Your Illness Fingerprint

We thoroughly understand the idea that each of us is completely unique just like a fingerprint. We can be very similar, such as identical twins, but our decisions, our life experience, emotions, illnesses, injuries, traumas, chemicals and toxin exposures will all conspire to gradually separate us even further into our own unique state.

So if this is true, then why is our conventional medical system designed to provide assembly-line medical care as though we are all identical? As soon as we are provided with our “label” it’s a computer-pprogrammed list of needed tests, then secondary tests, then the first medication, the second medication and then a third to combat the side effects of the first two. The only other option is surgery with very little instruction on how our bodies should or will recover. So let’s agree that this approach is very limited and is wonderful if you are hit by a truck, but misses the mark once you have any type of chronic symptoms.

This approach makes it difficult to know when we should seek medical guidance and it makes even more difficult for us to receive a solution.

This is where natural medicine steps up. Not only is natural medicine great at prevention, it is an incredible resource for understanding your unique illness fingerprint. Since our journey to where we stand at this moment is unlike any other person on the planet, we are making a great mistake by insisting on accepting a “label”. Instead we need to understand that these “labels” are simply more guideposts to what the real issues are.

Let’s look at a woman who has had the worst period imaginable since she was 12. Now that she is in her mid-20’s, she might be thinking about wanting to have a baby … or she might be just thinking that she wants to have her uterus ripped out because she can’t take all the monthly drama that has extended itself throughout her month, every month.

The biggest question is always going to be “WHY”.

Why is this happening and how did it start? Conventional medicine has a name for this, in fact a few names for this including dysmenorrhea, menorrhagia, PMDD. Now if you look up each of these you will see a description of symptoms, because that all there is, these are labels that describe symptoms. There is nothing to tell you why.

Now if you are lucky, your OB/GYN will tell you that it could be ovarian cysts, sexually transmitted diseases, pelvic inflammatory disease (another description by symptom), birth control pills or just that’s the way your body is (which is usually chalked up to genetics, more on that below).

I’m here to tell you no such thing. If you really want to discover why this is your monthly sentence, then you need to dig deeper and really evaluate your illness fingerprint, the history of your body through its life. In that you will discover that there may have been the straw that broke your camel’s back, but this was a combination of factors that built upon each other and eventually overwhelmed your body’s ability to keep a balance with your female hormones.

Now you can substitute high cholesterol, high blood pressure, chronic skin problems, fatigue, A-Fib or even ADD. If you are taking a medication for any of these conditions, do you actually know why you have the symptoms you do? Do you assume that if a medication has made your tests look more normal, then you must be better? You might be shocked to learn that your body may have only compensated for the problem, not that the problem is resolved. The medication may just be blocking your body’s normal response or your body’s awareness of the issue. Is that really better?

The two most You-Tube rated, Dr. Google or AI factors that everyone now thinks are the ultimate explanations for just about everything are inflammation and genetics.

Let’s take inflammation first. Inflammation is a result, not a cause. Your body does not create or produce inflammation without a reason. Inflammation is the first step in the body addressing any threat or danger, in other words, in responding to an assault. Now that can be an irritation, like inflamed sinuses when you breathe in some horrid thing, or it can be due to an invasion such as a bacteria, fungus, virus or parasite. Inflammation is also the first step in the healing process. You can’t have healing without it, so simply assuming that inflammation is bad or that it is the cause of your symptoms is way too simplistic. You have to dig deeper and discover why your body is creating the inflammation because otherwise you will be living with cortisol shots, steroid medications, pain relievers or nerve blocks.

So I want to encourage you to do two things whenever you have an issue. Ask why until you are at the core of the problem and seek out a natural perspective so that you understand how to prevent this from happening again in the future.

Because conventional medicine isn’t about prevention, it’s about waiting until your condition and symptoms reach a critical point where they will be detectable in blood testing, CT scans, X-Rays or ultrasounds. You want treatment that is not just based on a label that describes your symptoms, you want it to be based on the underlying reason for your illness.

You want to be treated like the unique individual that you truly are.