Diabetes: A Disease of Sadness. Part 2
For centuries, Diabetes has been considered a “Disease of Sadness” which we will speculate on and examine some profound facts that may contribute to this condition. The body is a very balanced organism, much like a Swiss chronometer, but if you mistreat the instrument all sorts of mischief abounds with the various parts contained. For the human chronometer we can start with stress, then depression and resultant symptoms of visible psychological disorders.
For one brutal example: child rape is at 1 in 3 for females and 2 in 5 for males at tender ages. Although you may not want to examine pedophilia this moment, other brutal family abuses still remain “covered up” and hidden. Victims of war, street violence and military veterans remain in the forefront of psychological damage. Accordingly one psychiatrist stated to me that the largest number of unhappy and depressed patients were “single mothers.” The list can go on and on for delineating traumatic experiences in one’s life that causes damage to one’s psyche. Our nation runs a divorce rate at over 50%, which is by the notion of statistics depressing. The largest “worry” factor today is our economy, personal debt and becoming homeless. Worry alone tightens internal sphincters and leads to hemorrhoids, or worse.
Such events above are not all inclusive, but to suggest stress. When you develop serious stress this causes an imbalance in the body with symptomatic pains based on organ stresses. How often do you have heartburn? Headaches? Cramps? Blurred vision? Do you just take a pill, or do you identify the problem cause and eliminate it?
How we solve our symptoms and negative life’s experiences is a matter of learning a better response than perhaps we were trained to cope with as a child. Interestingly a view of coping often becomes a “life script” that is repeated over and over again.
Looking at a script to deal with life’s up and down situations, a way of structuring time may be alcohol and illegal drug use. Overeating is commonplace as we seek “comfort foods.” This is often learned from parent models, Hollywood models on screen and neighbors, teachers and perceived heroes of our childhood.
The Christian Bible mentions child raising as “Spare the Rod-Spoil the Child.” The intent of this 400 year old King James language version would be interpreted literally to beat the child-which many do- but the correct interpretation was with the word “Rod”, a statement of character strength. Therein we would use modern English to understand if you do not show character you will not provide a proper modeling image for the child to model on. Quite often the beating of children is a sadistic way of venting inappropriate anger, much like kicking the dog when things are unsuitable.
The psychological component of the Diabetes “Disease of Sadness:” be it from personal experience, or passed on to the child who may relive your experiences as a learned script may imbalance our biological balance.
Another considerations of course is a heredity factor. You or I may inherit a physical factor that initiates Diabetes. The Child who does not produce insulin from a defect of a pancreas is fortunate in today’s benefit of science to have artificial insulin. This is known as Diabetes Type I. The more common form of Diabetes is the symptoms appearing after age 35, usually a bit later in mid life, which we discussed in last week’s article. This is Diabetes II, more common although we can attribute decline of body strength due to ageing, it is now thought to be a disease that we do to ourselves. This has been the prevalent educated view for many, many years.
We eat too much and we eat the wrong kinds of foods. It is that simple-so say the printed Diabetic literature. Well, not quite true, there are the changes in the Western culture of “fast foods” being harmful to your body as well as early childhood eating patterns being taught in school. Let us look at these points of view.
First the question arises about foods causing Diabetes. To understand this view we look to the Northern Europeans who for centuries displayed diabetic symptoms. Germans adapted to eating lots of fat (pigs) beers (sugars) and larded-preserved meats (salts)-the basic drive of all humanity; developing a higher portion of symptoms over the centuries. Other cultures, such as Black Africa indigenous people did not have such a diet and did not have the diabetic symptoms until they were enslaved and brought to the new world and subjected to the white man’s diet of fat, salt and sugars. Then the Black African became diabetic. This is very conclusive in supporting that an improper diet causes a diabetic reaction.
My PhD daughter with a major study in Biochemistry and I discussed this issue. She stated: (my paraphrasing) “ Dad, it is simple. Mankind ate what was available for thousands of years and adapted to a specific balance of natural foods. Aside from inherited defects the introduction of an artificial diet provides improper nutrients and promotes Diabetes.”
Within this area of South Western Virginia there is a disproportionate amount of Diabetes. Virginia Tech University is undertaking a study of why this is prevalent. I would suggest to them that the founding fathers of this area were principally of German extraction and brought with them their food habits; such patterns of food consumption contribute to the growing problem.
A further comparison of northern Europeans and Black Africa would be sunshine. Africa is a sunshine haven yet northern Europe is a dark place in comparison and that means less vitamin D-necessary to regulate life functions. There are clusters of intense Diabetes in other locals such as Pennsylvania where in it was settled by German-Dutch peoples. Other cluster areas abound but not in Africa per se. Also we note that Asia was spared Diabetes clusters and the reasoning may well be a high vegetable-low fat-low sugars-low salt diet, opposite the western diet. Surprisingly this has been recently changed and the only difference in the culture has been the introduction of “fast foods” and a western white man’s diet. There exists at this time a class action lawsuit in Indonesia against the fast food-soda beverages industries concerning this issue.
Perhaps we can look at the public school system that is paid money to install soft drink and fast food snack machines for the students. The hot lunch programs are composed of questionable fast foods and certainly the cheapest of salt-sugar-fat substances.
The public education system in many schools precludes recess due to potential schoolyard violence and substitutes “snack time” as a recess-exercise for the children. In all good consciousness I can not blame the modern school system for what it is doing as they are just as much victims of our rapidly changing culture as the children, the single mothers and the homeless are. Are our children and workforce having enough exposure to sunlight? Dark skin people require more sun exposure time than light skin people to produce vitamin D. Also there exists for the student and the secretary, tucked away in a dim recess, fluorescent bulbs in the proper wavelength approximating sunlight (5000 degrees Kelvin Temperature). However employer costs are forefront, not employee health. See my early articles on greenhouse lamps. You may also be interested in signing up for Heal news at Yahoo groups.
What we have is a nation of fat children. This may be said to be a nation of fat UNHEALTHY children. Although I can beat the drum for changing all this, it is not going to happen. The parent, who is aware of the problems of obesity in their children, and concerned with their health, can get on the bandwagon and become activists to change. Such changes however are nation wide social engineering changes on a major scale beyond just one small elementary school. Where the change needs to be initiated is at home. Pack a school lunch; take a homemade lunch with you to work.
Sadness I would suggest is also based upon GUILT. The Catholic Church bases much of their structure on relieving guilt, but sets in place the dogma of rules that delineate wrongdoing, which promotes guilt. Keeping this in mind, the Church was and still is a dominant life in people today. Jews openly speak of “Jewish Guilt. Other Judeo-Christian religious teachings admittedly employ guilt as part of their guidance of worshipers in that faith system Guilt sparks anxiety, then stress in conflict, which leads to depression. Most people have the chains of guilt baggage hanging on from unresolved childhood experiences that make therapists rich. Many in counseling, especially older folks will relieve past experiences of 50, 60, 90 years aback about situations long forgotten by others, like a dog worrying a bone over and over again displaying some trivial guilt issue. If your parent is doing this at times, notice the anger and tears involved in these remembrances. PTSD victims keep hanging on to the tragedy. There are ways to cope and forget which we will discuss later on.
Guilt as a manipulative tool is so commonplace we tend to discount its impact on daily social interaction especially home life with raising children. Probably the best book on this subject is: “When I say NO-I feel Guilty” by M. Smith. This is a premier assertiveness introduction. Many of my students learned to incorporate assertiveness into their thinking and eliminate guilt with this book.
Depression takes many forms and the Diagnostic Manual of Mental Disorders IV (DSM IV) on this topic encompasses several chapters of interesting readings. Today, the diagnosis of depression is commonplace. Our public re-cycled potable water supply stands in mute testament to the antidepressant drugs we excrete. Feel blue- take a pill, or perhaps a drink of public water since these chemicals cannot be destroyed or filtered out.
The psychological factors will contribute to a person’s potential Diabetic downfall in part
with physical stress on various organs. Probably the most observable fact of worry- guilt-stress-anxiety-depression is the attempt to self medicate. We do that by trying to feel better through alcohol, drugs and food. We stuff our face with all the wrong things, and too much. Perhaps Doctor Freud was correct with his thesis on the “Death Wish.”
Next week we will address food, herbs, and insulin plant production you can grow in your garden.
God Bless
COPYRIGHT: 2010, Back2theLand.com, Mark Steel
