Health care. TREATMENT OR HEALING?
Natura sanat, medicus curat morbos
The physician treats, nature heals.
Hippocrates
The two terms often used in the context of health care are treatment and healing (rehabilitation). How are they similar and yet profoundly different?
Medical treatment as a way to restore good health
An illness triggers a powerful self-control response from the body to achieve self-healing. |
It should take a long time for self-cure to replace medicine, because of the fear, self-distrust, and unnatural physical reliance on drugs. Sri Aurobindo |
Medical treatment implies active interference with the body regarded as a mechanical system or a passive object. In certain cases, this approach makes sense and cannot even be avoided. For instance, when a cardiac arrest victim hovers between life and death and stops breathing, her vital systems must be restarted at any price. Forceful treatment is also inevitable in case of a grave infection and in numerous other situations. In most instances, however, an illness triggers a powerful self-healing response from the body that should never be ignored because of unwillingness or lack of skills. Otherwise, the doctor can inflict even more damage on the body than the original problem, as evidenced by the term "iatrogenic conditions," meaning those caused by medical intervention.
Hygieia, the goddess of health. |
The healing approach
Healing means recuperation of the body by fostering self-change, self-control, and self-regeneration. |
The healing approach is based on dialogue with the body. To quote Alexander Alexeichik, a renowned Russian psychotherapist: "Attempts to change a living organism by force are often counterproductive: you can only encourage it to change on its own.” Indeed, life, health, and the body resent forceful changes so much that treatment may sometimes cripple the patient, causing a short-term recovery followed by a general collapse.
In healing, we pursue recuperation of the body by fostering self-change, self-control, and self-regeneration. Self-healing is the start of genuine recovery. The body engages in meticulous efforts to eliminate minuscule inflammation centers and adjust small imbalances at the cell level. During this process, each cell and organ receives extra nutrition, oxygen, and energy needed to restore their functions.
The reconstruction we are describing is a discreet process that can take weeks or even months. As a result, however, the body does not just get rid of specific symptoms of disease but becomes healthier overall and, in a sense, even younger. Consequently, the integrative approach, which has been making so much headway in America in the past decade, is sometimes called anti-aging medicine.
Launching the self-healing process
Medicine is necessary for our bodies in disease only because our bodies have learned the art of not getting well without medicines. Sri Aurobindo |
To start the process of self-healing and rehabilitation, you must follow certain rules. The very first step is to liberate the body, to minimize any confining and burdening effects of spasms, stress, herniation, or heavy pressure. To achieve such decompression, one needs to create some free space in the body to attract blood and life. It is much like breathing: rather than forcing air into our lungs, we stretch our thorax to produce a void that draws oxygen in. Joints and ligaments of the spine and limbs may be stretched in a similar way. By creating such voids, we are making a gift of life to our bodies. This concept may puzzle an advocate of the so-called scientific (or should I say mechanical?) approach, yet it fully complies with the ancient Eastern philosophy.
The invisible energy of existence that gives birth to everything, including our consciousness, can treat the most fearsome diseases. |
The soul and the brain, just like the body, also need to be relieved of persistent stress. To this end, one should resort to relaxation, meditation, and prayer, the age-old ways of concentrating on matters spiritual. The invisible energy of existence that gives birth to everything in the world, including our consciousness, can treat the most dangerous of diseases. Yes, this energy is scarce and hard to find like the proverbial fountain of youth, but it is real, not imaginary, as can be testified by patients who were curious and persistent enough to benefit from its power.
The body and the soul, relieved of confining pressures, run to the river of complete health, like a stream from a mountain. Health is what attracts the body naturally, as a magnet attracts iron. This attitude is the fundamental difference between medical treatment and healing.
Treatment adds something foreign to the body by force; healing aspires to remove what the body does not need to give it a chance to recover from within. In other words, while treatment keeps imposing on the body, healing aims at supporting and strengthening the body's own potential.
Medical professionals who believe in the philosophy of rehabilitation give their patients an opportunity to experience the natural miracles of self-healing.
About the author
Doctor Andrew Ivanchenko gained his medical degree twice - first in Russia in 1985 and second in America in 2005. His interest in pain management and rehabilitation resulted in him opening his own Comprehensive Rehabilitation Center in Chicago, founded in 2006. His work on a popular broadcast show and in Russian newspapers, where he explains medical topics in layman's terms, gave birth to his book THE DOC'S NOTES: Talking Medicine the Easy Way. You don't have to be a doctor to comprehend the secrets of health and disease revealed on the book's pages.
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