“The truest form of healing”

Most people come to see their doctor when they are ill. The doctor’s task is to treat them, reduce their pain, discomfort, or symptoms. However, have you ever considered that, actually, the doctor’s most important duty is to keep people from getting ill? Prevent them from getting sick? That would mean that you would come to see a doctor primarily to regulate your various systems and enhance your overall immune system, to keep your energy in smooth flow and thus to keep yourself away from illness. Among my colleagues, some have defined the following as the essential steps toward a healthy life: acute care, maintenance care, and wellness and preventative care. Acute care takes place when you are sick and seek a doctor to eliminate the pain or whichever other symptoms are bothering you. After a certain period of pretty intensive treatment (perhaps as often as two or three times a week) you find yourself getting better, the symptoms are going away; at this point, you will be entering maintenance care, needing to see your doctor only once a week. The third step is when you are well and the symptoms, having fully disappeared, do not bother you anymore; at this point, you may wish to receive wellness and preventative care, in which you might see the doctor only for monthly or seasonal visits. We live in this world, dealing with many pathogenic factors -- the harsh weather, the pollution, the noise, the stress, the emotional ups and downs. If we can learn to live a balanced life, get preventive care, keep the pathogenic elements from accumulating or getting to us, ridding ourselves of common ailments and problems when they first appear or indeed at the first sign of any possible problems, working steadily on maintaining and improving our overall health and on strengthening the body’s resistance to disease -– then we are in the process of the truest form of healing: from the roots outwards.