The Body Can Change – Despite a Diagnosis

Sometimes doctors tell their patients things that are difficult or unsettling to hear during a diagnosis: “I don’t know … We can’t do anything for you … Wait and see …” These types of conversations leave the patients feeling powerless to affect their own health and are especially common with autoimmune diseases or other “lifetime illnesses.” These aren’t mean or vindictive physicians; they’re just speaking the truth from the Western medical perspective. But from the Eastern medical perspective, the picture looks very different.

We can positively affect our health regardless of diagnosis. We can move — step by step — from where we are closer to where we want to be.

Part of the issue is that Western diagnoses take a snapshot of your health and project out the rest of your life based upon how you’re doing in that moment. That would be fine if you were a broken down car in need of new parts: A car isn’t going to improve on it’s own. A car doesn’t have natural healing mechanisms where if you park it on the lawn for a month with a cover on it, after that month is up it’ll run like new again. With a car, you fix the parts or you trade it in or you junk it. Well, people do sometimes “junk” their bodies in terms of the food they put in it, but generally speaking we are not cars; we are people.

Our bodies know how to heal themselves. Cut your finger and it will heal … without you focusing on it or trying to make it heal. It just will. Balance the body’s energy systems and it can heal and improve. Just because you’re in one state of health on Tuesday doesn’t even mean you’ll feel the same way on Thursday — must less for the rest of your life. That’s why Traditional Chinese Medicine focuses on the body’s “engine” rather than just its parts. The engine is what keeps the car going. The engine is what keeps us going.

Please read Part II for a patient story that illustrates how The Body Can Change – Despite a Diagnosis.