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The Drama of Illness as War

I find it very interesting that we even have to push the idea of health in this country. Why isn't the prevention of disease ie. feeling well, vital and strong, preeminent in everyone's mind? Why do most of us just doh-de-doh along in life eating our Krispy Kremes, crossing our fingers and praying to whomever that this or that horrible disease doesn't strike us? Instead, our fundamental orientation in the USA is very much towards waiting for disease to occur and then reacting to it with all the associated purple heart bravery metaphors, such as fighting valiently against the thief in the night, the unseen enemy. So, let me get this straight: First we are helpless little boobies sucking our thumbs waiting for an attack from an unseen enemy after which we get to be brave soldiers fighting against our surprise attacker? Whew. Don't you think there is something innately wrong with this thinking? Kind of sick and twisted? Read on if you dare.

It's the American mentality to fight for or against everything, including disease, using all the big guns at our disposal, including, may I add with much amazement, the 50BMG rifle, an evil looking thing sitting on a tripod ,which has the power to pierce armor at one mile. It has not been banned for sale to your wacko neighbor, because we have the "right to bear arms." I really don't think that Thomas Jefferson et al with their trusty rather benign muskets could even grok the possibility of the malignance of something like the 50BMG in the hands of a teenager allergic to his Prozac.

It is ingrained in the American psyche that we deserve, being American citizens to defend ourselves against interlopers and to own lethal weapons with which to do this, and it is not a difficult leap to see why the very male oriented AMA-based medicine emphasizes the worth of aggression and battle and killing in the treatment of illness. It is ingrained in the American psyche that the worth of medical care is directly related to how aggressive it is . . "and we assign symptom complexes and names that we associate with the decline or the decrease in not feeling good that we call disease." (Dr. David Hillis, M.D., an interventional cardiologist.)

In plain English this means, and stay with me please. When we don't feel well, "We assign symptom complexes and names": That is we say that if you have a bunch of symptoms, for example, like alternating diarrhea and constipation, cramps, fatique and fever (the symptom complex), then we will just arbitrarily lump this bunch of symptoms into a handy little disease and call it Irritable Bowel Syndrome (the name). Can you see that IBS is not a disease, but just a complex of symptoms? Can you see that heart disease or migraines or rheumatoid arthritis are not really diseases but a complex of symptoms that make you feel bad? It's just easier to name stuff. This way we think we get a handle on it, we publish the name in the Merck Manual so now it's a real disease and then we can attack it with drugs.

Because we lean towards medical killing machines in this country, by naming our symptom complexes, we can give our enemy a face and a name ( cancer, heart disease, the Iraqies, Osama bin Laden etc.) and start developing ways to kill our enemy(chemotherapy, bypass surgery, soldiers and the 50BMG). This allows the AMA's version of the military industrial complex, ie. the pharmaceutical companies to start spending their gazillions to develop very expensive drugs to combat this or that new disease or to develop new very expensive drugs to treat old diseases. Any which way you look at it, it involves dollar signs. (Just follow the money, when you are confused about something that just doesn't feel right. You will often find motivation and source in the dollar sign.)

So, back to your Irritable Bowel Disease: You are experiencing a complex of symptoms, someone else is giving it a name, then you both react to it as an interloper who needs to be dealt with "with extreme prejudice" ( This means kill in spy novels). Kill that diarrhea with this expensive drug! Combat your cramps with this other expensive drug! Fight your fever with aspirin! Parry! Thrust! Attack!

People, there is an alternative and to my mind, a much better way to look at this.

First of all, lose the war metaphors and stop thinking about your body as a battlefield. I know we are all culturally trained to "fight" the disease that "gets us." but you could begin transforming your thinking about this. Think of natural healing as being more Eastern than Western, more like Aikido than boxing.

You may come to me complaining of all the symptoms of Irritable Bowel, and perhaps have had extensive and uncomfortable testing from the allopathic community who actually gave you the name of your symptom complex which you bring to me. I don't really care about the name of your disease, whatever it is. I will not try to suppress symptoms,( in fact, I may encourage your symptoms as part of your healing process. . .) but I will search for the root cause that caused your symptoms. In your case of IBS for example, maybe you have a wheat sensitivity combined with a fungal overgrowth from the antibiotics you had for recurrent ear infections as a child. This is turn has caused a leaky gut which promotes very poor digestion which could cause all those symptoms of IBS. Eliminate the yeast, stop the wheat and heal the gut and voila, you don't have the symptom complex called Irritable Bowel Syndrome anymore.

Secondly, don't ignore or suppress your symptoms. Overt symptoms like rashes, fevers or allergies are God's way of whupping you upside the head and telling you to pay attention to your body. Since your brain can't "talk" to you with a rash or fever, symptoms like anxiety or depression could be brain-language for "You are treating me rudely." Maybe it's the fumes from your new carpet or the mold behind your crumbling shower tile? Pay attention to everything and ignore nothing.

Thirdly, know without a doubt that you have an innate healer inside of you. "Your body has a Blueprint, a Schematic of what Perfect Health is and it knows exactly how to achieve it." (Dr. Richard Schulze) Your body just needs to be given half a chance to operate efficiently. Cleanse yourself periodically, feed yourself good organic food, move your body and think good thoughts, or Schulze again: " Give, Love and Do Good . . and don't look back!"

Thirdly, you and you alone are responsible for your own health. Doctors like me can give you the knowledge and point you in the right direction, but we can't follow you around to see what you put in your mouth, how depressed or despondant you are or how you sit on the couch and watch Friend's reruns. It's up to you. If you would rather have a bowel resection from colitis or be cut open from your collarbone to the end of your ribcage for bypass surgery, or have your gallbladder removed or your sick uterus or prostate, then just forget what I have just told you. However, all the above are for the most part preventable by listening to your body's messages and by subsequent treatment with natural medicine.

Don't waste a second of your precious life, no matter how old you are. Start feeling good right now.

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