Enervation - Toxemia

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Enervation —

Toxemia

Hygienic Review

Vol. XXV August, 1964 No. 12

Enervation — Toxemia

Herbert M. Shelton

In line with the old concept of disease as something imposed from

without, an attacking entity, medical men and the public have been

taught to think of causation in terms of germs, viruses, parasites;

resistance as the capacity of the body to marshal its phagocytes to

overcome or repel an invader or to marshal antitoxins to neutralize the

toxins of germ activity; cure in terms of antagonists, antidotes,

antitoxins. They employ the term toxemia, but they mean by it poisoning

by germ activity. No germs, no toxemia, is their general attitude.

Our concept of toxemia is fundamentally different from that held by the

medical profession. To us toxemia is the result of the accumulation in

the blood, lymph, and tissues of retained metabolin—metabolic waste. It

is an autogenerated state, the toxin arising as a normal by-product of

the regular and necessary activities of life. Toxin accumulates as a

result of inhibited excretion (checked elimination). Basically, we hold

that any influence, whether physical or mental, that results in an

excessive expenditure of nerve energy leads to toxemia. This means that

the chief causes of enervation are found in the voluntary habits of the

individual.

What is meant by the term enervation? It means the reduction of nerve

energy sufficient to interfere with or reduce the organic activities of

the body. The nervous system presides over and controls the functions

of the many and various organs of the body—secretion, excretion,

circulation, digestion, respiration, absorption, etc., etc. Hence the

term enervation simply means a reduction of the capacity of the nervous

system below the level required to maintain a normal level of

physiological activity.

As man in civilized life does not possess perfect health, we hold that

everyone is more or less enervated, hence more or less toxemic. This

lowering of the body's capacity to function on a high physiological

level is what we mean by lowered or broken resistance. But we have a

different concept of what is resisted. We resist heat, cold, poisons,

fatigue, and other inimical influences. When our energy is sufficiently

low that we present inadequate resistance to cold, for example,

exposure to severe or prolonged stress by cold, results in a sufficient

added check being placed upon excretion that there is a sudden increase

of the body's toxic load, thus precipitating a crisis.

A gradual accumulation of waste (toxin) occurs when continual draughts

upon the nerve energy of the body are made by various activities,

stresses and exigencies of life that prevent the maintenance of

complete elimination. This accumulated waste constitutes what we

understand as toxemia. This is not to say that there are no other

sources of intoxication (such as drug poisoning, toxins absorbed from

decomposition processes going on in the intestine, etc.) but we prefer

to differentiate between poisons of en-dogeneous origin and those of

exogeneous origin, by calling the one toxemia and the other poisoning.

Poisoning from any source causes suffering-disease—so that we have also

defined toxemia as the presence in the fluids and tissues of toxins

from any source. Tobacco poisoning causes disease; acute disease when

the tobacco is first taken, chronic disease after toleration has been

established. The same facts are true of all poisons. Bacteria produce

toxins in their activities, but they are as helpless as a feather in a

whirlwind in a healthy body. The body must first be enervated and

toxemic before bacteria can gain a foothold therein and thrive. This

means that we must first be sick before bacteria can add a complicating

and, perhaps, differentiating toxemia to the primary or metabolic

intoxication.

It should be borne in mind that there can be no toxemia, as we have

here defined it, without a previous checking of elimination and that

this is due to lowering of functioning power-enervation. The order of

events (sequence) in the evolution of cause is habits of mind and body

and environmental influences that use up nerve energy in excess of the

body's power to regenerate it during the hours allotted to rest and

repose, enervation, checked secretion and excretion (indeed a lowering

of the power of function in general), retention and accumulation of

body waste, toxemia. In the last analysis toxemia is the result of

fatigue of the nervous system to a sufficient degree to lessen the

functioning power of life and cripple the effort to maintain normal

functions.

While we may speak of an absorptive-toxemia arising from

gastro-intestinal decomposition or from an abscess, or we may speak of

a toxemia resulting from great emotional stress or from profound

physical fatigue, in the final analysis these are results of

enervation. Intoxication (alcoholic, narcotic, tobacco, etc.) may occur

even in those of perfect health, if poisons are deliberately introduced

into the body, but let us keep this variety of poisoning separate in

our thinking from the toxemia that is the result of habits of life and

environmental influences that reduce nerve energy; all the while

keeping in mind that indulgence in poison habits add a profoundly

enervating influence to their poisoning.

Enervation may grow out of any possible combination of the following

practices and influences:

Such emotional stresses as fright, grief, worry, apprehension, anxiety,

hurry, anger, irritability, hate, resentment, jealousy, over ambition

leading to overwork (mental or physical); physical overexertion,

excessive venery, lasciviousness, pain and shock, injuries, loss or

blood, surgical operations, disease processes, constant coughing, loss

of sleep, lack of rest and relaxation, drug treatments, the

stimulations and inhibitions of osteopathic, chiropractic, naprapathic,

hydropathic, electrical, thermal (heat and cold), and similar

treatments, the digestive strain caused by overeating, wrong food

combinations, condiments, drinking with meals; exposure to cold, and

wet, exposure to heat and humidity; eye-strain, malpositions anywhere

in the body; a lack of exercise, of fresh air, of warmth and comfort,

lack of cleanliness, lack of sunlight, inadequate food; in short, the

universal excesses and deficiencies of which mankind is guilty and the

treatments which are heaped upon the sick, are the most common causes

of enervation.

Another great source of enervation is the almost universal indulgence

in poisons of one kind or another—the various alcoholic beverages and

soft drinks, tobacco (smoking and chewing), betel chewing, arsenic

eating, drinking of tea and coffee, the taking of narcotics and other

drugs, poisons absorbed from the intestinal tract, chemical and

bacterial poisons taken in by mouth, lungs, mucous membrane or by

injection. Poisoning of any nature and from any source causes a waste

of nerve energy in resisting and expelling the poison. Toxemia, once it

is established, causes a waste of nerve energy in the activities needed

to resist and expel the toxin.

Thus it will be seen that enervation results in toxemia, toxemia

increases enervation, thus increasing the toxemia; enervation causes

the individual to resort to enervating depressants and stimulants for

relief of discomforts and the enervation thus caused calls for more

enervating means of relief. Soon the individual finds himself in a

complex of vicious cycles, from which he sees no way of escape. The

more he resorts to the treatments, the more enervated he becomes. The

more enervated, the more toxemic and the more he thinks he needs

treatment. The more he lashes himself with stimulants, the weaker he

grows and the more he resorts to stimulation.

How do we break up this complex of vicious cycles? Certainly not by

resort to more enervating treatments, not by surgical vandalism, not by

more of the hair of the dog that bit you. A radical, a revolutionary

change in the way of life is the only way out. Every cause of

enervation must be abandoned or corrected. Every bad habit of mind and

body must be abandoned and good habits of life substituted therefor.

Anything short of a radical change in the way of life will fail to

enable the man or woman to evolve into a state of good health.

A housecleaning is in order. Toxin must be eliminated. This is not to

be accomplished by the artificial and forcing methods that have been

employed for ages by the curing cults, for the effect of these is to

produce more enervation while failing to secure toxin elimination. The

body has its own blood purifiers and these will do the work if they are

given an opportunity and supplied with adequate functioning power.

Where is functioning power to come from in a body that is already

profoundly enervated? It can come only by hoarding what one has; this

is, by ceasing all unnecessary expenditure. Energy saved from one

activity is available for use in other activities. This is the reason

physical and mental rest result in an immediate increase in excretion.

It is also important that we look toward stopping the absorption of

toxic materials from the digestive tract and from drug habits. An empty

digestive tract and discontinuance of all drug habits enable the body

to free itself of poisons already accumulated. The fundamental error of

all the curing systems lies in their effort to force the sick organism

to act in accordance with the practitioners' conceptions of how it

ought to act, ignoring all study and observations of how it is

constituted to act. They try to force healthy action upon the sick body

and cause more suffering by their very efforts.

Herbert M. Shelton

-- Peace be with you,

Don "Quai" Eitner

"Spirit sleeps in the mineral, breathes in the vegetable, dreams in the animal and wakes in man."

Nearly all men die of their remedies, and not of their illnesses. ~Baptiste Molière, Le Malade Imaginaire

The obstacle is the path. ~Zen Proverb