Why is it invalid to judge the merit of healthcare purely on symptoms alone?
I argue that symptoms are a BAD way to judge how healthy you are. Symptoms are a BAD way to judge your progress. Symptoms are a BAD way to determine if you need healthcare support.
Why does the Wellness & Prevention paradigm make clear that it is invalid to judge the merit of true healthcare purely on the resolution (or not) of symptoms alone?
Why is it crucial to address all toxicity and deficiency as a true wellness practitioner?
What are Symptoms?
To understand why symptoms are not the only thing we take into account when we work out how well you’re doing with your care, it’s important to understand what symptoms are.
Looked at one way, they’re the outward signs (how you feel) that show you have a ‘disease’ or a dysfunction in your body. If you look at symptoms that way, then you simply want to get rid of the symptoms.
Once symptoms are gone, you feel better and you’re fixed, healed or cured. Job done! – NO!
We look at them differently.
In our paradigm, symptoms are smart messages or signals from your body showing us that it isn’t working at its best, that there is some type of stress which we need to find and either reduce or preferably get rid of.
And one of the first things to realize is that when symptoms come on, they usually only appear once we’ve reached out limit of dealing with the stress – which means they come on a long time after the stress has been wearing down your cells!
Even if symptoms ease, or fully disappear, there might still be (often is) more work needed to get you truly healthy.
And if they don’t immediately disappear, it doesn’t mean our work has not begun the process of getting you toward better health, it’s just that the body needs time to adjust, or we haven’t found all of the stresses yet that are causing your symptoms.
The Plant Analogy:
As a analogy, imagine an experiment where we are trying to find out what causes a plant to wilt (this would be the symptom!).
We give the plants the right amount of light, water, fertilizer and drainage, and they don’t stop wilting.
If we looked at symptoms the first way, we’d have to say that none of those things ‘worked’ to get rid of the symptom so they don’t ‘work’ as ways to get plants healthy (and clearly we all know that is not true – all of these things are vital for a plant to truly be at its best).
However, if we look at symptoms as signals, there must be some other stress that keeps the symptom showing up – and until we’ve found it, and gotten rid of it, you simply won’t be healthy.
If we analyse the soil in the plant pots, we find that we accidentally put some oil and sludge in the mix that was causing the wilt.
If we just focus on getting rid of the symptom, and we don’t figure out the underlying issues that brought the symptom on in the first place, then all we’re doing it helping you feel better, not actually getting you well.
We’re doing you a disservice, because while you might leave symptom-free and happy, you will likely get symptoms again, because the underlying causes haven’t been dealt with. Our commitment is to use our philosophy and paradigm to provide you the best possible healthcare!
Are the plants healthier than they were, thanks to the water, light, fertilizer etc., or are the still at the same level of sickness because the wilt didn’t change?
