Here’s a scenario to try with any health care professional you know –
Imagine a patient presents with an infection in their bladder (cystitis), with burning pain passing urine, frequent need to pass to urine and some blood in the urine. You send a sample of the urine to the lab and they grow “E Coli” (a commonly implicated bacteria) sensitive to “Trimethoprim” (an antibiotic). You prescribe the recommended “Trimethoprim”. What does it do?
The only correct answer is that it kills the bacteria.
So, how does the inflamed, swollen, bloody bladder wall return to normal?
Only through the body’s natural healing system.
Drugs have effects. Antibiotics in particular can kill bacteria which might otherwise cause us great harm. But prescribing a drug is only part of the job needing done. If we only prescribe a drug and do nothing to support or stimulate self-healing, then we leave healing to chance……as if healing isn’t part of a health care professional’s job.
So, here’s something I wonder about. Why don’t they teach how to heal people at medical school? Why do they only teach how to “manage” diseases, remove diseased tissue, or suppress symptoms?
There’s the BIG gap in biomedical practice – how do we encourage and develop healing?
Shouldn’t we be using approaches which focus on healing as well as those which focus on disease?
We have an uneasy relationship with things we don’t think we fully understand. Healing is one of those things. Until we can come to peace with either a) how it happens or b) the idea that we may never really understand it, we won’t think about medicine in terms of “healing” as you’re describing here. At least, that’s what I think today… ask me again after I’ve had a bit more time to think about it…
What is the body’s natural healing system?
I applaud the moment when health management/healing is taken seriously in the medical field and disease is not looked at as a singular episode, but a imbalance of the whole, (be it mind, body or spirit) – I am so glad I stumbled across your blog and I appreciate so much hearing your thoughts and experiences.
as ever mrschili, you’re spot on – I agree – if we’re going to understand it we need to come to terms with uncertainty and ineffability. One of my favourite philosophical writings is Gadamer’s “Enigma of Health” where he grapples with the phenomenon of how when our body is healthy it has a kind of invisibility to us, and when it is diseased it makes itself known to us (that’s my best attempt to summarise that book in a single sentence!)
Grace – I think we’ve only scratched at the surface of what it is so far but the concepts that I find most helpful are those of “self-organisation” (which is a characteristic of all complex systems – read more on this blog by searching for “complex adaptive systems”, or google that) and the idea of a “vital force” (not as an entity but as a phenomenon – whatever it is that keeps us alive, protects us and restores us when damaged). As best we know so far it involves a large number of body systems interacting in an “integrative” way to produce coherence. What do you think it is?
Becca – you also hit the nail on the head – as long as we consider disease as either an entity or as a “singular episode” we’re not going to grasp what’s going on. Health is an experience, and so is illness…..and experiences can only be understood within their contexts. That’s what makes narrative so important in thinking about healing.
From my own experience, I believe natural healing begins as soon as the effects of the initial trauma lessen; when there are no additional negative physical stressors; when restful sleep occurs regularly; when my body is fueled optimally; and when my attitude toward the final outcome is generally positive.
I think because good health is a priority of mine, it has been easier to both survive and heal from life-threatening illnesses.
And I have found that sometimes plain good luck from any quarter helps.
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