[Nature's healing power--natural selection in protein turnover].
For millennia, medical practitioners, healthy people and the sick have known that there is an inner force that keeps us sound and also cures us. However, neither medicine nor natural sciences have been able to define this curative power. It can not be captured by experiments or assigned with dimensions or numbers. The answer can be found in the quintessential process of all living systems, the interaction of genes and proteins in every single cell. Genes encode proteins; proteins are the ubiquitous instruments of life. Protein molecules undergo rapid turnover: their median lifetime is about 2 days, and in every second so many proteins are synthesized in each of us that their number equals the number of seconds that have passed since the big bang 15 billion years ago. The biochemical dogma that says that after their synthesis proteins are degraded at random - blindly, quasi - is wrong. The experimental results have not been interpreted correctly. In the first instance, proteins are stable and functional, since they have to fulfill numerous tasks. Only aged, severely damaged, non-functioning proteins are discarded. Protein turnover is subject to selection, not to chance. By selecting fresh, functional proteins, the quality of cellular proteins is kept at a high level. The principle of selection in protein turnover is the crucial component in the scientific groundwork of naturopathy therapeutics. With natural influencies and measures (e.g. food processing, intermediate metabolism, exercise, light, warmth, coldness) the steady process of regeneration is accelerated - in contrast to medical therapy, which restricts and blocks protein activities. Natural healing power and self-organization energy are basic phenomena of a therapeutically used physiology. Naturopathy is natural science.