As we move into the new millennium we have noticed two things emerging: people are becoming more concerned with the environment (think Bono, Live Aid and the River Murray), and people are becoming more concerned with their health (organic food, The Biggest Loser). For me, these two are inextricably linked, but more and more I am running into people who are really concerned about one and not the other, and it makes me wonder why - not just because a healthy environment is vital for healthy people and vice versa.
The reason that I can't separate the two is the fundamental philosophy that undermines them both. Both our bodies and the environment are self-regulating ecosystems. Both of them know exactly what to do and when to do it in order to maintain their healthy balance. Both of them have an amazing ability to deal with the natural challenges that are thrown at them on a daily, weekly and yearly basis. And both the environment and your body don't need any help to stay healthy; just no interference.
The River Murray is a perfect example of what I mean. So, what does the Murray really need to be healthy? It needs people to stop taking too much water out of it. It needs people to stop putting introduced species into it. It needs people to stop putting chemicals into it. In short, it needs us to leave it alone. We can't fix it. We don't need to do anything to it. We just would need to get out the way and let it heal itself.
In fact, if you really think about it, when have people ever interfered with a healthy natural ecosystem and made it better? I can't think of a single example. But I can think of plenty of examples of when we have tried to interfere and make things better, only to make it worse. Cane toads are a great example.
Well, your body is exactly the same. Lots of things that we do to our bodies thinking we are making them healthier are in fact having the opposite effect. Antibiotics, for example, disrupt the natural bacterial balance in your stomach and actually decrease your body's immune system function. So, while they may help to kill off your current infection, they will actually make you more likely to get an infection in the future. In effect, they have made you less healthy than you were in the first place.
Now, of course there are crises in both fields where these rules do not apply. If you have let your body or the environment get into such a broken state, it may mean that you need to take some short-term intervention to avoid long term damage or even death - and you would be mad not to do so. But you would be equally mad to continually go from crisis to crisis without ever realising that it would be much easier and much cheaper to create a healthy ecosystem in the first place.
So, the sooner you greenies and health nuts realise that you are in fact working from exactly the same song sheet and that your underlying philosophy is exactly the same, the better off we will be, both in terms of our health and the environment.
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