Nature Cure is most commonly thought of as a way of caring for the sick, in a way which is natural to both body and mind, with the aim of restoring full health. But it is more than that. It also embraces a natural lifestyle which if practiced on a large scale would produce a better world with a cleaner environment, causing less suffering to both animals and humans, less violence, etc.

Nature Cure is a health care system for anyone, but it is particulary suited to ethical vegans because it involves no cruelty to animals. Other health care systems use medicines and remedies that may be tested on animals or derived from animals. Nature Cure uses no remedies or medicines. It is basically a health care system which teaches people to take responsibility for their own life and to build health. When health is built, disease will disappear.

It also makes use of various diagnostic methods and therapies, which are natural and when applied will improve the conditions for healing. These include irisdiagnosis, hydrotherapy (the use of water), psychotherapy, and mechanotherapy (to correct any structural abnormalities), diet therapy and fasting.

Nature Cure is based on a philosophy that it is natural to be healthy and that the human body and mind is self healing. All healing takes place automatically through innate forces. The task of a Nature Cure practitioner is to remove, as far as possible, all causes of disease and supply favourable conditions.

Some direct and spin-off effects that an adaptation to a natural philosophy and lifestyle could bring about to the individual and society, may include the following:

• The philosophy of Nature Cure supports anti-vivisection because it believes that medicines have no power to heal disease. Medical research that tests medicines on animals to find cures for various disease is fraudulent. The human body is self-healing and will heal only when the conditions are favourable enough. Medicines can only suppress symptoms of disease. Medical research will never find cures for conditions like cancer and AIDS etc, because there are no "cures", only nature can truly heal disease. Following Nature Cure philosophy, would automatically mean the end to all vivisection that searches for cures of disease through the use of medicines.

• A cleaner and more biodiverse environment;
  1. - The growing of trees for food production in favour of animal agriculture or production of grain on a large scale. The production of fruit and nuts causes less damage to the environment than both animal agriculture and the growing of grain on a large scale. Ideally vegetables, pulses, grains and seeds should be grown between the trees in a sustainable way;
  2. - Avoidance of all harmful chemicals;
  3. - Sustainable chemical free agriculture and local production of food;
  4. - The production of plant based foods rather than the production of animal products
  5. - Would free up vast areas that could be reforested; minimising both soil erosion and the use of water in food production;
  6. - Reduction of energy consumption; by, for instance, minimising energy and fossil fuel use in food production and by favouring the use of raw foods rather than cooking;
  7. - Less pollution for many reasons, for instance Nature Cure encourages exercise in opposition to the use of cars. Nature Cure teaches that we should breath pure air. The best way to avoid air pollution is not to cause it. Society should not accept current levels of air pollution both for health and environmental reasons; and
  8. - People who live naturally tend to appreciate nature more and therefore destroy it less.

• Nature Cure is freedom because;
  1. - It liberates people from the dependency of modern medicine, the taking of medicines, drugs, and remedies and the costs thereof;
  2. - It produces health; and
  3. - A natural lifestyle in different ways, directly and indirectly, saves time, for instance it requires a minimum of food preparation.

• Nature Cure liberates women because:
  1. - Natural lifestyle removes the problem of being sick with every menstrual period. Also menopause will not be a problem;
  2. - It teaches natural family planning, which has no harmful side effects; and
  3. - It produces less violence against women because a natural lifestyle produces a balanced biochemistry and a balanced mind which removes causes for violence.

• Nature Cure teaches that we should adopt a positive mental attitude and that any problems or conflicts should be solved in a peaceful way. Causes and solutions must be sought in a constructive way. Natural living and natural diet produces a balanced body chemistry which brings with it peace of mind and less violence. It would be difficult to believe that a person with a balanced biochemistry could willingly kill or harm another living being. Perhaps natural living would bring with it an end to wars?

• Nature Cure is economical for society and for the individual because:
  1. - The cost of seeing a Nature Cure practitioner is low. No expensive examinations are performed and no medicines are prescribed;
  2. - Cures are effectively produced;
  3. - A natural lifestyle is cheaper than a "normal" lifestyle. Examples of cost savings are sweets, alcohol, drugs, coffee, tea, soft-drinks, tobacco, etc;
  4. - Health is wealth. It is a lot cheaper to be healthy than to be sick; and
  5. - Gigantic hospital and medical care costs could be saved.

  Nature Cure is very little known and practised. This is unfortunate and more knowledge of Nature Cure would be highly beneficial to both the vegan/vegetarian movements and the world in general. By understanding Nature Cure vegans/vegetarians can add many arguments to our cause for a gentler world, anti-vivisection, care for Planet Earth, good economy, sustainable living and health.

The philosophy of Nature Cure holds that there are a lot of misconceptions about health, healing and disease. Medicines have erroneously been given credit for improving health and curing disease because they remove symptoms. Because medicines remove symptoms does not mean they cure. Simplified, this phenomenon can be explained as the body recognizes that the medicine is a bigger danger than the disease, so it tries to eliminate the medicine rather than focusing on healing the disease. Disease is not necessarily something harmful. This thought is nothing new. Hippocrates said 460 B.C.: "Disease is the crisis of purification of toxic elimination. Symptoms are the natural defenses of the body". About 150 years ago Dr. R.T. Trall M.D. said " Disease is just the contrary to what is taught in medical books. It is a remedial effort. (1)

Administration of medicines may stop the healing process because they are poisons and render the disease degenerative (chronic). While this is normally interpreted as a cure or an improvement because the patient feels better it is in reality a pseudo cure or a suppression. The fact that someone feels better after taking a medicine does NOT mean they became healthier. The assumption that medicines cure is a result of shallow thinking. At a glance medicines appear to cure just as it was once thought that the earth was the center of the universe, because on the surface it appeared to be so. However, things are not always the way they seem.

Medical philosophy teaches that the medicine acts on the system. Natural philosophy teaches that the system reacts to the medicine and tries to eliminate it. Only a living organism can react not an inanimate object.

Conventional as well as alternative medicine administers a special substance in order to produce a certain result. Nature Cure does not prescribe any medicines or remedies of any kind as they cannot cure disease and are unnecessary. The body is self-healing. Biological processes within are totally responsible for all healing and regeneration.

Not all diseases are harmful, some are regenerative. They are healing processes, not diseases in the normal sense of the word. Some conditions that Nature Cure regard as regenerative or protective natural reactions to an unnatural lifestyle or unfavorable environment are: vomiting; coughing; sneezing; hiccoughs; eczema; psoriasis; pimples and other skin conditions; fever; colds; inflammation; influenza; profuse perspiration; excessive urination; warts; cysts and even tumors. Cysts and benign tumors are formed when the body successfully encapsulate poisonous materials that cannot effectively be eliminated from the body.

The philosophy of Nature Cure is so diametrically opposed to medical philosophy that you could almost say that to understand Nature Cure you will have to turn all medical concepts upside down.

Unlike medicine, Nature Cure does not consider the primary cause of disease to be germs. There may be thousands of different causes of disease but Nature Cure divides the causes of disease into three basic categories:

• Structural which may result from injury or bad posture;

• Biochemical which may be the result of an unnatural diet and various forms of poisoning; and

• Mental which may result from trauma, stress or shock.

Some central points in the practice and philosophy of Nature Cure are:

• Health is the normal state of the human body. Disease is the result of unfavorable lifestyle and environment;

• Nature has not provided cures for disease, only penalties for the breaking of natural law;

• The body is self-healing. Biological processes within are totally responsible for all healing and regeneration. The same innate powers that is maintaining health is also responsible for healing. There is no special function responsible for healing only.

• Nothing that comes from outside the body has the capability to heal the body;

• No medicines or remedies are used;

• All diseases are either regenerative (acute) or degenerative (chronic). To obtain a cure of a chronic condition the body must be regenerated (the chronic condition must be converted into an acute condition);

• Removal of causes are necessary for a cure;

• Supply of favorable living conditions;

• A balanced alkaline forming diet;

• Use of natural therapies to enhance the healing process;

• Supply extra rest, physically, mentally and physiologically (fasting) when indicated; and

• Fasting is normally only used when the organism clearly indicates that it does not need food.

The above points combined together makes Nature Cure unique as a healing art. When these principles are followed, so-called "incurable" disease may be cured. This statement may seem like a contradiction but when removing causes for the first time a medically diagnosed incurable person may regain health even if the disease has been long-standing.

Copyright February 1995
Eric Karlsson D.N., N.D.
P.O. Box 2222 TOWNSVILLE N.QLD
AUSTRALIA 4810

Reference: 1. Kenneth S. Jaffrey, Medicine on trial. 1986