The root causes of chronic health problems (we’ll discuss root causes in another post) weaken the Three Systemic Functions of the body. As the Systemic Functions become weaker, every cell, tissue group, and organ in the body is adversely affected to some degree. When the tissues and organs are not monitored, controlled, fed and cleaned effectively by the Systemic Functions, tissues and organs begin to subfunction (they don’t work normally). Chronic subfunctioning of tissues eventually produces chronic (on-going) health problems.
Everyone’s body is different, so it is impossible to predict which tissues and organs will subfunction the most and which symptoms and illnesses will be produced first. The body can break down in many ways, producing many combinations of symptoms.
Knowing that it is weakness in the Three Systemic Functions that produces many different symptom combinations greatly simplifies the job of improving our health. The age old concept of Three Systemic Functions provides a very clear and useful way of understanding how the body works. Let’s take a closer look at each Systemic Function.
Blood Function
Blood Function includes three things: blood quality, blood circulation and lymphatic drainage.
1. Blood quality means the blood makeup or chemistry. Blood quality is determined by the right balance of oxygen, nutrients, hormones, enzymes, water, etc. It includes effective activity of white and red blood cells. The right amounts of cellular wastes in the blood – uric acid, lactic acid, carbonic acid, acetic acid, ammonia and others – also determines blood quality. The dynamic, balanced relationship between all of these elements is also considered part of blood quality. Finally, the concept of blood quality as defined here includes immune function. In fact it is blood quality as a whole that determines immunity and resistance to disease.
2. Blood circulation is the activity of our heart and blood vessels including the capillaries which are the smallest branches of the circulatory tree. It is at the capillary level that the actual exchange between blood and tissues (cells) takes place. When some of the capillaries become chronically constricted – as is the case with 90% of American adults – the bloodstream can’t feed the tissues as effectively. The bloodstream also cannot do the job of cleaning cellular wastes from the tissues effectively, so wastes store in the tissues and are then considered toxins.
Impaired feeding and cleaning of tissues
produces subfunctioning of tissue and organs,
which leads to many chronic health problems.
3. Lymphatic drainage works in conjunction with blood circulation to clean and protect the cells and tissues. Fluid is filtered from the blood through capillary walls into the microscopic spaces between cells (interstitial spaces) and is then called interstitial fluid. This interstitial fluid collects microbes and cellular wastes. Most of the interstitial fluid, laden with wastes, reenters the blood capillaries, but about 15% of it drains into an extensive network of one-way lymphatic capillaries that permeate tissues. At this point the fluid is called lymph or lymphatic fluid. In a healthy individual the lymph is quickly pumped by muscular action through special filters (lymph nodes) and then on to the bloodstream, which finally delivers waste products to the four systems of metabolic elimination (lungs, skin, kidneys and colon).
The metabolic cleaning process described above is essential for immunity and disease resistance. Unfortunately the process is often crippled by poor health habits to the point that we frequently fall prey to avoidable health problems.
The three point description of Blood Function outlined above has great practical value for understanding health and disease. Even though the details are complex, the overall concept is simple:
When cells are fed and cleaned effectively by healthy Blood Function, injured, weakened or fatigued tissues are more easily repaired and the body is protected from infection. If blood quality, blood circulation or lymphatic drainage are poor, cells and tissues are not fed and cleaned effectively and symptoms and illness of some kind are the inevitable result.
Each cell in the body
needs to be fed and cleaned effectively
or tissues will subfunction
and produce chronic health problems.
Poor health habits weaken Blood Function and prevent the effective feeding and cleaning of the cells and tissues. Because Blood Function is systemic, its weaknesses can lead to health problems anywhere in the body. Therefore, it is one of the most common causes of chronic health problems of many types.
We’ll take a look at the second Systemic Function, the Neurological Function, in the next post.