Healing The Root Cause
Since becoming sick a few years ago, I've completely changed the way I think about medicine and healing. Picture in your mind a tree that is sick and struggling. It might have brown or dry leaves. It doesn't grow right and doesn't seem to be health and flourish. If I came along and painted those brown leaves green, it would 'look' better wouldn't it? It might look like the tree had been fixed and had returned to health. Ultimately though, that is not going to fix or heal the problem with the tree and doesn't address the underlying reason why it has brown and unhealthy leaves.
If a tree is sick, what needs to be fixed to help the tree truly heal from within and start to grow healthy, green beautiful leaves?
You must look to and heal the ROOTS OF THE TREE.
This is where the real healing of the tree resides.
LOOKING AT THE ROOTS
With all the multitude of issues that I had, my doctors and I have had to look at the roots of my body. We had to look at the underlying reason my body was sick, look at my entire body as a system, and find a natural treatment that would actually work to heal the root cause of my health issues, instead of only temporarily fixing the symptom with a band-aid or what I call painting the leaf green. In my experience, I have found that most typical Western doctors approach health issues by merely managing symptoms and doing it mostly with medicine. It is a disease care system.
For example, some people have chronic sleep issues. Some only consider taking a sleeping pill as a means to address their problem. By taking medicine, this is temporarily managing symptoms, instead of treating the root cause of the sleep issue. It could potentially be overworked adrenals that are the problem with accompanying high cortisol, a hormone imbalance or even detoxification issues. There are numerous underlying issues that could be causing the sleep problem.
Treating the root cause of this issue might involve addressing diet, lifestyle changes and adding some natural supplements to restore the body to health and improved quality of sleep.
With this said, I also know there are times and situations when conventional western medicine is absolutely necessary. There are medications, surgeries and procedures that save lives. Western medicine has certainly helped me and my family on many occasions.
There are also times, as was the case with my health situation, where western medicine wasn't even an option. These doctors did not provide the answers that I was needing to help me heal or even diagnose what my health issue was. Not always, but often times people who are presenting with chronic health issues go undiagnosed and untreated by these same conventional medical doctors. Typical western doctors are not trained to treat the root cause of disease, they are trained to manage symptoms.
INTEGRATIVE MEDICINE
Integrative medicine looks at the whole person - body, mind and soul and makes use of many different healing modalities in helping a person achieve optimal health and healing.
Dr. Habib Sadeghi, from the Be Hive of Healing says that "Integrative medicine provides treatments that are individualized to each patient's condition, and are developed to activate the body's natural healing processes. Integrative medicine is a holistic approach to healing, and acknowledges the person as a whole being, rather than a collection of symptoms."
When patients are only offered solutions that eliminate symptoms instead of treat the root cause, they seem to feel like they are always one step away from sickness again. With this approach many doctors are puzzled if the health problem is beyond their scope, and if they can't give you an answer, often times they will tell you there's nothing wrong with you, it's in your head, or send you on your way with no real answers. I experienced it repeatedly when I first became sick.
Integrative doctors have been putting the pieces of my health puzzle together from day one - analyzing, studying, and questioning my entire body until they've figured out the answers. Even understanding that my body reacts and responds completely differently from another who might have the same health issues. They treat me as an individual. They do not give up on me when we run into a roadblock. We're still figuring it all out as we go.
Part of my integrative healing journey has included analyzing and addressing:
my gut microbiome
genetics and methylation pathways
mineral and vitamin deficiencies
adrenals
opening detox pathways
nutrition
meditation
toxic heavy metal load
hormone and thyroid imbalance
energy work and clearing chakras
outside stressors and relationships
mindset skills
forgiveness and more
Healing your body from the roots takes time, commitment and ultimately a lifestyle change. It does not happen overnight. It can be a little overwhelming to think about making all these changes, particularly if you have a complex chronic health situation that you've been dealing with for a while. However, by taking one small step at a time, it can be done. Healing from a chronic health issue is much like the butterfly effect. Seemingly small changes that are consistently made over time, can produce some of the most significant changes and results.
You have the power within you to make changes, to address the root cause of your health issue and to heal.
In hope and healing,
Deanna
