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If we eat junk food we will have junkie tissues that don’t perform up to par. Organs will subfunction and eventually some kind of health problems develop.

In order to be physically healthy, we have to practice the daily habits that keep our three physical Systemic Functions healthy so that they can keep all the organs, glands, tissues and cells healthy and protect the body from outside infections.

There’s no sense in getting all hung up on what we didn’t do for exercise, or food habits when we were young, that led to our being sick now. It doesn’t matter anymore what we didn’t do in the past. It might be useful to realize that poor health habits when you were growing up have led to your present poor health, but does it really help to discuss it hour upon hour? If we are going to discuss something, let’s discuss in a positive way the nuts and bolts of what we can do now to fix it. More importantly, let’s just get busy and start practicing the right health habits now and start reaping the benefits.

Will it be a little tough in the beginning to establish the opposite habits than you’ve been doing for years. Maybe at first, but when you keep trying you’ll develop new habits.

“But I didn’t know about fasting when I grow up.” Well, OK, but the important thing is, what are you going to do now. Focus on getting busy now.

In the same way, in order to be emotionally healthy, we have to practice the daily emotional habits that keep our Three Systemic Emotions healthy so that they can keep the rest of our emotional condition healthy and protect our minds from being infected by the world’s negativity!

Emotional counseling can be very useful at identifying what happened in our past that led to some of our emotional weaknesses; but then what. Constantly discussing it changes nothing. Let’s discuss it enough to recognize that it happened. Then let’s discuss how to change it. then let’s get busy and practice the right daily emotional habits that will make us strong and healthy emotionally.

The physical health habits of exercise, rest, fasting and eating habits that have already been discussed in this course all have a tremendous influence on our emotional health. Modern research is full of proof, for example, that nutritional deficiencies can change blood quality (i.e. hormones) which can have a tremendous effect on our emotions. But there are also daily emotional habits that need to be developed. Systemic Thinking is a powerful method of strengthening ourselves emotionally.

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1. Farming methods: We strip our soils of vitamins, minerals, enzymes, etc. and we dump tons of chemicals onto our crops. Eating these chemicals has a detrimental effect on our health.

2. Food processing: Processed foods have become the norm since the 1950s. We add chemicals during processing such as preservatives, texturizers, emulsifiers, coloring agents, etc., and processing removes nutrients.

3. Partial Foods: Partial foods don’t contain as many nutrients as whole foods, and they don’t digest as well. Nutrients in one part of a food are often required to digest other parts of that food. For example, a grain of whole rice has seven layers. When whole rice is processed the outer few layers are removed to be sold as rice bran and other products. What is left is white rice. The outer layers not only contain most of the nutrients, but some of those nutrients are needed to digest the nutrients in the inner layers. Consequently, even the nutrients that are left in white rice are not usually digested well.

Another function of the outside layers of whole grains and whole legumes is to keep the kernel from spoiling. Once the grain or bean is broken open, or the outside layers are removed, it starts to turn rancid and loses nutrition. Grains and beans will retain their nutrient content for years if the outside layers are intact and they’re stored properly.

4. Food selection: The older cultures have for centuries put an emphasis on:

a. how foods effect the health of our three Systemic Functions.

b. the digestibility of foods

These days the focus tends to be only on the nutritional content of foods, which is certainly important, but most nutritionists have lost track of how to improve poor digestion, and understand little about the effects of foods on Systemic Function. We need to choose the foods that are right for our present systemic condition. As our state of health improves, our food selection can be freer and more relaxed as long as we practice a good foundation of whole foods.

5. Food storage: Even fresh, good quality food loses nutrients quickly if not stored properly.

6. Food preparation: Whether eaten raw or cooked, how we prepare foods determines their digestibility and nutrient content.

7. Food combination: People with weak digestion need to be careful how they combine foods. Once our digestion normalizes, it’s not much of a concern. The healthy human digestive system is designed to handle many combinations of foods without much problem.

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This is accomplished by first understanding how root causes lead to systemic weaknesses, which in turn lead to chronic illnesses of many kinds.

Although heredity, structural misalignment and emotional trauma are certainly root causes that should be considered as possibilities, our daily health habits are by far the most common root causes.

Our daily health habits
determine our state of health
more than any other causal factors.

Consequently, this course focuses on improving the five most important health habits in a special way that has a profound effect on the Systemic Functions. That’s why we call them the five Systemic Health Techniques.

Fasting is one of these techniques. It applies the same Systemic Health Principles as the other techniques and it improves the health of the Three Systemic Functions, so it is called Systemic Fasting.

Who should practice fasting? Who should avoid it? Many people would like to fast on a regular basis for the physical benefits or for spiritual purposes, but find it too difficult. Many people would like to fast, but have heard that it’s dangerous.

Some people shouldn’t do long fasts without entering an in-patient facility that provides continuous medical supervision. Long fasts can be dangerous for those who have underlying medical conditions. The short duration fasting taught in this course is completely safe, however.

This form of fasting is comfortable and safe. It is a powerful tool for improving your health when it is conducted properly. Anyone can do Systemic Fasting regardless of age or physical condition. Properly practiced it will never cause hunger or produce adverse effects of any kind.

You will learn how to detoxify the body more thoroughly, yet safely, than with other fasting methods and how to correct many kinds of digestive dysfunctions, nutritional deficiencies and the illnesses they lead to.

Some of the popular fasting books teach approaches that may have been safe for most people a few decades ago. However, many such methods are inappropriate for people who have health problems such as hypoglycemia, diabetes, asthma and others that are much more common today.

Once you practice Systemic Fasting for a few months, you will receive so many benefits, we are sure you will make it a part of your new healthier lifestyle for the rest of your life!

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Fatigue is the number one health complain that health care practitioners hear from their patients. People are more tired than they used to be. Unfortunately, fatigue has become so common that we have accepted it as a necessary evil of modern life. We should not.

In recent decades, to counteract tension, stress, and fatigue, we have attempted to separate our work and leisure. On one side we place work, effort, stress and achievement. On the other we put play, relaxation, leisure and the healthy pleasures of life. We squeeze our work into a 40 – 80 hour work week and try to eke out a little time for relaxation and leisure. Here we have made a great and costly error.

A human being is not a machine
which stops and starts when a switch is flipped. 

The tragic result is that we do not have enough energy to enjoy either our work or our leisure, and we find it difficult to relax during either. We are not as effective at our work as we should be, so we do not as feel fulfilled as we could. When we are at work we wish we were at play. When we are at play we cannot fully enjoy it because we are thinking about our ineffective work.

This dilemma comes from a modern misunderstanding of fatigue, rest and vitality. When natural vitality is foreign to us, we interpret high energy as being “hyper” and the only time we feel completely relaxed is when we are exhausted.

Suppose for a moment, that instead of trying to resolve this problem by separating “work-tension” and “leisure-relaxation,” we deliberately bring the two together. What would happen if we were able to take the stress and tension out of our work and the worry out of our play? What if we could eliminate the fatigue from our work and the collapse from relaxation time? We would then be able to enjoy our work more and accomplish more and relaxation time would truly refresh us.

We can become more effective in our work
and enjoy our relaxation time more
by relearning how to rest and relax
and by increasing our vitality.

Most adults need to relearn the skill of relaxation. We can accomplish that by learning effective relaxation technique and practicing it every day until we are good at it again.

In this part of the course you will learn several techniques that allow you to eliminate fatigue, relearn the habit of staying relaxed throughout the day, regain emotional calm, get more rest from your sleep and regain your natural Vitality. This will be accomplished by improving the health of the Three Systemic Functions of the body. This is why we call it Systemic Rest. Once woven into our daily schedule, these techniques allow us to have more than enough energy for our work and leisure time, yet remain relaxed and calm during both.

The post What Is Fatigue and How and How Can We Correct It? appeared first on Systemic Health.

Blood Function

A healthy bloodstream accomplishes two important things.

1. It feeds oxygen, nutrients, hormones, enzymes, and water to all of the cells and tissues.

2. It cleans metabolic waste products (including uric, lactic, ascetic and carbonic acids) and environmental toxins from the tissues. The smallest lymphatic and blood vessels pick up these wastes from the tissues and carry them to the four systems of elimination (lungs, skin, kidneys and colon), which remove wastes from the bloodstream and discharge them from the body.

The bloodstream feeds and cleans
all of the cells and tissues.

The smallest blood vessels, the capillaries, are so small that red blood cells have to pass single file through them! Oxygen, nutrients, hormones, enzymes and water pass through the walls of the blood capillaries into the interstitial fluid in which cells float and finally enter the cells.

When we are fatigued, the body tries to conserve energy in any way that it can. It lowers its metabolic rate and constricts some of the lymphatic and blood capillaries throughout the body.

Here’s an analogy:  Assume we live in a cold climate and we have a big house with lots of rooms, but we only have a small heater. We can’t heat the entire house with a small heater, so we close off the rooms that we are not using to conserve heat and only heat the rooms we use the most.

In a similar way, by constricting some of the blood capillaries, the bloodstream doesn’t have to deliver oxygen, nutrients, hormones, enzymes and water to as many tissues. It also doesn’t have to clean as many tissues. This works well as a temporary solution to short-term fatigue.

However, when low-level fatigue continues over a long period of time, the body stays in emergency conservation mode for too long. Capillary constriction becomes chronic, so the tissues are not fed and cleaned effectively and this contributes to more fatigue. This becomes a slow, downward spiral and we gradually feel more and more fatigue. This is one of the reasons that fatigue is the most common health complaint these days.

Chronic capillary constriction prevents effective
feeding and cleaning of tissues throughout the body,
which must eventually lead to subfunctioning of tissues
(symptoms and health problems).

Chronic capillary constriction is very common these days, especially since the 1950s, when people in industrialized countries became more sedentary and processed foods became the norm. We estimate that more than 90 percent of American adults have this sluggish capillary circulation to the degree that it is causing chronic symptoms of some kind.

The effect of exercise on capillary function
is very important to our health.

One of the primary goals of fitness programs is to strengthen the cardiovascular system. The emphasis is usually placed on strengthening the heart and the larger blood vessels. However, when the cardiovascular system begins to break down, it weakens at a capillary level long before the heart gets weaker and larger blood vessel show plaquing. So, a more basic step that should come before strengthening the heart and the larger vessels is the correction of capillary function. This is an important point that is usually overlooked.

Actually, when we correct chronic capillary constriction, the heart doesn’t have to work as hard to force blood through constricted capillaries, so resting heart rates usually drop substantially after the first few months. This works even though we are not emphasizing increasing heart rate to an extreme during Systemic Exercise sessions.

A more basic step, and a safer approach, is to use a form of exercise that increases the heart rate slightly, yet conserves energy, and opens up the capillaries. We believe this is the most effective first step when beginning an exercise program, even for those in relatively good health.

Historically, Systemic Exercise was sometimes called “tissue stimulation exercise” or “tissue cleansing exercise,” because, in modern terms, it emphasizes opening capillaries instead of increasing the heart rate.

Over the short term, Systemic Exercise provides better feeding of the tissues (delivery of oxygen, nutrients, hormones, enzymes and water) and better cleaning of the tissues. It makes us feel better during and for a few hours after the exercise. Then, of course, capillaries gradually resume their chronically constricted state.

However, after a few months of consistent Systemic Exercise, the condition of the capillaries is more permanently corrected and they stay open as they should, allowing them to feed and clean the tissues more effectively (normally) 24 hours a day. Also, the condition of the four systems of elimination (lungs, skin, kidneys, colon) is improved, and they remove cellular wastes and environmental toxins from the bloodstream more effectively.

Capillary function, and the functioning of the four systems of elimination, together comprise the “metabolic elimination mechanism.” Weaknesses in this mechanism causes a retention of metabolic wastes in the tissues throughout the body, producing many kinds of health problems. Systemic Exercise, along with the other Systemic Health Techniques, improves metabolic elimination and promotes health in dramatic ways.

Many chronic symptoms can be reduced or eliminated
when the tissues’ feeding and cleaning processes are improved. 

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1. Athletic Exercise

The “no pain, no gain” approach is appropriate in athletic exercise. Coaches drive athletes to push beyond their comfortable capacity to improve performance. When athletes experience fatigue or pain during training or competition, even though their body is telling them to stop, their mind has to say “continue anyway.” They must push beyond the point of fatigue and pain if they are to win competitions or break records. In athletic exercise this approach makes sense.

2. Fitness Exercise

We use fitness exercise to get back into good physical condition. It should be much gentler and safer than athletic exercise. However, when people decide to get back into shape, they tend to use athletic activities to do it. What are the results?

The health insurance companies that pay for treatment of injuries tell us that 90 percent of people who start jogging and 35 percent of people who start walking programs are injured during the first six weeks. Sixty percent of people who begin other types of exercise classes are injured within the first six weeks. This includes low-impact and no-impact classes. Sports such as tennis and golf, also have very high injury rates, and weight training also scores very poorly.

The most popular fitness programs are causing injuries and fatigue because they utilize athletic principles and activities instead of fitness principles. But we can’t participate in athletic activities without fatigue or injury unless we are already in good athletic condition. To be comfortable, safe and effective fitness exercise should be regulated by a completely different set of principles than athletic exercise.

If our health is poor, athletic or fitness exercise will reduce our vitality, cause imbalances in our blood quality and impair blood circulation and neurological activity. In other words, they will weaken our Three Systemic Functions instead of improving them. All this will retard our recovery from, or prevention of, chronic health problems.

The author knows from his experience with athletes and fitness buffs that many of them develop health problems caused by the very exercise they have taken up to improve their health.

3. Health Preservation Exercise

Health preservation (therapeutic) exercise requires a different set of principles than athletic or fitness exercise. It should always be appropriate for our condition the moment we are doing it, regardless of our energy level or state of health. As our symptoms and energy vary, our exercise should vary. We should always be able to exercise at a comfortable level no matter how sick we are. There is no room for the “no pain, no gain” approach in health preservation exercise.

When we have health problems of any kind, one of the most common symptoms is lowered vitality. In fact, reduction of our natural vitality is at the core of any chronic illness. Therefore, it is important to keep our energy level up as much as possible, as the body needs large amounts of energy for regeneration and recovery.

In the short term, Systemic Exercise raises our vitality and keeps it up for several hours after each exercise session. In the long term (after a few months) Systemic Exercise causes the body to gradually regain its normal vitality level, correct its blood chemistry and circulation and improve neurological function. In the process, many kinds of health problems can be reduced or eliminated.

By the way, if we want to get back into a fitness or athletic exercise program, Systemic (therapeutic) Exercise is a perfect place to start. In a few months, it lays down an excellent foundation on which to build a effective fitness program. We can then seamlessly progress to athletic exercise if we choose to. We avoid fatigue, injuries and setbacks along the way by laying this solid foundation first

Systemic Principles can be applied to any level of exercise;
for the very sick, for fitness, or for athletics.

The Systemic Health Recovery Course: Part One, Systemic Exercise leads you step-by-step in leaning how to do therapeutic, health preservation exercise. You can do it no matter what level of health you are starting from, no matter what kind of chronic health problems you have.

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Vitally has been better understood by traditional health specialists in some of the older cultures. In India it is called prana; in China it is called qi (chi); in Japan it’s ki; in Hebrew it’s called ruach; in new testament Greek it’s pneuma. In the West we used to call it vim, or vigor. Recently we call it bio-magnetic energy or vital energy. It is the subtle, basic energy that animates all the body’s functions. Perhaps it is best described as the breath of life breathed into every human being.

Most atoms (ions) carry a positive or negative charge. Most cells in the body carry a positive or negative charge. Every organ has its own quality and quantity of bio-magnetic energy. Vital energy is also organized into main pathways that circulate though the body. Key points along those pathways are manipulated by acupuncture and acupressure. In a practical sense, our Vitality is the energy we feel physically, how we feel emotionally, and our mental focus.

Our Vitality is also our emotions. What we habitually think and feel about ourselves, our Creator, other people, and our lives, can make us tired or energetic. Negative emotional habits interfere with our body’s usage of oxygen, nutrients and hormones and cause our blood to hold on to cellular wastes, which causes fatigue and systemic toxemia. Positive emotion (natural Vitality) promotes improvements in our blood quality.

Our emotions and our physical energy
are not only closely related
– they are the same thing!

Example: Several years ago I was cutting firewood out at the woodpile. I was in a worried mood. I was dwelling on some weighty problems I was faced with, and I was getting tired from cutting the firewood. Just as I decided to put down my ax and go into the house and rest, the phone rang.

The phone call was from a friend who had very exciting, positive news about a serious problem he had overcome. I was very happy for him. After the call I continued to think about my friend’s exciting good news. I went back out to the woodpile and cut wood for hours with no fatigue at all. I felt great!

What had changed? Where did all that energy come from? Instead of brooding about negative things in my life, I had thought about someone other than myself, and I had dwelt on positive things.

“A cheerful heart gives health to the bones.”

We all occasionally have experiences like mine at the woodpile. If we are in the habit of dwelling on the negative, it can lead to chronic tiredness and other chronic symptoms. Why not purposely practice dwelling on positive, worthwhile, healthy things the same way we would practice healthy physical exercise to make our bodies stronger? We would be a lot healthier emotionally and physically if we did.

Everything the body does burns up energy.

The body needs energy for basic physiologic activities – digestion, thinking, breathing, heartbeat, etc. The body also needs to clean up cellular waste products and toxins, and that takes energy. Then it needs energy for all our daily activities – work, play, study, etc.

When Vitality is chronically depleted, we lack energy for daily activities. Even worse, our body doesn’t have the energy it needs for it’s own upkeep. It gets behind in feeding, cleaning, repairing and protecting itself, so the body starts to break down, and symptoms must be produced eventually.

In many of the older cultures it has been understood for centuries that the lack of Vitality is at the core of all chronic symptoms. The very first thing that goes wrong is a drop of natural Vitality. Then the body’s processes start to subfunction… then illness follows. Modern people tend to think, “I’m sick, so I’m tired”. Really, a drop in natural vitality always precedes illness.

To preserve our health we must be more aware of the Vitality our body needs. Instead of thinking only about our immediate needs – enough energy to get our work done and get through the day – we need to provide an abundant supply so the body has enough energy to run itself and make repairs.

Our vitality is how we feel
both physically and emotionally.

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1. Incoming Impulses: Reports from the tissues and organs travel along neurons to the brain, which is then able to keep a running inventory on all the workings of the body. The brain monitors all physiological processes.

2. Outgoing Impulses: The brain sends out controlling, corrective commands through neurons to all the tissues and organs. The brain animates and controls all physiologic processes.

Any weakness or impairment of Neurological Function can prevent some commands from passing between the brain and the tissues. As Neurological Function gets weaker, brain and neurological symptoms and diseases often arise. Furthermore, since Neurological Function is systemic, it’s weakness can lead to symptoms anywhere in the body.

Also, the brain and nerves must be fed and cleaned by Blood Function just like any other tissues. In fact, the brain uses more oxygen and certain nutrients and hormones than any other organ.

Even slightly decreased
oxygen, nutrient or hormone levels in the brain
can cause poor mental clarity or memory,
or even serious neurological health problems.

Weak Neurological Function can appear as chronic pain, poor physical coordination, or slow learning ability. It can manifest as poor mental clarity (poor memory, concentration, etc.) and many other symptoms. Symptoms such as these should first be brought to the attention of a professional health care provider. However, a great deal can be accomplished toward improving Neurological Function, and therefore many chronic health problems, by using the techniques taught in The Systemic Health Recovery Course.

We’ll take a look at the third Systemic Function, Vitality Function, in the next post.

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Everyone’s body is different, so it is impossible to predict which tissues and organs will subfunction the most and which symptoms and illnesses will be produced first. The body can break down in many ways, producing many combinations of symptoms.

Knowing that it is weakness in the Three Systemic Functions that produces many different symptom combinations greatly simplifies the job of improving our health. The age old concept of Three Systemic Functions provides a very clear and useful way of understanding how the body works. Let’s take a closer look at each Systemic Function.

Blood Function

Blood Function includes three things: blood quality, blood circulation and lymphatic drainage.

1. Blood quality means the blood makeup or chemistry. Blood quality is determined by the right balance of oxygen, nutrients, hormones, enzymes, water, etc. It includes effective activity of white and red blood cells. The right amounts of cellular wastes in the blood – uric acid, lactic acid, carbonic acid, acetic acid, ammonia and others – also determines blood quality. The dynamic, balanced relationship between all of these elements is also considered part of blood quality. Finally, the concept of blood quality as defined here includes immune function. In fact it is blood quality as a whole that determines immunity and resistance to disease.

2. Blood circulation is the activity of our heart and blood vessels including the capillaries which are the smallest branches of the circulatory tree. It is at the capillary level that the actual exchange between blood and tissues (cells) takes place. When some of the capillaries become chronically constricted – as is the case with 90% of American adults – the bloodstream can’t feed the tissues as effectively. The bloodstream also cannot do the job of cleaning cellular wastes from the tissues effectively, so wastes store in the tissues and are then considered toxins.

Impaired feeding and cleaning of tissues
produces subfunctioning of tissue and organs,
which leads to many chronic health problems.

3. Lymphatic drainage works in conjunction with blood circulation to clean and protect the cells and tissues. Fluid is filtered from the blood through capillary walls into the microscopic spaces between cells (interstitial spaces) and is then called interstitial fluid. This interstitial fluid collects microbes and cellular wastes. Most of the interstitial fluid, laden with wastes, reenters the blood capillaries, but about 15% of it drains into an extensive network of one-way lymphatic capillaries that permeate tissues. At this point the fluid is called lymph or lymphatic fluid. In a healthy individual the lymph is quickly pumped by muscular action through special filters (lymph nodes) and then on to the bloodstream, which finally delivers waste products to the four systems of metabolic elimination (lungs, skin, kidneys and colon).

The metabolic cleaning process described above is essential for immunity and disease resistance. Unfortunately the process is often crippled by poor health habits to the point that we frequently fall prey to avoidable health problems.

The three point description of Blood Function outlined above has great practical value for understanding health and disease. Even though the details are complex, the overall concept is simple:

When cells are fed and cleaned effectively by healthy Blood Function, injured, weakened or fatigued tissues are more easily repaired and the body is protected from infection. If blood quality, blood circulation or lymphatic drainage are poor, cells and tissues are not fed and cleaned effectively and symptoms and illness of some kind are the inevitable result.

Each cell in the body
needs to be fed and cleaned effectively
or tissues will subfunction
and produce chronic health problems.

Poor health habits weaken Blood Function and prevent the effective feeding and cleaning of the cells and tissues. Because Blood Function is systemic, its weaknesses can lead to health problems anywhere in the body. Therefore, it is one of the most common causes of chronic health problems of many types.

We’ll take a look at the second Systemic Function, the Neurological Function, in the next post.

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