What is “The Doctor Inside” Each of Us? (Conclusion)

 

  

For three months late last year, an exploration took place here with the purpose of fundamentally broadening the concept of health, what actually takes place inside of the human body to achieve health, and each individual person’s role in becoming healthy.  The core position taken in the trio of columns leading to this finale was that “the doctor inside” each of us does the healing and our job is to compliment it.  This conclusion will emphasize that the better “the doctor inside” of us is understood, the better defined the road to health will be, and thus the healthier our society will become. 

It is important to have a basic understanding of how various things work.  That is how value is established.  Parents and teachers help kids connect good grades to short-term and long-term rewards.  Industry innovators sell the public on new ideas, often at the natural expense of classic ideas, the value in the former increasing as the value in the latter decreases.  The church instills the importance of acknowledgement in something greater than ourselves.  Both in these big picture concepts and in smaller things such as a pencil for writing or a pillow for a good night’s sleep, grasping their benefit comes from a baseline knowledge of what they bring to our lives. 

Health, increasingly so over the past half century, became too abstract; healthcare, consequently, lost its way.  “The doctor inside” has been rendered largely inconsequential by the conventionalists that serve as the primary educators of health in our society.  Since it has been given little to no value by those trusted to make health-related decisions, it has little to no value to the consumers within the healthcare industry.  Yet, “the doctor inside” has infinite value.  It is the innate intelligence which governs all activity within the body, keeping us alive and functioning; without it, we are reduced to a corpse or any other form of non-living matter.  The average adult is made up of 75 trillion cells, each of which performs 200,000 chemical reactions every split second.  Convert that math into a dollar amount and it equates to wealth beyond imagination.  That is the value of “the doctor inside.”  Human health potential will not be realized broadly across the population until that value is acknowledged.    

A more faith-based interpretation is that God supplies each human-being with the innate intelligence necessary for life, and so “the doctor inside” is an expression of God within each of us.  As referenced in a previous part of this series, label it something else if so desired, but the reality is that this great organizer of all human functions is present from cradle to grave.  It is divine, no matter if you define that adjective as God-like or as just plain awesome.  American healthcare exemplifies the idiom, “throwing the baby out with the bath water,” or the fallacy in eliminating something good when attempting to rid ourselves of something perceived to be bad.  In concerning itself almost exclusively with ever-changing theories and symptom management by chemical bombardment, it has largely ignored the very nature of the human body and the role of “the doctor inside” in facilitating health.  

Adaptability is the key that unlocks health potential, and it is not coincidentally the primary role of “the doctor inside” us.  A broken bone that heals in two months, the presence of all new blood cells in the body every sixteen weeks; these are amazing things that deserve a lot of credit.  Be sure to give the credit where it is due.  If a friend loses their job and their spouse, and then a year later is thriving in a new job and has found love again, we comment on their resiliency and their ability to bounce back.  In healthcare, credit is routinely given to all parties except the one that deserves the lion’s share of it: “the doctor inside.”  The inborn intelligence of the human body is the most underappreciated thing in human history.  We repeatedly look outside of the body for answers on how to heal – usually just when sick – and the answers are there already, innately gifted to us. 

That is not at all to say that letting the body simply do its job will lead to perfect health.  Humans are imperfect, made up of organic matter.  There will always be forces in life that work against health.  2020 offered a plethora of examples.  Nevertheless, it is important to recognize that, when optimized, we have the health potential to prevent the vast majority of our most common ailments, and also the potential to overcome them; “the doctor inside” just needs us to remove the variables standing in its way.  Health, then, is a math problem: is the body’s ability to adapt to physical, chemical, emotional, and environmental stressors greater than or equal to the various stressors working against it?  If not, ill health in several among its thousands of manifestations will ensue.  Optimization is made possible by knowing how the aforementioned equation flips to the sum total of stressors overcoming the body’s ability to adapt to them and how then to flip it around again.   

The final piece to fully understanding “the doctor inside” is how it adapts, which is a function of the nervous system.  The term “nerve” can be confusing.  Unlike a blood vessel, its purpose is not self-explanatory.  Nerves are basically electrical wires across which information-carrying electrical impulses travel.  They are the conduits for the brain and all parts of the body to communicate with one another, the roads that “the doctor inside” travels to stimulate healing.  The nervous system is comparable to the electrical system in a home. 

Transmitting an electrical impulse from one location to another, which in the body is a constant exercise in communication between the brain/stem and the various organs, muscles, and tissues, is a matter of timing.  The basketball held a split second longer and Michael Jordan’s famous “Shot” rims out; a moment too late tuning to the right radio station and a life changing song has come and gone without ever being heard.  Timing is everything, within electrical networks as well.  Everyone has experienced this with their cell phone; the signal strength decreases when it takes longer for the phone to communicate with the cell tower. 

The body’s cell tower is the brainstem, which as the hub of and the origination point for all the nerves is also akin to the main fuse in a home electrical circuit breaker.  The brainstem is the most likely point of disruption within the human body network due its delicate surrounding anatomy.  It can be destructively influenced by routine head trauma, especially before structural development is complete during youth, disrupting the timing of electrical impulses in both directions, down from the brain and back up to the brain; fortunately, it can then be constructively influenced by Upper Cervical Care, which non-invasively removes physical obstruction to restore proper communication, clearing the path for “the doctor inside” to travel to the proper place and at the proper time.  

Mostly unbeknownst to us consciously, there is a constant tug of war going on inside our bodies between destructive forces and the resistance to them (“the doctor inside”-controlled ability to adapt).  The dynamic that we must be responsible for is understanding that our input, also part of the equation, can be constructive or destructive.  Fast food consistently versus home-cooked meals with fresh, organic ingredients, for instance, is a decision that swings health for better or worse, especially over long periods.  Another example, so very apt right now, is to or not to pay close attention to things like sugar consumption or a fear-based mindset, which can both drastically alter immune system integrity during a time when it needs all hands on deck.  

Pharmaceuticals are an interesting part of this constructive or destructive conversation.  The reality is that all of them are designed to have an impact on “the doctor inside.”  That bears reiteration: every medication’s purpose is to influence “the doctor inside” us.  Like a tutor in school, a drug is introduced to facilitate the guidance necessary for success.  It is often misunderstood as the source of success, when truthfully its job is to help the body be successful.  The problem, of course, is that this kind of chemical tutelage is unpredictable and often demonstrates the human tendency for miscalculation based on always-changing theories.  We cannot break the laws of life with our theories, and when we try, we ourselves get broken.  Such is why adverse reactions to pharmaceuticals, of which we consume 80% of the world’s supply in America, is the third to first leading cause of death and injury in the United States; and such is why pharmaceuticals, in a revamped healthcare system, would assume their proper position as the last resort instead of representing 95% of recommended options.    

A healthy lifestyle is about eliminating the nutritional, structural, chemical, psychological, and neurological variables that disrupt the ability of “the doctor inside” to reorganize and overcome (when necessary).  Ill health in all its various forms and diagnoses comes from a decrease in the ability of “the doctor inside” to adapt.  Health cannot be achieved by treating the symptoms of being unhealthy.  Harmony, synergy, the optimal expression of innate intelligence – call it what you will – we are our best when we give “the doctor inside” its best chance to work.