I like to consider the word disease in its broadest sense and define it as a dis-ease or disorder which can be felt in the physical body. This can be due to disturbances on any level - mental, emotional, energetic and spiritual as well as the physical. Each aspect will affect you as a whole person not as separate distinct pieces. You are a whole being with all aspects working intricately together. Like a jigsaw puzzle, you may be able to get an idea of the subject of the puzzle before it is completed but the finer details cannot be appreciated until it is finished.
When looking at your problem many factors have to be taken into account; not only current conditions and thoughts but also all experiences, physical and emotional, which have preceded it. Your body holds all these in its cellular memory forever like the hard disc of a computer.
In order to start unravelling the complex series of events that have led up to your current condition it is useful to look at your dis-ease time line. This is a list of your conditions from birth to current day on one side and a list of events, accidents and illnesses on the other. It will show how your body has been affected and trying to adapt and what may be needed to aid your healing process.
Doctors usually only treat your current symptoms rather than try to discover the root cause of your condition. Before the advent of X-rays and other modern technology, doctors had to be more conscious of signs that there was a problem somewhere in your body. If these early signs were ignored or suppressed your body had to do something more noticeable and other symptoms would eventually manifest or take their place.
A typical time line that you may have come across is the one leading to arthritis. This is often due to being sensitive to dairy products which are foreign to the human body. This foreign protein is often introduced in the first year of life before the child's gut has fully developed. When this happens, the gut walls can become damaged, leading to leaky gut syndrome, irritation and a myriad of problems.
So it could go like this -
– Baby vomiting - the baby's body naturally tries to eliminate the milk as it reaches the stomach. This is often dealt with by thickening the milk.
– Infant colic - as the milk has stopped being ejected it now affects the intestines which become irritated. This is calmed down with an infant form of antacids.
– Toddler diarrhoea - the bowels need to get rid of this irritating substance as quickly as possible but is prevented from doing so with specialised antispasmodics.
– Childhood eczema - the bowels are prevented from doing what they want to so elimination of waste products needs to be assisted by the next largest eliminating organ, the skin. As this process is unsightly and irritating it is suppressed with corticosteroid creams.
– Juvenile asthma - the skin has now been prevented from eliminating waste so another root has to be found. This is often the lungs which can be helped with bronchodilators or suppressed with corticosteroids.
– Adult hayfever - the lungs are fairly efficient at eliminating mucus but if they are prevented from doing so, the mucus can be eliminated though the nose and eyes. As these symptoms are unpleasant they are often suppressed with anti-histamine.
– Middle age Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) - the more the other routes are prevented from eliminating the more pressure is put on the bowels to try and cope. They become more irritated and try forcibly to eliminate the offending irritants, which is suppressed with antimotility drugs.
– Old Age arthritis - having no way to eliminate the extra mucus and toxins the body needs to store them. As the torso of the body contains the major organs it aims to keep this area as clear as possible so the extremities are used for storage instead. The inflammation caused by this process is suppressed with anti-inflammatories or corticosteroids given as injections or tablets.
– Kidney failure - the possible finally stage, when no more room is left in the 'unimportant limbs' for the storage of waste products, is thatn the main organs can become affected.
This may sound alarmist and not everyone suffers from all stages, but the trend will probably appear familiar. As each symptom is suppressed the complaint becomes further entrenched into the body, until it can no longer cope. One way you can help yourself is by following a good elimination programme and don't ignore relatively simple symptoms.