Pies, cookies, candy and booze

Many people don’t yet understand how to support their own health over both the short and long terms. Health-related education and outlining customized holistic approaches to health and wellness is a regular, interesting and exciting part of my work.

Yet, while education is vital throughout the year, it’s especially important now as we move into the “Holiday Season” or, as many like to refer to this time, the “Cold and Flu Season”.

Holiday Season? Cold and Flu Season?  

Perhaps, just perhaps, this season might be more aptly coined the “Sugar Season”.  

Relabeling the “Cold & Flu Season” the “Sugar Season” is a helpful way of considering what affects our vulnerability and how we think about our own health and wellness.

“Pies, cookies, candy and booze.”

Guess what they all have in common. Yes, sugar.

When we talk about the “Cold & Flu Season”, our terminology supports the notion that it’s the bug, the microorganism, the pathogen … something “out there” that invades our bodies and causes us to get sick. When we do get sick and others around us are sick, this indirectly reinforces the notion that something “out there” affected us.

We rest in the understanding that our immune systems have been compromised by something “out there”. But really? Is this the whole story? Often, no.

The “germ theory”, the “out there” theory (so to speak), was a theory popularized by Pasteur.

Louis Pasteur was a 19th century French microbiologist who lived from 1822 until 1895. He suggested that many microbially-driven illnesses were caused by an invasion of a microorganisms from the exterior, from “out there”. While the scope of his work was considerable, and his contributions many, his germ theory, the “out there” theory, was adopted by the vast majority of western physicians.  It is still a very widely held belief.

Disseminating ideas, new and old

Sometimes the science and the ideas that are disseminated, both through the popular media and scientific literature, reach us not because they are the best ideas of the time but because they get the most backing; the most traction. Even when incorrect, often, perseverance, drowning out others or being the loudest wins the argument.

For many, the “out there” theory seems like a reasonable explanation, especially during the Holiday Season when we travel more and hence our exposure increases.

What if that wasn’t the whole story?

I would be tickled pink if we renamed the Holiday Season the “Sugar Season”. Let’s consider.

During the many years of my science education, rarely did we hear mention of a contemporary of Pasteur’s and much was the pity.

Also a Frenchman, Pierre Jacques Antoine Béchamp lived into the early part of the 20th century. He had a very different ideas than Pasteur. Unfortunately, for all the politics and the shouting, few recognized his work and Pasteur’s germ theory won the day. Much of western medicine continues to embrace Pasteur’s germ theory.

But, before I continue, I ask you to imagine:

You attend a party. Several people at the party have colds. Everyone mingles. A few days after the party, several additional people have contracted colds, but not all. Why not everyone?

Béchamp’s work explains this paradox nicely. Pierre Jacques Antoine Béchamp suggested it is the “internal terrain” and hence the resulting relationship between the host environment and the pathogen that explains why some and not others contract an infection or an illness.*

In other words, each of our internal environments are different. This difference results in many health-related differences. One important difference is the extent to which our bodies can host a given pathogen. Do we offer various microorganisms an environment in which they thrive?

What are the broader implications?

What does this mean in terms of our own health and wellness? First, returning to the idea of the Sugar Season, sugar is pro-inflammatory. This means that our [excessive] sugar consumption of pies, cookies, candy and booze during the Holiday Season produces inflammation. When we host inflammation in our bodies, we become more susceptible. Too, many microorganisms consume sugar as a source of energy.

If we sustain an environment that allows pathogens to feed on sugar, then also very likely the pathogens will thrive!

Could we eliminate what is euphemistically called the “Cold and Flu Season” by moderating sugar intake? By uncoupling celebrating from sugar consumption?

Adjusting the terrain

By moderating our food and beverage consumption, we can moderate our internal terrains and create environments where bacteria, viruses and fungi thrive and, where they cannot. If we focus on moderating the internal terrain, then it is no longer a foregone conclusion that exposure will result in illness. Perhaps this more adequately and clearly explains why some people at the party get sick and others do not.

Finding a solution “out there” can be dangerous for our health. For example, take the equation:

Doctor + Pill = Health

 Where are we in this equation?

More importantly, why are we absent from this equation? Likely because we have been schooled on the notion that the solution is “out there”?

Where and how can we insert ourselves into this equation? This is our work.

And why might it matter? It matters because the most significant interventions result from changing the environment, the internal terrain and not finding a solution “out there”.

Perhaps redefining the “Cold and Flu Season” as the “Sugar Season” will give us each pause for thought. While we know with surety that winter, spring, summer and fall each follow the other, the “Cold and Flu Season” is truly a time of our own making.

How we choose to label this season and of equal importance, how we choose to move through this season, characterizes our individual journey.

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*This is not to ignore or discount the myriad of variables that can, and do, affect health and wellness. It is a significant piece of the puzzle.

October 24 2023