Our bodies are highly evolved systems in which the actions of trillions of cells are balanced and coordinated in a symphony more elegant and complex than we can possibly understand. Health is, in essence, the proper coordination of this symphony. For us to be healthy, we have to live according to the same patterns of exercise, nutrition and sleep that we have lived in throughout our biological history. Otherwise our bodies simply cannot coordinate the symphony that is health, and disease ensues.

In the end, this comes down to a matter of design. Human beings, like every other organism, are designed to thrive in a specific environment. Take us out of this environment, and our health deteriorates. The environment that man was designed for required us to spend a lot of our day in motion, sleep at night when there was no light, and rise with the sun to gather food. The only foods available in this environment were natural whole foods. As a result, our bodies are adapted to eating whole foods, getting a good night’s sleep every night, and moving around through a good portion of the day. In the modern world, we deviate from these patterns (more and more every year) and our health suffers.

Another inescapable fact about the world we were designed to live in is that it was free of water, air, and soil pollution. As a result, our bodies didn’t have to be able to deal with pollutants. Our bodies haven’t changed much since then, and so in our modern polluted world, our health suffers. As the world gets more and more polluted, the rates of allergies, asthma, cancer, and autoimmune diseases like MS and inflammatory bowl disease go up every year. The connection between pollution and asthma is all but established scientific fact. If you’re dubious because the connection isn’t fully “proven” yet, keep in mind that it took over 50 years of research to “prove” that cigarettes caused lung cancer, and that powerful corporate interest is, if anything, more heavily invested in polluting technologies than it ever was in tobacco. There is a boat load of evidence out there linking environmental toxins to all sorts of chronic diseases, but, sadly, evidence isn't all it takes for something to be established as "proven" - either in sceintific circles or media circles. Its as much or more about ploitics than it is about data. Connections between pollution and hundreds of the diseases we get will eventually be accepted fact. It’s just a question of how far our health will have to deteriorate before this happens.

Not only air, water, and soil pollution, but every type of environmental threat represents a threat to our health as well. Global warming, if not checked, will have disastrous effects on ecosystems planet-wide. The way in which these effects will alter the quality of our air, soil, and food supply are impossible to predict, but they’re not likely to be beneficial. Destruction of the rain forests not only eliminates biodiversity (a moral issue if there ever was one – how can we conscience wiping out entire species?), it also directly compromises air quality. Trees release oxygen and trap pollutants in their bark. Killing forests means that we’re breathing less oxygen and more pollution. This list could go on and on.

Already millions of people are making changes in their lives to help the environment. Recycling, conserving water, buying hybrid vehicles and using public transportation. All of these measures help, but meaningful changes in national and international environmental policy have got to happen if we are to really slow, and even reverse environmental decay. These changes will not happen without massive political pressure. People need strong motivation to make the environment a top priority, even if this means making sacrifices. To be willing to make these sacrifices, people’s attitude towards the environment will have to change. Environmentalism needs to become a personal priority to people. Getting people to think differently about their health can make this happen.

If our culture embraces the idea that our health, and thus the quality of ourlives, is powerfully and inextricably bound up with the integrity of the environment, it provides an immediate, personal motivation to prioritize environmental issues. The intimate relationship between our health and the health of the environment is obvious once you think about it. That most people are unaware of this relationship is a legacy of the culture of the last century – a culture in which industrial/commercial progress was the focus, and the environment was largely neglected. The consequences of that neglect are now manifesting themselves in visible threats to our quality of life.

When a real environmental disaster finally happens to a major US city like Washington or New York, America will wake up and pay attention to these consequences (do you think we’d still be blasé about global warming if the tsunami or hurricane Katrina had put Manhattan under water?). Short of that, people need to be given another powerful reason to care about what we are doing to this world. Reverence for personal health, and the recognition that our health as individuals and as a species is bound up with the health of our planet, can provide this reason. So we emphasize the importance of the environemnt to all of our health to everyone we can.