Balance: Key To Good Health, Part 1

We live in a world of duality: Day and night. Light and darkness. Health and sickness. And to underscore the concept of polarity (or opposites), Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) has been using the terms yin and yang to describe the interdependence and relationship of opposites in preventing and treating various bodily ailments. So to live well, we have to balance our body through proper diet and good health.

Dr. Fe Jocelyn G. Merced, who was featured earlier in our blog, offers some insights on the importance of balance in achieving health and vitality. She therefore proposes that there are logical things we can do right now to boost the body’s natural healing ability without costing us a fortune. What follows are health facts to whet our appetite:

• Our bodies are different, yet our foundation is the same. We all breathe oxygen. We all have the same chemistry – it’s just that our bodies are so complex. Why do some get sick from being exposed to something that their neighbor is immune to? Once you understand the complexity of the human body, it all makes sense.

• You must work with your body – not against it – and that means discovering and maintaining certain things that your body requires. And as you’ll see, if you can correct your body’s foundation, it has huge benefits in ALL areas of your many systems. Never ever discount the healing power of the human body.

• Drugs work for some symptoms of disease. However, there are two major problems with that approach. First, the drugs often directly cause more problems (the disclaimers and warnings are several pages long). Secondly, lasting change will not occur if the root cause of the problem is not corrected. A symptom is NOT the cause and by avoiding the cause (beside making lasting change more difficult), you create OTHER problems. So why treat the symptom when it is only temporary at best?

• Treat the cause and never worry about the symptom again. The bottom line is… Nature Still Knows More Than Man!

• A confusing point for many: If acids are bad, how can lemons or limes be good? First, there are different kinds of acids – and they are not at all bad – in fact, they are much needed in our body. It’s just the proportion of certain kinds of acid in a sick body that’s out of whack. Secondly, there are four kinds of foods: acid foods; alkaline foods; acid-forming foods; and alkaline-forming foods. The last two are related to the chemical process that happens AFTER a food is eaten. Lemon is an example. Because of its citric acid and potassium, it creates carbonic acid when it enters the stomach, together with citric acid; this combination causes the release of secretin, signaling the pancreas to release sodium bicarbonate and other alkalines into the small intestines.

• Bicarbonate is released into the body’s circulation through the lymph. But it is the potassium citrate in the small intestines that is the strongest alkaline buffers. Doctors have been using potassium citrate for years without problems to raise pH in urine to prevent acid-forming stones. However, a less expensive and pleasant alternative to raise pH in urine is simply adding lemon juice to your drinking water.

(Part 2 of this article will be posted next Monday, Dec.5, 2011. – J.P.)