In a time with nothing but bad news, pessimism, and doom and gloom around the subject of health, I have decided to lighten things up. Imagine how your life could and should be if you were taking care of yourself and had all the health and life energy you wanted. Of course, there are extenuating circumstances, environmental issues, and factors outside your control that may be preventing this, but what would your health look like at its best? How would this feel? This is not a pointless exercise. Nothing in your life is likely to change until you decide what future you want. I have seen my patients take control of their current health situations and become closer to the ideal picture of what they envisioned their health and their life to be. You can do this at any age and at any time. Envision your life the way you want it to be right now.
Your 20s and 30s
(I may do more posts for different age groups, but if you are older than 40, read this description of the 20s and 30s to get a better idea of how you arrived at your current health.) Ages 20 through 39 is the time of your life when you should be experiencing all things new. You may be in college or graduate school or pursuing a new job challenge. You may be newly married or beginning your family. At this time of your life, your health should be vibrant and your energy abundant as you move and grow and change. In this period, you should be eating a balanced diet of excellent quality fruits and vegetables and lean, organic, non-processed meat, keeping processed foods, alcohol, caffeine, and sugar to a bare minimum. You should be exercising 3–4 times a week to keep your energy up and your body in shape and sleeping at least 7-8 hours per night.
Children and Families
This is when many women choose to start families and may go through pregnancy for the first time. Pregnancy should be a unique and amazing part of a woman’s life. A new person is coming into the world! A family is created to bring joy and new little people for the family and the world. Pregnancy should be a time of hope and expectations and a time when a woman cares for herself and her future little one. She should be balancing her work and her family life in a way that brings joy to herself and others. OK, I realize this might sound like a fairy tale! I imagine this is how a balanced healthy life should be. It isn’t how it is or was for most of us, but think how much better it would be if this were the reality. If you haven’t had a family yet, think how wonderful it would be for you to plan YOUR ideal situation and create it! I wish I had. I would have made some changes! During pregnancy, you and your body have exceptional needs. Specific supplementation for moms, recommended by an alternative or functional medicine professional, will enable you to keep your energy up and spot any deficiencies before they become a problem. Pregnancy can be very hard on a body, especially one with a lot of previous stress. Help from a qualified health practitioner can make the difference between a joyful and healthy pregnancy and one that takes a negative toll on the body, possibly even causing future health concerns. After your baby arrives, you and your family are overjoyed. Now is the time for you to pass along the same healthy habits you practice to your new child and family. Eat processed foods, fast foods, and sugar products infrequently, if at all. Use whole foods and natural sugars for baking and in drinks. As you live through your 20s and 30s, you can start to see the fantastic things you can create as a woman, at home, and in your career.
Careers and Success
If you do not have a family, the 20s and 30s are often a time when you are focused on creating a career and a name for yourself in your area of expertise. Ideally, you are sleeping and eating and balancing work and life in a way that gives you joy and fulfillment. If you are in a stressful work environment, take time to balance yourself. Notice the stress you’re under and do something practical to address it. You’ll be more productive and happier in the long term. In this balanced scenario, you’d work hours that allow you to exercise. You’d eat healthily. If you’re in college or graduate school, you’d take care of your body and eat and sleep the proper amount so that you can keep your immune system healthy and robust. College, graduate school, and new jobs can be very stressful times of life, so good sleep habits, healthy food, and specific supplementation to support extreme levels of stress are particularly important.
Planning a Well-Lived Life
Taking time to plan out what a balanced life looks like and how you can achieve it can be a life-changing decision. Looking back on my life, I realize I went into many situations with no planning, knowing I would “handle it” — and in many cases, I was “handled” by the situation instead! Maybe this is the way of youth, but when taking your next big step in life, understanding and seeing—really seeing—what you want your life to be like can be invaluable. I wrecked my health in graduate school, and it took me years to recover. I will always have a weakness in my adrenal glands as a result. What a difference it would have made for me if I had understood that while school was undoubtedly going to put me through the wringer, I would come through the stress with my health intact if I ate whole foods, stopped the junk food and sugar, exercised and slept. Instead, I ate whatever I wanted, with no thought of what it could do to my body. I ate pans of brownies and bags of Doritos and drank extreme amounts of coffee and soft drinks. I had completely unrealistic standards for myself for my grades and my life. I did not exercise, and I constantly stressed about my grades and classes and projects. I was sick after final exams every quarter and lost a relationship that meant a lot to me during this time. These times can and will shape you, and the results of your choices will be with you, perhaps for your entire life. These are the foundational years of your life and your health. Treat yourself well. Know there will be stress. Eat healthily, exercise even if you are stressed—especially if you are stressed. Find ways to handle stress, even if that means taking a quarter off or fewer hours at work if your health is suffering. Finishing college or graduate school quickly or getting that promotion isn’t worth it if you lose your health in the process.
The Danger of Perfection
Being a perfectionist is the way to early burnout. Being a perfectionist is the recipe for unhappiness and more stress. Take it from a perfectionist! You cannot ever be perfect, and if hearing that makes you cringe, you need to take some time right now to realize that trying to control your own life or someone else’s within your concept of perfection will not make you happy. It is a sure route to unhappiness. What I have learned after many years of being a perfectionist is that living that way hurts. It hurts everyone around you, but mostly you. You may never lose that urge to be perfect, but you can learn to love the imperfections. You can let go and let the world and your actions be imperfect sometimes. Yes, you should have high standards, but you have to let yourself fall short of them sometimes without self-recrimination—or for some of us, self-flagellation! As we see the world through our lens, we often see others the way we see ourselves. Expecting a loved one to respond to life the way we do and treating them the way we treat ourselves when we make a mistake is not healthy and puts the same heavy burden on them that we put on ourselves. Relationships with friends or others often can’t withstand this type of pressure. You can choose a different way! Choose the path that creates more sanity and more joy. You can find it because it is in you. Make your plan and include a lot of love and patience for yourself!
Find Out More
Here is a free booklet with the story of how I developed my techniques and how those techniques work (practical information that shows how your body works and how to start recovering your health for the rest of your life).
Want Some Help?
Complete this Online Evaluation: Your First Step to Ending Severe, Long-term or Frustrating Health Problems
If you answer the questions on this symptom evaluation, we’ll be able to answer these questions for you:
What areas of physical stress in your body are most likely creating your problems?
What could be done to help your body recover from this stress?
What are our recommendations to start you back on the road to health?
Vaccination is a four-letter word these days. I am an alternative health care practitioner, a doctor of Chiropractic who runs a holistic nutrition center in Atlanta, Georgia. For someone like me, discussing the subject of vaccinations can be a no-win situation. For many in my line of work, being against vaccinations comes along with the territory. My profession, holistic health care, has a skepticism of the mainstream health care system, which is often not misplaced. But right now, if I were to state any misgivings at all about a particular vaccination or ask for more transparency, I risk the label of “anti-vaxxer” and “crazy.” On the other hand, someone who fully vaccinates their kids become the “enemy” and supports the “evil empire.”
There are many things that modern medicine has right. The technology of imaging, diagnosis of disease processes, and correction of damaged body parts with surgical procedures and emergency medicine are second to none. However, some very pointed weaknesses exist in the medical system. Being in the field of alternatives, I am very often able to supply some of the pieces that our healthcare system is missing, especially regarding chronic health conditions. I utilize safe and straightforward solutions to a variety of health concerns often overlooked in many medical settings.
Despite the weaknesses and strengths of medicine, I do not think that a conversation about vaccinations should be a forum for name-calling and abuse. We are about as divided on vaccinations as we are on politics and unable to speak about either safely.
What’s Wrong with Medicine
Our current healthcare system is very much in partnership with pharmaceutical companies and large corporate structures that were created to make a lot of money. Many of these companies have failed the trust we placed in them and in the medical system they serve. The doctor-patient relationship is, for me, a sacred honor. Patients rely on me to help them in some of the most challenging times of their lives, and I need them to be honest with me so I can give them the best possible advice. In conventional medicine, there is this same requirement. There must be trust for patients to be helped, but in many cases, this trust is violated.
The public is losing its trust in medicine as a whole. The perception that the medical model is driven by profit and not by the patient’s needs or health concerns is becoming more apparent. When you see the inflated prices of a hospital stay and what the hospital charges the insurance company for aspirin, it is hard to remain idealistic in the face of sheer insane overcharging. In our current healthcare system, a third party often makes the decisions, not the patient and the doctor. Prescription drug prices are skyrocketing, and patients don’t always believe that the procedures recommended are in their best interest. Patients may be treated as a number, and patient care suffers in the face of corporate profit.
Distrust
Added to this distrust are the racial bias, fraud, and medical malpractice perpetrated on minorities. Medicine has a checkered history to overcome. Examples: the infamous Tuskeegee study where doctors let black men die of syphilis, and the case of Henrietta Lacks, a poor African-American woman whose cancer cells were used for decades without her permission.
I see many minorities in my practice. Often I am the only healthcare provider they will agree to see because of deep distrust in the “system.” This year alone, I have referred at least three patients in some stage of kidney failure, a breast cancer patient, and numerous others who needed medical intervention for severe diabetes or unmanaged blood pressure—but who were afraid to seek medical care. In many cases, they would not have gone but for their trust in me as their doctor. Because they trusted me, they were able to receive the medical intervention needed that they had been afraid to seek because of distrust of the system.
Vaccinations, like any health care, must be safe, effective and above all, trusted. Polls done this past May showed only about 50% of Americans are willing to get a coronavirus vaccine. Right now, especially now, there is distrust in government and the science that that government represents in the form of public health initiatives.
False Information
Possibly because of this distrust, we’re experiencing an explosion of “at home experts.” These are people who mistake their internet “research” for the professional opinions and advice of the actual experts who spend their lives studying and perfecting their art and science.
The internet and social media are a constant source of misinformation and outright lies, and many people can’t tell the difference. Confirmation bias is the tendency to interpret new evidence as confirmation of one’s existing beliefs or theories. In many cases, people only see and recall proof that supports their ideas. For example, if one believes that vaccinations are harmful, one only searches for this type of data and for studies that back up their beliefs on the subject. The more one finds people and articles that confirm this belief, the more that belief is bolstered and strengthened. People tend to ignore information that contradicts their existing beliefs.
It’s embarrassing to be wrong. If you have believed in a flat earth or a cheesy moon for your whole life, it’s going to be hard to admit to being wrong on these subjects, especially if those around you still believe it. Often, it is how we grew up, where we went to school, or in what church we had our upbringing; but by the time we reach our 20’s our world views have been formed and are difficult to change. I see this in friends I grew up with who never moved outside their small towns and belief systems. I also see it in health associates I went to school with, who were indoctrinated in a particular philosophical belief system. We are all the sum products of our nature and our nurture.
Looking At Both Sides
Opinions of vaccinations are subject to a person’s previous experiences as well. What you think about vaccinations and whether or not your kids are vaccinated probably has everything to do with what your education was on the subject and what your closest friends and family thought. You probably already have an opinion—perhaps a really strong one. I want to suggest a little experiment: whatever your belief, find and study ideas and content that is in direct disagreement with what you hold to be true.
When I was young, I came to realize that if something was true, I could examine it. If it still turned out to be true for me, then I’d consider it actually to be true. Do not be afraid to look and examine and ask questions and doubt. If your eyes are blue, you can examine it up and down, and no matter what you do or who you talk to, your eyes will still be blue.
With a belief, though, you do have to be brave. Your eyes being blue is different from a belief. Beliefs are, by their very definition, changeable. Be brave and be humble and be willing to examine information that is different from your previous experiences. Be willing to be wrong.
Do Your Research
If you think all vaccinations are safe, go to the CDC and read the ingredients and the side effects of childhood vaccinations. If you feel all vaccinations are harmful, read the efficacy rates and the rates of immunity for a particular immunization. Read how polio and smallpox affected our world when they ran rampant and what happened after we developed vaccinations for these diseases.
To counter confirmation bias, you need to study and read ideas and content that disagree with your stated belief. But you would have to have your mind open to learning and to possibly seeing something new. I don’t want to convince you one way or the other. Instead, I’m offering the possibility of broadening your experience.
The source of the material you read to get your information is essential. Reputable sources that use real science are the best places to get information. Personal experience and stories are just that—someone’s experience. They don’t add up to everyone’s experience and can’t always be extrapolated out to the population at large.
Public Health Needs Public Relations
I lay the responsibility for demonstrating and proving vaccination safety at the feet of our public health servants and other scientists. It is these professionals who should be safeguarding the public regarding pandemics and epidemics as well as vaccination safety. Certainly, these health officials desperately need a reputation makeover to handle the distrust that much of the public feels for their public health institutions—and vaccinations specifically.
A definition of public health is the science and art of preventing disease, prolonging life, and promoting health through the organized efforts and informed choices of society, organizations, public and private communities, and individuals. Public health is achieved by promoting healthy lifestyles, researching disease and injury prevention, and detecting, preventing, and responding to infectious diseases. So much of our lives benefit from public health initiatives like hand washing and hygiene, seat belts, and safe water, to name a few.
Vaccinations are part of public health, supposed to prevent disease and sickness. If someone believes that vaccinations will kill or damage themselves or their families, they won’t get vaccinated.
Lies, Truths, and Science
Winston Churchill said, “A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on. “ This certainly describes vaccinations. Mixed in with the lies are half-truths and urban legends, often creating confusion and misunderstandings. Churchill also said, “People always find lies more exciting and thrilling than the truth. Lies are like a virus that spreads easily around and contaminates the truth, making it impossible for people to separate actual facts from malicious rumors.”
Science is something one can see and can experience. Vaccination science is real science. In a fantastic turn of events, we humans can inoculate our bodies with a substance and create an immunity that is long-lasting and, in some cases, life-long. It’s a miracle and a fascinating story. My opinion is that public health advances in our world have been nothing short of miraculous, and to “throw the baby out with the bathwater” as many have advocated in regards to vaccinations rings particularly hollow.
In any application of medicine and with any drug, and especially vaccinations, we must demand transparency and safety. We must require this to improve our world with more and better science, not negating progress made and especially not lumping all vaccinations and scientists into a group intent upon harming the population. There is a real concern for the state of our healthcare. We have a “sick care” system, not a “well care” system, and that needs to change for all of us. We can do better than this. But do we want to go backward to a time when we had no vaccinations and no control over some pretty nasty diseases? To a time when our grandparents feared polio and smallpox? We are privileged not to have these fears and not to lose our loved ones to these incurable diseases.
We will have a vaccination soon for Covid-19. What will you do? How will we know if it’s safe? There is a lot to cover regarding vaccinations. I can’t possibly address all the pros or the cons right here. This is a post to encourage dialogue and discourse. If you cannot see how anyone could distrust vaccinations, read a book by Dr. Sears or talk to someone who has these beliefs—and really listen.
There are many organizations dedicated to educating people on the efficacy of vaccinations. If you think vaccinations are the devil’s work, find a doctor you respect and see why they think the way they think. You may find some interesting information from your asking. Be willing to learn and, at the very least, be ready to see another’s point of view.
There are rigid and structured steps to developing vaccinations. Nothing should be skipped, and one’s observational skills should be employed when examining data and evidence for or against vaccinations.
We have a lot of coming together to accomplish in this area, and I can only hope for more data and fewer lies and innuendo from both sides of the immunization issue. This could make a real difference in all our lives moving forward.
Find Out More
Here is a free booklet with the story of how I developed my techniques and how those techniques work (practical information that shows how your body works and how to start recovering your health for the rest of your life).
Want Some Help?
Complete this Online Evaluation: Your First Step to Ending Severe, Long-term or Frustrating Health Problems
If you answer the questions on this symptom evaluation, we’ll be able to answer these questions for you:
What areas of physical stress in your body are most likely creating your problems?
What could be done to help your body recover from this stress?
What are our recommendations to start you back on the road to health?
Here you are in the chaos created by a pandemic added to the chaos of the year 2020. But in the middle of this confusion and stress, your body has real heroes: your adrenal glands!
They are your body’s guardian angels, and I want you to understand them because they are the difference between health and vitality, and disease and exhaustion.
In our more primitive incarnations as humans, the “fight or flight” syndrome was over very quickly. We would either run from the threat or stand and fight, and the body’s stress response would be completed. Today the stress we are under is often persistent and never-ending. It overpowers our thoughts and our day-to-day lives, creating scenarios our ancestors could never have imagined. Your body was not designed to handle a 24/7 stress load. When you don’t have a chance to recover, you can go down the spiral of ill health very quickly.
The Anatomy of Stress
I remember how fascinated I was when I first read about the stages of stress and how the body fatigues. Now, I want to help you to see how your adrenal glands are working for you every minute of every day to keep you healthy. They compensate for our stress, for our terrible diets, for our busy lives.
Hans Selye, MD PhD (1907-1982) was a Hungarian endocrinologist who is often called the “Father of Stress.” He called his theory of what we now call “stress” the General Adaptation Syndrome, or GAS.
According to Selye, a stress is an “occurrence that could threaten the wellbeing or survival of an organism.” Here’s what Dr. Selye said:
“Every stress leaves an indelible scar, and the organism pays for its survival after a stressful situation by becoming a little older.”
We can only imagine how old we become after so many stresses that start so young for some of us!
Selye describes the stress response by using three stages of fatigue: alarm, resistance, and exhaustion.
What Stress Stage Are You?
Alarm: When your body is in a healthy state, with fully-functioning adrenal glands, it marshalls all of its resources effectively to handle stress. This is amazingly effective when the stress is temporary but becomes a problem if the stress goes on too long.
Resistance: With long-term stress, the body calls on other resources from the nervous system, trying to return itself to normal. Meanwhile, it must handle the continuing stress, so it never gets any rest at all. Soon, hormone levels are lessening, and fatigue and exhaustion begin to set in. Your amazing body is working to stay functional despite the ongoing stress, but it’s growing weary.
Exhaustion: Your body can’t keep up a “code red” condition for months and years. The constant output of hormones exhausts your body’s resources and organs, and you become susceptible to illness, or even death. Exhaustion is the stage when I start to see most of my patients.
Symptoms of Adrenal Exhaustion
Here are some clues for you to see how close to exhaustion your body may be:
Sweet and carbohydrate cravings
Increased fatigue especially in the afternoon
Weight gain
Increased difficulty handling stress
Anxiousness
Mood swings
Memory problems
Sleep issues
High blood pressure
Heartburn
Yeast infections
PMS
Infertility
Decreased Libido
Hypoglycemia
Impaired immune function
Inflammation
As you age, and your stress continues, and your body strives to keep up. Suddenly, your blood pressure is higher when it’s always been low; your lipid levels and sugar levels are high when they were always normal in the past. As women age and stress continues, heart disease becomes a genuine risk. When you are young, you can push through almost anything you encounter. As your stress increases with work and family and children, however, those days and years add up. Your resistance is reduced, and illness and disease can set in.
You can start to feel very old, very quickly.
Adrenals and Menopause
In addition to managing stress, the adrenals manufacture and secrete steroid hormones such as estrogen, testosterone, and cortisol. All your female hormones are necessary for health and wellness, and after menopause, the adrenals single-handedly create the bulk of these hormones all by themselves! If the adrenals have reached a severe level of fatigue by the time you are in your 40s, as they have for many women, you are in for a long, hard road ahead.
Adrenal Recovery is Possible
Over the past 27 years, I’ve helped many thousands of patients who have recovered their adrenal function. Here’s a summary of how this can happen:
A patient comes in with many symptoms listed above, often in addition to other problems.
Labs show the condition of the adrenals, so we’re starting with a known measure of exhaustion.
Lifestyle and diet are crucial components of any effective program for recovery.
Exact, tested supplementation can reduce stress on the adrenals and supply nutrients to help the body rebuild the damage.
Targeted acupressure treatments reduce specific stresses from allergies, toxins, and hormone imbalances.
Follow-up labs and reduced or eliminated symptoms show real, stable improvement.
There is a major difference between the costs of holistic health care and the costs for medical care:
Medical care: You pay to treat an illness or condition. When a new illness or condition arises, you pay again to treat it. In most cases, treatment of a condition doesn’t reduce the chances of having a new condition occur (in many cases, stress from drug treatments makes this more likely).
Holistic care: You pay to improve your health so that your body heals your illness or condition. In the process, you improve your lifestyle and reduce the stress on your body. The result is a much healthier body with much less chance of developing new conditions.
You could say that medical care is like paying rent: this is an expense with no residual value.
Holistic care is like buying a house: the money you spend creates additional ongoing value.
The best solution for health problems? Hands down?
It’s to stay healthy enough to not have them!
Can you believe, however, that this solution is controversial? The current medical thinking is that everyone is going to get sick and need medical care at some point. You may even think this yourself (by the way, it isn’t true).
Medically, every serious illness is expensive, no matter what insurance you may have. There’s deductibles and copays, out-of-network providers, uncovered expenses of all kinds. Then there’s missed work. This can include missed promotions and opportunities just because you didn’t have the energy, concentration and drive to succeed or because you aren’t seen as reliable due to health problems.
What value would you place on missing an activity you really enjoy? How about on skipping a trip to visit family because you weren’t up to it? How about having to cut back or give up on favorite activities (hiking, swimming, tennis, etc.)?
The real cost of a health problem shows up much later when your overall health has been reduced. Will you be a couch potato because you have no other choice? Compare this to being active, outgoing and taking on challenges you really care about.
Dr. Billiot’s Suggestions:
Leverage your current health potential: Becoming healthy now reduces the cost of future health problems
Most parts of your body are healthy! It’s the weak ones that will eventually cause you grief. Find these weak areas of your body and help them to heal. This will protect your overall health.
“Holistic Retirement Plan:” Be healthy enough to be fully alive during your retirement and not go broke from health care costs.
Will you still need me, will you still feed me When I’m sixty-four?
Or at least 65 (the age you become eligible for Medicare).
If you have Medicare, there’s a good chance you have two or more chronic conditions such as arthritis, cancer, diabetes, heart disease, or dementia.
Two-thirds of the 57 million Americans with Medicare have two or more chronic illnesses. Having multiple chronic conditions increases the risk of death and functional limitations, decreases quality of life, and leads to higher health care spending.
Managing chronic diseases can be difficult, to say the least. You often face multiple visits to one or more doctors; you must take multiple drugs at different times on different days; you have to make extra trips for tests. It can all be a bit overwhelming.
What if you just skip all this? It’s possible.
Start Now! Get Healthy!
Here is a free booklet with the story of how I developed my techniques and how those techniques work (very practical information that shows how your body works and how to start recovering your health for the rest of your life).
Often when a body is healing, what is happening FUNCTIONALLY (what the body is working on and trying to accomplish) is much more important than observing what is occurring PHYSICALLY (what can be observed or tested for at any given point in time).
Cleaning Out the Closet
As an analogy, think of what happens when you clean out your bedroom closet. Typically, you’ll pull everything out of the closet, sort it all out, then put it back neatly and organized.
Halfway through this job, your bedroom is really going to be (physically) a mess as you spread out the closet contents all over the place. However functionally, you are making good progress on getting the closet organized.
If someone looked at your messy bedroom and didn’t talk to you at all to find out why it was a mess, can you see that this might be misinterpreted as there being a big problem when in fact there was none?
This can happen with a medical diagnosis: the diagnostic test is a snapshot of the physical condition of a part of the body without ever asking the intelligence running the body what’s going on and why.
The doctor shows you the “diagnostic picture” (lab test) of the “messy bedroom” and says, “This is serious. This shows that your bedroom could become even terminally messy. You need to be on the drug Cleanupazide, 30mg.” So, you take the drug.
In your body, the drug causes big guys in black suits to show up in the bedroom and throw everything from the messy bedroom violently back into the closet. Then they slam the closet door and nail it shut. Voilà! No more messy bedroom! The doctor does another diagnostic test (takes another picture of the bedroom) and shows you that now everything is “back to normal”—as long as you’re on the drug.
Takeaways:
Your body can kick up a storm during the process of healing. This does NOT mean that you’re worse or that something is wrong. Your body just might have to mess up the bedroom for a little while in order to clean out the closet.
Diagnostic tests can be very valuable, but only in the context of what is happening functionally with the body. Much of the trouble with health care today comes from disassociated testing and rote interpretation of that testing with automatic treatment. Often, doctors aren’t observing what is going on in full context. They aren’t thinking with the functional situation (what the body may be doing and why). They are working off the theory that the body is a biochemical machine that needs to be repaired, not a living, intelligence that could have its own plans.
A Better Solution:
Working with the body to assist it to heal itself can be a much more effective approach for many health conditions.
Here is a free booklet with the story of how I developed my techniques and how those techniques work (very practical information).
I see lots of debate, disagreement and concern about “controversial holistic health care” from non-patients, but not from my patients on treatment programs. It seems that all the debate and disagreement end abruptly with results. But without the experience of results (“Nothing else has worked and this treatment is making me feel great!”), some people feel that holistic health care must be a scam or deception. But they usually can’t tell you why they feel this way. Ask a “doubter” almost any question about holistic health care and you’ll discover that they know NOTHING about it, or what they know isn’t true. But they know it isn’t conventional medicine, so therefore they’re sure it must be quackery.
This Goes Way Back
I think I can help you to better understand this thought process: When people “know” things that they can’t explain, these things are usually a part of the fabric of the society they live in. They accept it as true because it’s generally seen by the society as true, even though they’ve never personally decided about it. This disagreement with holistic health care probably goes back to a French philosopher named Renè Descartes in the early 1600’s. Descartes was the first to propose that the body was a machine. For this we have a lot to thank him for! Before Descartes, the body was mysterious, unknowable and dangerous to study. Seen as a machine, the body could be understood and treated.
The “body as a machine” model is responsible for all modern medicine, and certainly will continue to help find additional cures and techniques that will overcome injury and disease in the future.
The only problem with this useful model is that it isn’t completely true. This is no secret. Anyone who has extensively studied medicine, or a related subject is fully aware that the “boxes and arrows” diagrams of body functions found in textbooks are simplistic and inaccurate. Body systems are not limited to just their functions but are “fuzzy around the edges.” Areas of the body that are designed for one purpose can be found to be accomplishing something different under stressful circumstances. Medicine is referred to as an art and a science… because it certainly isn’t just a science.
This idea that bodies are something more than a machine tends to be understood by more experienced and educated professionals who have observed this for some time. Many sick lay people think that their “machine” has broken, and that the correct drug will simply repair it. Often, this idea is responsible for some of the disagreement with holistic health care: Why not just repair the machine with a drug? What’s all this OTHER stuff?
Vitalism: Debunking an Old Theory
I go one step further than the general agreement among health care professionals that bodies are more complex than machines. I operate off the assumption that bodies are (gasp!) ALIVE.
If you bring this radical idea up with many medical professionals, you should prepare to deal with fireworks. The health care field in general does NOT want to hear that bodies are alive. No, sir. And, once again, the reason for their upset is part of the fabric of our society. It has to do with vitalism.
Vitalism: the theory that the origin and phenomena of life are dependent on a force or principle distinct from purely chemical or physical forces.
Vitalism goes back (at least) to ancient Egypt. In history, proponents of vitalism muddled about, writing up their ideas and arguing— while the scientific materialists (body-as-a-machine guys) did useful research and cured illness. So, vitalism is a big LOSER historically, and no one has any business even bringing up that subject again, right?
Body As Machine Theory Fails to Treat Chronic Illness
Well, except now medicine is becoming a big loser as well, as it fails to effectively treat more than half the population suffering with untreatable chronic health conditions:
Six in ten adults in the US have a chronic disease and four in ten adults have two or more. Chronic diseases are the leading causes of death and disability in the United States. They are also the leading drivers of the nation’s $3.5 trillion in annual health care costs. –CDC (link is to CDC website)
Here’s news: medicine’s Descartes model of “man as a machine” is responsible for these statistics, and ONLY vitalism (reinvented) has any hope of changing them.
This is because chronic illness results from overall deteriorating health, not specific “malfunction of the body machinery.” So medical (machine) treatments don’t work, but working with the (living) body to assist it to heal itself does work.
Vitalism in the past was mystic or religious. It was all about how you couldn’t know stuff, where the Descartes camp was all about how you can find stuff out. I’m with Descartes on this one. My version of vitalism is all about knowing how to work with life, understanding how life affects the body and using this information the same as the scientific materialists did: to get results with patients and improve lives.
Practical Use of Your Body’s Intelligence
You may not understand what the underlying quantum physics is doing when you hammer a nail into wood, but that lack of knowledge doesn’t affect your getting the job done. Similarly, I don’t fully understand life, but that doesn’t mean that it isn’t possible to observe and measure and predict what life will do with a body and help that body to heal.
Any disagreement you run into about holistic health care is probably a misunderstanding based on the old vitalism arguments. Your friend thinks you’re getting mystic therapies that make no scientific sense.
Everything I do is based on anatomy, physiology, biochemistry, genetics—because this is how bodies function. I test the nervous system to find out what the intelligence (life) operating the body has as a healing priority and simply become an effective assistant by using (body as a machine) information in the way that the (vitalism) body wants to.
The result? Patients with chronic illness recover.
