What Makes People Sick?

Often in the office, or in the public speaking on natural health care, chiropractors are asked the question, “Why do people get sick, and why are some people more chronically ill then others?” The answer is both simplistic and at the same time quite enigmatic.

The simple answer is stress, this stress can take numerous forms, including physical, chemical, emotional, psychological etc. Simply put when external invasive forces (stress) surpasses internal resistive forces (health potential), the body is overcome and the result is ill health of some variety. Therefore the better we can fortify our health potential, the less likely we are to become ill, and, if we do become ill, the shorter the duration and severity of the disease process. In the last newsletter we discussed some ways that people can bolster their health potential, these included improving the quality of our food, water, oxygen, and nerve impulse.

A large misconception is that germs make people sick. This statement has some validity to it, but it is largely false. When we talk about germs, we are largely talking about bacteria, and to a lesser degree viruses. Science and micro-biology has shown that less then 1% of all bacteria are pathogenic, meaning that less than 1% of bacteria will truly make a healthy person sick! Of the other 99% of bacteria most are very beneficial to the human body (helping to keep yeast, mucous, and serous populations under control), and the other bacteria are normally harmless, unless they come in contact with a lowered health potential host. This explains why a husband can be home sick from work, while his wife feels normal and conducts her daily routine and vice versa. If it were truly germs, the entire family, then the neighborhood, school, and eventually community, state, etc. would get identical symptoms and have the same disease 100% of the time. Obviously we all know that this situation does not occur. Viruses follow a similar pattern, and for the most part attack a deconditioned host.

This topic brings up an interesting story often told by micro-biologists. There is a dead bird on the side of the road and its decomposing body is being consumed by maggots. Two men are walking down the side of the road, the first man passes this unsightly scene and surmises that the bird must have died and then as the birds health potential reached zero the maggots infested the host, the second man passes the same scene and comes to the conclusion that the poor bird was flying too low to the ground and the nasty maggots jumped up and attacked the bird, fought and killed the bird, and are now eating their fresh kill. As silly as this story sounds, it is quite similar to believing that germs make people sick.