Where is the “In between?”

Other than being dead or pregnant, life is really not just one way or the other.  We live in the gray zone.  Two examples of this highlight the issue for me.

The first is celiac disease.  This is the inherited disorder in which people are totally unable to tolerate any gluten grains (wheat, spelt, kamut, rye, and barley; oat technically is not a gluten grain except that the oats in this country have been contaminated and now are a gluten grain).  The proteins in gluten grains act like a rake to the insides of the intestines of these people.  They strip away the intestines ability to function.

Many people do not have the inherited disorder, but they still do not digest gluten grains very well.  The reasons for this are the topic of a long lecture, so I won’t go into that here.  The medical community has had a difficult time accepting this “in between” situation.  And the range of tolerance of these grains is wide.  Some people simply don’t tolerate wheat.  Others do not tolerate any of the gluten grains, yet they do not test positive for the gluten disorder, and others don’t tolerate any grains at all.  Acknowledging this intolerance and avoiding the offending grains can be tremendously beneficial for most because doing so eliminates their symptoms (or at least many of them).

The other example is cancer.  The diagnosis of cancer connotes a death sentence for many of us.  This is not necessarily the case however.  We all have small amounts of cancer in our bodies which, when our bodies are working properly, are kept under control or eliminated by our immune systems.  You can think of the immune system as our housekeeping system.   When our bodies become depleted or overwhelmed by toxins of various sorts, that is when cancer progresses beyond the “small” stage.  Again, there is a range of disease, a range of responses, and a range of outcomes with cancer.

The question, then, is why do we see the world only as “either/or.”  My teacher, Dr. Terry Preston discusses this very question in 3 videos we made.  Here are the links:




Watch them and give us your comments, and spread the word.  The more open we become in our thinking the better we can relate to each other and improve our world.

About Cathie Lippman, M.D.
