What is the most valuable thing in the world today? Riches, Assets or Resources? Food, Water or Electricity? People, Technology or Information? You might actually choose none of the above and instead say, it is peace of mind, perhaps because that is getting scarcer by the day. We tend to value something more only when it starts slipping away from our hands, isn’t it?

I tell you, it is health, because if you do not have health, none of the above really matters. If you are not healthy, you have to spend a lot of time as well as money. You have to subject your body to medicines, regular exercise and a special diet. As you get busy doing all of this, you lose time, energy and opportunities to do other things, such as work, making money, spending time with your family and friends, recreation, travelling, entertainment and pursuing your hobbies. But if you are healthy and have vibrant energy every day of your life, you can draw on these two resources to fulfil all your needs to the max. So, isn’t health the most important aspect of life that should always take precedence, no matter what?

We still have so many chronic illnesses that cannot be cured even after taking the latest medicines. You cannot say you are cured of an illness if you are popping pills for it all the time. Cure means the remission of an illness after the administration of a remedy. The problem is, we are not ready to understand and when understood, accept the cause of the disease/illnesses in the first place.

Let’s understand and accept the causes of chronic illnesses so that this new year we can start a new journey of healing our bodies towards robust health and wellness…

(I) Seeds of chronic illness could have also been sown before our birth in the state of health of our parents, at the time of our conception. The latest gene map of both the parents is what is passed on to the child during conception. These illnesses are usually called genetic or hereditary illnesses. Most parents assume that if they were healthy while conceiving children, then their children should also be quite healthy. But, research proves otherwise. Even if one has been diagnosed with a chronic illness, at say 35 years of age, the illness actually starts in the body about 5 years prior. It just gets aggravated to an extent that manifests itself physically at age 35. So, if one of your parents had a chronic disease whose severity was 50% and your other parent did not have it at all, by simple math, you would have a chance of having that disease to a severity of 25%, at some stage in your life.

This simple equation becomes complex with the interaction of their two different body types and then your resultant body type’s resistance to that particular disease. The fallout of this is that it could manifest with a severity level of 15% to 35% at some stage in your life. It is therefore very important that parents do whatever possible to be in good health before they plan to conceive because the health of their child squarely depends on the quality of their own seed. Most aspiring parents, who do not give their health its due priority, are directly responsible for birthing weak children who struggle with health issues through their lives. Activities like regular exercise, sports, yoga, pranayam, acupressure, eating healthy nutrition, and following healthy habits, if done between the ages of 5 to 20 years, will greatly reduce the chances of the manifestation of a hereditary illness in a child’s life. Certain practices, foods and habits are better suited towards negating certain hereditary illnesses.

(II) Many of us have had diseases like pneumonia, typhoid, cholera, tuberculosis, jaundice, colitis, kidney infection, gastroenteritis and malaria, or we get infected by internal parasites such as worms and other bugs at some stage in our lives. We treat these diseases with some medication and forget about it. What we do not realize is that most medications or treatments do not bring the affected internal organs back to their original health. There is always some residual weakness in the organ that becomes the new operating level of that organ, which is lower than before, but life goes on.

Often, the medications themselves internally damage some of our organs. Many of us have had several sicknesses by the time we are 35 years old. At this stage in life, the aging process and fatigue also acts on all our organs. This brings the hidden weakness in our earlier affected organs to the fore. By this age most of us forget about all our past illnesses and wonder about the sudden appearance of some ‘sickly symptoms’. We go to our doctors in order to figure out what has suddenly gone wrong and we look for probable causes across the previous few months and quite often, find none. When doctors cannot trace any definite cause, they conclude that sickly symptoms are normal signs of ageing, or the result of stress. In truth, however, the reasons are hidden in the prior weakness of our internal organs.

(III) Pollutants that we constantly and often unknowingly put into our bodies become causes of chronic illness because they accumulate in the body at specific sites and severely disturb normal cellular activity. They also weaken the immunity of the area where they accumulate, which makes the area prone to attacks from parasites, pathogens, bacteria, yeast, fungus, mould and amoeba. Examples of pollutants are mercury erosion from dental fillings, metal erosion from cooking utensils, inorganic food additives, erosion from water pipes, fibre-glass filaments from insulation, asbestos fibres from appliances, fumes from paints, resins, aerosols and gas leaks, solvents and alcohols from packaged products that are used in their cleaning, and finally, all the synthetic makeups, creams, lotions and sprays that we put on our skin. Most of these are inorganic substances that the human body was never designed to process or digest.

(IV) All the unnatural, refined and processed food stuffs that we eat for the so-called taste, plays a major role in our ill health. Regular readers will know exactly what I am talking about.

This New Year, think and eliminate these major four sources and through the year, I will continue sharing with you other suggestions to keep robust health.

Tandarosti and Saal Mubarak!!