A Critical Component of Homeopathy: The Power of Belief

As more and more people are beginning to turn away from "conventional" medicine in favor of gentler, natural homeopathic remedies, Big Pharma is working harder and harder to convince the population that homeopathic remedies seldom work, work poorly, or simply don't work at all. Physicians are not hard to convince; visit any doctor who wasn't trained in naturopathic medicine and ask about a natural treatment for any condition. The chances are pretty high that you will get a blank stare at best, or outright ridicule of the notion at worst. When physicians recieve paid and lavish vacations from drug companies in return for doling out their prescriptions, they rarely see the need for a natural treatment.

But Big Pharma's warpath against natural medicine goes even deeper than most of us may at first realize. Obviously, by growing our own herbs for medicine and taking charge of our own health, we are threatening the pharmaceutical companies' multi-billion dollar profit margins every year. In fact, the average person in 2014 in the US had about thirteen prescriptions written each year - that's a new prescription every single month. When these numbers begin to dwindle, so will Big Pharma's massive income.

There is one critical component of homeopathy that even the most die-hard naturalists often overlook: the astonishing power of belief. The drug industry hasn't overlooked it, though. By doing all they can to discredit herbal remedies, companies like Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson also diminish the power of belief and hold on to their $16 billion profits.

Health is a State of Mind

Have you ever noticed how a day that starts badly usually tends to end badly? Or how, when you get in a fight with someone, you end up feeling more tired than if you had run a mile? How weight gain and depression have an almost direct correlation? This is because, contrary to what modern physicians would have us believe, our physical health and mental health are intricately connected.

The human body is made of various systems which must work together for the body to run at optimal performance. The respiratory system, the circulatory system, the reproductive system, and even the endocannibinoid system, for example, are all intricately connected to one another. Likewise, the brain works through a series of chemical pathways, where neurons and hormones must all be balanced with one another for stable mental health. It certainly makes sense, then, that the systems of the body and those of the mind must be connected to each other.

Emotions almost always create a physical response in the body. Anger raises blood pressure, increases heart rate, diverts blood flow away from the stomach while increasing stomach acid, and causes a chain of physical reactions that lead to fat build-up in the heart and arteries. Anxiety causes a similar physical response. On the other hand, emotions such as happiness and contentment are vital to maintaining healthy blood pressure, cholesterol levels, and even weight.

Undermining the Placebo Response

You've probably heard of the placebo response before, where in a clinical trial the "control" group, or the patients in the trial who are given a placebo, respond to the treatment as well as - if not better than - the group on the drug being tested. This phenomonon is far more common than we are lead to believe. The placebo response has been observed in trials related to dozens of medical conditions, including physical conditions such as asthma, ulcers, migraines, and menstrual cramps, as well as mental disorders like anxiety, depression, and even substance abuse addiction. In fact, a Harvard Medical School program that is dedicated to studying the placebo response notes, "Even when we take pills with active ingredients, part of their effect is likely due to the placebo effect."

Such an important part of health and wellness should not be overlooked or undermined. By simply believing that a remedy will work, patients can increase the efficacy of a treatment, possibly by a lot.

Instead of quoting a bunch of studies on the subject, I can give you a personal example of the power of belief in healing a physical ailment. When my third son was born, he came home from the hospital with a staph infection. Foolishly, I opted to treat it with the prescription medication that his pediatrician prescribed, thinking that because he was so little I didn't want to take any chances with his health. I used the cream he had been prescribed, and within a few days the infection went away.

After only a couple of days, however, the staph came back, and this time it was different. His first infection looked like little white bubbles, just a rash; but his second staph infection started beneath the skin and felt more like the staph infections that caused a MRSA scare a few years ago. The original infection had morphed into something stronger, and scarier.

As I should have done in the first place, I now treated this new infection with a homemade salve of turmeric, ginger, and goldenseal root. In about four days it was gone, but not before it was passed to me. I dutifully began treating my own infection with my salve, but it took about a week and half to go away.

When my husband found a staph bump on his leg (this was the last one to plague my family), I got him to start treatment with the salve right away. He is, admittedly, very skeptical when it comes to homeopathic medicine - his father is a nurse - and I had to nag him daily to use the salve. For weeks, he doubtfully applied the funny-smelling yellow stuff and constantly vowed that he would have to see a doctor "if this shit doesn't go away soon." It finally did, but it took nearly a month of treatment.

Big Pharma and the FDA in Cahoots

It isn't really a secret anymore that some of the country's largest pharmaceutical companies regularly pay the FDA to get and keep their products legal. Of course it doesn't look that way on the books, but many of the "experts" hired to help the FDA determine the safety of medications receive money in some way from Big Pharma.

But the FDA is also working to undermine the efficacy of herbal remedies, namely by doing nothing. With no regulation at all on some strong and even potentially dangerous herbal remedies, the FDA is effectively saying, "Herbal remedies are so ineffective that they aren't worth our time." What a subtle yet extremely powerful way to put doubt into the minds of modern Americans.

The Power of Belief

Like a child who is determined to have a bad time at a party, we often set ourselves up for poor health with a bad attitude. But the best way to make any medicine work, whether natural or conventional, is to believe that it will. While few studies have been conducted on the placebo effect, many naturopathic doctors believe that this effect can improve the efficacy and duration of almost any particular treatment. Similarly, placing a strong emphasis on the power of faith - whatever your religion - can make a treatment more effective. The end result of prayer may be "little more" than a placebo response, but that doesn't make the healing that is gained from it any less real.

On Original Sin

According to the book of Genesis in the Bible, all humankind sins because Adam sinned. When Adam took the first bite of the forbidden apple, he introduced a whole new level of suffering, disease, sickness, and death to the human race. What Moses, the writer of Genesis, failed to reveal is how exactly the simple act of eating an apple could possibly have such disastrous consequences. A few passages in other books of the Bible give some clues, but for the most part the physicality of original sin remains shrouded in mystery and assumptions.

But is it really so mysterious after all? By embracing a few key facts about Adam, the apple, and sin in general, we can begin to understand how the first man wasn't really so different from his descendents, and eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil could indeed create a sin nature in all of Adam's offspring.

Sin Today

Before we can delve into the mysteries of original sin, we have to understand what exactly sin is and how it affects us today. A passage found in James provides perhaps the most easily understood definition of sin on a practical level: "So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin." (James 4:17 ESV) Seems self-explanatory enough, right? However, this passage gives us an insight into what sin is that many people overlook - a thought or an act that may be sinful for one person isn't necessarily sinful for another. In other words, sin is, to an extent, relative to each individual.

Of course, this doesn't give anyone free reign to do whatever they please, thinking that they are exempt from committing sin for whatever reason. Some things are not acceptable no matter who you are, like murder, adultery, greed, etc. But if there is something that is causing you to not do the right thing, then it is a sin.

For me, reading can be sinful. That's right, reading. If I get started on a book in the morning I will spend the rest of the day reading like an addict, to the detriment of my home and even my children. Dirty clothes will sit in the laundry basket, dishes will pile up, bedrooms will be destroyed, and I will put lunchtime off until I have read three more chapters and my boys are practically climbing in my face to say they are hungry. For me, to get started on a book before the house is spotless and the boys are safely tucked into bed can be a sin.

Why is Sin Unavoidable?

The easy answer, of course, is that we all sin because Adam first sinned. But there is more to it than that. Sin crawls in the food that we eat, in the air that we breathe; it is encoded in our very genes, in fact, and no matter how Christian and saved you may be there is no getting away from it completely while you live on this Earth.

Consider yourself at your very worst moments. When you snap angrily at your husband although he didn't deserve it, when an irritable impulse causes you to make fun of your children. When road rage blinds you to the fact that you are driving just as crazily as everyone else on the highway. Now consider why these things happen. Hunger, sleep deprivation, heat exhaustion, stress... they can all cause your mood to plummet faster than a failing economy. Consider your diet and your overall health. Fast food can literally cause malnourishment and obesity in the same person, which is a recipe for bad physical, mental, and emotional health. Hormonal factors, like PMS or the urge to have sex that overpowers almost everyone at some point in their lives, can easily lead to bad decisions and ultimately to sin.

Mark 7:20-23 says "And he said, 'What comes out of a person is what defiles him. For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.'” Sin comes from within - sin IS within - and even when you aren't actually sinning the capacity to, and the inevitability of it, is still lurking inside.

Thinking of sin as a software problem, or as something that can be fixed, is misleading. According to 1 John 1:8, "If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us." Sin is hardwired into our circuitry, and the way we take care of our bodies can exacerbate the problem immensely. In fact, from a medical standpoint, sin is remarkably similar to a mental health disorder. While a mental disorder, such as schizophrenia, addiction, or OCD, can seem like a problem with the brain's programming, or "software", it is really a hardware problem that invades a patient's genetic material and no amount of therapy or prescription pills can truly eliminate. With different forms of therapy, and medication in the most extreme cases, most mental disorders can be managed, but a patient will be stuck "managing" the disorder for the rest of his life.

In a similar fashion, sin can be managed. Communication with God is as fulfilling and helpful as communication with a therapist (although in some instances God's recommendation as your Therapist may be to refer you to a human specialist for additional help), and with practice, the impulse to sin can be quieted over time, but it will never go away. Your hormones will still fluctuate, you will still eat food that disagrees with your physical and mental health, and genetic predisposition will still influence how you respond to certain events. In other words, while the symptoms of sin can be managed, the disorder is one you will have to live with for the rest of your life. The hardware cannot be fixed while we live on Earth.

Adam in the Beginning

So naturally, as humans we wonder why this disorder has plagued us. Why exactly was the act of eating an apple the literal death of us? To answer this, we first have to examine Adam as he was before the apple, because once he ate the apple he became radically different.

In some ways, pre-apple Adam was a lot like us. He was, after all, human. It is clear that he had free will, because he exercised it when he chose to take the apple from Eve. Look, however, at his genetic material. Many creationists (myself among them) believe that for Adam to have sired the entire human race, he must have carried all the genetic information that exists today in his own DNA. Mutations may have appeared to create new traits and new gene functions, but Adam was created with the genetic information necessary for these mutations to take place. Dominant and recessive, usual and unusual, he would have carried them all. So your blonde hair and blue eyes, as well as your natural talent for art, were inherited from Adam just as your brother's black hair, green eyes, and mathematical mind were. This is a seriously simplified explanation of Adam and Eve's genes; you can go in-depth about the implications of Adam's genes here.

Now let's take a look at what Adam didn't carry. We know that he didn't sin. He had no hormonal imbalances that would lead to fits of anger or rash decisions. He had no genetic mutations at all. He had no physical impairments, like poor eyesight or bad teeth, that would make him worry about his appearance or detract from his natural physical prowess. He didn't have any trust issues with God, because he had never lost a child to illness or accident, and in fact had never even known what the word 'hungry' meant. There was no need for "survival of the fittest" instincts, which today causes unneccesary competition on the most primitive levels (I'm stronger/faster/smarter/prettier/more capable than you). And of course every drop of food that Adam ate was fresh, local, non-genetically modified, chemical-free, and far more organically grown than is possible today.

So Where Did the Sin Come From?

Adam passed down everything that exists today, including sin. Since it simply didn't exist before Adam ate the apple (which, I might add, was probably not really an apple. However, for simplicity's sake, I'll refer to the fruit as an apple since we can't be sure exactly what kind of fruit it really was.), sin must have existed inside the apple.

Perhaps that sounds a little "fruity", if you can pardon the bad pun, but consider how your food affects you. Obesity, currently a rampant epidemic in the United States, is due entirely to food (both the quality and quanity of it) and lack of exercise. Obesity is the leading cause of a myriad of problems, including heart diseases, joint problems, respiratory problems, circulatory problems, infertility... the list goes on and on. Food can be used to treat illnesses - many common herbs and spices are antibacterial, antiviral, anti-inflammatory, anti-oxidant, and so on - and food can even contribute to the severity of a mental illness. Many patients with disorders like chronic depression, anxiety, and even autism find that cutting genetically engineered food from their diets and losing extra weight can help make their symptoms far more manageable. When you throw the astounding prevalance of synthetic drugs, including OTC drugs and hormonal birth control, into the mix, then you have a recipe for worldwide disaster.

But genetically modified food didn't even exist until 25 years or so ago. It's been only a century since mainstream Western medicine was to be found in pharmacies and bathroom medicine cabinets across the world. Surely, you may be thinking, you can't possibly blame the existence of sin on these things. Of course not, for as we have already discovered, sin is within us. I blame the growing acceptance of sin as "normal" on these things, at least in part. But my point is merely to show that what you eat can have an affect on how you respond to the flaws in your hardware. This can help to explain why God spent so many chapters in Leviticus discussing what a person could and couldn't eat.

Finally, we can look to the fruit that Adam ate as the original source of our original sin. This is where all the religious and scientific debate in the world must dissolve into "what if?", or into a matter of faith, because there is no verse in the Bible that says "The fruit that Adam ate contained something which causes cells to die, genes to mutate, and the immune system to become susceptible to disease." But it must have, because after Adam ate it, that is precisely what began to happen. Adam's cells began to die, so that aging and death were not only possible but inevitable. Adam's genes, or at least the ones that he started passing down to his offspring, began to mutate, causing birth defects and inherited illnesses. His immune system, once impervious to all kinds of environmental factors, weakened over the generations to the point that even a very useful and necessary type of bacteria could make one sick when they gathered in the wrong place in his body.

We can't lay all the blame on the fruit, of course. We can't even lay all the blame on Adam - it was, after all, Eve who enticed him into eating it, and Satan who tempted her. We could say that all sin starts with Satan. We could say that Adam (and Eve) made the choice to bring sin into the world. We could say that their food was the real reason for sin. But in reality, all of these things are true, and they all played a role. Like a mental illness, sin is a genetic reality that can't be avoided. However, we can make the choice to fuel it with poor diet, lack of exercise, and an all-around bad attitude, or we can fight it by improving our health and our lifestyles, and spending time talking to the Ultimate Therapist.

The Diet Wars

The battle lines are clearly drawn.

On one side, we have the traditional foodies. Cool, calm, and sophisticated, they have decades of science and some of the highest authorities in the nutrition world on their side. They are the zero-calorie, non-dairy, lowfat, aspartame kind of crowd. "Proven" science and weight loss diets are the weapons of choice for traditional foodies, but don't think that means they won't stoop to some low-blow marketing tactics when it suits them.

On the other hand, the rebel eaters are becoming stronger and more numerous. Hippies, stay-at-home moms, political activists, and yes, even a few potheads make up this group of health food miscreants. With aggresive guerilla warfare and a focus on the natural, these bloggers and eco-villagers don't need science to tell them what they already know - but they've got plenty of it. Join the army of the rebel diet, and you will never look at food the same way again.

Weaponry in the Arsenals of Lifestyle Dieters 

Ask who you will, the fact that your diet is part of your lifestyle is unanimously agreed upon. The makeup of a quality lifestyle diet, however, is radically different between the two groups.

Foot Soldiers All Use Green Bullets... 

The concept of "green" living is an important one, and it can vary from person to person. The traditional foodies' idea of green and healthy lies somewhere between a solar-powered skyscraper complex and a suburban community garden. Some of their strongest weapons are simply misguided truths.

Counting Calories 

You have to use more calories than you consume each day to lose weight. Use exactly what you consume to maintain a healthy weight. Traditional foodies will even tell you to get "the most bang for your buck" by choosing foods high in protein, calcium, and other vitamins and minerals, and low in sugars and fats. To them, healthy often boils down to the Nutrition Facts. But how can rebel dieters count calories when most of the food they eat doesn't even have a nutrition label?

All Sugar is Created Equal 

So say the old school nutritionists. When sweeteners like honey, maple syrup, turbinado, and even sucanat - sugar as close to the originial sugar cane as you can get it - all add calories to your diet, it's better to use zero-calorie chemicals like aspartame and saccharin. When you're more concerned about counting calories than an elevated risk of cancer, that is.

Low Fat Foods Make Low Fat Bellies 

Fat is stored in your belly, hips, and buttocks to save for a rainy day. Conventional logic has it that if you eat less fat, your body will simply store less fat. But fat, especially saturated fat, actually helps your body's metabolism. The saturated fat found naturally in meats, butter, and full-fat dairy products are vital for a healthy brain, heart, liver, and even bones.

...But the Rebels' Bullets are Naturally Green, Not Dyed That Way 

The rebel dieters' view of Utopia is a little different. It's a world entirely free of chemicals in the food supply and in households. It's a world where we work with Mother Earth rather than forcing her, like a slave, to work for us. And it doesn't require any math.

Additive-Free 

Try to convince a rebel that a lowfat 100-calorie cookie snack pack is better than 300 calories worth of their homemade oatmeal cookies, and they'll look at you like you're off your rocker. Those homemade cookies may have lots of calories and will only last a few days, but you can throw in flax or chia seeds for extra protein, use healthy fats like coconut oil or real butter, and substitute applesauce, honey, or organic sugar for the ultra-refined sugar. The 100-calorie cookies are full of chemical fat substitutes, bizarre fillers, and a myriad of artificial preservatives. Not to mention, fresh-from-the-oven homemade cookies taste way better.

Homegrown Organics 

It's not that rebels refuse to eat conventionally grown fruits and veggies - it's just that organic is always better. And like the ingredients in homemade food, we have control over everything that goes on the foods we grow at home. While traditional foodies are happy to leave the details of their food to the corporations, rebels know that homegrown organics bring more power to the people.

Non-GMO

Want to reduce your risk of food sensitivities, digestive problems, and at least a dozen different types of cancer, all hile putting money into the hands of small companies trying to make a difference rather than huge corporations trying to make a buck? Cut out GMOs.

Heavy Artillary in the Diet Wars 

Every strong army has a secret weapon at their disposal, and the armies in this war are no different. The strongest and most persuasive nutrition bombs are at their fingertips.

Weight Loss Dieting 

Everybody wants to lose weight. Traditional foodies promise that the pounds will melt off if you adhere to their strict guidelines. And when you gain it all back within a month, it's because of your deviation from a dietary lifestyle that you've never been passionate about.

Your Health is Determined By Your Diet 

Rebel dieters don't diet simply to lose weight. The conerstone of any diet, rebels know, is not your weight but your health. Eat to stay healthy, and the weight loss will follow. The rebels use food for energy, for relaxation, even for medicine. We've treated everything from seasonal allergies to staph infections to life-threatening illnesses with the foods we eat - and the foods we don't eat. We're not afraid to question the doctors, to challenge the FDA's appalling lack of regulation in the food industry. We breastfeed our babies and raise our children to know how to forage. And as long as we keep fighting the diet war, we are the future.

The Sordid History of Refined Sugar Merchants

Once upon a time, refined white sugar was considered a luxury item. To enjoy a slice of cake or a cup of tea with real white sugar was a commodity that only lords and ladies could afford. As far back as 300 BC, when Alexander the Great discovered the well-kept secret of sugar cane in India and brought it back to the Persian Empire with him, sugar was considered a priviledge of the upper class and may even have been used to try to fight infections in war, although the evidence for that claim is rather inconclusive. Soldiers were fed sugar to give them energy before a long battle. And, unsurprisingly, when governments around the world realized just how valuable this "white gold" was, they began taxing it heavily.

For centuries, the investors and corporations behind the industry have touted the benefits of sugar to the general population. When the British tax on sugar was finally abolished in the 1800s, the price of sugar became so low that it wasn't hard to convince people to buy it. It was so cheap, in fact, that an attempt was made to feed sugar to livestock in an effort to fatten up cows and pigs without the high cost of the grains that animals need. Needless to say, the attempt was unsuccessful, if not downright disastrous.

According to the book Sugar Blues by William Dufty, the "sugar pushers" have used several tactics even within the past 100 years or so to convince people to buy their product. In the 1920s, the caloric value of sugar was considered a huge benefit - sugar is nothing but calories. Consumers were urged to use more sugar in their diet as a way to get enough daily calories at a cheap price. It was also advertised as being "pure", which is still on labels of refined sugar today. As Dufty put it, "So effective is the purification process which sugar cane and beets undergo in the refineries that sugar ends up as chemically pure as the morphine or the heroin a chemist has on the laboratory shelves." It has also been lumped into the category of "carbohydrate", making it sound like a necessary nutrient, and was even labeled "made from natural ingredients" during the age of the hippies in the '60s and '70s. Read an excerpt from this compelling book at the Global Healing Center.

The Dangers of White Sugar

Today, refined sugar is generally regarded as safe in small amounts, and there is no distinction between "pure" refined sugar, or sucrose, and other forms of sugar, such as glucose or fructose. In an era when counting calories is used to lose weight rather than gain energy, sugar in all its forms is advised to be taken in moderation. WebMD quotes nutrition professor Rachel K. Johnson as saying, "A calorie of sugar is a calorie of sugar, so whether you're getting it from white sugar or some other type of sweetener, you're still adding empty calories to your diet," referring to other sweeteners such as honey or maple syrup.

From a purely caloric standpoint, of course, Johnson is right. What she fails to grasp, or at least fails to mention, is that sweeteners like honey, maple syrup, or even coconut sugar have not been stripped of all redeeming nutrients, as refined white sugar has. Dufty explains it this way:

"Sugar is worse than nothing because it drains and leaches the body of precious vitamins and minerals through the demand its digestion, detoxification and elimination makes upon one's entire system. So essential is balance to our bodies that we have many ways to provide against the sudden shock of a heavy intake of sugar. Minerals such as sodium (from salt), potassium and magnesium (from vegetables), and calcium (from the bones) are mobilized and used in chemical transmutation; neutral acids are produced which attempt to return the acid-alkaline balance factor of the blood to a more normal state."

In other words, the sugars found in natural sweeteners like honey come with the nutrients needed to digest them. White sugar is devoid of nutrients, so your body has to pull these nutrients from other sources to make it usable.

Dufty mentions another reason why refined sugar is detrimental to health, aside from its inherent need to deplete the body of necessary nutrients. When taken with other carbohydrates, such as the wheat used to make cakes and cookies, sugar causes these carbs to break down improperly. The same is true of sugar taken with protein. In essence, refined sugar, which does not linger in the stomach when taken alone but goes straight to the small intestine and from there into the blood, causes your food to ferment in your stomach when it is forced to stay there with starches and proteins. Carbon dioxide and alcohol are two of the many by-products of such fermentation - ingredients that are not supposed to be in your body and lead to indigestion, excess gas, and stomach upset, among other things.

Sugar Pushers Today

With nutritionists claiming on renowned health websites that honey and maple syrup are no better than refined sugars, it is easy to see why the majority of Americans still keep white sugar in their pantries. Add to that such organizations as Sugar Knowledge International, or SKIL, who make the refining process of sugar cane and sugar beets look interesting rather than deadly, and the problem is even further compounded. SKIL has even claimed to be environmentally friendly, using leftover fiber from the sugar cane (bagasse fuel) to power sugar factories:

"When a large power station produces electricity it burns a fossil fuel [once used, a fuel that cannot be replaced] which contaminates the atmosphere and the station has to dump a lot of low grade heat. All this contributes to global warming. In the cane sugar factory the bagasse fuel is renewable and the gases it produces, essentially CO2, are more than used up by the new cane growing. Add to that the factory use of low grade heat [a system called co-generation] and one can see that a well run cane sugar estate is environmentally friendly."

Modern sugar pushers are just as cunning and decietful as the bigwigs who sold sugar centuries ago. Publicly advising that sugar should be taken in moderation, claiming to be good for the environment, and skimming over the fact that the phosphates used in the bleaching process are possibly linked to cancer, sugar pushers today are also just as successful.

But, all in all, the use of refined sugar in any home is a recipe for disaster. While its use does not guarantee obesity, gastritis, diabetes, heart disease, tooth decay, or any other health problem, the risk for all of these increases significantly in homes that have a bag of sugar in the pantry. Natural options like honey, maple syrup, stevia, and coconut sugar are more easily digestible by the body, and provide nutrients rather than stripping them away. Yes, they may still add to your calorie count for the day, but they are infinitely more healthy and nutritious than the refined sugar that is the emptiest calorie of them all.