EP #042: The Nine Pillars of Wellness

The Nine Pillars of Wellness

Wellness is the fulfillment and enhancement of human vital needs for air, water, food, movement, sleep, happiness, community, sex and spirituality. Needs can be defined as a hormone-controlled drive rewarded by pleasure to perform a behavior necessary to the survival of the individual or the species.

Maximizing the satisfaction of our needs will create a strong immune system, enabling us to prevent disease.  We believe that adulterated foods and beverages, a polluted environment, and lack of community is the cause of modernillnesses such as diabetes, obesity, high blood pressure, heart disease, cancer, depression, and anxiety.  We were born to trust and depend on a clean natural environment for our survival. Our wellness medicine aims at restoring an environment that we can not only survive but thrive in.

A word about needs and desire

Human needs are the manifestation of nature’s design for self-preservation of the individual and the species – diversification and adaptation.  Human needs operate on the physiological and psychological levels through hormones and neurotransmitters to signal a deficiency, manifest a desire for the object of the deficiency and end the cycle by a reward.  Satisfaction of needs are mandatory.  Lack of the object of the need will cause harm or even death.  For instance, dehydration of the body will stimulate the secretion of the hormonevasopressin which will be translated as thirst by the brain and instigate the search for water.  Drinking water will end the cycle. The hormone ghrelin signals a deficiency in nutrients circulating in the blood and a feeling of hunger that initiates a quest for food.  The hormone leptin will signal the satisfaction of the need, satiety will ensue and will terminate the eating behavior.  We see in the rise and fall of needs, a caring design from nature.  We were made dependent from our environment for the satisfaction of our needs but we were gifted warning mechanisms to avoid harm and rewarding feelings for the satisfaction of our needs.  Nature wants us well in our body and mind – it is a clear design of nature.  So why do we experience illness?

The Source of Illness

Historically and nowadays, the source of illness is found in the environment. We can trace the explosion of infectious disease to the advent of agriculture 10,000 years ago to the contact with domestic animals and overcrowding. Infectious diseases were brought from the old world to the new World (the Americas where Native peoples lived in harmony with nature where infectious disease was unknown). We thought that antibiotics would bring the end of infectious disease but with theexpansion of our urban areas into the wilderness, multiple infectious epidemic have plagued our modern world such as Lyme disease, HIV, influenza. More worrisome is the emergence of antibiotic resistant bugs that are defeating our 180 years old modern medicine strategy based on destruction of microorganisms that are believed to be the cause of infectious disease.

Exposure to particulate matter in the air, combined with polluted food and an unnatural lifestyle are the main causes of illnesses that we are dying from:  Heart disease, cancer,respiratory disease and strokes.

A medicine for wellness

A medicine for wellness is based on the satisfaction of our needsand desires, and a life in harmony with the laws of nature.

The 9 pillars of wellness

Survive and Thrive: The Nine pillars of Wellness Strive to fulfill and optimize our physical, mental and social vital needs.

Our high dependency on oxygen defines our number-one need.  It only takes five minutes without oxygen for our brain to become damaged, and 15 minutes for brain death.  Our body cannot store oxygen and requires an uninterrupted supply.  This continuous and vital need for oxygen is compensated in the readily available source of oxygen in the air.  Oxygen represents only 20% of the air composition, the other part being 78% nitrogen and other gases like argon, vapor water, carbon dioxide and particulate matter.  Oxygen is produced by the trees on the land and phytoplankton on the surface of water through photosynthesis, a process reversed to our respiration.  We are inhaling O2 and exhaling CO2 while plants are making absorbing CO2 from the air and producing O2.  The amount of oxygen in the air decreases with altitude, possibly causing altitude sickness and oxygen has been decreasing progressively overtime on the planet.  Studies show that air pollution decreases oxygen saturation through vasoconstriction or pulmonary inflammation. Of particular concern are small particulate matter formed from chemical pollutants emitted by vehicle oil combustion, smoke, and dust.  Inhaled particulate matter affects both lung and heart health, and increases risks for premature death.

Oxygen is Life 

Oxygen is an essential nutrient for energy production and must be kept at a minimum to sustain life.  Oxygen is inhaled into the lungs, then transported in the blood bound to hemoglobin and delivered to each cell of the body for the production of ATP, the molecular form of energy necessary to sustain life.  Anemia is when there is not enough hemoglobin or red blood cells. Sleep apnea or emphysema can lead to low oxygen delivery to the tissues.  Low delivery of oxygen will affect the highest consumer of oxygen: the brain, heart and liver. The brain is the most avid consumer of oxygen using 25% of the total amount inhaled.  

Ways to increase oxygenation:

Breathe deeper – Diaphragmatic breathing, physical activity/exercise, walking, running,

Conscious breathing – meditation, mindfulness.  It is a common reaction to restrict breathing when we experience anxiety or fear or any emotion we don’t want to experience.

Increase oxygen in your house: open the windows and create an air flow. Use a high quality air filtration systemand water filter, eliminate carpeting and off-gasing furniture, clean the ducts of your heater. Bring in more indoor green plants, remove the dust from your house oftenand use water and vinegar.

Eat more raw food in particular greens, less processed foods.  

Stop smoking.

Medical treatments increasing oxygenation: Hyperbaric chamber, ozone, increase hemoglobin in your blood

Our body is composed of 60% water.  Water is necessary to keep the body composition. Water is the main component of the blood, urine, digestive juices, 70 to 80 % of muscles, lungs kidneys and heart, 31% of bones. Water is necessary to keep joints hydrated. Water is needed for elimination of toxins through urination, defecation and sweating.  The body loses water through breathing, sweating, urination, defecation and digestion, and it is important to rehydrate the body daily since we cannot store water.  Water deprivation for more than oneweek leads to death.

Water is found in high amounts in vegetables and fruits.  Vegetables contain 90% water versus meat only 75%. Note that it requires 10 times more water to produce meat than vegetables, making the production of meat unsustainable.

The body extracts water from vegetables and fruits and claims water through thirst.  Dry fasting (without water) is a current trend in the fasting movement.  Beneficial results of dry fasting are said to be faster than water fasting.

Dehydration is a common condition in our culture due to our consumption of processed foods and high calorie diets containing a minimum of water.

Function of water

Water consumption is necessary to replete water loss through sweating, urination and breathing.  The need for water variesaccording to our physical activity, temperature and type of food we eat.  Nutritional factors affecting the need for water areamount of salt, consumption of meat and vegetables, juices, and sugar.  High outside temperature and physical activity will cause higher water losses through sweating and require higher amount of water to replenish the body.

Physical activity – the more physically active the more we sweat.

Water is needed for most body functions: water lubricates our joints, it is needed to excrete toxins through urination,defecation and perspiration.

Essential nutrients

Food contains vitamins, minerals, and fatty acids that are needed for chemical reactions in the body to occur.  Some essential nutrients are not produced by our body and can only be found in food.  These nutrients are vitamins and minerals, fatty acids and some amino acids.

The type of food we eat will affect our supply of essential nutrients.  Processing foods removes most of these essential nutrients.

GMO: Chemical Contamination

Food to be processed by the body must be compatible with our physiology. Chemical preservatives, colorants, and taste enhancers are difficult for the body to process and usually will get stored in adipose tissues.

Maximizing our Nutritional Needs

Eating a proper amount of raw food, high in water content and minimizing dehydrating foods like cooked food, frozen foods, and processed foods, will provide the nutrients necessary for the body homeostasis.

3. Movement/Exercise: our Need for Physical Activity

We are hardwired for movement to satisfy our survival needs. Our body is built for walking and running to forage for seeds and roots, to catch prey or to avoid being prey. Our arms and hands have unlimited possibilities for creative activities -farming, art, literature, and science, just to name a few. The evolution of humanity from hunting and gathering to agriculture was the product of our ability to use our bodies in a creative way to ameliorate our lifestyle. A quadriplegic or a baby without the ability to walk or move around is 100% dependent on his environment for survival.

Physical activity is needed for survival but also for multiple functions of our body. Our veins depend on muscle contractionto return the blood to the heart, lubrication of joints, formation of neurotransmitters, burning of the energy stores, mobilization of our fat storage, overall feeling of contentment.

Stagnation or a sedentary lifestyle slows metabolism, contributes to depression, overweight and obesity.

Maximizing movement through exercise is one way to replace the original activity of foraging for food, but it is deprived ofmeaning. Bicycling or walking to work or to the store or to visit friends, hiking in nature, swimming in the ocean, stretching and doing yoga, taking up a sport, add meaning to exercise done in a gym and a spiritual / social dimension.

Movement is ancient. Movement was here first. Hunting and gathering, dancing round the fire, walking, climbing, running, jumping, crawling, lifting, swimming, fighting…even sex! These are all movements the human body is designed for.

Our body needs repair, organization, reset.

Sleep has multiple functions: cell and DNA repair, hormone synthesis, and memory consolidation happen during sleep.

When we sleep we detoxify from endoxins and exotoxins

Our hormones have a cyclic life following the cycles of the moon and nictemeral cycles.  Serotonin and growth hormones are secreted during the night, with darkness before midnight.

Sleep deprivation

Night shift, long hours, and days of continuous working…

Sleep disturbance leads to apnea, multiple urination, pain, insomnia, anxiety, loud noise, temperature too high or too low.

Sleep optimization: have some sun exposure during the day,physical activity, and resolve stress. Sleep naturally – avoidmedicated sleep. Lose weight to cure sleep apnea. Have your last meal 3 hours before going to bed.  Avoid drinking before bed. Go to bed early! Get your room dark, eliminate electronics, sleep next to someone you love, cool down the temperature of the room, let go of your day and thoughts, enforce your sleep ritual. Take a hot shower, find your favorite position.

Manage your stress with exercise, yoga meditation mindfulness understanding, letting go.

Rest throughout the day and periodically during the week.

Lay down, close your eyes, take a deep breath, change your mind, talk to a friend, go for a walk,  eliminate the clock and do spontaneous activities.

A positive mindset nourishes the mind. It is more than a temporary feel-good moment.  Studies show that it builds skills and resources for the future, happiness is the precursor to success and also the result.

Our patriarchal society is based on a set of rules that people have to obey.  To create compliance to these rules our culture uses fear of punishment or exclusion or pain or guilt, Pessimismis a projection of a poor outcome in the future, poor self-image are common personality traits in our authoritarian patriarchal culture. Unless we were brought up in a family who encouraged trust and reinforced a positive self-image, most of us are bound to function from a negative mindset, poorly supportive ofsuccess.

A negative mindset can lead to depression and anxiety, poor health and social isolation. To reverse this conditioning a proactive attitude is needed to initiate changes.  Breaking barriers: The brain is malleable and a negative mind set can be changed to a positive mind.  MAP is a method proposed. M for motivation: cultivating the desire to change to be happier, or a better father or spouse, spiritual growth. A for awareness: focus on the present and witness the negative thought.  P for practice changing to a positive thought. Repetition is the key to reinforce new neuronal pathways.

A positive mindset leads to happiness, health and social successand even a longer life

We are social beings and the need for community is hardwiredin our human psyche.  Community gives us a sense of belonging and family, friends and social commitments cannot replace community.  Community feeds the heart, and providedprotection and survival in prehistorical times.  The tribe or the village was a basis for sharing resources establish rituals that gave a sense of belonging to their participants.

In order to survive the harsh conditions of the planet, humans had to help each other in their daily life.  Physical contact and huddling together provided warmth at night and helping each other was necessary for our prehistorical ancestors to survive.  The presence of other human beings ensured protection and support.  To be ostracized from your tribe was a death sentence. Each individual being a link in the chain of the social network was giving significance to people’s life.  Elders were taking care of the children and gardening, while the parents were working in the fields, children formed a community on their own, each member of the group serving the other member with his or her specialized skills and there was harmony with the environment.

Today, our brains still think we need to be surrounded by others to survive and thrive but the environment does not provide the same benefit as in our prehistorical society. Internet groups are a poor substitute to the face-to-face contact and do not provide the same reward.

Studies show that people who lack belongingness suffer higher levels of mental and physical illness and are relatively highly prone to a broad range of behavioral problems, ranging from traffic accidents to criminality to suicide… Pioneering sociologist Emile Durkheim observed in the 1890s that suicides can result if individuals do not feel a sense of belonging, or lack a feeling of connectedness to others.

Loneliness

With the breakdown of community and extended families,loneliness and social isolation settled in.  Today, loneliness is an epidemic. Being single or isolated are two risk factors. However, family is not the answer to loneliness.  You may still feel lonely in a family or in a crowd or being isolated without feeling lonely.   Internet is the driver of this epidemic allowing individuals to stay in touch with each other, without connecting.

Feelings of loneliness and isolation affect all types and ages of people, although some, like adolescents, are more likely to be impacted than others. The elderly are also at high risk. Research indicates that more than 20 percent of people over age 60 frequently feel intensely lonely. Not surprisingly, feelings of isolation can have a serious detrimental effect on one’s mental and physical health. Loneliness can be a risk factor for heart disease, Type 2 diabetes, arthritis, among other critical diseases. Lonely people are also twice as likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease. Loneliness cannot kill us per se, but if it is not mitigated, it might trigger anxiety, stress, and depression, which are known to drive people to unfortunate outcomes.

Social Isolation

Living alone, being unmarried (single, divorced, widowed), no participation in social groups, fewer friends, and strained relationships increase the risks for loneliness and for premature mortality. Retirement and physical impairments increase the risk of social isolation.  So the shock of social isolation could fuel inflammation in the body and the immune system may affect a region of the brain processing fear and anxiety. At the root, isolation compromises immunity, increases the production of stress hormones, and is harmful to sleep.

Dysfunctional Families

Society has recreated the harsh conditions of the physicalenvironment into the modern culture. Poor habits like sitting in an office, night shifts, and isolation in the cities cause humans to compensate by retreating to the nuclear family setting.  Outside values are imported in the family through TV. Competition, violence, superficial values.

We are seeing an increase in dysfunctional families due to contamination of social values imported into the family setting.Both men and women working has deprived children from human contact and more are left alone playing violent games with their electronic devices, learning violence as a way of living.

All of this feeds chronic inflammation, which lowers immunity to the degree that lonely people even suffer more from the common cold. As the tragedy of suicide proves, there is in human nature a fundamental need for community which must be met.

In 2015, researchers at UCLA discovered that social isolation triggers cellular changes that result in chronic inflammation, predisposing the lonely to serious physical conditions like heart disease, stroke, metastatic cancer, and Alzheimer’s disease. 

We must expand beyond our physical limits in a social body that has its own form will and meaning.  

Maximizing community in the cities

Talk to your neighbor and become friends, organize block parties to get to know your neighbors. Help each other care for the elderly and the children. Organize neighborhood gardens and kitchens, childcare and rides. Walk or cycle in your neighborhood, spend time outdoors, connect with people who live around you, or people who share the same belief system.

Community can be based on where you live embracing a wide variety of professions, belief system, ages or on identical belief systems or political / religious / spiritual/sexual choices

Coming together over a common cause (politics, faith, support groups) is much more binding group activities based on money exchange. The current climate change movement led by Greta Thunberg from Sweden is a very positive movement tending to unite adolescents around changing our environment to make it livable and restore trust and community.

In her complex design for self-perpetration of the species on earth, nature has lured us with the desire for sex, physical touch and love of others.  Every culture has tried to regulate sex through legal or religious institutions such as marriage, rituals, rites of passage or taboos.  Boundaries, restrictions, and ruleshave remodeled sex more than any of our needs.

Many questions may be asked, some of them:

Can we say that sex is a need since abstinence is not harmful?

Sex benefits mental and physical health through hormonal release of prolactin, oxytocin, dopamine, serotonin and endorphins.  Sex induces sleep, reduces stress, lessens pain, and reduces prostate cancer and heart attack risks.

Studies that focus on intercourse, masturbation, or same sex sexual activities are rare.

Sex serves a vast number of functions. It procures intimacy, sometimes friendship.  Historically, women traded sex for financial security.  Because of that, needs and desires are a strong driving force in our lives.

Humans have been on a quest for understanding and betterment that has motivated society to evolve. The need for meaning and purpose seem to have emerged from the destruction of communities in our modern life.  Traditionally, living in a tribe or a village included rituals. These rituals actedas a binder, and activities that cement dependence between its members.  For instance, in a village the wheat produced by the farmer is turned into flour by the miller and bread by the baker and back to the farmer.

Faith is a natural expression of our inquiry about our nature and our journey on earth.