Cleanliness Is An Essential Of Life
2.1 The Need for Cleanliness
The body operates most efficiently when it is unfettered. Filth on the outside of the body most people will not tolerate. They readily appreciate external cleanliness and most keep themselves impeccably clean. While there is much to be desired regarding the ways in which most people maintain external cleanliness, nonetheless they are imbued with the necessity of a clean body—at least on the outside.
However, more important than external cleanliness is internal purity. Internal filth damages the body in two ways:
The mere physical presence of pollutants clogs and interferes with body processes. They hinder operations much as a crowd of people in a street hampers automotive traffic.
All contaminants within are poisonous! The body not only objects violently to the physical presence of filth but it also objects to its chemical presence. The body tries to maintain physical and chemical integrity. Anything that alters the consistency of body elaborated fluids and compounds; anything that threatens cell well-being due to its chemical nature is anti-vital, hence poisonous.
Thus we can see that for best performance the body must not be hampered physically or chemically in its operations.
2.2 A Clean Body Is Necessary to Health
The sum total of all the processes whereby the body is cleansed or kept pure is called elimination or drainage. Elimination is the sequel of feeding or alimentation. Ideally the body must eliminate the unusable debris from food ingestion, spent cells, the wastes of metabolism and extraneous substances that may be admitted in some manner. The more thoroughly elimination is effected, the purer is the body.
A thoroughly clean body is necessary to realize the highest level of function—to achieve the highest level of health. Inasmuch as the basic cause of disease is body toxicity, we need to realize the importance of keeping our bodies clean internally as well as externally.
2.3 Body Elimination Must Be Equal to the Need
Obviously, to remain free of burdensome accumulations, both physical and chemical in nature, the body must have full use of its eliminative faculties. If these faculties are impaired by lack of nerve energy, if they have been disabled by toxic materials or if ingestion of toxic matters exceeds ability to cope, then elimination is likewise impaired. Accumulations further vitiate the elimination process until the body must undertake an eliminative crisis (disease) to free itself of its morbid load.
We Americans are habituated to many eating and drinking practices that fill our bodies with alien materials that must be eliminated. Alien materials always take their toll on the eliminative organs. Nonfood materials are usually inherently toxic, especially the alien substances the average American eats and drinks. A constant load of toxic materials taxes the eliminative faculties. Thus we Americans wallow in toxic materials from exogenous sources and, due to their impairing influences, from endogenous sources, too.
By waste we mean all end-products of all the metabolic activities occurring in every cell and organ of the body. Elimination must equal the processes of supply if balance and health are to be maintained. Just as we can be made sick by living in rooms with our fecal and urinary accumulations, so, too, can we be made sick internally if elimination does not occur apace.
To cope with its eliminative needs, the body must enjoy conditions favorable to elimination. As well, it should not be taxed with toxic materials from without.
2.4 The Body’s Daily Cleansing Cycle
Eliminative processes never cease. Every exhaled breath is an act of elimination of toxic gases. The skin exudes some small amount of wastes continuously. But there is one time in each day when the body heightens its eliminative processes. This time is, roughly, from three to four o’clock in the morning until from ten to twelve o’clock noon.
The body’s stepped up elimination during this time is evidenced in many ways. A particularly toxic person may have a furred tongue upon arising. Hunger will not be in evidence. But, if the body is fed just the same, the eliminative processes are depressed though the tongue may still remain somewhat furred.
The body passes through rather distinct cycles daily. These are roughly as follows:
4:00 a.m. to 12:00 a.m. — eliminative
12:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. — alimentary
8:00 p.m. to 4:00 a.m. — assimilative
In view that few studies of these phases of physiological activity have been made, little is known about them. The information presented here comes from studies made in Switzerland. These cycles are consistent, more or less, with the way things are with healthy humans who observe the natural norm of working days and sleeping nights. Thus we eat when hungry. This is followed by body assimilation and, upon completion, the body turns its energies to elimination of wastes.
2.5 A Brief Look at the Body’s Primary Organs of Elimination
You should strive to master physiology and anatomy to understand the body and how it operates. You will learn much about these subjects as called for in each lesson. Nonetheless, it would be wise to consult basic books on anatomy and physiology. Despite its medical orientation, Reader’s Digest publishes some excellent books on how the body works. We advise you to acquire and study them.
The organs of elimination are as follows:
Lymphatic system (adenoids, tonsils, appendix, spleen, nodes, vessels, etc.). These chemicalize wastes in such a manner as to render them less toxic in preparation for expulsion. The lymphatic system also plays other roles.
Liver. The liver further detoxifies wastes. It is the largest organ and performs myriad nutritive and eliminative tasks.
Kidneys. The renal system filters non-utile wastes from the blood and dispatches it to the bladder. The kidneys perform many other functions as well.
Lungs. The lungs, like most body organs, perform a dual role as supplier and eliminator. They obtain oxygen from the air and supply it to the bloodstream In addition, they remove carbon dioxide and certain other wastes from the bloodstream.
Bowels or colon. The bowels perform few nutritive tasks other than supplying the body with water in emergencies, and electrolytes should the body require them. On the other hand it carries out of the body digestive wastes and metabolic wastes as may be excreted into it by tubes from other organs.
Skin. The skin is the most extensive organ of the human body. Among its many functions are protection of the body from outside influences that would disturb homeostasis, temperature maintenance, cooling and warming and elimination of certain wastes in extremely small amounts. In vicarious eliminative processes such as acne, boils, psoriasis, eczema, rashes, measles, poxes, itches, etc. the skin is used as an organ of elimination. The skin performs a nutritive role in receiving sunlight for conversion into vitamin D.
The tongue is sometimes used by the body as an extraordinary organ of elimination. This is very noticeable when you have a furred tongue. The tongue is not a regular organ of elimination but incidentally one in vicarious processes of extraordinary elimination.
There are occasions when the body will undertake massive eliminative measures. The respiratory system and mouth may be utilized in vomiting; the bowels in diarrhea; the mucous membranes as outlets from the circulatory systems (lymph and blood); the kidneys are used for diuresis; and the skin is sometimes used for diaphoresis and eruptions.
2.6 Supplementary Organs of Elimination
We have cited the regular organs of elimination. Those nonregular organs through which the body eliminates in crises are called vicarious organs of elimination. As mentioned, the tongue, skin, respiratory system and mucous membranes (internal skin) are pressed into eliminative tasks in emergencies. The body can cause ulcers or lesions for the purpose of elimination, or it may utilize ulcers caused by tissue destruction as an extraordinary outlet. In emergencies the body may press any tissue system or organ into service as a vicarious organ of elimination. These may be the eyes, sinuses, bronchioles, lungs and so on.
2.7 The Liver as an Organ of Detoxification
The liver detoxifies internal wastes and also attempts to detoxify exogenous poisons. It passes these detoxified materials either through tubes to the small intestine for passing on to the colon or back to the bloodstream for forwarding to the kidneys where they will be excreted in the urine.
An example of liver detoxification may be seen in the case of alcohol ingestion or its formation within the body by bacteria due to indigestion. The stomach and intestines do not digest alcohol. Alcohol is absorbed into the bloodstream as alcohol and circulates until eliminated. The liver detoxifies the alcohol to a great extent and passes it on to the kidneys for excretion. The liver, the body’s foremost chemical factory, varies its chemicals to the need in neutralizing or detoxifying poisons in the blood which pass through it.
2.8 Cleanliness at the Cellular Level
A book we heartily recommend you acquire is Dr. Lewis Thomas’ The Lives of a Cell. Though the cell is generally regarded as the basic unit of life it may not be, for it contains bacteria-like components that act as living entities.
So varied and multitudinous are the functions within a cell that one can spend a lifetime of fascinating study of them. It is said that their operations are more complicated than the most marvelous computer systems—more varied and complicated than the activities in a major city like New York City.
The cells take on supplies and they defecate. It is the lymphatic system, not the bloodstream, that constantly bathes the cells in a liquid medium. From the lymph fluids the cells derive their nutrients by diffusion, pinocytosis and phagocytosis. The cells pass their wastes back into the lymph. Cell wastes are partially detoxified by the lymph organs in preparation for passing them into the bloodstream. The bloodstream, in turn, transports the wastes to the lungs, liver and kidneys for excretion.
Cells are self-cleansing of their metabolic debris. They expel it to the lymph fluids through carriers that, our physiology books tell us, are not yet clearly understood.
2.9 Illnesses as a Cleansing Process
The body keeps itself clean by thousands of different techniques employed by an army of faculties. A hundred trillion cells represents quite a population to be served. It is an unimaginably large aggregation of living units cooperating as an entitative organism for the good of each and every cell and for the organism as a whole.
Due to unnatural practices or influences, humans frequently accumulate toxic substances in their bodies beyond normal capacity for elimination. When the accumulation becomes intolerable within the context of residual vitality, the body will preempt its nerve energy and redirect it to the task of extraordinary elimination or cleansing. When the body does this, disease exists. Acute disease is a body process. The energies normally available for muscular or nervous (brain) activities, digestion, etc. are preempted and redirected. Hence, the sick person has little or no energy for normal pursuits.
When a person is ill, fasting is indicated as a remedial measure. People should also fast periodically even when not ill to help the body effect extraordinary cleansing and healing.
2.10 How the Body Becomes Befouled
There are more ways to accumulate filth in the body than we can chart. Basically, all unwholesome influences and practices debilitate body eliminative faculties and especially lower the body’s supply of nerve energy. The key to keeping the body clean is a way of life that neither distresses nor pollutes it.
2.11 Normal Activities of Life Essential to Internal Cleanliness
The eliminative capacity of the body is truly immense. The body has over-capacity in almost all its faculties. We can live well with one lung, one kidney, etc. The organism thus has safety margins to insure survival.
Most of the world’s people manage to exceed their generous capacity for elimination. Therefore, the necessity for illness or healing crises in order to remove excesses that accumulate. If we live within our capacities as developed in nature, our system will never become befouled in the first place; hence, there is never the necessity for a healing or eliminative crisis—disease.
The living practices that are attuned to our adaptations will not fetter the organism; rather, they will enable us to thrive optimally. Those acts and indulgences which are contrary to human adaptations are bound to interfere with normal functions in many ways, the result of which is to burden the organism with uneliminated toxic materials.
Health depends on internal purity, and this, in turn, depends on practices that promote health rather than practices that result in the retention of morbid matters.
2.12 Fasting as an Extraordinary “Housecleaning” Measure
Whether the organism is befouled or not, fasting is a constructive condition! During the disease process, fasting is imperative to efficiently restore high-level function. In health, fasting rests the faculties, rejuvenates the cells and heightens functions.
Since all diseases have the same underlying cause; that is, body intoxication, there is a nigh universal remedy for the condition. Fasting affords the body the rest it needs so that it may redirect its energies to the task of “housecleaning.” Under the condition of the fast the body will expel retained wastes and impurities. A thoroughgoing rest is, thusly, an almost 100% effective remedial measure.
