Paavo Airola - Let's Live - April 1976Index

What Is Biological Medicine?

For several months now, Let's LIVE has published several of my articles under this heading of Biological Medicine. If you have read them, and especially if you have read my books Are You Confused? and How To Get Well, you may have by now a pretty good idea what the term "Biological Medicine" means. If you have not read my articles, or books, you may wonder what Biological Medicine stands for. Especially, you may wonder how Biological Medicine differs from other nonorthodox medical groups or terms, such as Preventive Medicine, Metabolic Medicine, Nutritional Medicine, Orthomolecular Medicine, etc. Do all these "fringe medicines" represent the same basic healing approach under different names? What is the philosophy of Biological Medicine? How does it differ from the orthodox, so-called allopathic, medicine or the other branches of the healing art?

This article should have been the first in this series on Biological Medicine. But, better late than never. So let me introduce you to the concept and philosophy of Biological Medicine. The thorough understanding of it will help you to better comprehend the articles that will follow regularly in this department.

The lay public tends to regard medical science and the current medical procedures and philosophies as something unimpeachable and indisputable. But just because a certain medical procedure or thinking is currently popular and is generally accepted in medical practice - or, in other words, is "orthodox," - does not mean that it will always be regarded as such. In medicine, ideas, theories, methods and therapies come and go. Nor does the mere fact that a certain therapy is commonly accepted by orthodoxy, or is a part of traditional practice, guarantee that it is correct or even an effective one. Tomorrow it may very well be regarded as a part of the ignorant or superstitious past. On the other hand, certain remedies and therapies which were scoffed at and regarded as quackery yesterday are viewed today with scientific respect and are incorporated into the arsenal of useful and accepted practice. Throughout medical history, philosophies of the causes of disease and approved methods of healing have been changing almost with every generation. In just the last generation we have been witnessing numerous changes in medical thinking. For example:

The Dark Age of Medical Science

The rapid development of the chemical and physical sciences in the last two centuries has had a most negative influence upon medical thinking, and slowed down the progress of the healing arts. Doctors have come to regard man as a chemo-physical conglomeration of separate parts. This thinking characterizes our era of specialization, where one doctor treats feet, another skin, the third - eyes, the fourth - heart and so on. These specialists are able neither to view disease as a disturbance of the entire organism, nor to treat it as such. In spite of all the bravura and ballyhoo about our great medical progress, when, in the enlightened future, the true medical history will be written, the twentieth century will be known as the dark ages of the healing art. Unbelievable as it may seem, the twentieth century concept of disease is not much different from the primitive voodoo concept. The only difference is that the "evil spirits" have been replaced with "evil germs," bacterial or virus, which attack the unfortunate and undeserving man. We believe that disease "strikes" the unsuspecting and totally innocent bodies. We talk about diseases as being "caught". We speak of evil creatures - the germs - as "going around," attacking every man in their way. The job of the modern medicine-man is to kill or drive out the evil intruders, the germ or virus, with the magical medical power from his medicine bottle or injection needle, and, thus, save the innocent victim from the vicious attack.

The Fallacy of the Pasteurian Philosophy of Disease

The new Biological Medicine takes exception to such a Pasteurian concept of disease and the symptomatic drug-therapy approach to the treatment of disease. The biological concept of medicine is based on the irrefutable physiological fact that the primary cause of disease is not the bacteria or virus, but the weakened resistance brought about by man's health-destroying living habits and physical and emotional stresses. The bacteria enter the picture only in its final stage, as the undertaker of the natural order, to complete and fulfill the natural law of "returning to dust" again the organism that was made unfit to live.

Bacteria are always present in our environment, as well as in a latent state in every cell of all living organisms. They are completely harmless if the organism maintains its natural health and natural resistance - but ever ready to step in and destroy the host organism as soon as its life force, vitality and resistance are lowered.

In the last decade profound changes have been taking place in medical thinking. A growing number of progressive medical scientists, particularly in Europe, are moving from the Pasteurian concept of disease and symptomatic drug-therapy approach towards a new biological concept of medicine. Perhaps we should not speak of a new concept of thinking since truly there is "nothing new under the sun." Biological Medicine is based on the teachings of the great Hippocrates, the Father of Medicine, who two thousand years ago expounded that most, if not all, diseases are of man's own making and are the end result of longtime abuse in the form of poor living habits, faulty nutrition and other health-destroying environmental factors. New medical thinking is directed toward a concept of man as a whole entity with his physical and emotional aspects inseparably unified in one living soul. It sees man as an organic part of the biological and cosmic universe and subject to all the unchangeable and irrevocable laws of nature. Man's disregard of these laws in respect to his environment, nutrition and physical and emotional needs, leads to disharmony with the life-giving biological and spiritual universe. Disease is a consequent result of this disharmony.

The Basic Cause of Disease

The basic premise of Biological Medicine is that most diseases have the same basic underlying causes. These are: the systemic derangement and biochemical and metabolic disorder brought about by prolonged physical and mental stresses to which the patient has been subjected such as faulty nutritional patterns, constant overeating, overindulgence in meat and the body's inability to properly digest it, nutritional deficiencies, sluggish metabolism and consequent retention of toxic metabolic wastes, exogenous poisons from polluted food, water, air and environment, toxic drugs, tobacco and alcohol, lack of sufficient exercise, rest and relaxation, severe emotional and physical stresses, etc. These health-destroying environmental factors bring about derangement in all vital body functions with consequent biochemical imbalance in the tissues, autotoxemia, chronic undersupply of oxygen to the cells, poor digestion, and ineffective assimilation of nutrients... and gradually lowered resistance to disease. Thus Biological Medicine considers not the bacteria but the weakened organism or the lowered resistance as the primary cause of disease. Bacteria are more often than not, the result of disease, not its cause.

Therefore, the only effective way to cure the disease is to eliminate the causes of disease. All these underlying causes of ill health, mentioned above, must be corrected and eliminated before health can be restored. When, with proper assistance and support of optimum nutrition, special dietary factors, cleansing programs, specific vitamins and supplements, juices, herbs, and other harmless therapies, the underlying causes of ill health are removed, the symptoms (diseases) will disappear. Not because we cured them, but because there would be no more reason for their existence. The health has been restored.

I wish to stress the fact that no food, no vitamin, no herb - and, for that matter, no drug! - can ever cure disease. Disease can be cured only by the body's own healing and health-restoring power. The therapies used by biological medical doctors are aimed at helping the body's healing mechanism by eliminating the causes of disease and creating the most favorable conditions for the body's own healing forces to bring about the actual cure.

Disease - Our Misunderstood Friend

Our bodies are equipped with the most extensive and intricate defensive and healing system. When we violate the elementary laws of health or subject our bodies to severe stresses or other adverse environmental factors, our bodies react with self-defense. With various defensive acute symptoms, such as pain, fever, diarrhea, fatigue or loss of appetite, the body will signal that it has taken the defensive action aimed at restoring the condition of health. But in our ignorance, we totally misunderstand these warning and healing symptoms, calling them "diseases." Instead of letting the fever, the proper rest and temporary abstinence from food accomplish the health restoring goal for which the body had initiated these symptoms, we suppress the fever with medicines, we eliminate the pain with drugs and we try to feed the sick with as much "nourishing food" as possible to get him well soon. Thus, we counteract and break down the body's own defensive and healing efforts and cause it serious damage. Now the condition may have changed from the acute into chronic. As we continue to interfere with the body's own healing activity, the more serious chronic condition, such as elevated blood pressure, inflammations, immobility of joints, hardening of the arteries, skin eruptions, even tumors, may develop. Even these conditions, however, are not "diseases" as we understand them - the negative conditions that must be suppressed or eliminated - but are our body's own, often desperate, but nevertheless positive and beneficial attempts to cope with increasingly adverse conditions and protect the organism from the total destruction.

Disease - Nature's Way to Get You Well

Thus disease, as we know it, is a self-defensive effort of the body to restore impaired health. Disease is not a negative condition which should be combatted and suppressed ("cured") with all available means, but a positive, constructive process initiated by the body's healing forces and aimed at restoring health. Unbelievable as it may sound, we actually need disease to get well! When the body becomes ill, only the disease (which more correctly should be called health-restoring activity) can bring it back to health again. Thus we do not cure a disease, but cure a sick body, and restore health - often with the help of disease! - which is nothing but nature's own way of getting you well!

Failure of Conventional Therapies

It is becoming increasingly evident that the present-day conventional drug-approach, which treats isolated symptoms, is unable to solve the problem of the catastrophic increase of the degenerative diseases, such as cancer, cardio-vascular disorders, arthritis, diabetes, etc. Despite the fact that over 120 billion dollars is spent yearly for health care in this country, we lead the world in the number of victims of degenerative diseases - according to U.N. statistics we are in 27th place in the death rate from all causes among "civilized" nations. In spite of the costly and sophisticated chemical and technological arsenal developed by modern medical science, our health is constantly worsening. Often our health is worsening not in spite, but because of our sophisticated medicine! For example, at least 10% of all physical ailments in this country are so-called iatrogenic diseases - or doctor-induced diseases. The sad truth is that drugs cause more disease than they cure! There is no such thing as a safe, harmless drug. All drugs, including "simple" aspirin, are potential killers. Although both drugs and surgery can be life-savers in the hands of a conscientious doctor, if used with discrimination and only when absolutely necessary, both are now criminally overused, as acknowledged by the U.S. Senate Investigation Committee. More than, half of all surgery is needless and drug illnesses involving medical service is the seventh most common cause of hospitalization in the United States!

The conventional approach of treating specific symptoms with specific drugs or remedies, without taking into consideration the patient's total condition of health and correcting the underlying causes of his ill health, is as unscientific as it is ineffective. A more fundamental approach which takes man's environmental factors, nutritional patterns and emotional attitudes into consideration, is long overdue. Biological Medicine presents such an approach. Instead of the conventional masking of symptoms, biological treatments are directed toward the elimination of the basic causes of disease, helping the body's own healing activity and restoring the equilibrium and harmony in the functions of all its vital organs.

Biological Therapies 100% Safe

Biological treatments are completely safe and harmless. The arsenal of biological therapies includes dietetic restriction, controlled fasting, juice therapies, hydro-therapies, heat therapies, special exercises, massage and physiotherapy. herb preparations, vitamin/mineral/trace-element supplementation, and special biological medicines made from organic and inorganic substances found in nature and prepared in accordance with biological principles. These medicines are never synthetic and are completely non-toxic. Several drug companies in Europe specialize in production of such preparations, notably Weleda and Wala in Switzerland. These preparations are administered both orally and as subcutaneous injections. All the biological therapies, including biological medication, are free from undesired side effects and they do not alter or interfere with normal functions of the organs or in the metabolic processes - only support and activate them. They stimulate the glands and other vital organs of the body and accelerate the healing processes.

Relaxation and Peace of Mind - Prime Considerations

There are many factors that interfere with successful application of nutritional and biological therapies, such as: toxic environment; ineffective digestive and assimilative system; emotional stresses; anxiety, worries, fears, etc. If the patient is under a severe stress of acute anxiety, his ability to absorb and utilize nutritional and medicinal factors will be seriously impaired, and the expected healing will not manifest as long as the emotional disturbance continues to act.

Therefore, prime consideration is given to help the patient to free himself from all emotional stresses and worries and acquire a state of total relaxation and peace of mind. This is absolutely imperative in order to make nutritional and biological therapies effective.

Also, the patient should have a thorough understanding of the basic philosophy of biological medicine and of the purpose of various nutritional and other therapies, and have a complete confidence and faith in the prescribed methods of treatment. Thus, educating the patient with regard to the basic laws of health and disease and how he can stay well and prevent disease, is a most important work of a biological doctor.

The Total Approach

Since the basic goal of Biological Medicine is to help and support the body's own healing activity, the total approach is a must when the therapeutic program is considered. Not just this or that specific vitamin, herb or treatment, but a total combined attack on all fronts, from all directions, at the same time. After thorough study of the patient's background, and his living and eating habits, is made, and possible underlying causes of his health condition are determined, the patient's own healing and health-restoring mechanism is assisted with all the available effective and harmless means, simultaneously: biological treatments, optimum diet, specific herbs and nutritive supplements, juices, vitamins, minerals, etc., which are known to be effective for his specific condition. Such a total approach brings about the fastest recovery.

Biological Medicine in a Nutshell

Biological Medicine is based on the following basic premises:
  1. Most chronic, degenerative diseases, as well as most infectious and inflammatory conditions are caused by metabolic disorders and systemic disturbances which are in turn brought about by pathological biochemical changes in the tissues and organs of the body.
  2. The underlying causes of these systemic disturbances and pathological changes are to be sought in the prolonged abuses to which the body has been subjected, such as faulty nutritional patterns, overeating, nutritional deficiencies, chronic poisoning by chemical additives and residues in food, air, and water, drug poisoning, lack of sufficient rest and exercise, severe emotional and physical stresses, etc. These health-destroying environmental factors eventually result in diminished vitality and lowered resistance to disease, biochemical imbalance, disordered metabolism, impaired elimination and autointoxication.
  3. Biological treatments are aimed, therefore, at the eradication and the correction of all the abnormal health-destroying conditions that have led to the development of the disease. This usually begins with the total withdrawal of drugs; radical changes in eating habits with emphasis on fresh raw fruits and vegetables; exclusion of sugar, alcohol, coffee, tea, soda drinks, tobacco, salt, white flour and all the products made from it (cakes, pastries, refined cereals, etc.); controlled fasting and juice therapy; therapeutic baths and other hydrotherapy; etc.
  4. Biological treatments are directed toward normalizing metabolic processes, establishing biochemical stability, strengthening the functions of vital organs, revitalizing glandular activity, establishing capillary integrity, and, in general, rebuilding and strengthening the general health of the patient.
  5. The ultimate goal of biological treatments is to help the defensive and healing powers of the body in their constant effort to counteract health-destroying influences, correct existing disturbances, bring about necessary repair and effect the actual cure. Thus, the cure is always accomplished by the body's own curative forces - the biological therapies only eliminate the causative factors, strengthen the body and stimulate and assist its restorative and healing activity.

Conventional versus Biological Medicine

From the above it can be easily seen why some modern doctors, who look upon their profession as a business, would not be very interested in Biological Medicine. It is a time-consuming and tedious job to try to discover the initial causative factors of the ill health of each patient, then convince and instruct him in necessary changes in his environment, diet, living habits, etc., and help to rebuild and strengthen his total health. It is much faster, just a matter of a few minutes, to write a prescription for a drug, which will temporarily suppress the unwanted symptoms and make the patient feel that he has really been helped.

There is, however, an important difference between these two diagnostic and therapeutic procedures, the conventional drug approach and the biological medical approach. While in the former case the patient will be back in a short while with some other or similar symptoms, in the latter case the treatment will bring the total and the lasting removal and correction of the existing diseased conditions.

Biological Medicine The Healing Science of the New Age

The official medicine of today is in a state of utter chaos. The orthodox, allopathic medicine, misdirected by the fallacious Pasteurian concept of disease and consequently relying on drugs and surgery in its effort to conquer illness, has entered a vicious cycle. The complete fiasco of today's medicine is evidenced by the fact that in spite of more doctors, more hospitals, and more money spent on health than at any time in man's history, we have more disease than ever before. And we are witnessing a catastrophic increase in all the chronic degenerative conditions including heart disease and cancer. Already one half of the American people are chronically ill. While our mortality rate is increasing, our life expectancy is going down. We occupy 18th place for men and 11th place for women in life expectancy among industrialized nations.

Because of the medical doctors' inability to reverse the trend, people are losing their faith in them. So-called fringe medicines are booming as never before. The sick people, not finding relief in drugs, are going to chiropractors, osteopaths, naturopaths, spiritual healers, physiotherapists, herbalists, nutritionists, acupuncturists, drugless healers, Christian Science practitioners, etc. Or they take their health into their own hands and try to improve it with better nutrition, health foods, food supplements, vitamins, and exercise. Fearing the rapidly approaching end of its monopoly in the healing arts, the orthodoxy is fighting back fiercely trying to make fringe medicines unlawful, and by enacting laws that would make selling health foods and vitamins illegal. Today's medical history is full of persistent intolerance on the part of orthodox practitioners, and of violent opposition to and persecution of unorthodox philosophies. Practitioners of unconventional healing methods of healing have been thrown into jails, just as in the dark ages.

The totalitarian and relentless methods with which orthodox medicine tries to save its crumbling empire can result only in the total loss of people's confidence and respect and in an inevitable final crash. On the ruins of the crumbled orthodoxy, destroyed by conceit, intolerance, and greed, a new kind of medicine is being born - Biological Medicine, the medical science of the New Age.

Already several thousands of medical doctors have left the orthodoxy and are now practicing the new kind of medicine - some call it preventive medicine, some nutritional, some metabolic, some orthomolecular. But the basic reason and approach of all these new trends is the same; the doctors are disenchanted and discouraged with the failure of orthodox medicine to cope with the catastrophic deterioration in our health and are looking for new and better ways to treat their patients. These are a "new breed of doctors," the doctors of Biological Medicine.

Recently, the most important steps were taken to organize these dedicated doctors and help to establish Biological Medicine practice as a solidly functioning profession. The goal of the International Academy of Biological Medicine, which is now organized, is to educate doctors by special seminars and post-graduate studies in the theoretical and practical know-how regarding the application of Biological Medicine. Enlightened patients, who are disenchanted with orthodox medicine, are now able to seek out these "doctors of the future" and be treated by natural, harmless effective nutritional and biological means. The International Academy of Biological Medicine maintains the International Directory of participating doctors and will send it on request. (Write to: P.O. Box 31313, Phoenix, Arizona 85046. Enclose a stamped and addressed business-size envelope.) The International Academy of Biological Medicine will also conduct education seminars for laymen - firmly dedicated to disseminating truth regarding natural health and healing and believing that the "truth will make us free" - free from disease and suffering.

Biological Medicine is not opposed to any of the healing systems, including the medical. Its philosophy is based on the fundamental principle of intelligent cooperation with nature. It sees man as a part of nature, subject to its eternal laws. It is a modern science which incorporates all the harmless and effective therapies that can be applied in the correction of diseases and restoration of health.

The new era doctors of biological medicine will be trained in all the known arts of healing: allopathic, naturopathic, chiropractic, herbal, homeopathic, psychosomatic, spiritual, etc. The biolological doctor will recognize that no doctor and no remedy can cure disease. Disease can be cured only by the body's own inherent healing power. Biological doctors will assist these healing forces and create the most favorable conditions for the healing processes to take place. All known supportive therapeutic methods will be available for their use. Where life can be saved with drugs, they will be employed. Where surgery is needed because of accidents or other causes, it will be used. Where there is damage or dislocation in the spine or the joints - then chiropractic treatments will be applied. Where the disease is caused by systemic disorders and biochemical imbalances due to faulty eating and living habits - the corrective nutrition and naturopathic healing methods will be used. Where the condition is caused by mental stress, or other psychic causes, spiritual healing and psychological approaches can be used.

The doctor of biological medicine is a true doctor - which means teacher. He will teach people the correct ways of eating and living so that they can avoid ever becoming sick. Biological Medicine stresses the preventive approach to disease. "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure" will become the norm, rather than an empty phrase. Biological medicine is the perfect science of healing of which Hippocrates dreamed. When its precepts are accepted by all practitioners of the healing arts and applied in the management of man's ills, then, and only then, diseased mankind will be freed from the dark inferno of modern pestilence and plague into which we have been thrust by the misdirected chemical, pharmacological, and medical sciences. A new era of glorious, buoyant health and a total freedom from disease is emerging. Man will live in peace and harmony with nature, with animals and, last but not least - with his neighbors. The healthy body and mind will constitute a worthy temple for the spirit to dwell in. Freed from disease and pain, man will be able to pursue his true purpose in life - the perfection of his human and divine characteristics and the refinement of his spirit.

A new era of Medical Science, the era of Biological Medicine, has dawned. In these times of universal unhappiness, despair, unrest, and ill health, the message I am bringing to you with this article is a message of encouragement - Biological Medicine represents a new bright hope for disease-ridden mankind.

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