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Healing Chronic Disease

Created on: 2022-06-05

Modified on: 2023-07-23

Why Most People Never Recover from Chronic Disease, and How They Could

Diseases are often divided into two groups: chronic and acute. Simplisitcally, acute diseases are over with quickly. Chronic diseases are long lasting, or last forever.

As a health coach, chronic diseases are the main thing I deal with. Overall, few people with chronic disease make much progress. After a year of coaching, here are my experiences and insights into why, and the antidotes in each case.

Obedience to Authority and Orthodoxy

Most people with chronic illness will simply never look outside of orthodox methods. (Consequently, these people are never clients.) They trust that the orthodox system must be the best out there. They do not know how the system works, or how corrupt it is. If you speak of this corruption, you often get labelled a "conspiracy theorist." If you counter with precise legal records, there is always another excuse. I recently told someone of Pfizer's record breaking $2.3 billion fine to "resolve criminal and civil liability" in 2009. She had clearly never heard anything about this before I mentioned it, but nonetheless countered, "Oh, well, that was a long time ago." This is akin to the unbreakable faith held by members of religious cults.

Pfizer's record has since been broken by another pharma giant. These are the "leaders" in receiving criminal and civil charges, but they are far from alone. The whole industry is rife with corruption. And it's companies like these that write the standard of orthodox care. And yet people trust their lives to the standard of care written by such companies.

The antidote to blind faith in the orthodoxy is: start with an open mind - as to whether the orthodox approach is truly the best, and be open minded about what alternative approaches to healing might offer.

Toe Dipping

Many people have double standards regarding their expectations of outcomes from orthodox versus natural healing. They will take toxic drugs, experiencing obvious and dangerous side effects, day after day, literally for years, without much complaint. But if, for example, I give someone free advice, they might try some minor change for a week, and if they experience no radical cure in that time, they declare that it "did not work". But they continue with the drugs which cause endless side effects, with no end or cure in sight.

This is simply dipping one's toe in the water of natural healing, and then backing off.

Antidote: it's good to monitor progress with different systems. But check that you apply the same standard of judgement equally to all of those systems. If people took the toe-dipping attitude to orthodox care, the entire industry would collapse overnight.

Fatalism

By the time people come to a health coach, they've usually been worn out by the failures of the orthodox system for years or even decades. They have also likely been told by the orthodox system that their condition is incurable. People are most likely to come seeking help to "manage" their condition. When I tell them their condition is reversible, they often look shocked, or disbelieving. Disbelief leads to inaction, and is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The antidote - be open to there being a cure, and driven to finding it.

Homeostasis

Homeostasis is a word originally from biology. It refers to the body's efforts to keep things constant. For example, the body goes to great lengths to keep the pH of the blood within very narrow limits.

The concept of homeostasis has made it into coaching in general. For example, in business coaching, someone trying to escape from relative poverty must deal with psychological homeostasis in the form of fear of success, for success may mean alienation from the social strata where they feel they belong. This is a serious barrier for many people striving to improve their lot.

In health coaching, clients may have had a condition for so long that it forms a core part of their identity. If they lose the condition, that creates a crisis of sorts.

I can't tell you how frustrating it is to get a client to the point where they're starting to improve - and then they back off the treatment, or simply ghost.

As to the antidote: a great natural healer, Feldenkreis, used to tell clients when they approached this crisis, "Now is your next challenge. Now we have to build the dream," - that is, the dream of their new life as one in good health.

There is another way homeostasis manifests. Some are in such a delicate condition, that they are afraid to move. They may have experienced harmful effects of changes in the past - including those prescribed by orthodox "care". In such cases I empathize. These cases are rarer, and here, psychological homeostasis acts as a defence mechanism not for the psyche, but the body. However, natural healing is a much gentler and safer approach. In such situations, all changes can and should be made slowly and carefully, but even here, the principle holds: No change, no progress.

Failure to Take Responsibility and Action

In orthodox care, the client is literally a patient, i.e., they are passive. The medicine is done to them. They are told there is nothing to be done about their diet, and even discouraged from sorting this out. So long as they are taking drugs, symptoms may be suppressed, but the underlying illness will likely persist, or even progress. You can try it for twenty years, or longer, and see how it works for you.

In natural healing, the responsibility is on the client to put the information into action. The first step is usually to make significant changes to your diet, at an appropriate and safe rate of change. Most people can safely change quickly, but are really reluctant to change. Hippocrates, the father of Western Medicine, wrote, millenia ago, "Let food be thy medicine, and let medicine be thy food." The idea that one can take a pill - even a herbal pill - but still eat an unhealthy diet, and get well, is just a fantasy. Still, many people would rather go on falling apart than change their eating habits.

Antidote - understand that natural healing involves sorting out the "inputs" to your body first and foremost.

Failure to Invest in Self

Similarly, people object to paying for their health. In the UK, and many other countries, medicine is "free at the point of service." But it is not free. The cost is hidden through taxation, and it is astronomical. I was once given six weeks of medication, and when I read the list of side effects, I wanted to take them back. I called the doctor, and he told me I had over a thousand pounds worth of medication there, and they could not give them to anyone else. I felt obliged to use them to avoid the waste. Then I suffered side effects.

If you have a choice between a free meal that will make you ill, or a meal you have to pay for that will nourish and please you, which would you take?

Before I took training to be a coach, I spent thousands of pounds, and a great deal of time, trying anything and everything, and hundreds of hours learning about health. I was on a mission, even through illness, fatigue, and brain-fog, to use everything I had to find and implement solutions. It took a lot of trial and error, money, and years of searching, to find the answers that worked for me.

I then spent thousands more on training to become a coach, and through this I'm able to offer people massive short-cuts, in both time (potentially years, even decades) and expense.

If you're considering becoming a client, my fees are affordable. You'll probably need to make some other expenses (e.g. switching from conventional to mostly organic food does constitute an expense). However, what price do you put on your health? Being ill is really expensive. It can cost you your income, career, social life, love life, and more.

Some conditions are solved quickly and easily - so fast that the client may be in disbelief at how fast things improved. Others take more time and effort - it all depends. But bear in mind, staying ill is exhausting. When I was at my own crisis point in health, I was extremely fatigued. I had about two hours worth of work in me per day. I dedicated all of that energy to my healing. It was literally the only way forward.

The antidote to the problem outlined here is to ask yourself how much you value your health? Is it worth a small outlay, and effort on your side? When you are back in full health, how much more energy, and therefore usable time, will you have? And how much more quality of life will you have?

Conclusion

Note that most of the above problems and solutions are psychological. In the case of long standing illness, what is needed is determination to succeed. We constantly say "take care" in social situations. But seriously, are you taking care of yourself?

A book written in about 1940 said it was a common expression that, "A man is his own doctor by 40, or a fool." That attitude seems alien now.

With the right knowledge, we can live in health, and even long-standing illnesses can be reversed. Sometimes it is astonishingly rapid. More often it requires a longer commitment, however, the methods used can be taught quickly. My goal as a health coach is to teach people the methods to become independent as quickly as possible in restoring their own health.

If you have a health condition, if you're ready to commit to getting healthy, and are looking for guidance on how, do send me a message through the support page.

- Antony

: Justice Department Announces Largest Health Care Fraud Settlement in Its History, U.S. Department of Justice, Sep 2nd 2009

: GlaxoSmithKline to Plead Guilty and Pay $3 Billion to Resolve Fraud Allegations and Failure to Report Safety Data, U.S. Department of Justice, July 2nd 2012

: See Services for more information.

If you're in the minority who are ready to hit the healing super highway, click here : Services.

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