Listening To Your Body
One of the almost completely unchallenged ideas that we have in our practices of mainstream medicine is the idea that our symptoms, or the signs our body gives us of impending disease or illness are problems to be dealt with as opposed to important warnings we should pay attention to. It’s very common for someone to go to the doctor, complain about a symptom they have, and then get prescribed a drug to get rid of the symptom. This is a flawed system and one that only creates further problems for the patient. This drugging response to “fixing” symptoms only makes things worse and hides the signs the body gives us to solve various problems it’s having. For example if you have high blood pressure then taking a drug that forces your blood pressure to lower isn’t going to solve the problem. Your body is just going to find some other way to show signs of the problems it’s experiencing which could be due to a poor diet or a stressful life or a number of other causes. The diet or lifestyle is what needs to be altered and taking a pill doesn’t fix any of that. Instead you’re just likely to have another side effect from the blood pressure medication for which you’ll be prescribed another pill - which is a pretty scary cycle that can get started.
The fact of the matter is that medications such as these dull our abilities to read the signs that our bodies are giving us and without these signs it’s impossible for us to be able to give our bodies what they need. Every interaction we have with our body is the language our body uses to communicate with us. Blood means danger- an injury that needs to be repaired. Throwing up food means either we’ve eaten something that wasn’t meant to be eaten or a virus has made us ill. Pain is a message that our body is healing something and it’s an important one to listen to as it can prevent us from causing more damage to a part of our body that is already in repair. Pain killers and medicines that artificially alter our body can prevent us from understanding these messages and cause us to ignore them.
The body is filled with different ways of giving us signs but the two easiest ones to look at are your skin and your nails. Your skin, being the largest organ of your body, isn’t just there to hold all the rest of you together - in fact it serves as a mirror of the internal systems of your body and the state that they’re in. Dry skin, flaky skin, itchy skin, acne, rashes, and so forth can all be a very clear indicator of what the internal systems of your body look like. Your nails act in much the same way and can clearly show how your body is doing on the inside. Nails that are discolored or cracked can show chronic nutrition deficiencies and can even hint towards organ problems. You can also take a good look at your tongue as it can be a very reliable indicator of health too. Any good eastern medicine practitioner should be able to point out various signs and symptoms of what your body is struggling with at any given time.
You also have to pay attention to the day to day signs your body is showing you with little things. Things like having bad breath or body odor, having various cravings or digestive tract issues can all be causes for alarm with internal organs or the way your digestion is functioning. A big cause of symptoms can be dehydration. Many people in America are chronically dehydrated and the prevalence of sugary drinks like soda only dehydrate our bodies more making it harder to ensure we have all the water we need. Dehydration can show up as all sorts of symptoms like asthma, hunger, kidney problems, heart problems and so forth. Take care to drink as much water as you can and to do it on a regular basis. This alone can erase many frustrating symptoms and causes of illness. Pay attention to headaches, stomachaches, chronic pain of any kind and try to understand what your body is telling you. If you can’t be sure then find a naturopath or an eastern doctor and ask them to give you a once over to see what they can decipher.
The most important part of all is to look beyond the symptom. Make sure that you’re focusing on what the overall source of the problem is and not just the issue that you’re dealing with right at that moment. A drug will only mask the symptom while the problem continues to get worse but once you can identify and understand that problem you’ll be able to resolve the underlying issue and get healthier. Once thats done the rest of your symptoms should clear up all on on their own. This is a much better solutinon then to make your symptoms with medication and leave the bigger problem to go unresolved. This kind of treatment will only cause further disease and more problems while the basic abilities of people to prevent disease with good nutrition and healthy lifestyles go untaught. It used to be that people knew what all kinds of different symptoms meant and were able to conclude what was going on with their bodies without much help from doctors but now we’ve become so dependent on medicine and drugs that we don’t even bother to find out what is going on with our body or why it is producing certain symptoms we just run to the doctors office and ask for drugs to make it go away. Treating symptoms instead of the larger problems of them this way only leads to more problems and sooner or later the body isn’t able to keep fighting diseases all on its own while we’re busy masking the symptoms of it. Make sure that you learn how to tell what’s wrong with you’re body and what it’s really trying to tell you. If you can do that then you won’t ever have to really worry about getting sick because you’ll be able to understand what you’re body is trying to tell you and you’ll know how to give it what it needs.