There Is No Disease

By Robert O. Young

aguilegia flower

Disease names like diabetes and osteoporosis are misleading and misinform patients about disease prevention. There is a curious tendency in conventional medicine to name a set of symptoms a disease. I was recently at a compounding pharmacy having my bone mineral density measured to update my health stats. I spotted a poster touting a new drug for osteoporosis. It was written by a drug company, and it said exactly this: ‘Osteoporosis is a disease that causes weak and fragile bones.’ Then, the poster went on to say that you need a particular drug to counteract this ‘disease.’ Yet the language is all backwards. Osteoporosis isn’t a disease that causes weak bones, osteoporosis is the name given to a diagnosis of weak bones. In other words, the weak bones are the result of excess acidity, and then the diagnosis of osteoporosis followed. The drug poster makes it sound like osteoporosis strikes first, and then you get weak bones. The cause and effect is all backwards. And that’s how drug companies want people to think about diseases and symptoms: first you ‘get’ the disease, and then you are ‘diagnosed’ just in time to take a new drug for the rest of your life. But it’s all hogwash. There is no such disease as osteoporosis. It’s just a made-up name given to a pattern of symptoms.

As another example, when a person follows an unhealthy lifestyle that results in a symptom such as high blood pressure, that symptom is actually being assumed to be a disease all by itself and it will be given a disease name. What disease? The disease is, of course, ‘high blood pressure.’ Doctors throw this phrase around as if it were an actual disease and not merely descriptive of patient physiology. This may all seem silly, right? But, there’s actually a very important point to all this. When we look at symptoms and give them disease names, we automatically distort the selection of available treatments for such a disease. If the disease is, by itself, high cholesterol, then the cure for the disease must be nothing other than lowering the high cholesterol. And that’s how we end up with all these pharmaceuticals treating high cholesterol in order to ‘prevent’ this disease and lower the levels of LDL cholesterol in the human patient. By lowering only the cholesterol, the doctor can rest assured that he is, in fact, treating this ‘disease,’ since the definition of this ‘disease’ is high cholesterol and nothing else. But there is a fatal flaw in this approach to disease treatment: the symptom is not the cause of the disease. There is another cause, and , this deeper cause is routinely ignored by conventional medicine, doctors, drug companies, and even patients. Let’s take a closer look at high blood pressure. What actually causes high blood pressure? Many doctors would say high blood pressure is caused by a specific, measurable interaction between circulating chemicals in the human body. Thus, the ill-behaved chemical compounds are the cause of the high blood pressure, and therefore the solution is to regulate these chemicals. That’s exactly what pharmaceuticals do — they attempt to manipulate the chemicals in the body to adjust the symptoms of high blood pressure. Thus, they only treat the symptoms, not the root cause.

Or take a look at high cholesterol. The conventional medicine approach says that high cholesterol is caused by a chemical imbalance in the liver, which is the organ that produces cholesterol. Thus the treatment for high cholesterol is a prescription drug that inhibits the liver’s production of cholesterol (statin drugs). Upon taking these drugs, the high cholesterol (the ‘disease’) is regulated, but what was causing the liver to overproduce cholesterol in the first place? That causative factor remains ignored. The root cause of high cholesterol, as it turns out, is primarily an over acidic diet. A person who eats foods that are acidic will inevitably cause the body to go into preservation mode and produce more cholesterol to neutralize the excess acid, thus showing the symptoms of this so-called disease of high cholesterol. It’s simple cause and effect. Eat the wrong foods, and you’ll produce too much acid, which will cause the body to release cholesterol from the liver to bind up that acid which can be detected and diagnosed by conventional medical procedures. You see it is not the cholesterol that is bad. it is the acid producing food we eat that is bad. Reduce the acid producing foods like beef, chicken, pork, dairy, coffee, tea, soda pops, etc and you will reduce the protective cholesterol that is saving your life from excess acid foods. Yet the root cause of all this is actually poor food choice, not some bizarre behavior by the liver. If the disease were to be accurately named, then it would be called Acidic Food Choice Disease, or simply AFCD. AFCD would be a far more accurate name that would make sense to people. If it’s an acidic food choice disease, then it seems that the obvious solution to the disease would be to choose foods that aren’t so acidic. Of course, that may be a bit of simplification since you have to distinguish between healthy alkaline foods and unhealthy acidic foods. But at least the name AFCD gives patients a better idea of what’s actually going on rather than naming the disease after a symptom, such as high cholesterol. You see, the symptom is not the disease, but conventional medicine insists on calling the symptom the disease because that way it can treat the symptom and claim success without actually addressing the underlying cause, which remains a mystery to modern medicine.

But, let’s move on to some other diseases so you get a clearer picture of how this actually works. Another disease that’s caused by poor acidic food choice is diabetes. Type 2 diabetes is the natural physiological and metabolic result of a person consuming refined carbohydrates and added sugars in large quantities, undigested proteins from beef, chicken, and pork without engaging in regular physical exercise that would compensate for such dietary practices. The name ‘diabetes’ is meaningless to the average person. The disease should be called Excessive Acid Disease, or EAD. If it were called Excessive Acid Disease, the solution to it would be rather apparent; simply eat less sugar, eliminate all animal proteins, eggs, dairy, drink fewer soft drinks and so on. But of course that would be far too simple for the medical community, so the disease must be given a complex name such as diabetes that puts its solution out of reach of the average patient.

Another disease that is named after its symptom is cancer. In fact, to this day, most doctors and many patients still believe that cancer is a physical thing: a tumor. In reality, a tumor is the solution of cancer, not its cause. A tumor is simply a physical manifestation of bound up acidic cells so they do not spoil other healthy cells. The tumor is the solution to cells damaged by acids not the problem. The truth is cancer is not a cell but an acidic liquid. When a person ‘has cancer,’ what they really have is a latent tissue acidosis. They are absorbing their own acidic urine. It that would be a far better name for the disease: Latent Tissue Acidosis or LTA. If cancer were actually called Latent Tissue Acidosis, it would seem ridiculous to try to cure cancer by cutting out tumors through surgery and by destroying the immune system with chemotherapy. And yet these are precisely the most popular treatments for cancer offered by conventional medicine. These treatments do absolutely nothing to support the patient’s immune system and prevent the build up of acids in the tissues. That’s exactly why most people who undergo chemotherapy or the removal of tumors through surgical procedures end up with yet more cancer a few months or a few years later. It’s also another reason why survival rates of cancer have barely budged over the last twenty years. (In other words, conventional medicine’s treatments for cancer simply don’t work.) The main reason is current medical science wrongly perceives cancer as a cell when in reality cancer is an acidic liquid, like lactic acid. This whole situation stems from the fact that the disease is misnamed. It isn’t cancer, it isn’t a tumor and it certainly isn’t a disease caused by having too strong of an immune system that needs to be destroyed through chemotherapy. It is simply latent tissue acidosis. And if it were called latent tissue acidosis disease or urine in the tissues, the effective treatment for cancer would be apparent.

There are many other diseases that are given misleading names by western medicine. But if you look around the world and take a look at how diseases are named elsewhere, you will find many countries have disease names that actually make sense. For example, in Chinese medicine, Alzheimer’s disease is given a name that means, when translated, ‘feeble mind disease.’ In Chinese medicine, the name of the disease more accurately describes the actual cause of the disease which is caused by acids or urine on the brain, whereas in western medicine, the name of the disease seems to be intended to obscure the root cause of the disease, thereby making all diseases sound far more complex and mysterious than they really are. This is one way in which doctors and practitioners of western medicine keep medical treatments out of the reach of the average citizen. Because they sure don’t want people thinking for themselves about the causes of disease! By creating a whole new vocabulary for medical conditions, they can speak their own secret language and make sure that people who aren’t schooled in medicine don’t understand what they’re saying. That’s a shame, because the treatments and cures for virtually all chronic diseases are actually quite simple and can be described in plain language, such as making different alkaline food choices, getting more natural sunlight, drinking more alkaline water, engaging in regular physical exercise, avoiding specific acidic foods, supplementing your diet with green foods and green drinks and alkalizing nutritional supplements and so on.

Western medicine prefers to describe diseases in terms of chemistry. When you’re depressed, you aren’t suffering from a lack of natural sunlight; you are suffering from a ‘brain chemistry imbalance’ that can only be regulated, they claim, by ingesting toxic chemicals to alter your brain chemistry. When your bones are brittle, it’s not acidic brittle bones disease; it’s called osteoporosis, something that sounds very technical and complicated. And to treat it, western doctors and physicians will give you prescriptions for expensive drugs that somehow claim to make your bones less brittle. But in fact, the real treatment for this can be described in plain language once again: regular physical exercise, vitamin D supplementation, mineral supplements that include calcium and strontium, natural sunlight, and avoidance of acidic foods such as soft drinks, white flour and added sugars. In fact, virtually every disease that’s prominent in modern society — diabetes, cancer, heart disease, osteoporosis, clinical depression, irritable bowel syndrome and so on — can be easily described in plain language without using complex terms at all. These diseases are simply misnamed. And I believe that they are intentionally misnamed to put the jargon out of reach of everyday citizens. As a result, there’s a great deal of arrogance in the language of western medicine, and this arrogance furthers the language of separation. Separation never results in healing. In order to effect healing, we must bring together the language of healers and patients using plain language that real people understand and that real people can act upon. We need to start describing diseases in terms of their root causes, not in terms of their arcane, biochemical actions. When someone suffers from seasonal affective disorder or clinical depression, for example, let’s call it what it is: Sunlight Deficiency Disorder. To treat it, the person simply needs to get more sunlight. This isn’t rocket science, it’s not complex, and it doesn’t require a prescription. If someone is suffering from osteoporosis, let’s get realistic about the words we use to describe the condition: it’s really Acidic Bones Disease. And it should be treated with things that will enhance bone density, such as nutrition, physical exercise and avoidance of acidic foods and drinks that strip away bone mass from the human body to neutralize the excess acids in the blood and tissues. All of this information, of course, is rather shocking to old-school doctors and practitioners of western medicine, and the bigger their egos are, the more they hate the idea of naming diseases in plain language that patients can actually comprehend. That’s because if the simple truths about diseases and their causes were known, health would be more readily available to everyday people, and that would lessen the importance of physicians and medical researchers. There’s a great deal of ego invested in the medical community, and they sure don’t want to make sound health attainable to the average person without their expert advice. Doctors all want to serve as the translators of ‘truth’ and will balk at any attempts to educate the public to either practice medicine on their own. But in reality, health (and a connection with spirit) is attainable by every single person. Health is easy, it is straightforward, it is direct and, for the most part, it is available free-of-charge. A personal connection with our Creator is the same if we ask humbly in prayer for a relationship with Him, and guidance. Don’t believe the names of diseases given to you by your doctor. Those names are designed to obscure, not to inform. They are designed to separate you from self-healing, not to put you in touch with your own inner healer. And thus, they are nothing more than bad medicine masquerading as modern medical practice.

Muscle Stretching Improves Flexibility and Health

stretching improves body performanc

“ We never really have time for anything. If we want time, we must make it”

All your life your skeletal muscles create the movements that carry your body. They do what you ask without even questioning why. Now, you do have other muscles that are quietly working behind the scenes. These involuntary muscles (as they are called), help you to breathe, digest your food, and so on, but since we are talking about stretching, the ones we want to discuss are the voluntary ones that move your arms and legs and body around.

Our body’s just like our cars, homes, and yards need proper maintenance in order to give us joy in return. Too often in our busy day to day existence it is easy for us to take for granted what our body’s need, in order to be healthy. Many people who strive to take care of themselves well, come to see me often. They eat right , they exercise a bit, but then they get an injury, or have some bound up tension in their body, never making the connection that they need to stretch out and become relaxed as part of the balance of good health.

Consider the animals and how instinctively they do what they do. Picture a cat for example, he gets up from his nap and goes through his motions of lengthening his entire body, from his wide yawn, to his big stretch, making every part limber and ready for what ever is to come in his day. If we but follow that example, we would be happier because of it. We maybe wouldn’t be as blissful as a cat, but at least more flexible and ready for action.

Consider this, your muscles actually have one ability. They contract or shorten. This in turn pulls together their two ends, and moves a joint. From your knee, to your neck, your leg, or your back, your entire body is this mass of shortening muscles moving your body around.

Now there are moments when muscles become weak and lose their strength. They become too lengthened which can cause further imbalances, but I will save that for another article.

For now, we will focus on the necessity and simplicity of getting and keeping your body flexible, by the conscious effort of helping your muscles regain their normal resting length.

Muscle Stretching Brings Freedom

Our bodys by nature are designed to move. A healthy body should have freedom of movement, without pain and restriction.

So what then is the answer to regain that movement? What can you do to have the ability to bend over and touch the floor, or to stoop to pick up the kitty, or your child? Even to look over your shoulder and check for traffic?

You guessed it, the simple answer is stretching. Without it you’re a mess. You get out of bed stiff, you go through your day feeling like you couldn’t tie your shoes or bend over to touch the ground, even if you wanted to.  When you get down you can’t get back up. When you stay too long in one position, you feel like it takes you forever to get moving again. Sitting at your computer all day you begin to have muscle strain so intense that you get eye strain and headaches, back pain, and a cascade of other problems.

You try muscle relaxers and aspirin only to find that the tension is still there hiding deep in your body, waiting for that moment to debilitate you; the moment when you need your flexibility the most.

No matter what your current level of flexibility your body is amazing in its resiliency and ability to overcome. You can regain whatever freedom of movement that you have lost by starting now, the habit of daily stretching.  All of us have a miraculous ability to regain health, whether its from poor physical condition, bad diet, or even something serious like surgery or injury.

So allow me just a few minutes to share some simple and easy things that I have learned to help you feel better, have more freedom of movement, and relieve some of that tension that you have been needlessly carrying around each day.

Muscle Stretching Tips

Some may ask, I know I want to stretch but how?

What muscles do I need to work on, and what is the right way to do it?

Great questions. Here are some answers for you.

First I can share some pointers and suggestions here, but its really good to have a resource that you can use. A book that I have found to be an awesome guide to learning is titled “Stretching” by Bob Anderson. My personal copy is dog eared and well worn and I use it frequently because it is so simple to understand, and filled with photos that make it easy to use.

Following this article you can find some samples you can use right away, but really you should get your hands on it and see for yourself how easy it can be to get back in the shape you want to be in. So, find it here or at your local bookstore. You will thank me, I am sure.

So, for now lets tackle some of the basics you should know:

When to stretch:

• In the morning when you rise
• Whenever you feel stiff or tense
• Before and after exercise or strenuous activity
• Before bedtime

Why you stretch as a habit:

• Help muscles to regain flexibility and natural resting length
• Warm up muscles to avoid injury before activities
• Cool down muscles to lessen post exercise soreness
• Help you relax
• Raise your body awareness
• Give your mind time to rest and be quiet as you stretch

Who should stretch:

• Anyone that has muscles in their body

When you should NOT stretch:

• During the acute phase immediately after an injury
• After any surgical procedure before its wise to do so
• If there is significant pain in an area. (Note: The rule of thumb should always be to listen to your body’s intuitive guidance.)

Simple steps to follow:

• Begin with an easy stretch- You should feel some light tension in the muscle, but it should be comfortable.
• No bouncing- Bouncing is counterproductive and can actually cause injury because it sends automatic messages to the body to protectively shorten the muscle, while your objective is to lengthen it. So, NO bouncing.
• Slowly increase the stretch- As your target muscle area adapts to its new resting length you can gently increase the depth of the stretch. Do so always within your comfort range. It doesn’t have to be painful to be effective.
• BREATHE- The act of slow, rhythmic breathing is a relaxer to the entire body. As you stretch practice slow deep breaths and focus your attention on the area you are targeting. Feel the tension leaving the muscle and flexibility increasing.

Holding your breath holds tension in. Breathing releases it. So, BREATHE.

• Count quietly in your head- Set a goal in order to make progress. You can stretch for any amount of time you wish. As you make stretching a daily habit learn to ease into a stretch and hold it for a little longer each time. Before you know it your stretching will have gone from just few seconds to 10-15 seconds, then to 30 seconds – 2 minutes. Your body is amazing in its ability to quickly adapt and improve. You will be proud of your fast progress if you engage in stretching for even a few minutes every day.

So there you have a brief beginning into the importance of stretching, some basic knowledge of why and when, and some guidelines to follow. Certainly it is not everything you should know, but it’s a wonderful start to get you going, and get you excited at the possibilities of what you can do for yourself.

And remember,

” Its not where you are now but the direction your headed, that matters”.

I believe in you. You can do this. You will be so happy you did.

(  For your safety): If necessary, please consult your doctor or health care professional before beginning any exercise or stretching regimen.

Deep Tissue Sport Massage

Deep Tissue Sports Massage

isn’t just for the high performance athlete or marathon runner. When you’re an active person engaged in athletic endeavors you demand a lot from your body. When you perform these activities repeatedly you need your muscles to recover as quickly as possible.

This includes ensuring that any knots that are harbored away in those muscles are worked out as best as possible. Sometimes even with all the proper pieces in place- be it nutrition, rest, hydration, stretching, and supplementation, you will still need a little hands on help. That’s where Sports style massage comes in.

Deep Tissue Sport Massage Takes Someone Skilled

It is necessary to locate a skilled massage therapist that has a firm knowledge of anatomy (how the body is structured) and kinesiology (how the body moves). They definitely need to possess good communication skills and be receptive to your feedback at all times. Deep sports style massage in no way has to be torturous; however working with deep muscles and with certain techniques like friction will have a level of uncomfortability. But oh the joy when those affected muscles are helped to release all those nasty painful knots. You will be so much happier without them.

It’s All in the Timing

Typically Sports Massage is used Pre and Post event and then as maintenance. Duration can be for as little as 5 minutes and as long as 60-90 minutes. In Pre event situations massage is used judiciously and prudently as the muscles need to be worked lightly and briefly so as not to take away from their upcoming performance.

Post event massage is generally used to return muscles to their pre event state. Here massage works with the lymphatic system to flush out and aid in normalizing the tissue. Post event sessions are typically gentler and shorter than maintenance treatments, lasting from 15-30 minutes or so, and not much longer. The type and depth of the work is dictated by the type of event. When muscles are extremely fatigued after a 13 or 26k run or bike ride for example, they will not tolerate too much massage.

Pain or No Pain

All massage techniques begin with what I like to call the ‘warming up and ironing out.’ Their respective names are:  Effleurage, Pettrisage, Kneading, and Tapotement. As their names suggest we are gently pinching, pulling, grasping, rolling, and smoothing out the muscle tissue. You can picture the baker gently caring for his dough, molding it to its desired state. You the dough, me the baker.

A 60-90 minute maintenance session of Sports Massage would begin with the aforementioned steps, then we go deeper into locating those bound, constricted areas, with their knotted muscle fibers. We apply friction type movement that moves back and forth across the muscle fibers, gently teasing them apart from the neighboring muscles. We continue this layer by layer to aid all the fibers back to their individual fiber states and away from their bound, knotted, shortened condition.

The experienced therapist will be able to readily feel the state that your muscles are in, but just as in any other type of massage nothing can replace your communication when they reach areas that are particularly sore or tender.

Describing the sensations in your body like hot, tender, burning, tearing, stretching, relieving helps the massage therapist to know how your body is receiving the work, how much pressure is ideally suitable, when to continue, and when to stop.

As we free up the muscle groups it’s time to add a bit of compression and stretching at this stage to help encourage muscle elasticity (ability for a muscle to return to its normal resting length). Ice and/or heat could be used during and after the session to help either reduce the inflammation and pain or encourage circulation respectively.

It Can’t Move When it’s Stuck

Adhesions are created when significant trauma or surgery causes the body to create scar tissue. Collagen fibers in the body when healthy and uninjured are arranged in parallel patterns. When scar tissue forms it lays down collagen in random patterns like layers of fiberglass on a dented fender. The problem here is though the tissue area is stronger it does not function the same as healthy tissue.

It is now shortened and less pliable which means a loss of its range of motion if the tissue covers a joint,  and  is also likely the area will adhere to the surrounding skin, muscle, fibers, tissue, fascia, and organs, either some or all mentioned. Massage therapy in the form of a technique called friction is how we encourage your body the body to distribute the collagen fibers as close as possible to what is normal.

This way an injury doesn’t have to be debilitating or result in limitation, but instead with this proper rehabilitation it can more quickly return you to the activities you love.

With massage we are putting the body into a more optimum state, so the body naturally increases circulation on its own. By massaging muscles and adding input to the central nervous system, We are facilitating the body in recovering faster from exercise. It’s not the massage that’s doing the healing; it’s the person’s body.

 Deep Tissue Sport Massage May Help You:

• Reduce injury by relieving muscle stress
• Greatly improve range of motion
• Shorten recovery time between workouts
• Maximize oxygen and nutrients in the blood by increasing circulation
• Increase feelings of confidence and well being
• Calm or stimulate the central nervous system
• Psychologically wind down after strenuous activity or event
• Provide support to the fatigued immune system

CHAIR MASSAGE ON THE CAST OF RENT / PENTACLE THEATRE

When a cast of 17 highly talented and diverse theatre performers all come together within one small community theatre, explosively creative things are bound to happen. How could I have known that a
simple 3 week business promotion for Cedarleaf Elite Massage by performing chair massage at Pentacle Theatre in Salem, Oregon on the cast members of the recent rock musical ‘Rent’, could evolve into what I could boldly say was an experience to long remember.

I would actually consider myself more of a massage artist than a typical therapist. Always the consummate professional yet having more of an informal, outside the box approach to massage therapy does keep clients coming back again and again. My sole aim being to make it the best massage treatment you ever had, and create each session as unique as the first.

Now, I enjoy taking on pursuits that will both offer my services to those that can receive the most benefit and thereby appreciate it more, and will provide me with new opportunities and experiences. Up till now I had not been behind the scenes of a musical production before, nor entered into a dressing room during a performance. Needless to say I was in for a real treat as I prepared to immerse myself into what was obviously an electrically charged environment created by passionate on purpose actors and actresses filled with fire and enthusiasm.

In such a small space no bigger than a home living room, with this number of musically gifted young men and women, engaging in all the pre performance processes, it could have been too much for some..
Not me! Having a latent performer hidden somewhere within, I felt like I had just entered a secret den of expressive people just like myself.

So here I am de-stressing the muscles of actors and actresses closely surrounded by others applying makeup, styling hair, getting into character by bringing to light their most animated aspects of personality and full on expression of their character. Watching and listening to them go through vocal
warm-ups, and enjoying the brother/sister type camaraderie that only performers know. Uplifting and acknowledging each other’s inner greatness. All this activity was enough to make anyone high with exhilaration, anticipation, and excitement.

Being a massage therapist provides an inherent joy in that people are always glad to see you and this experience was no exception. I knew I could offer great benefit knowing that these stage performers demanded full use of their bodies along with their voices. Thereby, needing all their muscles to be relaxed yet ready for full engagement.

With each successive visit it became clear these were a group of talented and skilled performers who knew their craft inside and out. They warriored on despite the eventual wearing thin of energy produced by almost daily performances. Learning that only a couple hundred performers across the nation have acted out this production, somehow, though it be on the level of local community theatre, you got the sense that history was somehow being made. I felt it a privilege to come and share my skills and talent with fellow artists.

Now, mind you, all this sense of excitement, passionate drive, laughter..Lots of laughter, energy, fellowship and caring were just what I experienced downstairs behind the curtain. Only when I seized the opportunity to see these gifted young artists from the audience did my eyes open to the magnificence of what they all came together to deliver….And deliver they did!

Sure some may have been put off by the content of the show, however this troupe poured their very hearts into their performances, leaving it all on the stage and showcasing a story of dramatic life situations; gritty, poignant, and powerful. In the most masterful way, never seeming to miss a beat, and with a style and caliber that could equal any Broadway performance. One would never know they had entered a cozy community theatre tucked away in a wooded glen just west of Salem, Oregon.

There are these moments that a massage therapist like me can treasure when I happen upon an opportunity to be of service to a group of individuals that can use my type of attentive work, and then to walk away having been part of an experience that may or may not come again for a long while.

Truly a spectacular production run, and stellar performances by all. Not forgetting the crews that support the cast in their efforts. But then who am I? Just a guy that got to experience what happened behind the scenes, and offer the best service possible to.. as my saying goes:

“Helping you BE the best YOU that you can be”

Thanks everyone. It was a pleasure serving you. Come and see me should you have the need for massage bodywork that always works hard to give performances such as your own.

Mark Cedarleaf
Cedarleaf Elite Massage
“It’s called Elite for a Reason”