Wintertime Illness: Viruses or Something Else?

I have never fully accepted the germ theory of disease. I have always felt that the biological terrain theory of disease makes more sense. Germ theory says that microbes can attack a perfectly healthy plant or animal and cause it to become ill. In practical observation, however, the reverse appears to be the case. My skin is always covered with microbes, but if my skin gets injured, that's when I run the risk of infection. I also believe this holds true for infections transmitted by food, water, or air. My belief is that healthy mucus membranes don't get infected; the membranes are damaged, and the microbes enter afterward. 

This makes sense to me because I believe that everything in nature was designed with a Divine purpose, and microbes were created to recycle dead or dying material and return the elements to the dust from which they came. An apple sitting on the tree is perfectly healthy, but soon after it falls from the tree, it starts to decompose. My skin is healthy, even though it's constantly covered with microbes, but as soon as I get an injury, there is a risk of infection because of the damaged tissue at the site of the wound.

To carry this understanding further, I have come to understand that food poisoning, which is caused by eating food that is being broken down by bacteria, is not because of the bacteria. It's because, as the bacteria decompose the food, they produce microbial endotoxins. These toxins are the major cause of symptoms associated with bacterial infection, rather than the bacteria themselves.  When we sterilize food for preservation, we inhibit microbial activity that would normally decompose the dead food. So, we can preserve food, but this does not stop it from continuing to break down and lose nutritional value. That's why preserved foods have a shelf life. I'll talk more about this issue in this webinar, but now I want to shift this to the issue of viral infections.

Every winter, a large percentage of people experience various symptoms typically labeled as colds or flu. The belief is that tiny bits of genetic material, encased in a protein coating, are being transmitted from one organism to another and that these pieces of genetic material enter cells and hijack them to produce more viruses. This belief is so entrenched in society that few question it.

I have always been suspicious of the viral theory. I once read that the size of a virus relative to a cell is roughly the same as that of a flea relative to an elephant. What we are led to believe is that these viral "fleas" can enter a cellular "elephant" and turn that elephant into a flea-making machine. I've also encountered the idea that viruses are fragments of broken chromosomal material from damaged cells and that, rather than being the cause of cellular damage, they are actually a by-product of it.

Whether any of this is true or not, I started to get better results in overcoming these "viral" diseases when I started looking at the symptoms they exhibit, such as congestion, coughing, sneezing, skin rashes, fevers, etc., as efforts of the body to remove the irritation. I concluded that they were not caused by a foreign microbe but were, in fact, the body's efforts to remove irritating substances. In other words, they were detoxification methods, and the symptoms were "emergency evacuation" attempts to remove toxins. When I sought to support rather than suppress the symptoms, I found that the body recovered faster.

The more I study, the more I'm convinced that the primary reasons we get sick have little to do with microbes and more to do with nutritional deficiencies and toxicity. For the most part, people in modern society are not consuming fresh food, which means they are missing vital nutrients found in fresh, natural foods. They are also exposed to numerous toxins in their food, water, and air, and most disease symptoms are caused by the body seeking to eliminate these toxins, not by microbes. The microbes appear because they are part of the detoxification process.

We'll explore these concepts in this Sunshine Sharing hour and talk about alternative approaches to treating so-called "viral" infections that don't involve trying to "fight" viruses, but rather rely on supporting overall health and vitality and aiding the body's detoxification processes rather than fighting them. Don't miss this important webinar.

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