Health

I have never liked the term the “Hygienic” diet. It implicitly suggests a diet designed for everyone that is specific, inflexible and stereotyped. Hygienically diet represents a means of affording the organism adequate nourishment and, in order to accomplish this there may be a thousand different diets which will provide the necessary materials of use in adequate proportions. Diet is merely a vehicle that provides the nutrients the body requires for the maintenance of its health and life. There is no diet that will suit everybody.

Diet does not cure disease. Diet per se does nothing. It is passive. It is acted upon by the organism. The purpose is to secure from it the necessary nutrients which the body needs for growth, development, repair of wear and tear, reproduction and the maintenance of its functions. To speak as though diet performs some function by itself is erroneous. There is no such thing as an eliminating diet, implying in some way that diet is responsible for elimination. Elimination is a physiological process; it is performed by the organism, not by the food it consumes. As the husband told the doctor when he enquired about the reducing diet his wife was following, “It worked well, she disappeared three weeks ago.” It is a fundamental conflict of principle to think that diets work. “Work” is something the living body does. You can easily demonstrate this by putting several different people on the same diet. You will get several different results.

A diet should consist of those materials which are essential to the organism’s survival. These may be broadly classified into proteins, carbohydrates, fats, minerals and vitamins. Proteins that all of these are secured in adequate amounts, in a form, which is usable, the organism will have the necessary materials with which to work. If they are supplied but, deficiently or excessively, nutritional stresses will be incurred. To the extent that they are excessive or deficient will accrue depending upon the activity of the individual organism. Obviously there are considerable limits of toleration, varying from one individual to another. The organism can tolerate slight excesses and occasional deficiencies, at these times drawing upon its own nutritional reserves, but prolonged deficiencies and substantial excesses will incur consequences of malfunction. The means whereby the various materials that the organism requires for its health and life are supplied are not of prime importance. Of first importance is the fact that they are supplied. This does not mean that we can take refined and processed foods as good sources of the materials that we require. What it does mean is, that providing the necessary materials are available to the organism in the diet consumed, free from noxious extraneous substances, in a form which naturally occurs, not tampered with by the food refiner and processor, the organism will be securing the necessary nourishment. It is important that we get away from the idea that specific foods and specific diets have healing properties or have special properties other than the mere presence of nutrients needed by the organism. The idea that we should take beet juice for anaemia, cabbage juice for ulcers or parsley for the kidneys is a vicious reactionary hangover from the medicating superstition. Nor is it desirable that we study the analyses of various foods and select our diet according to some chart that indicates that a particular food is rich in a particular nutrient. This is not good nutrition. From this practice we may learn that whole grain cereals are rich in iron but we may not discover that the presence of phytates renders the iron relatively unavailable to the organism.

We should attempt to secure our nutrients from a wide variety of foods although, obviously, not at the same meal. Over a period of time, eat as wide a variety of foods as is practicable. Introduce new foods into the diet. I am speaking here, of course, of natural foods and by that I mean foods that are provided by the plant or tree in nature, i.e., fresh fruit and vegetables. In fresh fruits and vegetables, I also include nuts, which are botanically classified as fruits. Some of the nuts, which are in common use, are not, strictly speaking, nuts. The peanut is a legume. The cashew, the seed of the cashew apple, always heat treated. However, if we select our protein from almonds, brazils, hazels, macadamias, pecans, pine nuts, pistachios, walnuts, etc., these will supply the essential amino acids required for growth, development, repair and reproduction. To avoid any argument about the importance of taking all of the necessary amino acids at the same meal, eat a variety of nuts, but be careful not to overeat. An amount of three to four ozs. daily is quite adequate. Some additional protein will be taken in the very small quantities present in fruits and vegetables. In some cases this might be quite significant. It is desirable to keep one’s diet simple, not to have a wide variety of foods at a single meal, but to limit the variety to perhaps four different types together with some concentrated food such as nuts for protein. There are those who do not digest nuts well. They are uncomfortable after eating them. They find them too concentrated and rich. They are better not eating them.

Many people can survive quite well on two meals a day; one fruit meal and one somewhat large salad meal together with protein. This does not mean however, that one cannot have two fruit meals or two salad meals. It may be varied as desired. Two fruit meals may be taken one day and two salad meals may be taken, another day. If one is on a three meal a day program, a fruit breakfast is usually the most desirable, but there is no real objection to a salad breakfast. For the remaining two meals, these may comprise a further two fruit meals or two salad meals, or one fruit and one salad meal. Some protein with one of the meals is desirable and I usually some nuts. Basically the Hygienist argues that the natural diet of humans comprises fresh uncooked fruits and vegetables (which includes nuts) and insofar as we deviates from this, we increase our chances of incurring trouble. Dairy products, cheese, yoghurt, milk, eggs, butter, represent a compromise and if taken at all should be used sparingly. Flesh such as meat, fish and fowl represent a departure from food normal to humans.

Nutritional type

It is the general belief among the various authorities on nutrition, the WHO, the FAO, the National Academy of Science, etc., that humans are omnivorous, that is, they eat a diet which can eat both plant and animal matter. Animals that are omnivorous usually lack categoric specialisations in their food-gathering behaviour and anatomic structures. Many animals generally considered carnivores (Lions, tigers, the cat family) are actually omnivorous, among them the red fox, which enjoys fruits and berries, and the snapping turtle, a considerable quantity of whose diet is provided by plants.

The herbivore is an animal adapted to subsist solely on plant foods. They range from insects (such as aphids) to large mammals (such as elephants), but the term is most often applied to ungulates, or hoofed mammals. The specific adaptation of the herbivore include specializations such as the four-chambered stomach of ruminants, the constant growing incisor teeth of rodents, and the specialised grinding molars of cattle, sheep, goats, and other bovids. Certain herbivores are monophagous, that is restricted to one type of food typical is the koala to eucalyptus, but most do have some variety in their diets.

From the conventional standpoint these are the three groups, carnivore, herbivore and omnivore. These have been derived from observations of different organisms associated with differences studied in comparative anatomy, physiology and biochemistry. Obviously, if we observe humans from different and often remote areas of the world we discover that they will eat almost anything. They are omnivorous.

The hygienist, and others, have introduced a fourth category called frugivore because humans and the anthropoids do not seem to fall into the other categories when considered solely on comparative studies of anatomy, physiology and biochemistry (diagram). The orthodox scientist has never accepted this however. Therefore many difficulties arise. Is this category justified? Monkeys and small apes will eat animal foods, this is a certain observation in the wild. Although they do not eat much it does occur. The gorilla has not been observed eating such foods. In fact according to Schaller, in his book the “Ecology and Behaviour of the Mountain Gorilla” the primates would go to great lengths to remove insects from food.

The arguments in support of the inclusion of another category are involved and extensive and it is not appropriate for me to discuss them here, but it is incumbent upon me to state that hygienists question whether or not flesh foods constitute a part of the normal diet of humans. Maybe their use represents a compromise. We have to decide this issue for ourselves.

DIAGRAM ONE
Systems of Nutritional Classification.

The category into which an organism may be placed varies according to the chemical nature of the nutrients it requires. Three separate classification systems are commonly employed. One system is based on the chemical nature of the foods needed. Therefore, organisms such as green plants, and some bacteria, that require only inorganic compounds are called autotrophic organisms, or autotrophs; all animals, fungi and most bacteria, require organic as well as inorganic compounds and are called heterotrophs.

Another system is based on the type of the energy source utilised by the organism. Those that convert radiant energy (light) to chemical energy in the form of adenosine triphosphate (ATP) are photosynthetic organisms called phototrophs. The others use inorganic compounds such as oxygen and organic compounds such as the common nutrients to satisfy ATP requirements, called chemosynthetic organisms or chemotrophs.

A third system is based on the type of electron-donor nutrient material utilised to synthesise certain cell constituents. Most plants consume inorganic compounds in this activity, water is the ultimate source of electrons, and are called lithotrophs; conversely and organotrophs uses organic substances, such as carbohydrates, to perform an analogous function.

An organism may be classified according to more than one system. Thus, a green plant is photolithotrophic, certain bacteria are photoorganotrophic, and other bacteria are chemolithotrophic. Animals, including humans, most bacteria, and yeasts are chemoorganotrophic.

Among the most dangerous and health-impairing nutritional habits, I consider the following:

• Overeating
• Eating refined, processed and chemicalised food
• Eating foods that have been significantly chemically manipulated
• Excessive consumption of concentrated food
• Eating too much cooked food:
• Overcooked food:
• Reheated cooked food:
• Pressure cooked or high temperature cooked food.

I personally view the diet containing a large proportion of fresh raw fruits and vegetables as the most satisfactory. The diet may have to be manipulated in various ways, in disease and during the process of recovery. What I am here discussing represents certain basic principles of dietetics which are generally applicable to the sound and healthy. The diet of the invalid may have to be modified considerably and frequently as their strength and weakness alternate, as the energy ebbs and flows, as the needs fluctuate from day to day. Considerable knowledge and skill are required in order to feed the sick adequately, without imposing nutritional burdens which prove enervating and contribute to the misery of the sufferer. In acute disease it is relatively simple: abstain from food, i.e., fast. But in the case of the chronic sufferer, the problem is far more complex Fasting may be employed but there are limits to its practical application imposed by the organism’s nutritional reserves, and the extent of the toxaemic load. Very few chronic sufferers are likely to recover during a fast. The fast merely provides a foundation for the reconstruction of health and in some cases it may require several fasts to provide this foundation, and the periods of feeding in between are most crucial. Progress may be inhibited if mistakes are frequent and serious. Correct feeding after the fast, in recovery from chronic disease, is an extremely critical and sensitive process requiring an accurate assessment of the nutritional needs and capacities of the invalid, and whilst there can be no mathematical accuracy applied to the provision of nutrients, it must always be kept clearly in mind that we do not nourish the organism by providing nutrients but by providing foods that contain nutrients. The organism is constructed to ingest and digest foods and thereby assimilate nutrients. We do not secure health by feeding nutrients but by providing foods that contain nutrients. The difficulty is encountered in providing the right food in the proper proportion under the correct conditions, at a time when the organism is capable of using them.

People phone me and ask “Can I eat fried potatoes? Fat and starch are all right together?” Now there are two points I wish to stress here:

1) Combinations are a refinement of food reform, not a basic principle. The rules of food combining are subordinate to eating the right diet and

2) I did not make the laws of life and I cannot make any special dispensations.

Even if I say you can eat something does not make it either good or right. Some people try to persuade me to let them eat certain foods as though I am in some way responsible for physiological processes in relation to food. As though I control the Laws of Life; I only interpret them. When I am asked these questions I often reply “What do you think?” Then they are forced to refer to their knowledge of Hygiene which usually compels them to accept the facts of reality.

People will argue that the in some way they are special, the usual laws of life have to be modified a little in their case. These are all the subterfuges of compromise. There are only two types that are special, male and female. There are special periods such as infancy, pregnancy, lactation, disease, but this does not mean that lettuce and apples are good at one time and pot and crack at another. Such periods require modifications of feeding and of food. This means that a particular person may have a problem with a particular food. Certainly they may. However, there are biological variations, it is trite but true that we are individuals. It is just that there are limits to the variations. The exception is infancy when the infant secures his fruits, vegetables and nuts through his mother; in her milk. A completely fibre free diet. There are dangers of feeding infants fibre too soon.

In any discussion of diet, there are two considerations, which are frequently confused with each other:

1) The food and

2) Feeder

The food remains basically the same in feeding anyone under any circumstance. The use of the food, its employment or feeding varies widely according to many factors: age, work, climate, activity, health and disease, etc…

Health is an ordinary language word, not a medical term. A paradox implies contradiction, inconsistency, incongruity, a puzzle, enigma, ambiguity, confusion, a riddle, absurdity, dilemma, something that cannot be but is. Indeed these epithets are befitting of the nature of health.

What is health? Can only individuals be healthy? Can we speak about a healthy marriage, a healthy family, a healthy society, meaning by these references more than just a healthy individual or a collection of healthy individuals? I think not. Such uses of the term health are inappropriate. Health, I think, in the strict sense, refers to the individual organs, plant, animal or human, and only metaphorically, can we speak of it in relation to larger groups.

Health, it must be argued, is a matter of degree. There are standards of health and they are relative. Health is a relative concept and it also pertains to the time of life of each person. It is true to say that almost everyone’s state of health could be better. Many of us can remember when we were healthier than we are now. The famous Greek philosopher, Aristotle, pointed out 2,000 years ago health admits of degrees without being indeterminate. That means then, that health is like pleasure, strength and justice. It is unlike being pregnant or being dead. Health is a positive quality of living tissue. It is not a condition. It is however the absence of negative qualities. Is one necessarily healthy if one is not ill or diseased? Is one necessarily unhealthy if one is not ill or diseased? One might infer from modern medical practice that health is simply the absence of all known diseases.

The modern medical textbook,” Harrison’s Textbook Principles of Internal Medicine,” contains no discussion about health, gaining health, regaining health, maintaining health, in fact the term ‘health’ does not even appear in the index. Medicines’ pre-occupation with disease, the emphasis of disease and its cure, is understandable because, after all, it is the sick and not the well who consult the doctors. Therefore, they have become distanced from the promotion and maintenance of health. Health and health care were the responsibilities of gymnastics and dietetics in Greek times, they have never been the province of the medical practitioner. As one eminent doctor said “Doctors are too busy fighting disease to be bothered much about health.” There must be something of a paradox there.

Who is the best judge of health? The doctor or the patient? Recently, a friend of mine was admitted to hospital. He was bleeding internally. He told the surgeon and his other medical advisors “the source of my trouble is here – I can feel it.” The surgeon, a professor at the University, and the other doctors refused to accept this. They said “No – you have an ulcer in the stomach and its haemorrhaging.” After 27 litres of blood my friend had surgery. They operated. They cut him from here to here and they found a lesion here. The patient knew where the problem was but the doctors refused to believe him. Subsequently they apologised but instead of the incision that was necessary over a small area, the whole of the abdomen was separated.

It is true that in certain situations the doctor may discover a condition of the body of which you are not aware. A condition that may ultimately kill you, but this situation is indeed rare. Generally you know, yourself, whether you are well or sick. It is your pain not the doctor’s. It is your incapacity not his and you alone should take the responsibility for it. The responsibility is not something that you can transfer to somebody else. Whilst it is commonly believed that if you have a disease you can give it to somebody else, they don’t say if you have health you can give it to somebody else. The paradox here is that it is common for people to look upon disease as an entity, but not health. Therefore, their concept of disease is not in the same class as their concept of health. Whilst they talk of health and disease as though they are antagonistic opposites, when we analyse the concepts we find that, not only are they not considered as differences in degree (of health), but they are in fact entirely different in kind.

Health is both subjective and objective. A person must not only feel well they must also look well and be well. He or she must be capable of performing certain functions within certain parameters which we consider the normal range.

Should we consider the health of an organism apart from the environment which supports it. The environment provides the needs, the raw materials; or the facility for the expression of the need, whether it be food or activity, sunlight or relationships. Health is dependant upon environment, but not solely upon it. Heredity, what we inherit from our forebears, formulates the fundamental limits or constraints of the human race. Our self-determined, self-generated actions make their contribution to our functional efficiency. We can present the triad schematically as:-

USE

HEREDITY             ENVIRONMENT

These individual features are far reaching in their implicit potential. Heredity imposes determinism, environment increases flexibility but without the constraints of heredity would lead to chaos. Use provides us with the capacity to step outside the limits of determinism and, with our self-generated action, modify, alter, change and control our environment and ourselves.

We must also consider the importance of cause and effect. Disease has causes – health does not. I would like expand that thought a little. Health is the normal condition of the body, it is autonomous, that providing the environment supplies the needs and the organism is used within its limitations, health is the natural, normal outcome, given an intact organism in the first place of course. Disease, on the other hand, has to be caused and removing that cause, providing it is done before irreversible damage ensues, will allow health to be re-established. I will comment further on that subject when discussing the nature of disease.

I am not seeking here a precise definition of health. I am inclined to believe that it is not possible to define health so accurately any more than it is possible to define knowledge, wealth, livingness. I am more concerned with creating a clearer understanding of health, eliminating many of the misconceptions about health. In ordinary speech we use the terms health and healthy as if we really knew what we were talking about. Now, I do believe, in fact it’s a conviction, that most people, when they talk about health, and this includes the professionals, really do not know what they are talking about. Etymologically health is derived from an old Anglo Saxon word ‘hou’ meaning ‘wholeness’ and ‘to heal’ means ‘to make whole’. The German word ‘heil’ also means ‘whole’. In Greek, Ancient Greek, there are two etymologically distinct words translatable as health – ‘hygieia’ and ‘uixia’. ‘Hygieia’ the source of the word ‘hygiene’ of course, stands for living well or more precisely ‘a well way of living’. ‘Uixia’ means literally “well habitedness’ or in our present context “good habits of body.”

Certain linguistic points are worth noting. The Greek and the English words for ‘health’ are totally unrelated to all words for disease, illness or sickness. This fact is also true of German, Latin and Hebrew. The Greek words for health, unlike the English, are also completely unrelated to all verbs of healing. Health is an action or function unrelated to, and prior to, both illness and physicians. The English emphasis on ‘wholeness’ or ‘completeness’ is comparatively static in structure and the nature of a whole, distinct from all else and complete in itself, carries connotations of self-contained-ness, self-sufficiency, independence, responsibility. In contrast, the Greek terms stress the function and activity of the whole body, not only working but working well.

The Greek term suggests that health is connected with the way we live and perhaps implies that health has largely an inner cause. The Greek also seems to imply that to stay healthy requires effort and care, that however much nature makes health possible, human attention and habit are required to maintain and preserve it. Health is neither given or, usually, taken away from the outside, nor is it the gratuitous expected state of affairs.

Health is a natural norm. It is not a value as opposed to a fact. It is a state of being that reveals itself in activity as a standard of bodily excellence or fitness and, it must be related to the environment that supports it. Health and disease are not incompatible. They can co-exist in a sense and herein lies the paradox. The healthy person swallows a virulent poison. They immediately become sick. They have a disease. They get rigors fever, nausea, vomiting, symptoms of disease. The vigour and effectiveness of which are directly related to health. If the person is healthy they will defend themselves against the poison efficiently and completely, restoring normality rapidly. On the other hand, if the person does not vomit on imbibing the virulent poison, it is absorbed into the blood and more serious consequences are inevitable, with possible death.

As I have mentioned on occasions in the past, when I have departed from Australia, in the middle of winter, to arrive in Los Angeles half a day later, in the middle of summer, the adaptive requirements imposed upon the organism are enormous. A few hours in Los Angeles, with the smog, my eyes are sore, nostrils irritated, mucous in the throat, signs of disease, yes, but also indications of health because my body is defending itself against an environmental irritant which it cannot escape, overcome or destroy.

Health is not a static condition; it is a fluctuating quality. It is not the opposite of disease, it is inextricably associated with disease in an ever changing continuance, but to understand health, we need to understand disease. We need to understand the relationship that exists between the organism and its environment. If a person consults me and I learn they smoke tobacco, they take drugs, they imbibe tea and coffee, they drink alcohol and do the usual conventional things that are accepted as quite normal, I can state unequivocally that they are not healthy because they are not supplying needs. They are daily poisoning themselves and this is inevitable that health cannot withstand such an incessant and continual onslaught. If we are prepared to accept health on an average basis; if we are content to consider ourselves healthy when we suffer from frequent headaches, repeated gastro-intestinal upsets, recurrent constipation and obscure aches and pains then it is time we revise our values.

Hygiene argues that to be healthy we must supply the conditions of health – that health is not a matter of chance or accident but that the organism functions according to known and demonstrable laws, that the physiologists, biologists know only too well if we are to have health we can have it only on nature’s terms. An organism cannot act contrarily to its nature. The nature of the organism is, and it does not change. Its requirements a thousand years ago, a thousand years ahead and to- day are similar.

The body does not use food one day and poison the next. It does not utilise oxygen one week and carbon dioxide the next. The needs of the organism do not change in kind. Your needs are basically the same as your next door neighbour i.e. in the fundamental sense. Their appropriation, their quantitative application may vary but there is never a time when the organism acts contrary to its nature.

The needs of health are many and complex but broadly they fall into the major categories of food, air, water, sunshine, rest, sleep, activity and mental and emotional factors. The precise qualitative and quantitative application is highly individual and becomes more so as health is impaired because limitations become greater.

Health then, is a fluctuating quality of living tissue. It is a concept which represents an ideal. It is not an opposite of disease but the optimum on the same continuum.

One of the main features which distinguishes Hygiene from systems of caring for people is the unique conception of the nature of disease. Health and disease represent a continuum that goes from the absolute optimum of functional excellence to the extreme of structural degeneration, just short of death. Health and disease are relative terms not absolutes. Absolute health and absolute disease are both nonsense terms. If, as we claim, health and disease are processes, they must also be relative.

The degree of health attainable by an organism, given the most favourable environment, is limited by genetic and congenital factors that impose irrevocable limitations on its functional performance. For practical purposes this may not be important but alternatively it may be crucial. Health and disease are varieties of functional display, the former we call normal, the latter, abnormal. Health represents a dynamic quality of physiological action sustained by the organism where the internal environment is conducive to its survival.

The internal state is autonomously regulated to meet the fluctuating demands of a continuously changing external environment. The actions of self-regulation and the resulting efficiency with which the organism copes with the demands of its environment represent its health the only essential difference in disease is that the internal environment is not conducive to survival. There has been some disturbance of homeostasis, (stability of the internal environment). But the autonomous regulation is attempting to restore this medium to a salubrious condition by modifying the physiological actions to a point where we consider them pathological (accelerating, diminishing, suspending) etc. At the point where a function is arbitrarily deemed abnormal, disease is manifested.

There is often no clear distinction between normal and abnormal function. The normal performance of the stomach as an organ of digestion is to retain food. If it fails to do this and vomiting occurs this is a sign or feature of disease. It is abnormal and pathological, however, the action of the organism cannot be separated from the causes and the assessment of health must be related to the conditions favourable and unfavourable that comprise the environment in which the organism survives. Vomiting is abnormal, it is pathological it represents one of the signs of disease but it does not necessarily mean the organism is not, in a broad sense, healthy. An organism manifesting an optimum state of health, May, inadvertently, ingest some virulent poison and suddenly health is impaired, disease develops (within a matter of seconds or minutes) vomiting occurs, distress, pain, frustration, dehydration, pallor, palpitation, delirium, coma and death. During this brief period, the actions of the organism have been modified from physiological to pathological, from maintaining the internal constancy (homeostasis) to desperately attempting to restore it.

It is important then that we understand that our use of the terms “health” and “disease” refer to actions or processes not to states or conditions. Actions can change almost instantly and the healthy can display disease very quickly. The autonomous processes restoring normality and health is restored.

Therefore the concepts do not imply any static condition which is stable and rigid. Health and disease are fluctuating qualities on a continuum with optimum health at one end and death at the other.

However, all of us tend to lapse into a semantic error occasionally and we use the word “health” to describe our general and fluctuating condition, but the danger is when we use the term several times in a discussion with different meanings at one time from another. As the term?s “health” and “disease” are important to our total philosophy it is essential that we restrict their meanings to prevent ambiguity or equivocation. Both terms have meanings other than the one I have chosen to adopt but unless we are clear about what the hygienists means by the terms our literature will be as confusing and contradictory as most others on the subject.

As an example, we commonly find in popular magazines, newspapers and medical books disease referred to as communicable, contagious, infectious, inflammatory, disabling, neo-plastic, etc. Measles is a disease, anaemia is a disease, paralysis is a disease, contagious disease is a problem of identity. The disease is regarded as an entity capable of being transferred from one person to another. It is implicitly independent of the body which it is said to “attack”.

Now in the context in which the term is used it becomes apparent that it is not the disease which is transferred but its assumed cause, the virus or germ. So one common fallacy involves the use of the term “disease” to designate a “cause”. Processes of information, fever and vomiting in common with the hygienists’ views, designated symptoms and signs of disease, such as we might encounter in so called measles. Finally conditions such as anaemia, paralysis and cataract are included as a category of disease, which in the hygienists opinion are not “actions” but “degenerations” or end results of the causes. The point is that the term “disease” is used to refer to three distinct concepts:

1. The cause

2. The process

3. The results of the cause upon living tissue

To make the point more distinct, consider the following example: a man strikes his hand with a hammer whilst carelessly woodworking. The tissues are bruised, torn, bleeding, the bones are broken and the joints crushed.

What is involved?

1. The immediate cause of the injury is the hammer,

2. The tissues are painful, bleeding and inflamed,

These are legitimate processes of disease, the repair of damage, defensive, reparative and adaptive change the bleeding ceases, the inflammation subsides, the lesions heal, the bones knit. Recovery has taken place; the “disease” no longer exists.

3. There is a resulting deformity and scar formation that is permanent. This is not disease but the end results of the cause.

Now in debate or discussion it must lead to confusion to use the term “disease” at different times to mean one or other of the following, 1, cause, 2, process or action, and 3, result of cause.

Infectious disease refers to the “cause”; inflammatory disease refers legitimately to “actions”. Anaemia, cataract etc. refer to the end results of causes, they’re not processes, although there are processes involved at some stage which do represent the “disease”.

The processes are the organisms unsuccessful mechanisms of defence and adaptation to the persistent cause. Therefore it becomes obvious that people do not die from disease but from the causes, where degeneration and death are the results of persistent causes, causes which proceed ignored and unremoved.