What Is Natural Hygiene?
Natural Hygiene philosophy teaches that it is natural to be healthy. We believe that human beings, like animals in their natural state, are normally healthy, and should be healthy.
We believe that behind every ache, pain, illness or disability there is a cause. We also believe that to gain freedom from sickness we need to first remove the cause, and then give the body an opportunity to heal itself. We believe that the body is self-repairing and self-regulating.
Natural Hygiene does not prescribe drugs or medicines, vitamin preparations or herbs or food supplements as medicines or curative agents, or use electrical machines or operations. It uses only such methods as are natural to the body. Natural Hygiene teaches that illness is caused by an infringement of natural laws. It teaches that the only way to regain health is to return to an observance of natural law. In other words, humans are encouraged to live naturally, and therefore maintain natural health.
In order to be healthy, humans need clean fresh air, pure water, suitable food, sunlight, warmth, exercise, rest, cleanliness, wholesome mental and emotional influences, and correct living habits. When a person is ill, the same factors are necessary as in health, but in different proportions.
The treatments used are not treatments in the usual sense of the word. Natural Hygiene treatments are used only to achieve normality. When the body is normal, it repairs itself automatically.
So, a Natural Hygiene Practitioner is not a medical practitioner, or "Alternative Medicine Practitioner" or "Complimentary Medicine Practitioner" (modern "naturopath"), does not supply medical or surgical advice, treatment, or operations. Natural Hygiene is devoted wholly to the achievement and maintenance of normal health by natural means. It seeks to provide the correct environment and conditions so the life force within the body will restore and maintain normal health.
Natural Hygiene has no religious affiliations. It has no use for gimmicks. It is a purely natural approach to health. The following natural factors are used: natural foods, therapeutic fasting, Eliminating Diets, pure water, fresh air, sunlight, appropriate exercise, relaxation & counselling.
No Medicines - No herbs - No drugs - No colon cleansing ("Colonic Irrigation")
"Hygiene is properly defined as that branch of biology which designates the conditions upon which health depends and the means by which it may be sustained in all its virtue and purity while we have it, and the means upon which its restoration rests when we have lost it. It is the scientific application of the principles of nature in the preservation and restoration of health. Hygienic means health preserving. Practically, it implies the observance of the laws of life". Natural Hygiene, Man's Pristine Way Of Life; 1968, ch.10, Herbert M. Shelton.
"Inasmuch as a spurious system of hygiene is promoted by the medical profession - one that accepts processed and refined foods, haphazard eating, so-called moderation in tea, coffee, alcohol, tobacco, etc. - and rejects most of the genuine program of Hygiene, we prefixed, several years ago, the descriptive adjective, "natural", to the name, thus giving us (the name) Natural Hygiene." Herbert M. Shelton, 1968.
"The Hygienic System is one by which both the well and the sick are cared for solely by the employment of materials and influences conducive to the promotion of health. A Hygienic material or influence is one that is normally employed by living organisms in their development, growth and function. It is that upon which life depends. Hygiene thus becomes the employment of materials, agents and influences that have a normal relationship to life, in the preservation and restoration of health according to well-defined laws and demonstrated principles of nature."
"There must always be a normal relation between the living organism, whether well or ill, and the material things and conditions that contribute more of less perfectly to sustain physiological phenomena. These substances and influences supply the very materials out of which life and health are built up. Each of them has a direct, positive and indispensable role to serve in those vital processes by which living activities are maintained. An adequate supply of each of these basic needs of life is essential to supply the positive, urgent and constant demands of the vital organs for materials to sustain them in a state of health and vigor."
The Science and Fine Art of Natural Hygiene, Herbert M. Shelton.
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