Ancient Knowledge of your Body - ebook

Foreword

I have been interested in the topic of healthy living ever since I was a child. To be exact, it all began when my father started working in natural medicine (as a chiropractor and nutritionist). Since then, healthy diets and trying to eat as healthily as possible has been an organic part of my family’s life. I was still in primary school when I started spending most of my free time browsing the books on natural medicine on my father’s bookshelf, my favorites being the ones on various diets and eating. By changing his diet entirely my father successfully cured his hay fever and he could finally stop using the nose drops that he had had to constantly rely on to be able to breathe and therefore sleep at night for 11 years. For my grandmother, natural methods solved two big health problems in her life. First of all, she was able to cure the persistent leg ulcer that she had had for years with the help of herbs, and secondly, her eyesight improved. She used to wear prescription glasses of several dioptres and she developed a cataract. The hospital was going to operate on her eye, but after practising some simple eye exercises for a few months she was able to read without glasses again, and to the astonishment of the doctors her cataract actually disappeared without an operation.

I fasted with my father several times and, surprisingly, I had much more energy after 2–3 days of fasting than I had before, and I experienced some very positive changes. We tried many things, and after a while I started to develop an interesting theory based on the substantial experience and knowledge we gained through these episodes.

I noticed that every effective technique and healing method tries to heal the patient through being natural, only with different approaches. But if the key is being natural, then why couldn’t we simply make that single idea the method itself when it comes to the health of the entire body? And explain all the diseases and physical anomalies by looking at how civilization has changed our ancient lifestyle.

My life had different things in store for me and I became an economist, working for multinational companies. As the years passed by, I felt more and more that this was not my path, so I spent a lot of time learning about healthy eating alongside having a full-time job and giving advice to my friends who had health problems about how they could improve their health. Fortunately, my advice worked beyond even my own expectations, so they started referring their friends with health problems to me to see if I could help them too.

I gained a lot of positive experiences through the improvement of people suffering from various diseases, and I realised that the system, every single element of which is based on simplicity and ancient naturalness, is incredibly effective. I started perfecting my theory with the help of all the people who turned to me for help.

Later, I was offered a position at a company producing and distributing organic food, where I started to work as a manager. I learned a lot of new things there and I gained insight into this industry, not only as a consumer, but from the perspective of the producer and trader.

During this time I gained a lot of useful experience, while also continuously helping those who came to me for advice. A counselling session takes about 3–4 hours, so I didn’t have enough time to help everyone while also having a family and a full-time job. That is how the need arose for me to write a book in which I can share the most important principles of my method and the attitude that is represented by this lifestyle.

Note that I am neither a doctor, nor a nutritionist, and my method is solely based on the positive feedback of the people I have helped, my own experiences and existing literature. The name of my system (Ancient Knowledge of your Body) also refers to the fact that you don’t have to wait for a miracle or rely on some expensive magic pills – the solution is much simpler than that. The most harmonious way to achieve our inherent physical and psychological health is through natural living.

And that is what this book is all about!Introduction

We humans are an organic part of nature, just like any other organism. This is hard to deny, as we are the result of a natural evolution process over the course of millions of years, shaped by the prevailing natural conditions. And so our ideal environment is the natural environment. All our sensory organs, our instincts, our reflexes, our organs and their reactions work properly when they are in alignment with the physical environment of the Earth.

In space, for example, where there is no gravity, our bones will start losing density, our muscles will start to waste away, and we will experience negative processes happening to our blood circulation as well. The blood vessels in our neck expand, the kidneys start working more intensely due to changes in the blood flow, calcium excretion speeds up, etc. Our body will slowly but steadily go to waste in space, and the special exercises astronauts have to do and the special suits they have to wear while aboard the space station are designed to hinder this process.But we don’t have to go into outer space to experience negative changes in our body. It is enough to deal with the damaging effects of civilization on Earth. By decreasing the time spent in nature, we expose ourselves to serious health risks. Our body is a perfectly tuned, but adaptive machine that functions best when it is used in the environment and for the purpose it was “designed for”.

Even the most modern sports car will break down if water gets into the engine, because it was not designed to be used underwater. The human body is a self-healing system that is capable of maintaining its ideal conditions, has an amazing ability to grow and change – so far unknown to us in its full extent – and works the most harmoniously in the environment in which it has evolved. What’s more, we should feed it with the correct “fuel” we have eaten as we have evolved, in the form in which it is available in nature.

“The most important link between the body and its surroundings has to be food. In the form of food, our surroundings actually enter the body and become part of it. Vitamins are undoubtedly considered one of the most important factors in the coordination of this link. I am convinced that if we place our body back into its original environment in which it has evolved, it would function just as perfectly as the body of other organisms. Disease is an expression of the disharmony between the body and its surroundings.”

Albert Szent-Györgyi (1893–1986)

/Nobel laureate Hungarian biochemist and doctor/

Moreover, our body also needs the external, environmental influences that we might not even think about and which might seem to be a bit extreme, but which are an organic part of nature. More on this later.

The purpose of the lifestyle described in this book is to return to the ancient zone of wellbeing in which our body evolved, and in which it can be the healthiest. This most natural lifestyle has three building blocks: nutrition, exercise and other physical influences or external conditions. We don’t need synthetic powders, various artificial concoctions or expensive equipment to be healthy. Fortunately, as you will see, the solution is much simpler than that.Diets in general

There is a multitude of different diets today, some of which are better known than others: low-carb, candida, paleo, Atkins, ketogenic, alkaline, metabolic, Gl, Kimkins, FFL (Fit For Life), the “12-week plan”, Mediterranean, SBD, 90-day, Evers, Gerson, Hay, blood type diet, 160g, etc.

There are so many kinds of diet that it is easy to get confused. One friend swears by the 90-day diet, another follows the paleo diet, and a third one believes in a third kind.

Everyone has a diet that they think will solve all their problems miraculously, helping them lose weight, recover, be healthy, etc. (But deep down many of us know that we are just tilting at windmills, trying to defeat our body and our environment.) But they forget one thing. And that thing is the fact that people need to eat healthily as a habit, and not just go on diets periodically. If you eat healthily you can forget about all the diets out there, because you simply won’t need them. In the following chapter I will explain why.Man, inherently searching for balance

The human body – just like that of every other organism we share this Earth with – is self-healing. It strives to achieve harmony, a healthy and balanced state. We could illustrate it as a coordinate system. Let’s make an analogy, where the origin is the ideal, absolutely healthy, harmonious, neither overweight nor underweight, perfect physical state. Everyone has such an ideal state, in which they are full of energy, they feel like moving around, they are curious, happy, fit, etc. When do the problems start? When there is deviation from the origin in either direction due to an unhealthy lifestyle. Take for example the changes in someone’s weight (not connected to any illness): they start becoming pathologically overweight or pathologically underweight, malnourished. Neither of these conditions is appropriate for the body, so the body tries to return to its state of balance: underweight people get hungry and start eating more, and overweight people also feel uncomfortable and their body signals them by feeling full, gassy, satiated, etc. But, as a “conscious” being, Man overrides these physical sensations, and as a result of our socialisation (Christmas, Easter, etc) – or if there is too much food available – he forces himself to eat more than necessary and deviates from the point of balance even more. But our body is not calibrated to handle this overload of food and is unable to function properly in such an unbalanced state. Hence it develops various diseases.

Every illness is healed by the body itself. Medications merely help the body to cure itself. Just think about what a magnificent gift our body is. We cut our hand, the bleeding stops. Then the cut starts to heal day by day until it disappears completely. If we were to watch this process on a video in fast forward, it would look exactly like a superhero movie, where the injury of the superhero heals in a matter of seconds. What’s the difference between us and the superhero? Only that the healing process takes more time in our case…

The ability of the human body to heal itself is simply amazing! Here’s an even more hardcore example: bone fractures. As soon as a bone breaks, it starts to heal. And this happens so fast that after only a few hours of it being in the wrong position it will have to be broken again in the hospital when it needs to be reset…

Our body has a solution for everything. If it gets too hot it reduces its temperature by sweating, and if it’s overly cold it warms itself up through shivering. If we eat something bad we throw it up immediately so it doesn’t poison us. If we step on something sharp we instantly lift our leg as a reflex (i.e. not consciously) to prevent a more serious injury. If we happen to see a spider or a snake we instantly draw back our hands to avoid getting stung or bitten. Stinky (toxic) things disgust us, inducing gagging so that we are unable to eat them. The list is endless.

The body is a self-healing organism protecting itself and compensating for the external, environmental influences trying to push it out of its state of balance. It is programmed to protect itself, and if it is damaged in any way or it contracts a disease it tries to solve these problems by its inherent self-healing processes if we let it.

It is important to acknowledge that our natural defensive mechanisms, our behavior and our reactions to potential threats are all instinctive. Our instincts developed over millions of years to help our species survive – we can safely rely on them. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that our survival depends on research conducted in the past 20–30 years.

Firstly, because even scientists don’t understand many things about how our body functions; secondly, because vitamins and other dietary supplements are nothing but weak attempts to recreate something that nature has already brought to perfection.

As for the body, survival is its absolute priority, and everything it does supports this one goal. There are certain functions that are essential for maintaining its living state, and which are continuously in operation. These are the most important functions. Even in a comatose state, our heart keeps beating and we keep breathing. If these stop, life ends. After these functions come metabolism, digestion, excretion, maintaining our cells, etc. And if all of these are in order and working properly, only then comes defence against viruses, bacteria or cancer cells.

If we cut ourselves badly, then stopping the bleeding is an immediate and absolute priority, because if the bleeding continues we will bleed to death rather soon. The body starts to heal bone fractures instantly because that serves its survival the most. If it had not started healing the bone immediately, then Man couldn’t have stood up on his feet in the ancient wilderness and would have become helpless. Unable to move, he either would have been caught by predators or would have starved to death. Although bone fractures did not necessarily mean certain death in the last couple of thousand or ten thousand years, such a relatively short period of time is not enough to induce evolutionary changes. Today our broken leg is cast almost immediately, then all we have to do is wait comfortably at home for the bones to heal. But our body keeps functioning according to its ancient principles, because evolution happens much slower and it is not able to keep up with the fast changes of a mere couple of thousands of years, and adjust to the fact that now bone fractures do not need to be the priority anymore, but rather the prevention of certain fast-developing types of cancer. Because those are what kill people nowadays, not bone fractures.

So there are certain priorities. First, it is to ensure our survival, then it is to heal the injuries threatening our survival. And if we still have some capacity left, we can also deal with the diseases that develop more slowly, out of sight, deep down. As these diseases (e.g. cancer cells growing for months) do not threaten survival in the short term, our body prioritises the use of its energy and focuses on our day-to-day survival, dealing with the many negative external influences (additives, chemicals, the constant digestion it is forced to do, other toxins).

An early-stage cancer cell growth is not considered a priority, but rather a (to borrow the term from accounting) “subordinated debt” that does not have to be dealt with straight away: “I’ll get to this problem when I have some capacity to spare”. The problem today is that people overwhelm their body with their unhealthy lifestyle to the extent that it does not have the energy to deal with these so-called subordinated debts and heal abnormal cell growths, etc. The body has so much to deal with that it never gets to the end of its tasks, the system keeping itself busy with a continuous flow of band-aid solutions. Maintaining a body that is constantly treated badly and pumped with chemicals takes so much energy that there is none left to heal chronic diseases. And these diseases sooner or later permeate the body so thoroughly that often there is no way back.