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VIRGINIA NATURAL HEALTH
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Dr. Byron "Ted" Butchart, ND Naturopathic Physician
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"Treat the patient, not the disease."
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Offices in Charlottesville and Staunton Virginia
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Keep the Energy Moving
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When we carefully observe a healthy ecosystem, one of the first
lessons we can glean from the study is that the movement of
energy is never a simple straight line from input to output. It is a
principle of naturopathic medicine and in nature that energy
always cycles around and around within the system, being
passed from one member of the community to another and on to
yet another in a botanical or natural symbiosis. A particularly
impressive example of this in a natural environmental ecosystem is
the cross species cooperation facilitated by fungus in fields and
forests.
We have been told that the natural world “is bloody in tooth and
claw,” and it certainly can be. The Social Darwinists have seized
on this aspect of nature to justify cutthroat competition and
unchecked “me first” behavior. But in a natural scheme, that is
only part of the story. The bigger story is about cooperation.
In soil that has not been disturbed, fungal rootlets, called
mycelium, penetrate into the roots of plants and initiate a two way
exchange of energy and materials. This is not a simple parasite,
sucking sustenance from another plant. This is a nutritional
exchange. The plant excretes sugars, amino acids, and other
high energy nutrition more complex than the fungus can
manufacture. It is giving away surplus energy that it gained from
the sun. The fungus for its part is giving minerals to the plant that
it is able to free from the soil at a distance from the plant,
extending the plant’s nutritional zone far beyond its own roots.
But wait, it gets better. Multiple mycelium running in parallel are
capable of forming hollow tubes that can run for many yards
through the soil, carrying the surplus energy from plants in the
sunshine way back into the forest to feed other plants that are in
the shade. The trees back in the shade would not be able to
thrive on the little bit of sun they see, but with the cooperation of
the fungal rootlets they get enough energy and materials to grow.
So much for survival of the fittest. How about survival of the most
cooperative?
Cooperation works out there in the fields, so why do we two
leggeds have such an aversion to it? We glorify the sociopathic
creed, the one that says that satisfying our solitary greed is what
makes the society great. There are many ways of measuring the
damage we have wrought upon the natural world through that
belief in greed and non cooperation: wasted resources, poisons
in our drinking water, fertile farmland turned into warehouses and
concrete. As a naturopathic doctor I have a different view of the
damage, and it has more to do with opportunities squandered,
unresolved grief, lives lived in the shade, lives that don’t
thrive.
The lack of an ethos of cooperation, the pervasive singularity of
life in America has spawned an epidemic: An embarrassingly high
percentage of Americans receive treatment for depression and
other behavioral issues, in the form of anti depressants and
anti anxiety drugs. Are we to believe that all of them just
happened to be born with insufficient brain chemicals to lead
normal, natural, drug free lives? Highly unlikely. So why are
millions of well educated people living lives of such low energy that
they need sunshine in a “therapeutic” pill every day? I believe
that a good part of the answer to that question is that for many
people in this country life is lonely and alienated. The quest for
the American Dream, or at least the dream as it has been defined
by Wall Street over the last half century, has left them without
meaningful, integrative connections and without purposeful
interactions.
Naturopathic doctors are trained to look for what we call the
determinants of health. After a century of work we have managed
to get once revolutionary concepts like clean water, healthy
nutrition and basic hygiene accepted as common sense
necessities for achieving health. But there are other determinants
of health without which true health is not possible: useful work,
meaningful social interactions, and a grounded spiritual life are
among them. The more we isolate, the less we trust each other,
the more we lose the free exchange of energy that we need for
mental and emotional health.
The importance of community, of deep friendships, cannot be
overstated. We are social beings and we cannot thrive on
simulated relationships via TV, we cannot be healthy with a diet of
superficial interactions. I have a colleague from New Zealand who
tells me that in his country the tradition of taking tea in the
afternoon with friends and co workers is still very much alive. He
says pubs and teashops are abuzz with conversation. And he tells
me they have very few behavioral issues that require treatment in
the country. That isn’t a coincidence. We have a country full of
therapists, stores full of drugs for the “treatment” of depression,
and we tend to sit around in our separate rooms watching TV by
ourselves, or surfing the internet by ourselves. That isn’t a
coincidence either.
Pass on some energy. Go visit a friend and find out what is really
going on with them. It will do more good than a handful of pills.
© 2009, Dr. Ted Butchart. All rights reserved.
Virginia Natural Health , Charlottesville, Virginia and Staunton,
Virginia. 540-213-1350
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Dr. Butchart's Articles
Keep the Energy Moving
Psycho-Emotional Health
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