Your Body is the Best Remedy

Imagine you are working at your desk and suddenly one of the fluorescent lights overhead starts buzzing. You take notice of it since it is a new stimulus, but don’t think much of it. The longer it persists, however, the more annoying it becomes. But, eventually you are able to ignore it and continue with your work, until finally you don’t even realize that the buzzing noise still continues. Later that night you walk into a movie theater and are met by the overwhelming smell of fresh popped corn. After some time in the theater, the smell of the corn becomes virtually unnoticeable.

So what changed in the examples above? Did the light stop buzzing? Did the aroma coming from the popcorn machine diminish? Or did your body simply adapt to the situation? The answer, of course, is that you adapted to the external stimuli. The body is designed to do so in order to avoid sensory overload.

Adaptation is a good thing when you are dealing with a trivial nuisance that should not garner an inordinate amount of your focus, but what about when you are dealing with more important stimuli pertaining to your health? More specifically, is it a good thing or a bad thing when you adapt to a stimulus if that trigger happens to be a bodily symptom? That depends in part on the nature of the symptom, but in general it is not a good thing to simply ignore your body’s signals until they eventually fade into the background.

Coughing, sneezing, fever, vomiting, diarrhea: these are all natural reactive stimuli that are designed to rid the body of foreign substances or irritants all to help the body maintain a healthy state of balance. When you are “sick” your body reacts the way it does for a reason. If you are infected with a bacteria or virus, the body brilliantly raises its core temperature to burn up the invader. When the infection is caught and eliminated, your body temperature normalizes again. Remember, your body gets sick from an infection, not sick from a fever. Treating the fever does not address the infection. Without the essential survival stimulations of elimination, we would risk dying at the first exposure of poison or pathogenic attacks.

Understand that when you are simply addressing a symptom, whether through your own ability to adapt, or by masking the pain with a medication, you are doing nothing to improve your situation.

Symptoms are your body’s warning system and are there to alert you to an underlying problem. Trying to adapt to (ignore) a continuous symptom is like mentally blocking out the fire alarm while your house burns down around you. Without proper care and attention to your body’s signals, long term accumulation of toxins and stress can weaken the body's natural ability to eliminate. Sometimes a symptom is not so much a symptom as it is a natural response or reaction of the body’s self-healing, self-regulating and self-replicating its own defensive mechanisms.

To be at our absolute healthiest, we must try to rediscover our faith in the human body. A truly healthy body evolves from earning its defenses from the inside out beginning with proper diet, rest, exercise, healthy thoughts and actions. In a similar way, vomiting and diarrhea, as unpleasant as they may be, serve a useful purpose in eliminating toxins from the body.

Naturally, all must be in proper balance so, too much of elimination can also be harmful. Trust your body’s innate wisdom to heal itself, as well, when all else fails, be open to alternative options like Oriental Medicine and Acupuncture.

This is ancient medicine that has and still evolves with humanity for thousands of years. It is natural medicine with the innate wisdom to compliment today’s complexities of nature, modern medicine, and your body’s immune response. Because we all eat, breathe and sleep on this planet we call Earth, equally we are made from the same earthly environment.

Remember that the symptom is not the problem, but a result of the problem. The only effective way to bolster your health and your quality of life is to correct the underlying cause. Getting regular acupuncture treatments can help your body self-adapt and be the ideal remedy toward achieving the quality of life you want!