Killing Ourselves with Cleanliness and Trusting the Untrustworthy

Killing Ourselves with Cleanliness and Trusting the Untrustworthy

"But raw milk from a Jersey cow is a totally different substance from what I'd thought of as milk. If you do not own a cow or know someone who owns a cow, I must caution you never to try raw milk straight from the teat of a Jersey cow, because it would be cruel to taste it once and not have access to it again. Only a few people in America remember this type of milk now, elderly people mostly, who grew up with a cow. They come to the farm sometimes, looking for that taste from their childhood."
- Kristin Kimball, American writer, farmer city-refugee, from The Dirty Life: On Farming, Food, and Love

Perhaps the worst thing that has happened to food in the modern era was the creation of pasteurization for milk, by Louis Pasteur.

In 1862, heating raw milk to eliminate most of the germs (pathogens) seemed like a great idea. After all, people were dying all over the world from mysterious illnesses that Pasteur identified as microscopic organisms, which we now know as bacteria.

We know much more than we did in the mid-1800s about bacteria. Back then was a time when cleanliness was a matter of removing dirt from your hands before coming to supper and bathing once a week (or a couple of times a year, in some cases) to stop the body from smelling bad (if you couldn’t afford perfume, which was invented to cover bad body odour). Surgeons didn’t even wash their hands or butt out their cigarettes before dipping their hands into the bodies of patients on their operating tables.

When Pasteur invented the process that came to be named after him, he was hailed as a hero. He killed germs. Pasteurized milk and other foods would be "clean."

We now know that our bodies are not composed only of our own cells (and invading bacteria and viruses that sneak in). We have some twenty times as many good bacteria living inside us as we have of our own body cells. These bacteria are so important that we could not live without them. Most are in our gut (they help us digest good) and on our skin (where they protect us against invasion from the environment). In lesser numbers, good and critically important bacteria appear in many other places on and in our bodies.

Milk was, at one time, called "the perfect food" because it contained so many nutrients and beneficial elements (we now know as good bacteria, vitamins and minerals). Now, thanks to pasteurization, our milk is mostly white water, with any goodness being added manually at the dairy, such as vitamins.

Pasteur was so influential on the topic of human health that our ancestors accepted that all microbes were "germs," bad for us by definition. We came to believe that if we couldn’t see it and it was living, it was bad.

We now know that by killing off so many of the good bacteria that aid our health, we have made ourselves unhealthy. Milk, "the perfect food," is now perfectly useless for our health, except for the vitamins added after the cow and pasteurization.

We use mouthwash to make our mouths perfectly "clean." Our mouth is another of those first lines of defence against disease invasion. With a "clean" mouth, our bodies are open to disease against which we have no protection. Clean, but vulnerable.

We use electric toothbrushes to remove that terrible plaque that supposedly causes decay and destroys our health. Many of us spend many minutes each day brushing far longer than a dental hygienist spends cleaning our teeth. This does not make sense, but it delights dentists. Patients keep coming back to their offices when they have weak dentin and super sensitive teeth, for which they must use a special toothpaste for sensitive teeth. Not necessary. Sensitive teeth were almost unheard of among our ancestors.

We suffer pain, have no protection against disease invasion, but our mouths are "clean" according to the advertisers. Who profit from our ignorance and reluctance to learn what we should know.

Speaking of "clean," a TV commercial shows CLR efficiently removing calcium, lime and rust from devices in our homes. Then we can just flush it down the drain. "Clean" homes. But sewage treatment facilities do not remove chemicals from waste water, nor do water treatment plants remove them from incoming water before communities downstream of our chemical waste drink "treated" water that has biological pathogens removed, but not chemical waste. Somebody is drinking water with chemical components that are strong enough to dissolve rust.

Back in the days of our grandparents and earlier, kids got sick. Sometimes regularly. Sometimes parents with large families caused all their children to be infected with diseases like measles, just so they would all gain immunity at once. As adults, they got few diseases because their immune systems had been built up in childhood. It’s commopn today for adults to be off work several times during the year because their weak immune systems allowed them to invaded by some pathogen.

Today we have children who must, in some jurisdictions, take as many as 48 vaccinations (with documented evidence to prove it) before they will be allowed to enter school. Their parents may be forced to home-school if they refuse to subject their kids to these vaccines.

And what is in the vaccines? To avoid legal ramifications, I will let you do some research yourself. But here is a quote from NaturalNews.com:

"Suspicions have been confirmed for those wary of vaccinating their children. A recent large study corroborates other independent study surveys comparing unvaccinated children to vaccinated children.

"They all show that vaccinated children have two to five times more childhood diseases, illnesses, and allergies than unvaccinated children."

What kids in school have these days are "asthma, reoccurring tonsillitis, chronic bronchitis, sinusitis, allergies, eczema, ear infections, diabetes, sleep disorders, bedwetting, dyslexia, migraines, hyperactivity, ADD, epilepsy, depression, and slower development of speech or motor skills."

But schools rarely have cases of chicken pox or measles. Vaccines look after that.

Now in my senior years myself, I sometimes face a new medical professional (such as in a lab) who asks if I brought a list of my medications with me. I say I don’t take any. Some don’t believe me until I insist that I don’t take medication because I don’t need any.

They say I’m lucky. I know that luck has nothing to do with it. I am very attentive to my health and that of my wife. I have studied and learned.

That requires commitment to learning what is real about health claims and what is fraud. Or even what is dangerous to human health, even if proposed by a family doctor or in advertising by pharmaceutical companies.

Most people have no interested in doing that much work. The older they get, the more they suffer. They just consider that they have bad luck. They refuse to consider that they were lazy or ignorant in their younger years.

I was born with two autoimmune diseases (technically they are called syndromes) that were in both sides of my family. I studied and learned how to minimize their symptoms and maximize my own potential. Sure, I have problems sometimes, mostly during stressful periods. But my problems are manageable, which can’t be said by many with autoimmune diseases.

Many people consider me lucky. A few know how hard I have studied to learn what I need to know to safeguard my health, without having to depend on doctors and medication. On the rare occasion I pay a visit to a doctor’s office, I come prepared with a description of my symptoms, what I believe causes them and what the doctor might do to help. Rarely do I leave without the doctor agreeing with me.

That’s not luck.

There is no reason why you can’t control your health as well. The internet is filled with health advice. Some is trash, others are treasures. As you are a reader, you can read it and make your own choices. Don’t wait for someone else to provide the best solutions to good health on a platter.

You can make your own luck when it comes to your own health. You don’t need to depend on professionals who earn their living from people who are chronically unhealthy. Or who refuse to learn.

Bill Allin is the author of Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today’s Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for parents and teachers. Yes, bad health is a social problem. You catch it by listening to advertising.
Learn more on this subject at http://billallin.com