A few days ago, a medical doctor phoned me and she expressed a number of interesting thoughts about the future of the human race. She said that infertility has now reached the 41% mark. She was speaking so fast that I was unable to ask her whether this is an American statistic or if similar crises are facing people in other countries. It was clear that her main concern was the estrogenic effect on male sexuality and fertility but it might be possible to take a wider look and see the whole picture. Her speculation was that if matters remained unchecked, only populations in remote areas that are almost untouched by modern civilization will survive. Frankly, I do not know whether "untouched" belongs in our vocabulary because the estrogenic compounds found in plastics and other blessings of chemistry go into our drinking water, into the rivers, and into the oceans. We all heard stories a decade ago about male fish lacking secondary sexual development, and the baby bottle scare went out to young mothers not to give their children, especially their sons, anything out of plastic bottles.

Infertility and Stubborn Sterility

Years and years ago, the crisis was already such that approximately 20% of young couples were unable to conceive children. At the time, I thought to myself that since either the husband or the wife could be infertile, the odds were that only 10-12% of the population was facing stubborn sterility. If the figure has increased to the 41% cited by this rather high profile researcher, then she is right, our civilization has a dilemma and the problem must be solved if we are to survive.

I think we could take the same figures my colleague was using and make another equally valid argument: the laws of karma are forcing a readjustment in the direction of the feminine and this, not surprisingly, is having an androgynizing effect on testosterone. If this were the main consequence, I think we could live with it, but unfortunately, it is not that simple.

Ayurveda is quite clear that sexual differentiation occurs as a result of the water element, the primary element affecting the second chakra and its impact on the reproductive system. When the water element is functioning properly, the XY chromosome matter as well as countless other associated factors all work normally. We might say there would be no children born whose gender is unclear, no boys whose testicles fail to descend, and no girls who are born without the capacity to procreate. When the water element goes amok, we can no longer take for granted that fetal development will be normal much less that the onset of puberty will result in the expected appearance of more mature signs of secondary sexual differentiation.

This is a complex subject and usually I avoid it because it's so charged, but if we ignore the issue, the larger problem will not be solved and this is truly not desirable so let's see who hangs in here.

The Nature of Water

The nature of water is magnetic. It attracts, you might say through pheromones and other subtle but unconscious mechanisms. However, it attracts for the purpose of merging and as such is tainted by partnerships in which balance and harmony are lacking. You might therefore say that one of the first insults to water is the misuse of power because water seeks a cooperative alliance, not a subservient role in a tyrannical bond. The dysfunction of our societal structures with the emphasis on authority instead of loving support is truly dumbfounding to water.

Worse, the emotional and physical toxicity of the world is absorbed because water really has no choice. It is contained in a space from which is usually cannot readily escape so what is introduced into that space is very critical to the well-being of water.

So, now let us look at how it feels to the rivers and artesian springs and oceans to be forced to absorb toxins from industry and wars and medicines with horrific side effects? I think you see the picture. It is like the story I was telling about the red blood cells trying to escape the plasma, but how does the plasma itself feel.

Toxins

When I was in Germany, a doctor picked me up in Nuremberg and drove me to Switzerland. It was a long, interesting drive with lots of talk. She was expressing some of the same concerns: our pharmaceutical medications eventually go into the septic system and from thence to the ground water. It's very hard to convince oneself that the power of Nature is so great that these substances will be broken down and converted back to benign and natural substances, especially since some of the water we are consuming today is not 25,000 year old deep artesian water but three-year old, barely recycled waste water.

It is not a pretty picture when you understand it as deeply as some do. The toxins raise the heat and this causes more evaporation and loss of water levels. You see this in areas where there is a run off from heavy use of fertilizers and pesticides but you see it now in the body.

Water-Air Relationship

Water is in a very delicate relationship with fire, its energetic opposite, and with air, its nemesis. Just as fire is the only element that is hot, water is the only element that is wet. The moisture provides both the sea in which life itself is nurtured and the buffering required to protect from friction, as in the joints and and surfaces of cells. This barrier protects against microbial infection and damage from abrasive movements. When the barrier is thin, pain and suffering ensue.

It's easy to understand this concept in the context of nerves. If the nerves are shielded by properly constituted myelin sheaths and if there is enough distance between nerves, there is relative freedom from pain and irritation. Now, think of the uterus. It is a bed for a fetus where the fetus can grow and, of course, move about. For the maximum comfort of the unborn child, the womb should be soft and pliable, not rigid or stormy.

Detoxification

The primary cause of female infertility is excess air: disturbances that cause the uterus to wobble and tilt. This often leads to failure of the fertilized egg to anchor properly and take up residence but this fact is seldom noticed by young women. They may be "fertile" but unable to stabilize their wombs enough to carry pregnancies full-term. The antidote is demulcent herbs and foods, ones that are deeply nourishing to the tissues and that promote elasticity and flexibility. The primary herb in Ayurveda for the female reproductive system is shatavari, a member of the asparagus family. I believe that conception is best prepared for by 2-4 months of detoxification followed by 2-3 months of tonification. This means that the chemical and other toxins should be eliminated in preparation for motherhood. It's really logical. What responsible young woman wants a child whose development has been thwarted by alcohol and drugs? Just as these are best avoided by mothers to be, it makes sense to get rid of as many other toxins as possible.

This time of year is a good time to detoxify because the body accumulated heat during the summer, heat that it will use during the colder months ahead, but excess heat can reduce fertility and/or result in toxicity.

For men, the main cause of infertility is excess fire and you don't know how much I wish men would detoxify instead of taking all sorts of medications to lower their blood pressure and stimulate their libido and so on and so forth. If you step out of the insanity of modern civilization and ask yourself if there is any other species that needs a pill to eliminate heartburn, a pill to sleep, a pill to poop, and a pill to get it up, you'd have to conclude the human species is indeed in trouble.

Okay, so the monkeys and baboons do not have stressful jobs selling cell phones to gullible customers, but they also do not microwave their food, do not eat stuff that is laced with chemicals, and they are mercifully spared the propagandizing of our entertainment industry. I am not suggesting that they do not have major issues, such as loss of habitat and hunting and global warming, but despite all this, they are not apparently as infertile as humankind.

Aging

What is important is not only the future of mankind but the quality of our old age because one of the many wonders of our intricate bodies is that the energy we devote to growth while young and to parenting in our middle years is the energy we use to regenerate and rejuvenate as we move into our senior years. There is no real reason that these years should be fraught with pain and senility; these are side effects of air-water imbalance, but as we age, there is a tendency to become more airy so we have to compensate by deliberately seeking more nutritive foods to forestall the memory loss and other demeaning developments afflicting so many in our society at this time.

This is rather long but I can continue later with more detail. For the moment, let me suggest that everyone consider a major commitment to detoxification every five to ten years, let's say two to six months of careful detoxification with the intent of averting untoward side effects from 21st century life styles. In addition, people can do a 3-4 week annual detox around this time of year. There are excellent herbal formulas for this: the Planetary Red Clover Combination, the Vadik Detox or Liver Tonic, the Banyan Blood Cleanse or Liver Support, or the Nature's Formulary products I mentioned in an earlier email: Phyllanthus and Picorrhiza. All of these are available in our online store.

From this point, I would say that the emphasis should go on the priority and this is usually tonification of the weakest system of the body. Thin people have low water; heavy people need to remove excess stagnant water. It's all very, very logical.

Copyright by Ingrid Naiman 2007

Xenoestrogens: Pills, Pesticides, Petroleum, and Plastics

Air-Water Axis || Detoxification and Tonification

Design by Damien Francoeur