Foods and Environmental Illness.
Just what are You eating?
Chronic long-term illnesses are personal --
they are tailored to your genetic and self-experience.
Why a "Dangerous" Food ?
FOOD IS any substance which we can eat without detriment and with benefit to sustaining our health, vitality, and longevity. If we have categorized, confirmed by experience, and drawn an assumption of the safety of a food ... how can it suddenly become a poison for some people, yet be healthy for others? We are not concerned here with the decay of harvested food or the unclean or improper preparation of a food. Why might you eat a food for decades without an adverse side-effect --- and then, find that it produces life-threatening symptoms when you taste it?
Key to Long-term Health:
Your Brain.
In 1969, Paul D. MacLean, M.D. published
A Triune concept of the brain and behaviour
as a result of his neurological research into the brain. It has been known ever since, though largely ignored, that the human brain is structurally and functionally divided into three major parts. MacLean defined these as the
- Reptilian,
- Paleomammalian (Limbic, or emotional), and
- Neomammalian
(Neocortex, or rational consciousness).
The Reptilian
part is the brain core and its simplest and oldest participant. We have a good sense, proudly so, of the potential benefit and contribution which our rational consciousness, our Ego, provides to the direction of our life. We have an appreciation and frustration of our
Limbic emotionalism which enables us to place values and priorities into our thinking.
FEW OF US give a second thought to the
Reptilian structure which enabled the Reptiles to outlive the more complex brained Dinosaurs and which is responsible for keeping us alive on a minute-by-minute basis. Every beat of your heart, every breath you take, the even temperature of your inner organs, every "instinct" you have ... comes directly from the Reptilian structure. It is a compulsive pattern follower. Its pleasure is to keep all your body components moderately active (not overstressed) and to keep you safe as a living physical entity. It is so automatic that we take it for granted and ignore it.
Why what we don't know CAN hurt us.
When we ignore the Reptilian Unconscious, we allow it to go on building patterns of responses associated with the presence of specific stimuli it perceives. These responses become automated into reactions --- reflex-like actions and feelings which control us and increasingly make us more and more behaviorally predictable ... like robots ... as we get older. We do have choice over the matter.
IGNORANCE IS BLISS, for most of us --- no awareness, no questions, no conflict, no anxiety, no responsibility, no self-management. In the face of this apparent loss of choice, our rational Ego continually excuses its loss of control. Behavioral patterns created as a result of trauma and necessity rather than by choice and skill-building we continually excuse with such rationalizations as: "That's just the way I am", or, "I can't help it, it's my character", or, "I could stop (the pattern) if I wanted to but (excuse)." How much freedom can we give away before we start to suffer?
SOCIETY: Survival at what Cost?
IN HIGHLY POLITICALLY STRUCTURED SOCIETIES, humans are provided with a status quo of behaviors which the privileged, powerful, or well-intentioned sanction (acceptance). The rational expectation is that such behaviors will benefit the majority. Eating food at standardized times of our day's activities has long been a North American and larger society tradition-ritual. Doing so enables an efficient deliver of fresh prepared foods to family and other groups. Food is so central to the daily activities of most commercialized and industrialized nations that parents often use food-soothers to replace the comfort of love through attention and sensual expression with their infants and children. We learn to use food to soothe frustration, anxiety, anger, loss, abuse, enthusiasm, commitment, rejection.
IN a HIGHLY INDIVIDUALISTIC SOCIETY, such as those found in North America, a contradiction has developed. Where coping skills were not mentored to, made available to, or, were lost by pioneering settler-immigrants, political structure and laws have been used to excuse their development. Culturally, coping skills basic in rainforest hunter-gather bands ... which existed for hundreds of thousands of years --- have been lost from our more complex, more competitive, more aggressive, more desperate, larger societies. Instead of eating fresh foods when we are hungry, we now eat when we are told, or, when we are allowed to take a "break".
SMALL GROUP BEHAVIORS can be flexible and personalized partly because there are fewer participants to interact with --- leaving time available to acknowledge others, encourage others, understand others, and sensually enjoy one's environment. As population densities grow and social groupings become large communities, the efficiency of mass production of specialized crops enables some persons to develop specialized skills for the creation of artistic and manufactured goods. Time available for interaction with all members of the community diminishes. Interpersonal skills are replaced with interaction tactics, strategies, greed, pride, lust, and hate --- and order is demanded.
ORDERLINESS has perpetually conflicted with civil rights and freedoms, and justice. As the individual has "fit in" to the norms of society, there has been encouragement for the person to discard or suppress interpersonal coping skills in favor of mechanistic interactions focused on material production and economic efficiency. In a less protected (institutionalized) environment, these skills would have meant personal and social survival.
AUTHORITY HAS REPLACED PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY by selling acceptance and a promise of reward. The state has taken the position of an overprotective parent, which is largely absentee. Acceptance has meant the freedom not to be politically persecuted and denied employment, health care, and freedom from imprisonment. The promise is that with the benefit of employment, state or private sanctioned conventional health care, and the treat of imprisonment ... everyone will live peaceful lives surrounded by material prosperity and gifted with social respect and power. What is the reality?
THE SECULAR PARADISE !
WE are surrounded by a glut of food from both local sources and from many other climates and countries. Yet, north Americans are one of the most malnourished populations worldwide. We consume 30 percent more calories than healthier persons in other parts of the world. We use more manufactured --- energy, fertilizers, pesticides, cattle feed hormone and antibiotic supplements, food colorings, taste substitutes, petroleum-based food replacements, hair colorings, perfumes, facial masks, and odor-hiding substances in the production of our food and the maintenance of our bodies --- than any other culture.
Historically demonstrated numerous times, human institutions only magnify human weaknesses ... even as their accumulated power enables them to magnify human strengths. Any review of the economic statistics of Canada or the USA during 1977 - 1999 will reveal the following:
- increasing numbers of below poverty incomes;
- increasing numbers of chronically ill;
- increasing numbers of persons with addictions;
- increasing numbers of maximally indebted persons;
- increasing numbers of persons in litigation;
- increasing numbers of homelessness & poorly housed;
- increasing numbers of persons maxed out on credit;
- increasing numbers of desperate persons taking risk;
- increasing numbers of hyperactive persons.
EACH of these STATISTICS indicates a higher personal negative stress burden ... which makes optimized personalized selection of foods critical to any degree of positive coping.
The Reality of Good Intentions:
Impracticality and irrelevancy.
WE SURRENDER --- some say SELLOUT --- our personal authority and self-direction to others in return for the good intentions and group power of a social institution. Authority structures cannot cope with self-assertion, self-direction or negotiation from and by their participants. Community strength and teamwork is easily rationalized as too wasteful of time and resources ... especially when the sanctioned authority insists on making the final decision anyway. And how can a competitive society survive if its members are not willing to take advantage of each other, sacrifice to make the sale, or, win by deception and manipulation. We are obsessed with pretty, perfectly shaped, cheap, delicious food ... forget the nutrition.
REMEMBER THIS:
In a materialistic capital-based society, if you decrease the availability of services and affordable products to the individual, increase the degree of sacrifice required to participate in a competitive workplace, and continue to compromise the basic nutritional and Ego rewards in reality --- such imbalances will create disease.
Less nutrition requires more food and surplus calories.
IMBALANCES create DIE-or-STRUGGLE reactive responses.
UNDER CONDITIONS OF CONTINUAL CHALLENGE --- longer work days, lower real value income, higher expenses, decreased employment security, constant career or workplace skill upgrading, continuing persuasion by the media to buy more, and increasingly complex social and intimate relationships --- most people are easing into states of chronic depression. Encouraged by commercialized child-rearing practices, many people eat in an effort to feel more alive, wanted, content. Their reward is to become heavier, more tired, more anxious, more depressed, more rejected.
DESPERATION REPLACES LIVING when one tries to make quality grow from a foundation of coping poverty. The harder you try to build a house with just one tool, a hammer, the more the task leaves you a worn out failure. One may begin to feel that life is just a bore; is continual struggle without reward; is almost not worth living. So much to do and you have so little. But, you are assured that if you can just keep hammering, the job will get done. Addictive co-dependent behaviors are encouraged when our sacrifices don't deliver on persuasive promises made to us by our educational, political, and mass media mentors. We need a lift in our "spirits" and in a socially patterned reactive manner --- we build addictions.
A FANTASY HOPE ENCOURAGES US TO CONTINUE rather than face reality and make changes. It is easier to be in denial and pop pills, inject drugs, play loud music, and glut ourselves with possessions and food --- while our "Titanic" society slips beneath the waves. The more things fall apart, the harder we try to make the rudimentary coping skills we have been given do the job they never have been able to do. It is often a strategy with an absence of self-directed choices. We simply let ... and our Reptilian Unconscious responds in functional obligation ... automatic responses take over. We feed our problems hoping that they will solve themselves.
WE DO WHAT WE HAVE ALWAYS DONE:
We expect our institutions to guide us and protect us.
We expect God to save us from the proud choices we have made.
We expect our Unconscious to make the decisions we are emotionally and intellectually unprepared for.
An UNCONSCIOUS Strategy... by default!
A STRATEGY OF AUTHORITY IS NO LONGER EFFECTIVE.
Institutions are best at providing simple solutions to the masses for simple problems. They build processes and patterns of response which become accepted as perfect. The rigidity of this "found" solution increases over time ... and so does its irrelevance. Only when the majority of person are disadvantaged by irrelevant options, do leaders begin to listen. Early signs of failure are often rejected with self-serving pride, denial, intolerance, violence. The longer problems are left to grow the more complex and costly the solutions frequently become.
MORE COMPLEX AND INDIVIDUALIZED CHALLENGES demand flexible, innovative and self-directed responses. These depend upon the development of coping skills by individuals ... coping skills which may challenge authority and institutions which are no longer responsive in this modern environment. Since we consciously are ill-equipped by our culture and its institutions to cope with the stresses we are not supposed to have to face, and since those stresses are beginning to threaten our physical health (over-work) and our sanity (over-anxiety) --- our Unconscious comes to the rescue.
EVERY TRAUMATIC EXPERIENCE OF URGENCY that arises, the Reptilian Unconscious patterns and remembers. With individuals increasingly becoming simultaneously responsible for more and more roles ... urgency has become a daily experience for many. Our food selections are present in this environment of distress. Our Unconscious takes the feedback from our senses and assumes that the environment is the cause of this disharmony.
REACTIVE DEFENCES take the form of the Reptilian Structure responding with NEVER letting any traumatic intense experience happen AGAIN. As soon as some of the parts of the original scenario begin to assemble around us, it gives us physiological, emotional and intellectual demands which drive us out and away from the potential negative experience.
FOOD is often present in the picture.
Remember this:
Any food which the Reptilian pattern driven Unconscious part of your brain associates with a consciously experienced or unconsciously identified traumatic experience can be reacted to as if it was a poison.
Underground and Location Centred storage options.
Use the links below to find out more about hypersensitivities and how to avoid and recover from them.
|
