It is the theorem that defines what we can observe. (Einstein)

What is the basis of the Natural Hygiene Opposition to Drugs?
Student Essay By Dana Clare (1996)

The basis of the Natural Hygiene opposition to drugs is the Hygiene understanding of disease.

Hygienic Understanding of Disease
• Hygiene views disease as a remedial, reparative, defensive and adaptive process which enables the body to repair damaged tissues, eliminate accumulated toxic waste via an acute disease process.
• In the case of chronic disease, the body is seeking to manage, the toxic accumulations which it has not been able to eliminate, within the body in a way that is the least harmful to the organism although degenerative changes in the tissues do occur over time.
• We need to understand that disease processes are body-initiated and conducted. The body resorts to these disease processes in order to restore normality to its internal environment. Once we understand this then we can see the fallacy of seeking to interfere with the body\'s intelligence in producing symptoms by using toxic substances such as drugs to counteract these symptoms.

Drugs have no normal relationship to the body
• They cannot be transformed into cellular constituents or be used in the body\'s performance of its functions.
• Drugs cannot be transformed into blood and tissue.
• They cannot invigorate the immune system or impart energy.
• They cannot remove causes of disease or restore health.
• Drugs cannot cure disease, as disease being the body\'s corrective mechanism is not a process that is amenable to cure.
• Drugs appear to cure because they have the effect of suppressing symptoms.
• There is no relationship between suppressing symptoms and healing because the body needs the symptoms to deal with the harmful influences.
• Healing is a process which the body accomplishes for itself when the causes of disease are removed, the conditions of health are supplied and when the remedial disease processes are left intelligently alone.

Drugs Add to the Causes of Disease
• When the body is prevented from eliminating toxic waste through disease symptoms, then the toxic waste is retained within the body where it remains to accumulate and provide the conditions for a more serious or chronic disease to develop.
• The taking of drugs to treat disease adds to the causes of disease within the body as the medications are themselves toxic and interfere with normal chemical and physiological processes.
• It is energy expensive for the body to have to metabolise and eliminate drug toxins. If the toxins cannot all be eliminated, then they are stored within body tissues, where they interfere with normal metabolism

Tolerance & Withdrawal
• Another problem with drug use is tolerance. The body adapts to the chemical substances in the drugs and then a higher dose is required to maintain the same effect.
• When the drug is withdrawn the person experiences withdrawal symptoms and the original disease symptoms which the drug suppressed tend to be exaggerated.
• With long term use drugs tend to have contradictory effects such that the very symptoms that the drug was supposed to alleviate are exacerbated.

Collective Self-Deception
• The therapeutic, physiological effects attributed to drugs are not produced by drugs, as drugs being lifeless substances have no power of intelligence to initiate physiological actions.
• The effects attributed to drugs are actually a manifestation of the body\'s effort to eliminate them, or to counteract their chemical impact. The use of drugs thus impairs the body\'s vitality.
• The whole drug-taking enterprise is based on a collective self-deception because people take drugs believing that drugs will make them better or cure them. There is a widespread belief that symptoms need to be managed or controlled with drugs. This goes counter to the body\'s healing intelligence
• Natural Hygienists do not seek to treat, cure or control disease symptoms.
• They endeavour to understand and remove the causes of disease and provide the body with the conditions of health so that health is improved rather than the disease process itself being conquered.

Dana Clare

1996