Our world has a notion strongly imbedded in our consciousness that we only get help or go the doctor when we are really sick or hurt. That there should be a problem in order to receive any treatment or care. That the little signs our body sends to tell us something isn’t right, don’t mean much, or hopefully, will go away on their own. We smother these signs with quick fixes, forcing our bodies to create new signals (i.e. discomfort) to let us know that we need to do some work to bring things into balance.
Natural medicine really excels in preventing illness and disease. Prevention means going for treatment or doing something to help your body stay well—before you get sick. This means listening to messages from your body, however subtle, to observe the small tweaks and aches or funny feelings. If they continue for a few days or a week, they are worth following up and checking out. Acupuncture, acupressure, herbal medicine, Qi Gong and cranial sacral therapy are all expert tools for keeping things in balance. They are so much more effective and useful when they can work on a healthy body or mostly healthy body. If there are only a couple of things to “fix” or bring back to balance, treatment can be much less often and more effective.
Still, if you have a bagful of complaints, by all means, you should definitely seek out some help. Natural medicine practices can help but if you catch things earlier, it is much easier to keep you healthy.
There are a number of reasons why this is so important:
- First, when imbalance sits with the body for too long, it becomes chronic. This sets up habitual pathways so that whenever your body goes through a challenge, (It could be dietary, environmental or emotional) you automatically go to that pre-programmed pattern of dysfunction. Much like the default settings on your computer. It only takes a slight disruption in your general equilibrium to set off the same sequence of disease state.
- Second, If you are good at preventing dysfunction in your body, you avoid trips to the doctor. These visits to the doctor take time and may result in prescription drugs or surgery and sometimes health advice. We all usually do ok with advice, but surgery and drugs come with their suitcases packed full of other problems. That’s when the plot thickens and the layers of dysfunction start to thicken. The more this happens, the harder it is for your body to find its healthiest state.
- Third, your preventative treatments are focused on relaxation and getting you in touch with your healthy self. These types of treatments are usually quite enjoyable and relaxing. Where as, when there is an injury or disease, treatment has to be stronger and sometimes more uncomfortable to focus on and correct the problem.
“To administer medicines for diseases which have already developed is comparable to the behavior of people who begin to dig a well after they have become thirsty. Would this not be too late?” (a quote from the Yellow Emperor’s Classic of Internal Medicine)
There are so many things to take care of in life, but if you have ever had a major health concern, you know how much time and energy it takes to get better. It can stop you in your tracks and life has to take some major change in order to recover. Being preventative is really the easiest and best way to stay healthy, happy and vibrant.