In Search of Balance

The 'Net of Indra';

the metaphor of Indra's

jeweled net asks us

to envision

a vast net that,

at each juncture

there lies a jewel;

each jewel reflects

all the other jewels

in this

cosmic matrix.

Every jewel represents

an individual life form,

atom, cell or unit

of consciousness.

Each jewel, in turn,

is intrinsically

and intimately connected

to all the others.

Thus, a change in one gem is

reflected in all the others.

Hundreds of thousands of people

have died unnecessary deaths.

The question is, why?

Most of what I treat in my

office is chronic disease.

We are living

in an environment.

Our bodies are ill-prepared

for a lot of disease results,

probably about half of disease

you see in the hospitals

is due to living

in an environment

we are not prepared for.

But perhaps the most

startling part is that

many of these chronic diseases

could have been prevented.

Chronic disease

is all the ailments from

heart disease, diabetes,

to depression,

that are just chipping away

at our quality of life.

Make rounds in

a modern hospital

with me in the

medical ward sometime

and just make a note of

each patient as you go through

which of these patients

would actually be there

if they had lived in

the natural environment

compared with our

modern environment.

These chronic diseases

seem to be moving ever

further town

in the age bracket

to the point where I am

seeing more-and-more children

with diabetes and heart

disease, morbid obesity.

Experts call it

'Diabesity.'

Over the past decade childhood

cases of type 2 diabetes

have increased ten-fold because

of rising rates of obesity.

The immune systems in

modern people specifically

in the developed rich

countries are trigger happy,

they are doing crazy things,

attacking their own tissues

like attacking the brain so then

you have multiple sclerosis.

All of these are situations

where the immune system

is doing things it

should not be doing,

and in developing countries

it doesn't do these things.

So something has changed in

the rich developed countries

which is causing

our immune systems

lose the control

mechanisms

that normally stop them

from behaving irresponsibly.

The medical profession is

now actually the third leading

cause of death

in the United States.

People didn't understand

why when we get antibiotics

it causes many problems,

not only that but each cell

in our body has mitochondria

that has been

before bacteria.

So bacteria is the fabric

of all the living systems.

So we did so many mistake

on our gut bacteria.

As we have less-and-less

infectious disease

we have more-and-more

chronic disease,

but even conditions like

multiple sclerosis

and depression had our thought

had some microbial involvement.

And so it may be, as we have

conquered infectious disease,

some of the strategies

like antibiotics

have been either eliminating

beneficial microbes

or providing the growth

of harmful microbes

that are contributing to these

chronic diseases in ways

that we are just beginning

to understand.

Most of it relates

back to our lifestyle.

So to the foods

that we are eating,

the highly processed foods

with lots of sugar

and very low nutrient,

to the fact that we experience

a huge amount of stress

and that we are disconnected

from our communities.

I am starting to discover

also to the fact

that we are disconnected

from the natural world.

We gradually killing

ourselves off.

People have to start realizing

that we are connected,

I mean, including the creatures

of the earth, including plants,

the land, at some point it

will come back and bite us

if we don't start

changing our ways.

Actually it's starting

to bite us already.

I love to garden

without gloves.

My name is Dr. Daphne Miller

and I am a family doctor

and a nutrition explorer.

-- and, I feel like

I wear gloves enough

in my medical

practice,

and why should I have

to wear them in my garden

where everything

is so wonderful

and where there

is a kind of microbes

that I want to be

connected to, so --

Agroecology is the

science that provides

the basic ecological

principles for how to study,

design and manage agrosystems

that are both productive

and natural

resource-conservative

and that are

culturally-sensitive,

socially-just and

economically viable.

We can get

behind that, right.

Agroecology goes beyond

a one-dimensional view

of agroecosystems.

At the heart of the agroecology

strategy is the idea

that an agroecosystem

should mimic the functioning

of local ecosystems.

But the word 'health'

has not come up once yet.

The key agroecological

strategy in designing

a sustainable agricultural

is to reincorporate diversity

into the agricultural fields

and surrounding landscapes.

How about human health?

No, no, no

health here, okay!

I am pleased to introduce

our next speaker,

Ms. Daphne Miller.

She will be talking about

diverse farming system,

diverse diets.

She is a family

physician, a writer,

and associate professor in the

Department of Family Medicine

at the University of

California, San Francisco.

I wanted also to add this

sentence which I like myself,

Ms. Miller approaches

medicine with idea

that opportunities

for health

and healing are found not

only in the medical system

but in such unexpected

places such as home kitchens,

school gardens, community

organization, spiritual centers,

farmers,

and natural trades.

Thank you.

We are hitting a wall,

and we know that pills

and surgeries are not making

cadent in the rates of diabetes

and heart disease

that we are seeing.

The most important thing

to understand is that

there is no one answer.

Health is something that needs

to be engaged with everyday

throughout the day in dozens

of little choices that we make.

The bad news is that

it's complicated.

On my 48th birthday

I had a really bad headache.

Ultimately

it was determined

that I had a disorder

called Neurosarcoidosis.

They started treating me

with prednisone, with steroids.

I tried to watch TV,

TV was too slow,

so I finally had to bring in

my laptop and that was the only

thing that was, you know,

fast enough that I could feel

because these drugs

just had my brain go --

A 106,000 Americans

are killed every year

from side-effects

of prescription drugs.

This is not drug errors,

this is not illicit drugs,

and this is actually

just compliant to drugs

given in hospitals.

And the steroids were great

and that the symptoms

that I was having went away and

within maybe two weeks of going

on these massive

dosage of steroids,

my appetite was back

and I gained somewhere

in the neighborhood 30

or 40 pounds in two weeks,

because I was eating

like a teenage boy.

What I didn't know at that

time was that prednisone

can lead to diabetes.

So I began a course of

medication for diabetes.

We tend to medicalize health,

we tend to really think of it

within the purview of what we

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