Health

Health is a process. You cannot buy it in the supermarket or anywhere else for that matter. Statistics have shown that millionaires rarely (if ever) live to be over a 100 years old, whereas many poor people have and still do. So what is the secret of the centenarians?

There is of course a point where poverty leads to malnutrition, a state where there is a lack of nutrients that are necessary to maintain a state of health. This is one of the biggest problems for the developing countries, but most of the population of the developed countries or otherwise called the western world would have enough money to buy an adequate amount of food to maintain health or to guarantee survival.

So are we in the western world the healthiest people in the world? We have conquered lethal infectious diseases such as typhoid and tuberculosis. The number of mothers and babies who die in childbirth has decreased thanks to the increase in hygiene and technical advances. As a result the average age in the west has increased dramatically, but are we healthier? What about the quality of life?

Chronic diseases such as cancer, cardio-vascular disease, obesity, diabetes, strokes, chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) and fibromyalgia, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease and auto-immune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis are very common in the west. Even though most of these diseases or conditions are not as lethal as some of the infectious diseases (except a fatal heart attack or stroke), they cause a gradual decline of health, decreasing the quality of life sometimes over a 40 to 50 years period!

There are also some conditions that were rare before, but that have increased dramatically over the last 50 years. The sharpest increase is found in the conditions known as the 5 As:

1. Autism Spectrum Disorders or ASD
 (including Asperger's syndrome, Dyslexia, Dyspraxia, speech and language
     disorders and many cases of learning difficulties and developmental delay)

2. Attention Deficit (Hyperactivity) Disorder or AD(H)D
3. Allergies

4. Asthma

5. Alzheimer disease or AD
 (some people argue that AD is just a later manifestation of the same underlying
     processes that lead to  brain degeneration as the ASD group).

These are the 21st Century conditions. Autism occurred in about only 3 in every 10,000 children in the 1960s in the USA. The latest figures are 1 in 165 in the USA, 1 in 150 in the UK and 1 in 120 in Australia. You cannot really call the above conditions a disease and they are not contagious either, but they do cause a decline in the quality of life varying from mild to severe. Data from India show that these conditions are less prevalent in the poorer classes compared with the more effluent parts of society.

What causes these chronic diseases and conditions?

The fact that we can afford food doesn’t mean that the food we choose has enough nutrients in it to maintain health. Packaged and processed foods are usually low in nutrients and high in calories, sugar, carbohydrates, bad fats, artificial, colourings, flavourings and preservatives. Vegetables may have been grown with pesticides, herbicides and in a soil that may be nutrient poor, so they may not contain the amount of nutrients they used to.

There are other factors that can act as stressors to the body:

* environmental pollution, ie. Mercury from Amalgam fillings and vaccinations,
   Aluminium from vaccinations, pans, cutlery, aluminium foil and soft
   drink and beer cans, herbicides and pesticides.

* the consumption of too many acid-forming foods such as coffee has been
   associated with conditions such as gout and other inflammatory conditions.

* a lifestyle that is too sedentary often results in eating more calories than the
   body digests. The surplus will be turned into fat.

* stress such as deadlines, unhappy relationships or financial worries lowers our 
    resilience and our immune resistance.

* pharmaceutical drugs such as vaccinations, antibiotics, steroids suppress the
   immune system and often contain dangerous additives such as Thimerosol
   (a very toxic Mercury compound) in infant vaccinations until recently and still in
   all flu vaccinations.

Almost every health problem is caused by an accumulation of a variety of stressors to a person's system. As soon as there is a stressor that acts as the "straw that breaks the camel's back", illness may develop.

What can we do about these chronic diseases and conditions?

Herbal and Homoeopathic medicine can make a dramatic difference to a person's emotional and physical health. Homoeopathy also offers a safe and valuable alternative for vaccinations through its homoeoprophylaxis programme.

Our diet plays a major role in our state of health. The kind of food we eat can make the difference between health and illness. Diet can also play a significant role in the development of allergies, depression as well as learning and behaviour problems (see the information booklets about Health and Nutrition). Nutrition Medicine is an excellent tool to determine what diet is best suited to your needs and what nutritional supplements may be needed to replenish any nutrients that were lacking in the body.

Illness may appear after an emotional trauma, injury, accident, operation, change of diet, use of a certain drug, food poisoning or any other severe trauma in a person's life. However that trauma could merely be the famous straw that broke the camel’s back, so for the system to return to health, all the stressors need to be identified and dealt with. Kinesiology is an excellent technique to determine what the causes are and Kinesiology also offers many different ways of dealing with these causes.

If stressors are still stressing the system (such as food that upsets the person's digestive system on a daily basis) they need to be eliminated. If the stressors originate from emotional traumas from the past a Kinesiology balance, Australian Bush Flower Essences, Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) or Homoeopathy are excellent tools to remove the negative emotional responses from the system. As Kinesiology is developing rapidly, new techniques become available every day to more precisely identify the cause or causes of a health - or learning problem, as well as techniques to rectify the problem in faster and more effective ways.

Fortunately when using a holistic approach directed at identifying all the causes and treating all levels of the human being it is often possible to achieve a state of improved physical, mental, emotional and spiritual health and wellbeing.

 Make an Appointment
 
If you live in Australia and you would like to make an appointment to see Drs. Anke Koelman for an assessment or consultation, please click here.

If you would like ask Drs. Koelman a question via Email or if you would like to make an appointment for a telephone or internet appointment with Drs. Anke Koelman, please click here.

If you would like to contact me, please click here.

Can we help ourselves?

Yes we can. We can help ourselves first and foremost by looking after ourselves. This means selecting the optimum diet, listening to our body, rest when tired, having regular Kinesiology balances, managing stress levels and take supplements for any nutrient deficiencies. If you would like to know how to select the right supplements, Brain Gym® or the best diet yourself, you can learn how to do this at the following courses:

In the Introduction to Kinesiology course (for dates see: Course brochures) you will be able to learn how to Muscle Check yourself and others, to determine what the cause of ill health is and which foods, supplements and techniques will be most successful in assisting you and others in your/their healing process.

In the Brainfood course (for dates see: Course brochures) you will learn what foods are beneficial and what foods and substances are harmful for brain development, memory, behaviour and learning.

In the Quantum Learning Improvement course (for dates see Course brochures) you will learn:

* Brain Gym®

* The Integration process of Educational Kinesiology (see the
   How to Improve Learning? booklet for writing examples of “Before” and “After”
   Brain Gym® and the Integration Process)

* Accelerated Learning techniques for Mental Mathematics, Spelling and Reading
   Comprehension
    
* The SureReading programme – the amazing reading programme that teaches
   anyone how to read especially designed for children with Dyslexia and
   other reading difficulties

In the Gut Feelings course you will learn how to do a Kinesiology balance for stressors that influence gut function in a negative way, such as negative feelings and thoughts, attitude, wrong gut flora, fungi, parasites, toxins, wrong diet for the person’s genetic make-up, sedentary lifestyle (for dates see: Course brochures).