....

Phase 1 The Human Automaton

Somewhere in the 16th-century, French surgeon, Ambroise Paréstated, stated that to perform surgery is, "To eliminate that which is superfluous, restore that which has been dislocated, separate that which has been united, join that which has been divided and repair the defects of nature." After that, the first stage of our misunderstanding about the human body begins; Reduction-ism in biology is born and surgery became common practice.

Ever since people have been curious about how the human organism has worked, people have been repeatedly cut open to allow a number of observers to witness the magic in the inner-workings of our bodies. Somewhere along the way, scientists got the notion that like a machine, we too are a creation of multiple parts that make up a greater contraption. As curiosity further grew, and as more research was conducted, it became increasingly obvious that not only could we cut some of those little pieces out from the system and they would still work, but in some cases, it seemed to work even better. With that discovery, we had figured out that we are biological machines that can be taken apart and re-assembled.

To heal a person is simple. Anything that doesn't work, replace it. Anything broken, fix it. Anything not serving a purpose, remove it. When an organ is no longer functional, it's time to get another one and put it in the same spot you found the original one. When we become fearful of possible infections that may or may not cross our way, if it has to do with a vestigial organ, it might as well be removed so that it can't cause a problem down the road. If a blood clot forms in the veins, perhaps the veins can be manipulated in such a way like a bunch of wires to re-direct the blow of blood, or electricity, by re-arranging them and making alternate connections. These are the fundamentals of surgery and are the root of an idea that the whole is only the sum of all it's parts, interchangeable or not. Unfortunately, (for reasons we would delve into here,) this isn't the case within a human body. Granted, that you can get away with a lot of abuse, mutilation of the body is rarely ever necessary, and is in most cases, negligent. However, nonetheless, reductionist surgeries are still performed to this day, beneficial or not.

Phase 2 Evolving Out of Our Own Organs

In 1980, Charles Darwin stated in his book, "The Decent Man," a number of, what he believed were redundant, and punitive organs that we now deem as vestigial in our bodies. It was determined then, that due to evolution, there were pieces of our robot bodies that upgraded, and others that remained the same and, inevitably, became outdated. Since some of those parts were no longer of any use to us, the natural assumption to draw from that was that it would be in our favor to just remove them before they could cause us any harm. After all, why would we keep hanging wires around if they only will drag aside us and get tangled up somewhere?

Phase 3 The War On Bugs

At the turn of the 1900's Harvey Wiley essentially founded the organization responsible for Pure Food and Drug Act. Food became more standardized and more prevalent. As more people ate and less people farmed, however, the hands of the crops passed from millions of small owned farmers, into the hands of corporations that had the resources to mass populate a limited number of crops until the earth was left with less nutrients than the plants needed to thrive. Plants grew sicker due to the lack of crop rotation, and therefore, couldn't defend themselves from invading specious of bugs.

Since you can grow almost any crop with just the bare essential 8 nutrients, those ingredients were added to the soil so that a food replica could start growing in it's plot's graveyard. Harvey fought this by stage by showing his research on the poor contents of the soil, but he died without resolution. The soil continued to become saturated with life support and the bugs that followed we eliminated by compounds that would kill them off. Were the effects of these poisons dangerous to the consumer? Of course not....says the companies growing them.

Phase 4 Dangerous Food

Anything food that provides less energy than it takes to digest, is negligible to one's health. Harvey discovered that bread fit into this category along with cereals, crackers, along side with foods that were a great part of an average american's diet. By this point, however, it became so ingrained in society's households, it was a futile attempt. There was too much to risk in such a dynamic change of a person's habits. There was too much money to be lost if these foods were made illegal to sell as Harvey suggested.

Unfortunately, void soil creates sick plants, and sick plants bear poor fruit. Without enough substance to sustain the appealing look of a healthy food product, concoctions were created to give a layer of effect to the food replicas. plump and colorful characteristics were painted on store products to manage a look that could no longer be achieved by natural means. If food looked like it would without it's appealing disguise, people would be less eager to eat it.

Phase 5 The Progression of Allopathy- solutions in a jar

As food grew weaker, so did it's consumers. Since we were likened to that of a machine and in the habit of eliminating the problem by extraction, quick fixes started being created to reverse the appearance of sickness in ourselves, much like it had by camouflaging the food that haled us arrive to our diseased state. Any part that couldn't bear any more burden would be removed, and anything that cause discomfort was muffled by the effects of pharmaceuticals.

Curing a problem would involve rebuilding the robot, however, replacing it's parts, ensured a business model for the designer of it's parts. The robot didn't need to be fixed though, only under the impression that it was. As long as it could move around oblivious to it's own conditions, it would, for all intents and purposes, be much the same. A cold is common and the flu happens every year. Anybody who doesn't visit the doctor at least once a year is in risk of being left out of the loop. A mother who doesn't pay for the additional tests during her pregnancy obviously doesn't value her child and anyone who doesn't vaccinate them once they are born are subject to being ridiculed. A perfect system to ensure that the system doesn't collapse from it's own weight. A perfect trap to keep the unknowing entranced.

That's all for today. We will continue this in part 2.

I take health very seriously and I will be writing a book on it down the road, but I will have plenty more where this is coming from and I will explain it as we go along. Thanks for reading and Keep Steeming!