A Full Body Approach

There was an insult thrown around in ancient China that was aimed at certain doctors. If you thought your doctor was bad, you would say that “he is the type of doctor who treats the eye when the eye is sick, and the foot when the foot is sick.”

While to modern ears this sounds a little odd (of course you treat the foot if the foot is sick), to the Chinese the disease that showed itself was only a sign of the underlying disease, not the disease itself. A good Chinese doctor, therefore, was interested in getting to the root of the problem, not just treating the symptoms.

We, like the Chinese people of years gone by, should measure the health professionals we see in the same way. For the most part, we ought to see our own health as being the result of many things. If we take a pain drug to make our headache feel better, we might have relief from the pain but the underlying cause is still there which means we’re very likely to get another headache. The drug was just a temporary mask.

If our back hurts, we might take a pain drug for that as well or even have surgery, but it’s likely our lifestyle is causing inflammation and irritation. Perhaps the way we’re sitting, the way we lift or even our mattress when we sleep. Our spine might have misalignments that require a chiropractor to correct and would be followed by lifestyle adjustments to prevent recurrence.

The bottom line is that the mainstream medicine of today has become the “bad doctor” that the ancient Chinese were wise enough to call out. After all, the reason for pain is not because our bodies are Tylenol deficient. The reason for emotional stress is not because we’re deficient of antidepressant drugs. Yet that’s all the medical world seems to offer.

True, there are exceptions to the rule and a small number of medical doctors are catching on that drugs just mask the real symptoms which are often poor diet, vitamin & mineral deficiencies, toxic metals such as mercury in our mouths or fluoride in our drinking water. And all of these things add up to compound and create even more problems.

What makes matters worse is that the drugs prescribed have side effects that harm our overall health and can exacerbate the problems they were intended to “treat.” Drugs can also create lifetime dependence, filling the pockets of pharmaceutical companies and doctors whenever you make that office visit to get their approval for continuing your prescription. But what makes dependence worse is that the real problem is not ever addressed because we no longer feel the symptoms and think we’re cured. Our body suffers further, leading to other issues that, we’re told, require more drugs and so the cycle goes. That doesn’t include the fact that we have to spend money regularly, buying monthly prescriptions that we’re told we can’t miss.

Getting to the root of the problem is best and that should be the goal of real healthcare.

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