Why Physical, Emotional and Spiritual Balance is Important

When we arrive in this world, our bodies are for the most part in perfect balance.  Since the beginning of man, most cultures believed that maintaining proper balance within our bodies was the key to health.  The Greeks believed that balance within the four humors of the body gave them health.  The Chinese believe that Yin and Yang must be in balance to be healthy.  Balance IS everything. The term doctors use is homeostasis, the tendency toward a relatively stable equilibrium between interdependent elements, especially as maintained by physiological processes.   Unfortunately, everything we do today puts our bodies out of balance.  We consume foods that are completely processed.  We take all balance out of food that is in it in the first place. Nutrients are eliminated and then add a few back. The food industry adds artificial chemicals to almost everything we eat.  Hormones, artificial flavors, preservatives, pesticides are all part of our daily diet.  The food we consume today is as far away from the balanced foods our ancestors ate as it can get.  Our daily activities are equally unbalanced.  Exercise patterns are abysmal.  Obesity is skyrocketing.  Stress in our daily lives is higher than ever, and causing great harm to us.  Why?  BALANCE.  The human body is not made to handle the stress our lifestyles demand of us.  Our environment is toxic and polluted.  Thousands upon thousands of toxic chemicals are dumped into our living space, daily.  These poisons enter our bodies and create such devastating imbalances that, without recognition, will kill you. 
Am I being too dramatic?  If anything, I am understating the conditions in which we live.   It is no different today than it was a hundred years ago, except, the way we approach health care today is very different; but the fundamentals remain the same. I believe there are three fundamental cornerstones to regain and maintain balance.  They represent choices you have within your daily life.  They are as follows:
1.    Diet / Nutrition
2.    Lifestyle/Daily Activities
3.    Environmental Influences
 
When these cornerstones/lifestyle choices are paired with the 4 imbalances/dysfunctions within the body (Digestion/Absorption, Endocrine/Hormonal, Immune/Inflammatory and Detoxification/Elimination)  it proves to be a highly effective means of controlling chronic inflammatory illnesses.  
Properly implementing these fundamentals today is difficult in a culture that dismisses any of them as consequences of virtually all illnesses, a culture that promotes taking everything natural out of our foods and replacing them with man-made chemicals; a culture that requires lifestyles to work in favor of rapidity and ignores the simple influences of proper health; a culture that believes that thousands upon thousands of toxic chemicals dumped into our air, food, and water have little or no effect on our health as a whole; a culture that promotes that everything in time will and can be cured by a drug; it goes on and on.  Our culture today, and our lack of taking responsibility for our own health, is destroying our quality of life and advancing diseases at an alarming rate.