Whenever we get sick or have a health problem, our first instinct is to attack the disease.
We do surgery to cut out the parts of our bodies that are diseased; we take drugs to lower blood pressure, stop inflammation and pain, and kill bacteria; toxic chemicals and radiation are used to attack cancer and other conditions.
But there is another way to come at the problem: improving the healing process. This is the approach wellness care takes. While it sounds similar to attacking disease — both involve treating the patient, after all — at the core they are quite different.
Because of our focus on disease, and despite the fact that healing is one of the most important functions of our bodies, it is amongst the least studied and understood. It is telling that we have spent countless millions on disease — the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge has raised over $100 million so far — but still know very little about the process of healing.
It is even more telling that what little we do know about healing, the chemical steps in the inflammation process, was used to produce drugs to stop it. These are the anti-inflammatory drugs, including aspirin, ibuprofen (sold as Motrin and Advil), Aleve, and Celebrex. They are amongst some of the most commonly used medications in the world. But because they stop inflammation, they also interrupt healing. Studies have shown they interfere with fracture and soft tissue healing. One surgeon commented that these drugs are actually used when doctors want to prevent a bone from growing back.
As a wellness provider, I was taught to look at health and disease a little differently. Most health problems, especially the chronic ones, are due to a failure of the healing process, rather than the overpowering force of disease. Rather than attack the disease, our approach is to restore this healing function.
This is especially evident with acupuncture. Many patients ask if the needles are tipped with chemicals or drugs. Otherwise, how could acupuncture produce the changes that it does?
The answer is that acupuncture does not produce the healing, only the body can do that. What it does is somehow jump start a stalled healing response in the body, and it is not unusual for this to happen instantly. I compare it to starting a car. Turning the key does not directly cause electricity to flow to the plugs and gas to the cylinders, etc., but instead it activates a system that is all set up to go. Our innate healing response is there all the time, but for some reason — injury, poor diet — it is stopped and the patient does not heal.
One of the principles of wellness care is that a single treatment may have many benefits, because it does not attack one problem, but rather helps the body heal. This is common in chiropractic, where treating low-back joint problems has been known to improve the patient’s digestion, bladder function, or even hormone balance. Again, the manipulation does not directly affect these other bodily functions, but improving joint alignment seems to reenergize a stalled healing process in the patient’s body, which can restore several problems to normal.
The approach of attacking the condition has led to great advances in health care, especially in emergency care and dealing with infections. But our over reliance on this more aggressive and dangerous form of health care is leading to a different form of health crisis — this one entirely manmade.
Logically, most conditions should not be treated as enemies to attack, but as blockages to the body’s own healing potential. This requires a big change in our way of thinking about health and disease, but if we are to reverse the decline in our nation’s health, it is a necessary change.
Dr. Michael Noonan practices chiropractic, chiropractic acupuncture and other wellness therapies in Old Town. He can be reached at noonanchiropractic@gmail.com.