Poor health depresses vitality, mood and tolerance of stress and pain.

Health services are overwhelmed by avoidable lifestyle diseases including heart and vascular diseases, diabetes, cancers and auto immune diseases. And they are good at ameliorating their immediate effects. Life support systems and chemistry often triumph over nature.

But the longer term unintended consequences of medical interventions are uncertain, because our vast knowledge is tiny compared with all that is to know about our metabolism,

a hydrogen ion economy
T
he human body like any other living carbon based system is a hydrogen ion economy. Metabolism occurs by the transfer of electrons across PH gradients and each body fluid in each part of the body has to be kept within a particular PH.

Molecules interact according to their shape, the elements they are made of and their capacity to accept or donate electrons.

Living organisms are resilient within the environments they are adapted to but they begin to break down if there is too little or too much of something and at a certain point they stop functioning.

mind and body
Low vitality, susceptibility to infections and minor ailments show up first in the weakest part of the body or the weakest link in a metabolic cascade.

The location of disease is not random. Illness or injury can start in a part of the body that has been injured but also in a part that is the focus of a personal problem or has been overstimulated or shut down during a stressful episode.

Personal problems often have to resolve before physical healing is complete. Reducing stress improves health, fitness and performance. And also improved health reduces stress and increases the capacity to deal with stress.

Even if someone is desperate to recover they may ignore remedies that disrupt their lifestyle or habits or from fear of the consequences of better health.

limitations of treatment
Medical specialists bring life saving diagnostic and treatment but they tend to view the world through the lens of their specialty so they may miss other details or the broader picture.

Relying on them exclusively can be dangerous if they dis-empower someone from listening to their body and doing their own research. You can't always buy a cure. The body and mind do the healing. Expert advice may be sound as far as it goes but may be incomplete or coloured by commercial interests.

The risks of some medical treatments can outweigh the benefits and sometimes less intrusive changes in lifestyle could be more effective.

There are more micro-organisms than cells in the body and they evolve together and interact in many ways including in the brain and hormonal systems. External influences like drugs, vaccines, antibiotics, pesticides and stress can disrupt this ecosystem and degrade health, emotions and energy levels.

Autoimmune diseases begin when an immune system mistakes its own body proteins for foreign ones and reacts to eliminate them. Examples include some forms of arthritis, Lou Gehrig's Disease(ALS), Crohn's, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, fibromyalgia, lupus, scleroderma, diabetes and endometriosis. The trigger is often stress, diet or a physical insult like food, vaccination, chemicals, mould or injury. Sufferers typically experience more than one auto-immune disease.

prevention
Avoiding carcinogens helps lower the risk of cancer formation but maintaining body health and especially the immune system is critical for survival.

For example avoiding exposure to the sun lowers vitamin D levels. Dark skinned people moving to an overcast country will usually experience reducing levels.

Vitamin D mediates various reactions including aspects of the immune response. Body reserves are consumed whenever there is an immune insult like a viral infection or vaccination. Depletion below a certain level will collapse the immune system. This is one of the many ways that the risk of vaccine death and injury increases.

The diseases and cures of western degenerative lifestyle diseases are complex and varied. Prevention is simple.

Smoking, junk food, alcohol and less obviously caffeine impair health.

The lifestyle suggestions here include ways to listen to our body, keep a clear heart and mind and avoid environmental and dietary hazards.