<h3>By Alvin H. Danenberg, DDS</h3>
We were born to be healthy. Is that such a difficult concept to wrap your head around? Over these seven installments, I will share my story and what I have learned to unequivocally state, “We were born to be healthy.”

Since I’m a periodontist, I’m going to take a dental perspective. However, the health of our body and the health of our mouths are intimately and intricately connected. What happens in any human cell eventually affects every other cell to some extent. So, let’s get on with the task of being the healthy specimen we were designed to be.

<b>My enlightenment</b>

For the first 66 years of my life, I was an unhealthy guy. I thought I was healthy, but I wasn’t. As a matter of fact, in 2006 I had a stroke. From 2006 until 2013, I actively pursued a new course to get healthy. I began exercising aerobically 5 days a week for about an hour a day. I ate low-fat, high carb/high fiber foods because my physicians told me that was what I should do. But, if I was getting healthier, why was I gaining weight?

Then I took an unbelievable 5-day CE program in 2013 called Nutrition Intensive for Healthcare Professionals. I thought this would hone my skills and confirm what I was doing was on track. It had a different slant from what I was previously learning; it was based on ancestral nutrition. To my surprise, in those 5 days I learned that what I was doing was essentially wrong. The basic truths I was told to believe were actually false. That blew me away. My foundation was rocked.

I went on from there to get educated, as I had never been educated in my entire professional career. I eventually became a Certified Functional Medicine Practitioner and a Certified Primal BluePrint Expert. Concepts began to gel, and I knew we as humans were born to be healthy. I am now the poster-boy for a Primal Lifestyle. It has changed my entire life and my total body health. In the last two and a half years, my blood chemistries have improved significantly, and I have lost over 30 pounds without “dieting”. I am a work in progress.

I am healthier today than I have ever been. And, I have incorporated what I have learned into my treatment for my periodontal patients who want to know.

<b>Things to think about</b>
<ul>
	<li>We were not born with a Lipitor deficiency.</li>
	<li>We were not born with a fluoride deficiency.</li>
</ul>
We were born to be healthy, but disease is rampant.

Disease happens for a reason. There must be cellular damage that eventually manifests into some type of definable disease. For example:
<ul>
	<li>Something happens to our cellular function to create cardiovascular disease.</li>
	<li>Something happens to our biological chemistry to create tooth decay.</li>
	<li>Something happens to our immune system to create gum disease.</li>
</ul>
The question is, “What Happens and Why?” By the end of these installments, you will know what I believe happens to disrupt our body and take it off its designed course of health.