It's All Coming Together: Cellular Malfunction

As many of you know, over the last three years I have had some major health struggles. Some of my diagnoses include Primary Sjogren's Disease (akin to Lupus), Chronic Fatigue (ME), Fibromyalgia, and just recently, first stage Lung Disease. But during these last three years, I have tried to stay more focused on seeking God's divine wisdom for receiving a total healing from all these things. From the very beginning, the Lord let me know that my healing was not going to be instantaneous. No, it was going to be a struggle of its own--a real battle--a fight for my life. But God also showed me that He would be using my health struggles to help others with their own health-related issues. That took care of a lot of the "why me's," which I will always be eternally grateful for. Yet, as rebellious children often do, I have refused to listen to and impart a lot of the things that God kept slapping me in the face with over these last three years. I mean, in my puny defense, the things the big guy was asking me to give up were not things that I think anyone could easily part with: my health, my money, my job, my home, my friends, my family, my looks, my time, my diet, my sedentary lifestyle. (Yes, that's a lot of crossed out "mys" but since we are only stewards of the gifts God gives us, these things weren't really "mine" to begin with.) These things have been given up one by one over the last three years and each time something was "lost" PRAISE GOD there was so very much more gained! Based on God's track record with both myself and countless others for thousands of years (see e.g., THE BIBLE) it should have been easy for me to give up the last few things I was holding onto with clenched fists, which happen to be my time, my diet and my sedentary lifestyle. But that hasn't been the case...until now.

You see, being "sick" (I use the term with quotations because I will not claim it), I had to embrace a new sense of normalcy to keep myself from going insane. I couldn't do many of the things I used to do that were enjoyable to me but I could still sit down and enjoy a good meal. Unfortunately, being "sick" has also wreaked havoc on all my hormones and my metabolism and has caused me to gain a great deal of weight. This was compounded when I was put on steroids for almost a year and further impaired because of my lack of any exercise. I think anyone would agree that when you feel like you have the flu each day, getting out and sweating to the oldies with Richard Simmons is the last thing on one's mind. (Not to mention, the sight of Richard Simmons in those spandex shorts can make a person a little queasy too *shudder*.) So here I am, an overweight, out of shape "sick" person trying to tell others how they can be well. Unh-unh, sorry, not gonna happen. It's time for me to get real.

The fact is, three years ago, God showed me that diet was an important part of healing one's body. God created our bodies in His image and it was only when sin entered the world that we were plagued by death and disease (Rom 8:20-21). Still, our bodies are amazing, self-healing mechanisms that continue baffle the scientific community today. But why then are there some things that the body cannot seem to heal itself from? One reason, and I believe a big one, is our diet. We now eat mostly based on the Standard American Diet (or the more aptly titled, more widely recognized "SAD" diet). The majority of people have moved away from the God-ordained ways of growing, raising and processing food and are now eating what the food industry, big corporations and disinterested conglomerates pump out in mass quantities, fill with toxins, chemicals, and unnatural substances and label as "food." Our body needs the proper nutrition to function at the optimal level and if we don't give it what it needs, chances are it's going to start breaking down. This break down is the beginning of the disease process.

Many diseases that you hear about today are considered modern, which means they have only been around for the last 100 years or so. There is only one thing has changed over that course of time time which would cause the influx of all these new diseases: the way we live. Disease rate has risen dramatically since the Industrial Revolution and continues to rise. Cancer, for instance, was only found in a handful of almost a thousand ancient mummies recently studied by researchers, however, today cancer is the cause for one out of three deaths. It is second only to cardiovascular disease. How many of you know someone who has been touched by cancer? I am betting most all of you. My own mother has had breast cancer twice. Her mother and her grandmother's sister had it as well. Doesn't look like very good odds for me, huh? God willing, with the changes I am implementing, I will not carry that label as well.

But there is ALWAYS HOPE! Many scientists are beginning to believe that there is really only one disease- cellular malfunction-and that all other "diseases" are just labels that tell us the location of the cellular malfunction. "Every disease known to man can be explained in seven minutes," according to Dr. Gary Tunsky. Dr. Tunsky and many of his colleagues believe that cellular malfunction develops into the symptoms we know as diseases. To understand this concept, Dr. Tunsky says we must first realize that the biggest error in mainstream medicine and even naturopathy is that the body is compartmentalized, suggesting that the systems are not interrelated. In reality, the human body is a complete unit with highly complex systems working together to keep it functioning optimally. Sounds kind of like the way God designed the Holy Trinity (Father, Son, Holy Spirit), doesn't it? A fully whole, yet fully functionally, separate entities. And remember, man was created in God's image (Gen 1: 27).

You see, our bodies are designed to recognize self and non-self, but they're not designed to absorb synthetic materials like soda, pharmaceuticals and other man-made agents. When our bodies do absorb these toxins, as well as any emotional toxins (we'll touch on that another day), through the environment or through eating and drinking, they are able to expel some of the hazardous material, but not all. As a result, this material builds up until the blood becomes contaminated. For the purpose of self-preservation, the blood then pushes out the contaminants into the genetically determined "weakest link" body systems. This is why certain diseases run in some families but not others. When our "weakest link" body systems become affected by these contaminants, we then develop the symptoms mainstream medicine recognizes as individual diseases, but that are really just our cells "crying out," says Dr. Tunsky.
 
Mainstream medicine teaches physicians to treat the symptoms of one underlying disease, rather than cellular malfunction itself. To explain this phenomenon, Dr. Tunsky evokes the analogy of a car that has a "check engine" light on. Treating the individual "diseases" that really are just symptoms of overall cellular malfunction is like cutting the wires to the warning lights rather than actually fixing the engine. This type of medicine is ineffective because it is just the illusion of healing, making it what Dr. Tunsky calls "David Copperfield medicine."
 
To prove his point, Dr. Tunsky used cancer as an example. Mainstream medicine usually treats cancer by removing the tumor or tumors from the affected body parts. However, the tumor is not the problem, according to Dr. Tunsky. Rather, it is the solution. When cells malfunction in the manner that we call cancer, the body forms a bubble (a tumor) around the malfunctioned cells to isolate them with the hope that someday the immune system will be able to defeat the cut-off cells. Merely removing the tumor without addressing the factors that are causing cellular malfunction will not effectively treat or cure cancer, according to Dr. Tunsky, nor will further poisoning the body with chemotherapy or radiation. Now I am not saying that chemo or radiation therapy is the wrong choice for anyone, so please don't misunderstand. If that is the choice you as a reader have made or will make at one point, that is certainly understandable. God has given each one of us stewardship over our bodies and we are all free to make health-related decisions the best we know how based on the information provided to us. My only point here is that I believe the medical world has been looking at the disease process in an incorrect, or at least skewed way. No, I am not a doctor, thanks for asking, although I was a pre-med major up until my junior year of college so I do understand a lot about the human body. And, as an attorney, I am an avid researcher and scholar, which means I have read literally thousands of medical journal articles, natural health articles, books and other literature on the subject of health. But perhaps most importantly, being ill myself has sparked within me a real desire to learn about the way God has designed our bodies, how our bodies handle disease and what a person needs to do to heal themselves. I have prayed for, and I believe, that God has faithfully instilled in me wisdom and discernment regarding these things. He certainly has put people, places and things in my life on this journey to guide me in my own healing. And as I said before, I have always known that this journey of mine will be used to help others in their healing as well. Even if just one person finds relief or healing, then it will all be worth it. But back to cellular malfunction....
 
Cellular malfunction is not instantaneous; it is a multi-stepped process. The first step is of course toxicity, which results from the consumption of environmental and emotional toxins, as mentioned before. When you consume drinks like soda or breathe in chemicals like artificial fragrances on a regular basis, these toxins build up in your body over time. As a result, your cells become "gummed up," starving them of nourishing oxygen and water. At this time, heavy metals and malnutrition come into play, as well as bacteria and viruses. Dr. Tunsky's view of infectious agents' role in cellular malfunction opposes the beliefs of mainstream medicine. He believes that these agents are "trying to clean things up," as everything is integrated. Furthermore, because of the cells' anaerobic and dehydrated conditions, circulation problems develop, turning them into a stagnant swamp, breeding things like fungus and mold and representing another factor in cellular malfunction.

Like tumors, cholesterol, deemed "bad" by mainstream medicine, is nothing more than the body's attempt to isolate malfunctioned cells, according to Dr. Tunsky. He believes that the body uses hardening agents like cholesterol, calcium and iron to "wall off" the bad cells. In other words, high cholesterol isn't a result of eating cholesterol-rich foods; it is, in Dr. Tunsky's words, "like a scab on the walls of the arteries." As you might imagine, the last stage of cellular malfunction is tissue death, but fortunately there are ways to halt the malfunction before it gets to this point. That is great news for me since I just got my cholesterol levels tested in January and they were extremely high. Another sign God was using to get my attention so that I would make some more changes. But what do we do to stop cellular malfunction? Read on....
 
In order to stop cellular malfunction, you must first stop poisoning your body with the toxins that are causing it. This means limiting, or even better, eliminating, your consumption of trans fats, refined white flour, sugar and pharmaceutical drugs (some can be helpful and necessary as we will see later), as well as limiting/eliminating your exposure to environmental (many man-made)and emotional toxins (many satan-ordained). For more information on the metabolic disruptors in your refrigerator that might be making or helping keep you sick, see the Health Ranger Mike Adams' book, Grocery Warning, available from Truth Publishing. Then, once you stop adding to the problem, you must also detoxify and remove the agents that are already wreaking havoc on your cells. We will touch on many of those things as we go along. One of my mottos is, "Bad stuff out, good stuff in!" Defeating cellular malfunction is the key to preventing illness and disease while restoring your body to its greatest functional potential.

My HOPE with this blog is to tell you about my journey to healing and, in turn--for those of you who are sick--to help you on yours. For those of you who are not ill, I pray that this blog will be an eye-opener for you and that God will speak to your heart to alert you of the need for implementing some or all of these things in your own life. Join with me on this quest and let's fulfill God's true purpose for our lives together!

Always Hope

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