Children’s Health: A Question of Balance

All of the common illnesses of childhood are inflammations. “Infection” is the wrong word for them, because it suggests that we get “sick” because germs invade us. This is misleading. We are always exposed to, and often harbor, germs, and yet we only occasionally get sick.

Why Do We Get Sick?

In order to be healthy, we must keep an inner balance in body and soul, while all the time growing and changing from birth to death. Childhood is the time of most rapid growth and dramatic change, and a child will remodel and renew the body many times while growing. Every remodeling job requires some demolition, a breaking down of part of the inherited bodily structure in order to rebuild it better. This breaking down of old cells and tissues results in debris, which must be cleaned up before the rebuilding can begin. It is the immune system that does the breaking down by causing cell death and, when necessary, fever and inflammation to destroy and digest foreign or worn out bodily material. And it is the immune system which cleans up the digested material and debris by pushing it out of the body. This is why children so often will have skin rashes and discharges of mucus or pus, because their immune systems are actively working. Debris that remains in the body may act like a poison, or cause allergies or repeated inflammations later on. Germs do not “attack” us, but they often multiply wherever the body’s living substance is dying, breaking down and being discharged. Germs don’t cause illnesses; they feed on them.