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The true healers of disease

public_health@6:18 pm PST

By Darrel Crain, DC

The man known as the father of medicine is quoted as saying, " Natural

forces within us are the true healers of disease. " He also said, " It is more

important to know what sort of person has a disease than to know what sort of

disease a person has. "

That was Hippocrates, who walked upon the planet four or five hundred

years before another famous healer named Jesus showed up. Jesus is said to have

talked about healing forces of divine love inside every one of us that

miraculously make us healthy. This kind of talk was apparently not popular with

certain leaders of that era. I guess some things never change.

In the intervening two thousand years, physicians pretty much forgot

Hippocrates' advice about studying the person, replacing it with a fascination

for disease. Disorders of every variety have been amply described, named,

treated, defeated, rediscovered, renamed, and so on. The rationale behind it all

is the notion that disease eradication is a noble and achievable goal that

results in better health. Is this true? What would Hippocrates do?

If health is what we are after, perhaps we should build up our natural

healing forces as a top priority. Battling disease in order to gain health is

like flailing against the walls of a dark closet with a flashlight to defeat the

darkness. Turn on the flashlight, the darkness disappears without a fight. Where

to? It just vanishes. And what of so-called diseases in the body when health is

powered up, do those vanish too? Yes, although some conspiracy theorists believe

old diseases are loaded into black helicopters at midnight and flown to secret

government laboratories in land to be stored in freezers for possible future

use.

Speaking of secrets, there is one secret about disease your doctor

probably never told you. Perhaps because it was never properly explained in med

school, or else it was buried by the memorization of a jillion symptoms and

diseases. This is the secret: disease has only one cause. Just one. Wonder what

it is? Abnormal cell function.

Understanding this basic principle can change your life by changing how

you work to restore your health. Since disease is the abnormal function of

cells, it follows that recovery is a process of restoring cells to their normal

function. Healthy cells make healthy organs, healthy organs make healthy life

systems, and this adds up to a healthy human body. Of course, innate

coordination free of interference is needed to keep the miracle happening, as

well as a healthy mindset and lifestyle to sustain it.

Dr. B.J. Palmer, called the developer of chiropractic, is said to have

described this same principle of life in slightly different terms. He declared

there are two diseases, " too much, and too little. " This may be more familiar to

you as the famous toxicity/deficiency (or purity/sufficiency) rule that

predominates in many natural healing disciplines.

The medical world is coming around to recognize the importance of the

toxicity/deficiency framework. The prestigious British Medical Journal (BMJ)

polled its readers to name the greatest medical advance in the last 150 years.

Did the advent of antibiotics win that honor? No. How about vaccines? No. Was it

anesthesia, the discovery of DNA's structure, X rays, Viagra? No, none of these.

According to the BMJ, the greatest medical advance in the last 150 years is

better sanitation. This simply means clean water and sanitary sewage disposal.

The funny thing is, the other greatest single contribution to human health

in the last 150 years in my view, improved nutrition, is also non-medical in

nature. These two conditions, standards of sanitation and standards of

nutrition, to this day are the primary factors that determine human health

across the globe. Inexplicably, a delusional notion persists in the medical

industry that the greatest advances in medicine in the last couple of centuries

have, in fact, been medical in nature. But that is not to say medicine has not

advanced at all.

Only one hundred years ago the final curtain was falling on the era of the

traveling medicine show. The last Patent Medicines were being sold between acts

of entertainment from the back of the last medicine show wagons at the edge of

town. Professional medical men had spent years campaigning against the traveling

minstrels, complaining that the homemade brews in those little bottles they sold

were mostly alcohol and did little to help people, and in some cases made them

worse.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) was thus born to smash the Quackery

Cartel and rid us of the public nuisance of snake oils, potions and false

miracle cures. These efforts have apparently paid off, because the many snake

oils, potions and false miracle cures available today are government regulated

and are considerably more profitable. At least now when the wagons pull out of

America's living rooms every night after selling patented medicines between

entertainments on television, they don't leave horse droppings.

Yes, the era of modern medicalization appears to be in its twilight years.

People today are seeking the kind of doctor described in ancient times, a doctor

who finds out about the person in his or her office, not just the symptoms they

bring with them. People are educating themselves and asking tough questions. Is

this treatment nontoxic? Will it improve my health on a cellular level? The cool

part is that more and more doctors are thinking the same way.

lin wrote of such doctors, " He's the best physician that

knows the worthlessness of the most medicines. "

At last, regard for Hippocrates' wisdom has come full circle. After two

and a half millennia, we finally realize that he had the last word when it comes

to enjoying a healthy life, " If we could give every individual the right amount

of nourishment and exercise, not too little and not too much, we would have

found the safest way to health. "