For decades, we have looked to doctors and other professionals who went to school for a long time to fix our ailments. The problem is that much of their training is based on creating patches for broken systems, rather than reconfiguring the whole sytem to eliminate the problem at its root.
Thirteen years ago, the medical system failed me. I had been sick for over a month, put on multiple rounds of antibiotics and finally admitted to the hospital with the prospect of surgery to have my gall bladder removed. $2500 worth of tests later, they discovered that I had a mononucleosis infection at which point they cast me aside and said, “Go home, sleep, drink lots of water.”
That’s all they could offer me. If they had a drug for Epstein Barr virus, they would have given one to me. Someone else might go to the doctor and get an antibiotic for a bacterial infection, and they celebrate their swift recovery – behold our modern medical miracles. Yes, pharmaceutical drugs have their place in the world but the context desperately needs to change.
A true professional in that hospital could have sat on the side of my bed and had another conversation with me. Maybe something simple like this: “Hey, you look and feel like crap. I can see that. But here’s what you need to understand: 98% of the population carries the Epstein Barr virus but not everyone gets acutely ill from it. Why is that? Well, it’s about how well you live your life. Your body became hospitable to this bug. I bet you haven’t been sleeping. Maybe you have a stressful job and then you eat lots of sweets to get some energy. Bottom line: look at how you landed here. This doesn’t happen by accident. Let me give you a business card for a naturopath down the road who can teach you about your body and how to care for it.” Sound ridiculous? Maybe. But how wonderful it would be.
When I got sick, I was sleeping 4 hours a night, eating an obscene amount of sugar, exercising like a maniac, and had a stressful job managing a busy restaurant, and I didn’t really know any better. It’s rarely about the virus or bacteria, instead it’s about making your light shine so the dark riders can’t take hold.
You can’t afford to be a victim and to be uninformed about how your body works. Vitality is your birthright. The ownness is on us now. We have to be the systems analysts for our own bodies and seek out those who can help us reconfigure our bodies holistically. Take a stand for it – you’re worth it.