My daughter asks, “Why do we get sick?”

Dear Mom: “Why do we get colds? Why did I get this cold and you didn’t?”

Answer: (This question came from my 13 y.o. daughter, my most resistant healthy eater. I explained it to her and thought you might like the answer as well, highly simplified.)

“First of all, a mild cold with clear mucous is a helpful thing to get now and then (once or twice a year, even). It is your body flushing out toxins.

(When the mucous sticks around for a long time, settles in the lungs or elsewhere, and becomes thick, and yellow or green, THAT’S when you have a problem. That’s a highly acidic climate that is just begging for more viral or bacterial infections. That’s a perfect host for illness. How do you create that perfect climate for germs to take over? Take medications. Eat meat, dairy, refined flour and sugar, soda, coffee. Drink little water, get little sleep, fail to manage stress.)

Doctors believe that we die of things because germs are chasing us around, and finally they win and we die. The problem with this theory is that we have millions of harmful bacteria and viral and fungal “bugs” around us all the time. On the countertop, in our clothes, in the air, in our bodies. So why aren’t we always sick?

Because our immune system protects us. It fails us when we do not support it, or when we undermine it. Those with strong immune systems–and a healthy gastrointestinal tract where most of the bacteria populating it are good, supportive “germs”–do just fine. We might be exposed to swine flu, or strep, or meningitis, and the various systems in our immune support army just knock it out.

Those who make lifestyle choices to SUPPORT those complex, sensitive immune systems are more likely to avoid illness. Those who eat more colorful and especially GREEN raw, living plant foods are at least risk. Of course heredity, and inherent weaknesses, play a role. But the thing we can control in all of it is what we put in our mouth.

Now go drink a big glass of alkaline water please!”

Posted in: Detox, Health Concerns, Whole Food