THE ENVIRONMENT AND OUR HEALTH

 

The current medical care model has an impressive track record of performance for helping generally well patients who get acute and self-limiting illnesses such as infectious diseases and trauma. This model has assumed for many years that good health is the natural homeostatic state of the human body. The environment is seen as an essentially benign place that generally has little effect on health, and the diet is simply a passive source of metabolic fuels for the body's inherently stable metabolic functions.

 

Many health providers are turning to ancient traditions of both western and eastern medicine that are validated by modern science. The model of Environmental Medicine is based on the growing appreciation that the human body is constantly coping

with its dynamic environment by means of a number of inherited, built-in, complexly interacting, and usually reversible biologic mechanisms and systems. These systems are designed to maintain overall balance among all biological mechanisms.

 

According to this model, substances in the diet or environment are appreciated as being potential stressors, capable of contributing to de-stabilization of homeodynamic functions, therefore causing disease. Categories of potential external stressors would include organic inhalants such as dusts, molds, pollens, and danders; the myriad of man made and naturally occurring chemicals; the diet and the many substances in it; infectious organisms; and physical phenomena such as radiation, heat, cold, humidity, vibrations, noise, electro-magnetic fields, etc.