THE CONCEPT OF BALANCE IN HEALING

by Lawrence Wilson, MD

Balance is a very special healing principle in the science of nutritional balancing. Balance represents the idea of relationships. They may be between parts of the body, or between minerals, or many other aspects of the body or mind. Examples are contraction and relaxation of muscles, high and low blood pressure or blood sugar, and activity and rest.

Balance implies the existence of a set of complementary opposites or perhaps several options or possibilities. They need to be weighed or otherwise assessed in order to bring harmony to the body and the mind.

This is a very ancient concept used in most ancient healing arts such as acupuncture, acupressure, macrobiotics, Ayurveda and many others. Unfortunately, it is not given must importance in modern Western medical care. It is one reason this type of care is not keeping us healthy as a nation or in any of the Western nations.

The concept of restoring balance is very different from the prevailing medical view of “curing” or eliminating disease entities such as infections. The curing model has a lot of value, but so does the balancing concept. As a result, many drug and surgery treatments, for example, may eliminate infections, but they also throw the body chemistry out of balance. As a result, the problem may come back later, or other problems develop.

Focusing on balance is one of the major differences between nutritional balancing science and almost all other nutritional and medical approaches. Here are examples of how the concept of balance is used in nutritional balancing science.

BALANCING THE LIFESTYLE

A key area for healing is to balance such things as sleep and activity, exercise and rest, time alone and time with others, time at work and time for rest and recreation. These are examples of how balance applies to one’s lifestyle. For more on this, read the 2010 edition of Nutritional Balancing And Hair Mineral Analysis. It is available through this website at Books.

BALANCING THE DIET

Balancing the food and water intake is another complex and important area for healing. The way this is done in nutritional balancing is completely different from the four food groups system used in dietetics, or balancing the so-called food pyramid, which the government of America now recommends. We don’t find these systems nearly adequate or even accurate any more.

How it is done in nutritional balancing science is explained in a few of the sections below. It has to do with understanding the oxidation rate, the mineral ratios on a hair mineral analysis, and the concept of yin and yang in one’s choice of food. Many articles on this website also discuss this important area of balance.

MENTAL AND EMOTIONAL BALANCE

Balancing the mind is one of the most critical area today. We are all exposed to a tremendous amount of information, mental stimulation, emotional news headlines and much more. To remain healthy, a person must be able to sort through all this, keep what is helpful and reject the lies, the propaganda, and much that is just of poor quality or even destructive. It is a major task.

How this type of balance in one’s life is achieved is also discussed in the lifestyle section of the 2010 edition of Nutritional Balancing And Hair Mineral Analysis.

In addition to establishing good study habits, positive mental attitudes and excellent moral and spiritual values, a very helpful additional procedure to achieve mental and emotional balance is the Roy Masters Judeo-Christian meditation. It is discussed in a separate article.

Emotional balancing is also a critical area, so that one is not hyper or manic, yet also not depressed and discouraged. This may sound easy, but it is quite difficult for many people, especially those who are not feeling well. We find that balancing and strengthening the body chemistry is extremely helpful for one’s emotional balance.

An important way to balance the mind and the emotions is to stay away from all sweets, even most fruit and all fruit juices. These are not helpful today. Also, one needs to avoid most stimulants, such as caffeine, MSG, alcohol, and all recreational drugs including marijuana. Then the mind tends to become much more balanced. Many articles on this website discuss various aspects of how to balance yourself emotionally and mentally.

Below are some of the more technical ways used in nutritional balancing science to bring balance to our bodies.

BALANCING THE OXIDATION RATE

The oxidation rate is similar to one’s rate of metabolism, although it is not exactly the same. It is a central idea in nutritional balancing science. Dr. George Watson first wrote about the oxidation rate in 1972 in an excellent little book entitled Nutrition And Your Mind. While out of print, it is often available at used book outlets.

One can balance the oxidation rate by changing one’s diet, taking very specific nutritional supplements, and with lifestyle modifications. For example, foods and supplements that enhance the oxidation rate include protein foods, especially animal proteins and vegetables. Supplements that enhance the oxidation rate include most of the B-complex vitamins, thyroid and adrenal glandular extracts, and vitamins C and E.

In contrast, one can reduce an overly fast oxidation rate with more fat and oils in the diet, along with eating many fewer sweets and complex carbohydrates or starches. Nutritional supplements that slow the oxidation rate include more calcium and magnesium, copper, zinc, vitamins A and D, choline and inositol.

Some chemicals such as caffeine temporarily speed up the oxidation rate, but later exhaust a person. The same is true of vigorous exercise. More rest, on the other hand, temporarily may slow the oxidation rate a little, but later enhances it by allowing the body to heal and recover its energy.

Much more on balancing the oxidation rate is found in the article entitled The Oxidation Types and other ones on this website.

BALANCING MINERALS AND THEIR RATIOS

Each mineral in the body affects all the others and there is a mineral ‘system’ in the body. Nutritional balancing science focuses heavily on balancing certain minerals and their ratios.

Dr. William Albrecht first explored this idea of a mineral balance in the soil and in plant life early in the twentieth century. Balancing the ratios and levels of the minerals requires knowing how the system works. Then one administers small amounts of the appropriate minerals, while avoiding supplementing or eating too much of other minerals or foods that would move the system away from balance.

The system is extremely complex. For example, giving a particular mineral may in fact lead to a lowering of that mineral level in the body tissues. This was one of Dr. Paul Eck’s great discoveries early in his research on hair mineral analysis. He found that giving calcium to someone with a low calcium would often result in a lower hair level of calcium. Giving zinc to a person with low zinc sometimes caused the hair tissue zinc to become lower.

After years of research, he figured out that giving just calcium upset the balance of calcium with magnesium, which in turn caused a lowering of the calcium. He found he needed to give copper along with magnesium in order to raise a low calcium level, rather than give just calcium.

He also figured out that just giving zinc lowers the sodium/potassium ratio, a critical ratio in the body. Since this is often undesirable, the body does not accept the zinc and there is little effect on the zinc level in the hair, or it might even become lower. In order to raise the zinc level, one must increase the sodium/potassium ratio in many cases, and this is done using vitamins B1, B3, B5, C, E, chromium, selenium, copper, manganese and adrenal or thyroid glandulars taken together in the right proportions.

The complexity of the mineral balancing system of the body is one of the main reasons that I strongly recommend to all practitioners that they make use of the product recommendations from Analytical Research Labs, and do not substitute other brands or other types of products. In my experience, when other brands and types of products are used, results will not be as good. This is somewhat unfortunate, but true.

More on balancing mineral ratios is found in several articles on this website, such as The Sodium/Potassium Ratio and The Calcium/Magnesium Ratio.

BALANCING THE SYMPATHETIC AND PARASYMPATHETIC NERVOUS SYSTEMS

This is another important focus of nutritional balancing programs in all cases. The autonomic or automatic nervous system in all humans and animals is composed of two complementary systems that are called the sympathetic and parasympathetic branches of this nervous system. They must function harmoniously together or serious disease results in the body.

In most people today, they do not function properly. As a result, many people are tired, do not digest their food well, cannot eliminate waste products from the body as well, and cannot fight off infections well enough. The key to correcting all these problems is often to balance the autonomic nervous system.

This is another essential area of therapeutic correction. For more on this topic, read Balancing Your Autonomic Nervous System on this website.

BALANCING YIN AND YANG QUALITIES IN THE BODY

Another very important area in which balance is most helpful for healing has to do with a principle of physics. The idea is used in Oriental medicine, but not used at all in Western medical science. In acupuncture, macrobiotics and other Oriental healing arts, it is called the balance between yin and yang.

The yin principle is cool, expanded, centrifugal in action, fragmented, and the foods are more sugary. The yang principle is warmer, harder, more contracted, heated and food is cooked, more salty and less sweet.

On a hair mineral analysis, slow oxidizers are more yin, while fast oxidizers are generally more yang. The slower the oxidation rate, the more yin a person tends to be. Today, however, most everyone is very yin. This is due to:

· Eating fruit and other sweet foods.

· Radiation Exposure. Ionizing radiation from fallout and nuclear plants and other sources is very yin and affects everyone today.

· Yin Toxic Metals and Chemicals. These are in the food supply, the air and the water and affect everyone, no matter where one lives.

· Changes In The Food Supply. Hybrid crops, industrial agricultural methods, superphosphate fertilizers, and food processing and refining have made all of our food more yin. Refined foods like white flour and white sugar are extremely yin.

· Modern Medicine. Most drugs are yin. This includes most antibiotics, anti-depressants, anti-inflammatories and other classes of drugs.

· Recreational Drugs. Alcohol, marijuana and other recreational drugs are very yin.

· Electromagnetic Pollution. Yin electromagnetic pollution is very common, although it is much worse in large cities filled with cell phone towers, and radio and TV signals moving through the air. Computers, television sets, and all wireless devices in particular produce very yin electromagnetic fields. Most people today literally live in a sea of extremely yin electromagnetic pollution.

Yin and Yang Foods. Macrobiotics is a science of eating based on the principles of yin and yang. The most yang foods are eggs, meats, sea salt, poultry, fish and cooked root vegetables. Grains, cooked beans and cooked vegetables are more neutral. Raw vegetables and fruits, juices, sugars, alcohol and drugs are much more yin.

Cooking food and adding sea salt increase the yang energy. (Table salt is refined and much more yin.) Cutting up, grinding or powdering food makes it more yin. Protein powders, for example, are much more yin than eating protein foods. This is so because they are ground up into powder. In addition, they are usually missing yang components of the original food such as fats and minerals.

Flour products, in general, are much more yin than whole unprocessed grains. Whole grain flours, however, are far superior to refined flours as the refined flours lack vital yang minerals and other nutrients.

Raw ‘green drinks’ and especially fruit juices are also quite yin food items. They are fragmented foods. Juices also lack the more yang component of fiber.

YANG HEALING

Yang healing, in most cases, brings balance to almost everyone today. Here is a summary of the basic nutritional approach.

The Yang Diet. This is a diet of mainly cooked, high-quality and natural meats such as lamb, beef, chicken and turkey. Smaller fish such as wild salmon and sardines are also quite acceptable, although they are more yin than meats. Lightly cooked eggs and cooked grains such as blue corn are also excellent foods on this diet. Organic blue corn chips are, in fact, a superb grain food. White and yellow corn chips, as well as potato chips, are nowhere near as yang or as healthful, as they are made with much more yin flours.

Wheat and spelt are more yin and less desirable today due to the use of more yin hybrid crops. These foods are also quite pro-inflammatory due to their high L-glutamine content. Other whole grains, however, are excellent foods that are relatively yang.

The diet also includes plenty of cooked vegetables, especially root vegetables such as onion, carrot, turnip and parsnip. Others include rutabaga, daikon radish, garlic, celery root, ginger and burdock root. Red beets are slightly toxic. However, golden beets are excellent. For most people, kelp is quite essential for its iodine content. Sea salt is also essential for its trace element content. Even those with high blood pressure can often use sea salt in moderation.

Some goat dairy foods supply needed minerals and other nutrients, and are not excessively yin. Cow’s milk products, on the other hand, are much more yin today. This is due to the use of hybridized cows. This applies as well, though less so, to organic cow’s milk products.

Less Recommended Foods. Foods to avoid are sugars in all forms, including juices of most fruits. We also recommend severely limiting most fruit and most uncooked food. Fruit today is almost all hybridized and much more yin than in the past. Even organic fruit is often heavily sprayed with superphosphate fertilizers that are very yin.

Salads, while quite healthful, supply a lot fewer minerals than cooked vegetables. Cooking both concentrates the food and renders the fiber more digestible. Its minerals are not damaged by cooking. In fact, they are rendered more absorbable when the fiber is broken down by cooking

Raw foods, especially raw meats, eggs and dairy products, often harbor harmful bacteria and parasite eggs that may be difficult to wash off. Recall that most food today is grown in nations other than the United States.

We are aware that some health authorities advocate eating more raw foods. This may be helpful for a time. In time, on this diet, however, deficiencies and imbalances often arise.

Other Excellent Yang Therapies. We also highly recommend sauna therapy, preferably with an infrared electric light sauna, as it is the most yang. Red color therapy is also quite yang and very excellent. We also suggest spending up to one half an hour a day in the sun, if possible. This is less important, however. Another vital yang therapy is rest and sleep, providing one does not sleep all day, and gets up and moves around every few hours. Most people do not get nearly enough rest and sleep.

Yin And Yang Attitudes. One’s thoughts and attitudes can also be yin or yang. Victim thinking is quite yin and disempowering. Attitudes that emphasize personal responsibility are more yang and much more empowering.

For more details about the fascinating subject of yin and yang concepts of healing, click here.

BALANCED SPIRITUAL DEVELOPMENT

A final concept in this article is that human beings can develop themselves far more than most of us imagine. We can improve our minds, our memories, our thinking capacity, and our capacity for wisdom, compassion and other amazing qualities. This process is called Spiritual Or Mental Development. It is a wonderful process that is mentioned in many articles on this website, as it is so helpful for many people.

Even here, however, development can be unbalanced and become harmful and dangerous. We all know of stories of people who become delusional, schizophrenic, hyperactive and depressed as they learn about spiritual matters. So this website contains a number of articles such as Blocks To Spiritual Development and others to help people develop themselves mentally and spiritually in a safe and balanced manner. Once again, balance is the key, a concept never to be overlooked or minimized.

CONCLUSION

The physics concept of balance, in the body and in nature, is one of the most fundamental healing concepts. It needs to be taught much more to Western doctors, nurses and others who are healing people.

Nutritional balancing freely acknowledges the importance of many aspects of balance in order to heal people at far deeper levels than almost all other natural or medical healing programs that I have observed or experienced. The use of balance concepts also makes the programs we set up far safer, less costly, more effective, and less prone to other types of toxicity and problems.

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