There is a tendency, particularly in health discussions, to reduce everything to a simple question of what is good and what is bad. Parasites belong firmly in the latter category, at least according to the conventional story. But the deeper I get into the terrain model, microbial ecology, fasting, and the strange adaptability of living systems, the less satisfying that binary becomes. What if the organism we are calling the problem is sometimes part of a much larger process? And what happens when we start asking not simply what an organism is, but what it is doing, and why?
Tag: fasting
Between Fruit and Flesh: Searching for the Human Diet
Food, Belief and the Living Body
Food is one of those things we can make endlessly complicated, despite the fact that every living creature seems to know what to eat without consulting an expert, downloading an app, or swallowing a handful of supplements. Somewhere along the way, we learned to distrust appetite, intuition, tradition, and even our own bodies. Perhaps the more interesting question isn’t which dietary camp has finally got it right, but how much of what we believe about nourishment, health, and vitality was ever ours to begin with.
The Quiet Intelligence of Nature: On Honey and the Living World
Food, Ecology, and Direct Experience
There is something to be said for stepping outside the prescribed narratives and assumptions that shape so much of modern life. Food, health, and our relationship with the natural world have become increasingly abstracted, measured, categorized, and regulated, often at the expense of direct experience and common sense. Yet some questions remain worth asking, particularly those that encourage us to reconnect with place, observation, experimentation, and the quiet wisdom embedded within nature itself.
Your body knows how to detoxify, heal, and adapt. It’s doing it all the time — with every breath, with every bathroom break, every time you sweat, cry, cough, sneeze, or blow your nose. With every “cold” and every “flu,” and every time you take a shower and towel off, it works flawlessly. It works every time. It never takes a break.