Germ Theory vs Host Theory
adapted by Jean-Claude van Itallie from Darin Olien’s online article
In our culture, the dominant health myth, started by 19th Century French biologist Louis Pasteur, is that bad “germs” enter our bodies to cause disease.
Instead of being taught that good nourishment and a balanced life-style generate a healthy environment in and around our bodies — as children we were taught to be afraid of germs. Our caretakers, trusting in germ theory, taught us to avoid or kill any bacteria, cold, or virus we might “catch,” by means of exaggerated cleanliness, drugs and vaccines.
Yet in his day Pasteur’s germ theory was vigorously challenged by many scientists including his rival, Antoine Béchamp, a biologist who believed that every kind of germ, good and bad, already lives in us, and that chronic disease grows and thrives in weak bodies.
On Pasteur’s deathbed, his nephew reported, Pasteur recanted, admitting that the condition of the body, rather than an invading germ, is the principal cause of chronic or noncommunicable disease. But Pasteur had been the better salesman. So his theory won out, and is believed by most Western doctors today, leaving food-as-medicine far behind in the dust. Partly the reason for germ theory’s dominance is that pharmaceutical manufacturers make billions fighting the symptoms of disease with drugs, while no profits go to corporations if you heal yourself through nutritional and life style choices.
On the other hand, Bechamp’s host theory holds that “germs” thrive amidst chemical byproducts and degenerative detritus of an imbalanced body. We create our bodies’ balance or imbalance by what we eat, the pace and style of our living, our physical and body/mind practices or lack of them, and the purity of the air we breathe. By our choices in these matters, we encourage or discourage disease in our bodies. The World Health Organization reports non communicable chronic diseases like cancer are responsible for 63% of deaths worldwide. But for such diseases to take hold, cellular dysfunction already has to be present — dead tissue, decay, rot. Cellular dysfunction, caused by poor nutrition and ingestion of industrial toxins like food preservatives, polluted air, and medical drugs, invites destructive bacteria, “germs,” to thrive.
Yes, we need medical drugs to treat infectious diseases like HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, polio, and tropical illnesses. But even these diseases look for a favorable host — someone to exploit with a compromised immune system or internal area of weakness.
If you are constantly killing everything around and in you with antibacterial chemicals and antibiotics, you aren’t just killing “germs” but the good stuff too, leaving you more susceptible to new diseases.
Our nation seems to have adopted “germ theory” as foreign policy too. If our government finds what it considers an enemy anywhere in the world, a “germ” — we bomb it, scorched earth style, destroying infrastructure and many civilians including children. Naturally this causes profound anger in the countries we bomb, and lo, we’ve created new enemies, multiplying them like the heads of a hydra. If instead we applied “host theory,” we would aid and nourish countries so they would not be a breeding ground for “germs.”
Similarly, in Western medicine a quick-fix reliance on drugs has created super bugs and drug-resistant strains of bacteria. Because big profits go to pharmaceutical industries, in medical schools, future doctors are learning about drug interactions but not about healthy eating and medicinal foods.
Traditional Chinese medicine treats the whole body, not merely the symptoms of disease. Even Hippocrates, “father of modern medicine” said to students: “Leave your drugs in their pots if you can cure your patients with food.”
Instead of relying on drugs, we need to actively practice body/mind health to create a more balanced state. Healthy daily practices can change our lives for the better and are in the control of each of us individually.
