This is a big subject! It will take more than one post to cover this subject, but I want to get you pondering this:
"All disease begins in the gut."
ALL disease begins in the gut.
Eczema?
Asthma?
MS?
Chron’s disease?
Arthritis?
Cancer?
Autism?
Autoimmune diseases?
Mental illness?
High blood pressure?
Clogged arteries?
Tooth decay?
Osteoporosis?
Weight gain/weight loss?
Allergies? (Hay fever, seasonal, whatever)
Poor thyroid function?
Consistent sore throats, flus, colds?
Irritable Bowel Syndrome?
Congestive Heart Failure?
…..and the list goes oooooonnnnn!!!
YES, YES, YES, YES, and if I wanted to be cheesy I’d say 1,000 times yes. 🙂 ALL disease begins in the gut.
God made our bodies SO incredibly perfect that we could be disease free. We really could. Our bodies have the natural ability to fight off *many* things. Yes, even cancer. (If our gut is in perfect condition we will *never* have cancer). 80 to 85% of our body’s immune system (the disease fighter that God designed for us) lies in our GUT. You heard me right–in our gut….
Most of modern medicine denies a connection between what we eat and how we feel or what diseases we end up with.
I’ll post more on this topic. There is much more to say. Just think about it….What we eat matters. What we eat should be real food. What we eat should nourish us.
“All disease begins in the gut.”
Hippocrates, the father of modern medicine
When we have our students read books one of the things we should and often have them do is find out a little bit about the author. This informs the worldview, characterization and plot of the book. It is a great idea to know the source of what we are reading. So for the above statement it would only make sense that we should find out a little bit about the author of this statement.
Hippocrates lived about 400 years before Christ and is the founder of modern medicine. He was the first to separate illness and disease from the idea that it was “punishment from the gods”. This went against the traditional belief of the time. There were many things, however that he got wrong because what is known about the body today was not even possible in that day.
There is nothing to indicate that he knew or worshiped the God of the bible, so he did not have a God-centered worldview. So can we take a statement or quote and apply it to today? Probably not in it’s entirety. To say that ALL disease begins in the gut is a very broad statement that doesn’t take into account many variables such as genetics, pestilence, the work of God, viruses, bacterial infections and more.
Does what we eat affect our health – yes, absolutely. Can we fight off many diseases by eating right and taking care of our bodies? Yes, absolutely. In fact we are commanded to take care of our bodies in the scripture. Far more important however, is taking care of our minds and our spirits. Sometimes he will even allow affliction in our bodies to readjust our hearts to be centered on Him. God is most concerned with our hearts – are we loving Him and loving others the way we should. These 2 great commandments challenge me as I learn to walk by the Spirit every day.
Krysti, good thoughts. Eventually, I’ll be writing an article about so-called genetic diseases. Genetic diseases are western, modern diseases. They don’t exist in primitive people groups. Interestingly, though, they do exist in the next generation of those primitive people groups *after they start eating modern foods*. There was a ton of research done by Weston A. Price, a US Dentist in the 1930’s who traveled around the world studying these people. There would be a group of people living in a remote location eating only home-grown, homemade foods, and they would have less cavities (or none), less health issues (or none), no TB (the big thing in that day that everyone was getting), and longer life spans. He studied their relatives who moved into the city and began eating refined sugar and flour–they started having health problems, problems in child birth, tooth decay, etc., and their children started having health problems…and their children’s children’s children—well–that’s us….
80 to 85% of the immune system is in the gut–God made it for our protection. Our immune system is directly passed from parents to baby (mostly the moms, but partially the dads). Dr. Campbell-McBride (who wrote about the GAPS Diet) said that 100% of the time that she interviews the parents of an autistic kid, one of the parents has either chronic constipation or diarrhea. Constipation and diarrhea are direct immune responses and should be a clear sign to us that the immune system is weak. So 100% of the time, according to Dr. Campbell-McBride, kids with autism are born from parents with weakened immune systems–and the child’s brain is what suffers….There’s something to it…
God made perfect food for us. Like Karry said, it was humans who tainted it. We like it fast and cheap and we want it to taste sweet, too. Food from a package was invented by humans. We can’t expect that we can eat that kind of “food” and be nourished and healthy and live fully the way God intended us to.
Ever since eating whole foods, Karry and I have had much more energy. I know that the Gospel is the most important thing that people need to know–and that Jesus is the one who REALLY heals, not food. But at the same time, we need to be good stewards of our bodies. Sometimes I wonder if packaged foods are just another method of Satan’s to get at believers. When we were eating those kinds of foods, we didn’t have as much energy, I felt really sick, Isaac wasn’t growing (Isaac is up to 48 lbs now–from 39 before we started tweaking his food), and we just felt *blah* a lot of the time. Satan can use that…..I think when we eat well, we’re better equipped to be used by God…. 🙂
Of course God may afflict anyone by any means, for His glorious purpose.
I think a lot of the health problems in our society today are caused by selfish ambitions. God put together a plan for us to live in harmony with Him at the beginning of time, and He provided all that we need in order to do that. Our sin brought down a curse– part of which we would have to toil the ground painfully to eat of it. In short, it’s hard to get food, and that is by God’s design. We humans have done an amazing job making the work easier. We’ve tamed the beasts and tamed the land. We’ve built large storehouses and large distribution networks. We’ve beat the curse! Or have we? In the midst of our attempt to remove the painful curse, our selfish nature has fostered a lazy, entitlement when it comes to food. We want it now, we want it cheap (or free), and we don’t want to have to work hard for it. Sure, someone has to work for it, but even then, we do whatever shortcuts we can to mass produce our food, whether or not it’s the healthiest thing we can provide. The motivation for the food producers has moved from providing good food, to increasing profits by any means possible. And we are back to the selfishness of man.
What does this have to do with “All Disease Begins in the Gut?” Is it possible that our selfish ambition to make money, at the expense of healthy food, has continually weakened our immune systems (which is supported nutritionally through the gut) so much that we become more prone to diseases. Many diseases have been on the rise. I think it’s due to our food choices.
Hippocrates’ statement is general, but that doesn’t make it incorrect. Hippocrates may or may not have been a follower of the one true God, but that doesn’t mean that God couldn’t use him to make a statement of truth.
Thanks for the dialogue you guys. I respect what you are doing in trying to make positive choices for your family. You are not just talking about it you are doing it. Keep up the good work!
I think you both have great points. We rarely used packaged food when the kids were growing up – most everything I made was from scratch. We couldn’t afford it for one thing – with 5 kids and one income it was tough. We also rarely went out to eat. I am sure that this was beneficial to my kids and their health, even though that may not have been my first thought at the time.
Kerry – I too was thinking about the curse and the fact that the ground was cursed and in toil we would produce and realized that until there is a new earth we will never be able to even produce “perfect” nutrition – although we can get pretty close. The garden was perfect nutrition for Adam and Eve – and it just went downhill after that!
The main point I was trying to make is that we need to be careful about using ALL and EVERY. We also need to consider worldviews and agendas. I have lived long enough to see “studies” be completely reversed by the next person to come along (sometimes years later) and do a different “study”. It can be very frustrating to get to the truth.
There are so many variables in scripture, in individual lives, in societies, and with God’s sovereignty, There is no one perfect answer for one family or one person. (Example: your family has many allergies to deal with, while ours does not – therefore we have more options available to us and still feel great and have lots of energy!) We all must do what we feel that God requires of us and accept and love those that do it differently. Matt Boswell just wrote a blog that sums it up really well – being sensitive to others. http://maboswell.blogspot.com/ It took me a long time to learn this lesson and sometimes I still don’t do it well. Forgive me if I have offended or been unkind in any way.
Love you guys,
Krysti