When I take on a new patient, they immediately describe to me their symptoms, and/or they give me the names of any and all diseases they may have been diagnosed with.
Once they are done telling me all of these details, I immediately do two things. First, I ask many questions so I can figure out all of the imbalances which may have happened over the course of their lifetime, which slowly but gradually blossomed into all of these symptoms or diseases.
Then once I have discovered all the root causes of these ailments I proceed to teach the patient how to think outside the box. Because the real truth is that the cause of the symptoms (or diseases) is usually far removed from where the symptom is.
It takes a while to get the hang of this, but it’s an important step we all need to take when figuring out a treatment plan which will actually work. Doctors should learn this as well.
The ancient doctors of Ayurveda said before prescribing a treatment to the patient, you have to first see what they are doing wrong and tell them to stop doing it. And THEN you can give the treatment. It sounds like common sense, but it is rarely ever done, in both allopathic and holistic medicine.
So let’s take a few examples so you can understand this concept more fully.
When you look at skin conditions such as eczema and many others, you are looking at toxins that were sitting in your bone marrow. Therefore, we don’t want to think of eczema as a problem with the skin, but instead think of its origins from stemming from the bone marrow (and other fat cells harboring very hot and poisonous toxins). If you just treat the skin with cortisone creams in the case of modern medicine, or soothing herbal ointments in the case of holistic medicine, you won’t get very far if you ignore all the underlying root causes.
Next example: keeping our pH alkaline. Everyone is concerned about eating an alkaline diet to keep our pH alkaline, but we have to make sure that our gall bladder is working effectively to squirt the bile into the stomach acids to alkalinize the digestive juices which then become all the bodily fluids, such as blood, urine, tears and sweat. If the bile doesn’t flow, which happens dozens and dozens of times during the course of our lifetimes, then the digestive juices remain acidic, allowing the blood and other bodily fluids to become acidic as well.
Next up: clogged arteries. If your arteries are clogged, the first thing that should come to mind is the type of oils you’ve been consuming. Almost every oil, from seed oils to vegetable oils, sunflower oil, canola, safflower, corn oil, groundnut or peanut oil, and palm oil forms a plastic-like compound when you heat it which clogs the arteries. These oils contain no cholesterol, which is always blamed for the clogging of the arteries. Then, the second step is to analyze your diet for foods that clog the arteries, some of which contain cholesterol and many of which don’t. And finally you want to take good care of the liver and gall bladder which digest, assimilate and process all the fats out of your blood.
Next, Hashimoto’s: If you have Hashimoto’s the last thing you want to do is think of taking thyroid hormones. Instead, you have to shift gears and work your way backwards to see why your immune system is attacking the thyroid, and work on ways to fix it at the level of the gut microbiome, the liver and the bone marrow, the three major parts of the immune system. Then you want to strengthen your thyroid using highly beneficial and time-tested Ayurvedic herbs. If you take thyroid hormones then you will actually be weakening the thyroid gland since it is no longer called upon to make its hormones and meanwhile nothing is being done to stop the immune system from hurling its attacks on the thyroid.
Next, perimenopause and menopause. If your female hormones are low you want to avoid the knee-jerk reflex to just take hormones right off the bat. Instead, learn what the word Ojas means (it is our hormones and neurotransmitters) and then examine your diet and lifestyle starting with digestion, to see why your Ojas levels are low. If digestion is poor and you experience bloating or gas, it means the food isn’t breaking down properly at the first stage of digestion, allowing for less absorption of nutrients into the 7 tissues and less nourishment for shukra dhatu or the reproductive fluids and less Ojas production at the end of nourishing the 7th tissue.
Then you have to see if you are burning out what little Ojas you are making by rushing through the day, being anxious or nervous, going to bed late, burning the candle at both ends (which also burns out your hormones) and at the same time avoiding foods such as whole cow’s milk and ghee, which are the two best foods to make both Ojas and hormones. Remember, the hormones are made out of cholesterol and it’s an unfortunate thing that most of us have been told our whole lives to limit cholesterol at every turn and avoid animal milk in favor of plant-based milks and resort to low-fat animal products when possible. No wonder our hormones are suffering in this modern age!
Next up: uterine fibroids, polyps and cysts. If you have uterine fibroids or polyps, or ovarian cysts, it’s a sure sign your gall bladder isn’t working. The liver breaks down the excess estrogen everyday and dumps it into the gall bladder. The gall bladder then squirts it into the intestines so it can be excreted in the bowel movement every day. So if the gall bladder isn’t working up to par then the estrogen will reabsorb back into the bloodstream creating a situation of high estrogen/low progesterone. Estrogen makes things grow, and over time it will create a growth such as a fibroid, uterine polyp or cyst on the breast or ovaries. So if you are plagued by any of these glandular growths, then your first step is to see what you might be doing wrong to prevent the normal workings of the gall bladder. And THEN you can use the fibroid-shrinking herbs such as kanchanar and others.
I think you get the picture. In all these cases and many others, if we had just jumped to the treatment and ignored the underlying causes we wouldn’t have gotten very far.
That is why people are having a hard time treating their skin conditions with steroid creams and even herbal lotions – if they don’t get to the root causes their efforts will be less effective.
It’s also why people are eating an alkaline diet yet they remain acidic. Many people are on cholesterol medicine and eat a low-fat diet yet still have clogged arteries if they don’t examine their diet correctly and address the filter to the blood, the liver. And your cholesterol and other bad fats can still create problems if your gall bladder isn’t working effectively.
Many people I see have Hashimoto’s and are taking thyroid hormones, whether natural or synthetic, and are still having full-blown symptoms of low thyroid, such as gas, bloating, constipation, weight gain, hair falling, coldness, depression and anxiety. This is because there is no attention being made to the root of the problem, the overactive immune system.
Many women resort quickly to the use of female hormones during both perimenopause and menopause without first checking to see why their hormones might be low, and rolling up their sleeves to address each of these issues. You should understand that your body is fully capable of making hormones deep into old age if you just give it the chance.
And I’m sure no one ever thinks of the gall bladder when they are diagnosed with fibroid tumors, cysts on the ovaries or polyps in the uterus. But until they do, they will never get at the root cause of these growths.
These are just a few examples of how we should be examining and treating our own health issues. One little clue you might notice here: did you see that the gut, the liver and the gall bladder are at the root of many of our disease processes? They are also considered the seat of our digestive processes. This is why the ancient doctors and Hippocrates, the father of modern medicine, stated emphatically that all diseases begin in the gut, with improper digestion.
All our body’s processes are dependent on good quality food coming into our bodies and our bodies being able to properly digest those foods into small enough particles for proper absorption into the bloodstream. The blood then takes the nutrients to all the 7 tissues and the cellular system – and this is how we nourish ourselves. If the food doesn’t digest well it ferments and forms poisons which are then absorbed into our bloodstream and circulated around. And eventually these poisons add up and create disease, if we don’t know how to change our diets and fix our digestion.
So always take a step back, and think outside the box if you are having some health concerns, and resist the temptation to treat it superficially without examining all the contributing factors. Remember, the same disease has different underlying causes in each person, and the imbalances causing these are numerous. It is rare that it would be only one imbalance creating your health problem.
I hope this information helps you as you strive towards treating your body in a more holistic way.