One of the biggest misconceptions most people have today is that of the germ theory, i.e., that we "catch" a cold or the flu during the "Flu Season." As professional health practitioners (in New York - ed.), one of the most important responsibilities we have is to instruct and train our clients in healthy lifestyles.

One area in which we feel that we really need to begin educating our clients is that we do not "catch" diseases. Germs don't decide to hop a bus from the south and travel north in December and January so that they are here in time for the "Flu Season." Rather, we, by our own indiscrete choices, weaken our immune systems with the foods we tend to eat during the holiday season. These highly refined, nutrient deficient, calorie dense, low fiber foods, deplete the terrain (our bodies) of essential nutrients our immune system and bodies need to function (i.e., be healthy).

It's not ironic or coincidence that the flu hits during or shortly after we embark on our cakes, pies, cookies, ice cream, chocolate, candy, pop, alcohol, and a myriad of other junk foods during the holidays. This is the reason that the flu hits hardest in January. The immune system has been depleted - deprived of the raw materials it needs to function.

Obviously, germs are around us all of the time. The problem is that the TERRAIN has been compromised, allowing infection to set in. Obviously, as a rule, you will not find disease organisms taking over a healthy terrain, only one that has been compromised - one in which the defense mechanisms are no longer operating efficiently.

So, be sure to keep your terrain healthy throughout this New Year and educate your clients to follow your example!

One Healthy Life, LLC
Mer & Joanna Barrett

(Source: Thyme-ly News, 01/04 )

Editor's Note: One of the finest popular books ever written on the subject of germ infection is The Curse of Louis Pasteur - Why Medicine is Not Healing a Diseased World, by Nancy Appleton, PhD, best-selling author of Lick the Sugar Habit and Healthy Bones. This is a “must read” book for anyone interested in their health and how our “health” care system has knowingly mislead the public on how infections organisms function for the sake of marketing pharmaceutical solutions to these “invented” problems.
I've had Nancy as a house guest some years back and invited her to address our association. Anyone who has taken a pathology course, even one in plant pathology, knows full well that the ENVIRONMENT (the “terrain”) has to be conducive or inviting for pathogenic germs to grow. That's a LAW of nature and is therefore true of every living entity. Each NEEDS - for its very existence - specific environmental conditions under which it can survive, multiply, and thrive. That's true of pigs, cows, chickens, humans, plants, insects, worms, fungi, bacteria - ALL living entities. To believe otherwise is living in the dark ages of ignorance - superstition that has served western medicine and pharmaceutical industries well. By controlling the internal and external ENVIRONMENT of your body -- determined by the intake of oxygen, water, food; by the degree of physical activity and sleep; by avoidance or exposure to toxic chemicals, etc. --- you can have considerable say on what might infect and thrive in your body and what will not.