There are at least two definitions of vitalism. I define it as a deep trust in nature’s and your body’s innate wisdom to create and maintain life. If this were a new concept for me, I might question why it is so important.

Consider momentarily the miracle of human development and birth.

Within the mother, the ova makes a connection with the semen. From there, a great development takes place. In a predictable timeline and fashion, all of the organ systems develop:

Lungs that bring oxygen into the body, and remove carbon and cellular waste;
A heart with four chambers that pump continuously throughout all of life, and that sends a near-constant supply of oxygen and vital nutrients to the various cells and tissues of the body, and returns waste products to the lungs, urinary system, and lymphatic system;
The brain is by far the most complex human development. Starting with the notochord in week 3 of embryonic life, the neural tube develops. During the next 5 weeks, the core structures for the unparalleled adult brain will have developed.
The creation of life is truthfully a miracle. Its development is predictable, precise, very complex, and highly sustainable.

Now consider the grandeur of maintaining human life:

The heart is an amazing muscle that pumps all day, everyday, for all of life. It changes speed and intensity based upon current needs and conditions.
Complex channels exist that allow precise activation of neural and muscular tissues, while also removing and balancing chemical, pressure, and pH gradients. This is necessary for maintenance of life.
A muscle is able to willfully create inverted pressure within the chest cavity which causes air from the external environment to move into the lungs.
A multitude of tight balances are maintained automatically to ensure your muscles have enough power, and that your body can function correctly.
All of your skeletal muscles work in concert to allow your 206 bones to defy gravity and to move you at will.

These life-sustaining forces occur automatically and without requiring any forethought. The wisdom, complexity, and grandeur of life itself is indisputable.

There is a common saying: “The wisdom that made the body is the wisdom that heals the body”.

Think about it, a force that is able to develop an ova and sperm into a fully-functional human baby! A force that is able to make life fully sustainable and fully reproducible. Wouldn’t a force like this be intelligent enough to also heal and repair itself?

In general, we know this is true for cuts, bruises, and broken bones. My vitalistic assertion is that your body can do so much more than that. It is perfectly capable of providing for you optimum health, vibrance, and vitality. Not only that, but in every case possible, the wisdom of your body will attempt to give you the best of what is available.

So when we find ourselves in a position of dis-ease, the question therefore becomes: “What prevented my body from achieving its goal to keep me healthy, happy, and vibrant?”

If we can find the answers to that question, then we can support the best of life that your body will give you, as long as you don’t get in the way of your own mechanism for health.

I have deep and abiding confidence in my body to repair and restore, to rebuild and recover. This confidence guides many of the decisions that I make. My confidence that everyone else has similar intelligence within guides many of the recommendations that I give.

Genetic conditions

When introduced to this philosophy, a lot of people ask, what about genetic conditions and autonomic disorders? If the human body were so highly intelligent, wouldn’t it be able to create a healthy baby every time? Wouldn’t it be able to prevent itself from attacking itself?

These are fair questions, but the fact that there are sometimes genetic mutations, birth defects, and autonomic disorders does not undermine the truth that creation of life requires a degree of intelligence that extends beyond human-reach.

There are known causes for many of these disorders. For example, Thalidomide was a birth-control drug prescribed years ago, which resulted in thousands of birth defects because one of the chemical constituents had the wrong chirality or handedness: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/02/160208124237.htm. As another example, an abundance of folic acid is required during early stages of brain development (alluded to earlier) which take place before the mother is aware that she is pregnant. A deficiency of folic acid or its synthetic counterpart folate will result in a variably-serious condition called spina bifida.

In our day, we are exposed to an abundance of chemicals, stresses, environmental toxins, drugs, radiation, and other hazards that might explain the incidence of other conditions. Just like a plant needs water, nutrients, and sunlight; our bodies also require certain components.

Allopathy

To appreciate the importance of vitalism it’s also necessary to understand some other prominent philosophies about health. One of these philosophies is commonly termed allopathic medicine, which gets its name from the Greek “allos” – meaning opposite, and pathy – meaning “illness”.

The word-part allos or opposite, is based on a doctor’s response to a body action. For example

If a person has a fever, an allopath would do whatever is possible to reduce the fever
Diarrhea – an allopath would find a way to prevent the bowels from moving
Low insulin – find a way to increase the insulin
High blood pressure – find a way to lower it

Each of these treatment options I just mentioned seems reasonable at the surface. Each also involved doing the opposite of what the body has created.

Consider the common fever:

Viruses and bacteria cannot survive when body temperature exceeds 101 F: https://www.naturalnews.com/027149_fever_virus_flu.html#ixzz4Tl5DxPcD.

A fever is your body’s natural response to these invaders, but the common approach is to reduce the fever, and then administer medications designed to kill the invaders.

However, this does not come without a cost. Medications have side-effects, plus they kill part of your natural biome that is necessary for good health. Plus, drugs are not good at contending with viral infections. In actuality, a fever may be just what your body needs to get healthy again.

But I’m concerned about dehydration and brain damage. It’s a well-known fact that a fever above 107.8 can cause brain damage. However, research has shown that someone who is properly-hydrated will not experience brain injury, even with a high fever. Medical professionals also acknowledge that fevers resulting from a regular illness is very unlikely to ever cause brain damage. The main concern is actually fevers not caused by illness, such as heat stroke. See the link in the references:

https://www.verywellhealth.com/do-fevers-cause-brain-damage-770640

Let’s consider the other examples I raised:

Diarrhea: It could be that you have something very toxic inside of you, which your body needs to discard, and holding those toxins in could have other negative consequences.
Low insulin: Actually, the problem is rarely that your body cannot make enough insulin (known as Type I diabetes). It’s much more common that your lifestyle has required your body to produce more insulin than what is healthy. In the end, this leads to disastrous long-term problems, all of which are preventable by changing lifestyle.
Plus, inserting insulin directly into the body will cause a negative feedback reaction. This is how it works: chemical messengers in your blood will inform the hypothalamus that an adequate supply of insulin is present in the blood. The hypothalamus instructs the pancreas not to make more insulin. As this cycle continues over a prolonged period, the pancreas eventually becomes unable to create any volume of insulin, so that you have made yourself to be entirely dependent on insulin administered externally.
Blood pressure: It’s well known that high blood pressure is dangerous, but are blood thinners really the best response to this problem? It’s also well known that most people can lower blood pressure by consuming more raw vegetables, eating appropriate fats including very little saturated fat, and with appropriate portion sizes and exercise.
For short-term needs, there are herbs such as willow bark, which can reduce blood pressure; or essential oils such as wintergreen.
The long-term goal should be to modify your lifestyle so that you can lower your blood pressure naturally.

In each of these cases, I have provided some rational to support the idea that it is best to support the body’s innate wisdom. The allopathic approach has been to assume that the body’s natural mechanisms are deficient, and to instead over-take the body’s ability to respond to its environment, but instead to manually perform the necessary steps for the body.

This type of approach is necessary in certain extreme circumstances, and were it not for the availability of advancements spurned by this model, many people – including myself – might not be alive right now.

Issues arise when we overtake the body’s natural maintenance of itself, at times when th...