Medicine Health

To treat symptoms rather than causes brings no lasting results. To give a person a pain pill for pain rather than treating the cause of the pain, only gives a person some temporary relief. To cut out the part of the body that is affected, only weakens the overall function of the body. To replace parts of the body with artificial parts, does not help the body heal itself. All these methods only assure the medical profession of return customers and a continual income.

There must be a better way! There must be an alternative method that treats causes rather than symptoms. Truth is, there are many methods of health care that use non-conventional approaches to health care. They range from totally ridiculous to well thought-out scientific systems leading to ultimate health. The following are some that are based on well thought-out rational approaches that treat causes rather than symptoms. These are based on prevention as well as treatment.

I. Naturopathic Medicine

Naturopathic doctors believe the human body has an innate ability to heal itself. Naturopathic doctors (NDs) instruct their patients to use diet, exercise, lifestyle changes and cutting-edge natural therapies to aid their bodies' ability to ward off and combat disease. They view the patient as a complex, interrelated system. They craft comprehensive treatment plans that blend the best of modern medical science and traditional natural medical approaches to treat disease, and restore health. They base their practice on six timeless principles founded on medical tradition and scientific evidence.

1. Let nature heal. Our bodies have a powerful, innate instinct for self-healing. Finding and removing the barriers to their self-healing (such as poor diet or unhealthy habits) nurtures this process.

2. Identify and treat causes. Symptoms will only return unless the root illness is addressed. Do not cover up symptoms. Finding and treating the cause of these symptoms will bring lasting healing.

3. First, do no harm. Naturopathic doctors follow three precepts to guarantee their patients' safety:

Use low-risk procedures and healing compounds, like dietary supplements, herbal extracts and homeopathy, with few or no side effects.

When possible, do not suppress symptoms, which are the body's efforts to self-heal.

Customize each diagnosis and treatment plan to fit each patient. No two people are alike. Each person heals differently.

4. Educate patients. Naturopathic doctors believe they must be educators, as well as physicians. They teach their patients how to eat, exercise, relax and nurture themselves physically and emotionally. They also encourage self-responsibility and work closely with each patient.

5. Treat the whole person. We all have unique physical, mental, emotional, genetic, environmental, social, sexual and spiritual makeups. The Naturopathic doctor knows that all these factors affect our health. Because of this, he or she carefully tailors the treatment strategy to address the whole person.

6. Prevent illness. They understand, "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." To them proactive medicine saves money, pain, misery and lives. With this in mind, the naturopathic physician evaluates risk factors, heredity and vulnerability to disease. By getting treatment for greater wellness, we're less likely to need treatment for future illness.

II. A Master Herbalist

An Herbalist is one who uses herbs to promote health. This has been the world's primary form of medicine since the beginning of time, with a written history of over 5000 years. Unfortunately, the use of herbs for health care in America has been overshadowed by dependence on modern medications for the last 100 years. Notwithstanding, 75% of the world's population still relies primarily upon traditional healing practices, most of which is herbal medicine.

III. Homeopathic Remedies

Homeopathy is a system of medicine which treats an individual with highly diluted substances to trigger the body's natural system of healing. The idea is to treat "like with like." This concept dates back to Hippocrates (460-377BC) but in its current form, homeopathy has been used worldwide for more than 200 years.

This principle was rediscovered by Samuel Hahnemann, a German doctor who was shocked by the harsh medical practices of his day (which included blood-letting, purging and the use of poisons such as arsenic). This led him to look for a way to reduce the damaging side-effects associated with these crude medical treatments.

His first experiments were on himself and a group of healthy volunteers. By giving smaller and smaller medicinal doses, he found toxicity was reduced and the medicines actually appeared to be more effective with lower doses. He further observed that symptoms caused by toxic 'medicines' such as mercury, were very much like those of the diseases they were being used to treat. This led to the principle he described as "like cures like." The beautiful thing about this treatment for illness is that it treats the whole person without the side-effects of conventional medicines.

Hahnemann's documented work and textbooks are the foundations of homeopathic medicine as it is practiced today.

Perhaps this concept should be revisited. With the growing complications brought on by our many synthetic "medicines" and their side-effects which need to be treated with more "medicines," homeopathic remedies would be a great blessing to multitudes of over-medicated people. Let's face it, over-medicating people is just as crude today as it was in Hahnemann's day. Homeopathic remedies could very well be the preferred treatment for many of our modern day ills.

As you look through these three alternative health methods you can see a common thread. If we work with our body it will heal itself. Our body was made by our Creator-Redeemer God to heal itself. On a smaller scale, if we cut our finger it will heal itself. The same is so when our body is stressed by diseases, drugs or other modern-day health stressors. Remove the stress and our body will take care of the rest. This is very simple. Good sense will lead us to this conclusion. Perhaps it is time for us to "take charge of our own health."

One last thing. Complicated problems most often have simple solutions. When a paratrooper is falling out of an airplane the simple solutions is to pull the ripcord. If a person is in a burning building, the solution is to get out of the building. If a car is out of control and heading toward a person, the simple solution is to get out of its way. The same is true with physical, emotional, and spiritual problems. Remove the cause of the problem and the symptom will vanish away.

The 10 commandments to good health listed in my previous article will take you a long way toward restoring your health. If you want ultimate health bad enough to make some lasting changes, this is a good starting place.