Can We Really Live Without a Body Part?

Recently my sister called me to say that my nephew was going to have to have his tonsils out.  She was frantic, as I'm sure many mothers have been when confronted with surgery for their child.  I don't believe in anything being removed unless it is absolutely necessary, and granted ideas about that have even changed in the medical community since we were kids.  Which got me thinking about the whole idea of removing body parts... The development of the idea of removing the gall bladder, the tonsils, the appendix and even the spleen was most likely as a result of on the spot necessity.  Then it was simply wait and see.  Wait and see if the patient died.  Wait and see if they withered away (now that's a visual image!).  When they didn't, it became clear that we could live without these body parts. But the question is, are we living?  Are we truly living a healthy, vital life?  So let's go back to the tonsils.  Plenty of us had our tonsils removed as children and so as we look back, how did that affect us?  Obviously if the tonsils are chronically infected and inflamed, then there is an issue not with the tonsils, but with our internal environment, our exposure to things, and the health of our immune system.  So is the solution really to remove the tonsils, which apparently are an important line of defense against an even more serious problem - the offending agent getting further into our body system before invoking a reaction.

Now the first thing is that we really to this day (and I'm not kidding) have very little idea of what the tonsils actually do, aside from obviously being a HUGE part of the lymphatic system and our immune defenses.  Not that those jobs are small, but how many other things might they be doing tucked away in the back of the mouth?  The fact that they do get inflamed, and that they can often develop "white spots" which are collagen deposits that emit some pretty bad smells, would seem to indicate that they are working away in there doing something important!

It's the same thing with the gall bladder.  What happens when we don't have it?  The purpose of the gall bladder is that it concentrates the bile made by the liver making it more potent in digesting fats.  Then when fat in food reached the small intestine, the gall bladder contracts to release the bile into the small intestine to digest the fat that is present.  Without the gall bladder, bile is much weaker and it is released not on demand, but all the time, making it much more ineffective.  So your ability to digest fat is compromised.

But this isn't all.  Many people don't know that the gall bladder in fact also secretes small amounts of insulin and pancreatic enzymes, so it's a helpmate to the pancreas.  So without it, the pancreas is on its own!  And do you really think the appendix doesn't do anything?  That's it's just some little unnecessary appendage hanging on by a thread to the cecum?  Actually the most recent research tells us that it is the factory for our beneficial colonic bacteria and that when we have illness and the intestines gets flushed out (oh, there's another image of knocking people and chairs over to get to the bathroom) the appendix is the reservoir for the restocking of our bacteria colonies as part of healing.

So without the appendix, our ability to keep beneficial bacteria is much less. Candida anyone?

This is all without even touching on the idea of there being an energetic relationship between each part of the body, so that the loss of a part causes it to be missed energetically by the remaining parts.  I have often found that the loss of the uterus in a hysterectomy is a strong contributing factor to later illness, even if it is unrelated to the reproductive system.  By treating the remaining areas for the loss, the symptoms of illness are resolved.

So back to the tonsils.  Only now are we beginning to understand not just that there are myriad functions for every organ and gland and tissue we have, many more than we originally realized.  And as with the gall bladder and the pancreas, some tissues help adjoining tissues with their function.  So safeguards seem to be built in to our body systems on many different levels. Which is a good thing because for all of those who did have their tonsils removed, because there are actually four groups of tonsils including the adenoids, and so we are fortunate enough to still have two or three sets left even after the dreaded surgery.

The beauty of natural medicine is that it can often save an endangered body part when drug therapy is ineffective or when the doctor tells you there's nothing wrong with your gall bladder even though you're doubled over after the chicken wings at Hooter's.  So when symptoms begin, don't wait until it's too late.

Check out a natural solution and save a tonsil or two!