What Causes Human Illness?

Four Years Into Covid Era and This Question Still Remains

Beyond all things Covid, lies a very basic question - one that has been swept under the rug since the beginning of the First Industrial Revolution…

What causes human illness ?

A tight web of medical industries, in popular top-down fashion, insist that single microbes are—one at a time—to blame for illness, that they will forever be the enemy, and they must be fought to the death, at all costs. A look at the historical record reveals a more nuanced view—one that suggests that single-microbe theories are not just overly simplistic, but completely invalid. When I step back from current conversations to consider epidemiology and toxicology, to consider the microbiome, to consider everything I can think of…the physiological causes of illness come down to these two things: nutrient and electron deficiencies. But even these are not root causes of illness. We need to step back even further and ask “What causes nutrient and electron deficiencies?”

Root causes of human illness are environmental. They exist as threats, often in the form of modern biochemical and electromagnetic exposures, as well as all sensed and perceived threats. While a single deficiency can be shown through laboratory research to be sufficient to lead to illness, in ancient and modern times, any person’s condition is a result of a combination of many factors—a complex network of interactions and causal chains that loop around and impact each other. Two categories of factors—environmental exposures and their resulting deficiencies—interact with each other, our microbiome, the branches of that which is labeled ‘nervous system,’ and our human biochemistry in an infinite number of ways, accounting for all conditions, symptoms, illnesses and disabilities. We talk about "causes" of illness like increased cholesterol or leaky gut or genetic mutations, but if you step back to view a more comprehensive picture, these conditions of the body are outcomes—results of the direct environment around an organism—not root causes. The condition of a healthy body comprises intermediary outcomes which are part of a long chain of events that begin with nutrient-dense living soil, mineral-rich water, clean air, ancestral electromagnetic fields (EMFs) and connection to the earth (literally, skin-to-ground.) If the soil (or water or air) lacks nutrients or is contaminated, the nutrient-deficient chain of events begins. The organism and its future progeny will be nutrient deficient or contaminated—or both—because the body has no choice but to reflect the state of its environment.

Our rapidly changing world is increasingly replacing natural with synthetic in all areas of life. Over time, organisms become less saturated with life’s essentials and more contaminated with harmful compounds and altered by man-made electromagnetic energy, adding to one’s total burden. The body, having evolved to detect threats, accurately perceives its non-natural burden and automatically transitions into a state of sympathetic dominance, where digestive, emotional and cognitive processes (which are required to develop, heal, think and thrive) take a back seat to the autonomic processes required for survival, even if the result is discomfort and disability. Even the mainstream understanding of sympathetic versus parasympathetic is probably not the whole story. If we consider ancestral wisdom, we come to realize the nuance involved even in the common phrase ‘fight or flight.’

The dysfunctional or ill body is not making a mistake—it is doing its best, based on available nutrients and energy and its current microbial and neurological expressions. It is detecting threats and reacting in order to maximize the likelihood of short-term survival of its human host and resident microbes. The chronically ill body is one that has adapted to these realities over time, making it impossible to simply “reverse” illness. Disease reversal does not and cannot exist, because all processes move forward in time. The goal is illness resolution.

The goal is recovery.