Did you know…

that we mistake getting rid of symptoms for removing the cause?

There’s a human tendency to think that the symptoms we suffer are the disorder or disease and if we can only get rid of the symptoms, we’ve gotten rid of the problem. No pain, no problem. There’s nothing more vexing and stressful than the suffering of someone close to us. That was essentially the reason why blood-letting was so popular for so long – it drained so much life energy from a person that they stopped complaining – the body didn’t have enough energy to produce symptoms.

Symptoms are not the disease or disorder, but our body’s attempt to get rid of the problem. Symptoms are the message that we have a problem, “Houston, we have a problem.” At first, the message is given quietly, but if we ignore it, the body ramps up the volume, and if we keep ignoring the message and don’t correct the cause the symptoms are pointing to, it starts shouting at us.

Symptoms are really part of life’s game of ‘truth or consequences’: if we don’t follow natural law (and spiritual law) and live right we will suffer the consequences. So, symptoms are really good and faithful friends, telling us what we don’t really want, but need to hear. We don’t like to be told to stop overindulging in sweets or chocolate cake, or to start exercising regularly, or even to get out of a job we dislike and is stressing us. We know we need to do these things, but we often prefer staying with the familiar and comfortable to the unknown and often uncomfortable. We don’t generally like to change unless we are forced to. Symptoms effectively force us to consider changing the way we live, because that way is making us sick.

But our first tendency is to find something that will make the unpleasant, even painful symptoms go away, never mind the cause. It’s a ‘shoot the messenger’ response. The conventional system of medicine is essentially built around getting rid of symptoms, and it does this by forcefully suppressing them. We can see this in all the ‘anti’ drugs:

– antibiotics to suppress microbial life, whether good or bad, which are just the carriers for disease and are produced as part of the healing reaction; the microbial life are not the disease itself.

– anti-inflammatories that suppress the physiologically healthy fever the body produces in the effort to destroy disease germs, and repair tissue damage, and restore balance,

– anti-convulsants that suppress the discharge of energy built up in various organs,

– anti-hypertensive drugs artificially control high blood pressure which is the effect of a number of causes, etc.

We may like the temporary relief we get, but the disorder or disease is still there. We may choose to believe that the pain is ’caused’ by inflammation and take the anti-inflammatory, but we ignore what is causing the inflammation. We may choose to believe that our depression is ’caused’ by a lack of a certain hormone or neuro-chemical, but we ignore what it is that then causes the hormone or chemical to go out of balance. The symptoms are reduced and we go on with our life, until the symptoms come back. At first we just take more of what made the symptoms go away the first time, and sometimes it works, but eventually it stops working or it requires stronger dosage and longer usage, which produce side-effects that are often worse than the initial problem they were meant to ‘solve’ (a case of ‘sweeping it under the rug’).

The goal of Heilkunst’s therapeutic approach is to find the true cause underlying the symptoms, not just to make the symptoms go away. A state of health is not about the superficial outer appearances but the living functions underneath. Identifying the true cause requires a thorough understanding of the nature of disorder and disease. In most cases, knowing the traumatic event, shock or accident that triggered the problem will lead to the cause. We can then prescribe the right remedy to remove the cause. Different types of causes need to be addressed according to their lawfulness.

On the one hand, some causes can be in the nature of life style and dietary considerations. If arthritic symptoms that are suppressed by drugs continue to persist, and the symptoms are due to chronic dehydration, as in one case we had, then the remedy is adequate water intake and cutting back on diuretic drinks like coffee and soda. If schizophrenia is due to a lack of a mineral or vitamin, then supplying that mineral or vitamin will resolve the problem, where anti-psychotic drugs only aggravate the problem (leaching vitamins and minerals out of the system).

On the other hand, if the cause is a disease or complex of diseases, then even the naturopathic approach of nutrition and supplements will only palliate (give temporary relief), but not remove the cause itself. Take the case of a woman who was quite sick and received good advice on nutrition and lifestyle changes, which helped initially. However, the symptoms returned, and this time, even worse than before. The previous treatment program was re-applied, but this time it no longer helped. The problem was that the previous treatment removed the various disorders in the sustentive power, but not the disease involving the generative power. In order to remove the disease(s) cause we had to identify the various diseases and treated them systematically. Once this was done, the symptoms disappeared – and were not to come back.

Next time we’ll look at how to identify the disease(s) a person has and how to treat them properly, and in the proper order.

For more information about Heilkunst treatment and studies please visit our website.