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The Indigenous Therapeutic (IT) Lifestyle
IT is the acronym for indigenous therapeutic and represents Indigenous Therapeutic (IT) lifestyle It is the diet that early man likely observed at the advent of God’s creation of our marvelous bodies. IT Lifestyle is dichotomously opposed to our contemporary lifestyle, which many people feel is involved with many of our problems in diet and health.
God did not create anything that was wrong. In fact his creation is so complex and perfect in its relationship between the species, the world we live and how we evolved we can only classify it as a miracle.
When we realize that God created us in His own image and that He loves us unconditionally, then know the body He created for us to inhabit while on earth is quite exquisite. I realized many years ago as a young Physical Therapist working with patients who had major physical problems and injuries, just how powerful the body. I was struck over and over how the body would always seek to return to its normal status. I realized even then that my main job was to assist the body in its natural pathway back to normal function.
I have observed this same phenomenon with other species, specifically dogs. Much of Eastern Medicine is based on this fact i.e. the body is always seeking its normal point, no matter what the circumstances or specifics of the problem.
Paleontologists and anthropologists estimate that early man, i.e. indigenous biblical man ate equal parts omega-3 fatty acids and omega-6 fatty acids in its diet.
"We eat an overabundance of omege-6 fatty acids, and we consume animals that eat an overabundance of omega-6 fatty acids. The end result is a flood of pro-inflammatory prostaglandins cascading through our bodies, with a drought of anti-inflammatory prostaglandins. On wonder we are seeing an epidemic of inflammatory disease!" [1]
The result of this contemporary lifestyle is a lifelong ingestion of a diet that is inflammatory. This is not what our bodies were intended to ingest. God made our perfect bodies that were designed to ingest foods that were equal parts of omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids, not the 20 to 1 ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 fatty acids we presently ingest.
No one is saying that every inflammatory disorder we see is caused by our diet. What is being said is that a body, in good health and ingesting what it is supposed to ingest, will have less inflammatory problems. When inflammation occurs unrelated to the diet, the healthy body, ingesting its normal proportions of omega-3 & omega-6 fatty acids, will combat the inflammation much more effectively, just as our bodies combated the inflammation causing foods we put in it for the prior years on end. The body never stops healing itself. Physical Therapists and other health care professionals know this better than anyone else on earth. We need to assist the body and maybe even aid its normal function to return to its normal state of health. The next section is a partial list of inflammatory disorders.
There is a growing understanding how the foods we eat can improve inflammation or even in the negative make inflammation worse. Inflammation can raise your risk for heart disease, diabetes, other chronic diseases and make you miserable during allergy season. Many people with inflammatory diseases like rheumatoid arthritis and fibromyalgia will feel better if they choose an anti inflammatory diet. Obesity is an inflammatory disorder. By definition the fat cells produce inflammatory prostaglandins. Weight problems are by far the most prevalent inflammatory problem by incidence and growing at an alarming rate.
As I write this, I am bringing my weight down from a state of morbid obesity i.e. near 50 BMI by only observing a positive net IF factor score (see footnote number 1 below) in the food I ingest. This, after a lifetime of obesity, starting as a fat child. This is not about me, but I am my own laboratory for the one inflammatory condition known as obesity. More on me later. There are so many more inflammatory disorders, but what more important to our health and welfare as people than the epidemic of obesity playing out right before our eyes? No one has a clue really. It’s so bad the rules are being changed to accommodate the increased obesity i.e. the sizes are being raised in our cloths. A size ten is now larger that a size 10 was years ago. This tells me we have given up. Not acceptable!
Fat is beautiful? Fat is inflammatory and will kill you or maybe worse, disable you to a life of poor health and misery. There is essentially no relief for the morbidly obese except surgery. So we mutilate our bodies with surgery and continue the insanity that got us were we were. We then wonder why a growing percentage of the radical surgeries eventually fail. Our bodies can tell us why. Do a CRP (C Reactive Protein) test and it will speak to you. With 3 being a very high level for the test, my initially CRP was 4, but with a BMI of very near 50, what else could I expect. Fat is inflammatory! We get faked out though as the initial post surgery weight reduction diminishes the CRP and other tests that indicated inflammation because each fat cell produces inflammatory prostaglandins. So less of them results in a lower inflammation indicator, but if we don’t change the cause from the first place, our body will eventually become obese again. Then what?
Isn’t it pretty clear that our bodies are literally screaming at us to pay attention to how it is being treated? Part of the problem is the food we ingest and how it is able to be utilized by the body. The IF rating system is a clue to what is occurring.
Still working on this area. Much more to come!