After five doctor visits to specialists, two scopes, and four drugs, her problems hadn't noticeably improved. Except, now she wasn't sleeping well because of the pain, and was fatigued at work.
What disturbed her was that this had all happened before. During her college years, Janet started having long and severe menstrual cycles that led to anemia (low blood iron that causes fatigue). Her doctor put her on birth control pills, which helped. But her periods had never been right since, and she feared to get off the birth control. Just like her digestive problems, her doctors had no solution, forcing her to live with her health problems.
Health Problems can be a Slippery Slope
Sadly, I can accurately predict Janet's future health. The processes that underlie her problems are not medically treatable and will continue to get worse.
Janet will add a new symptom each year or two from now on. She'll probably develop high cholesterol, joint pain, and more menstrual problems. She may become infertile.
There are thousands of health conditions that are like Janet's, and the onset of these problems can predict that more will appear. Most of these problems have no effective medical cure, only management of symptoms from drugs.
Two Kinds of Health Conditions
Although this isn't the preferred terminology, doctors would agree that health conditions fall into two primary groups:
- Medically curable conditions
- Chronic conditions with no cure that sometimes can have their symptoms managed with lifetime drugs
Here's the difference:
With curable diseases, the symptom of the disease is also the cause of the disease.
Symptom: broken arm
Cause of the symptom: the arm is broken.
If you treat the symptom, you are treating the cause of the problem. Doctors are great at treating specific, observable problems (like bone fractures).
With chronic diseases, there's no apparent cause for the problem. For example, with diabetes, there's no "smoking gun," no observable problem that, if corrected, would resolve the disease. In Janet's case, lab tests and scopes revealed nothing abnormal, so there's nothing for her doctors to treat. The only medical solution is drugs to try to manage the symptoms.
Now the Bad News
Your problem might be relatively minor (acne, heartburn, allergies, sleep problems, back pain, etc.). Or your health could be seriously messing up your life (debilitating fatigue or depression, severe digestive problems, female hormone problems, diabetes, blood pressure, or heart disease).
The Cause of Chronic Disease
Chronic conditions come from a place where you might not think of looking.
Here is what happens:
Your body takes on damage every day of your life just from the process of living. For the past century, this damage has become increasingly more intense with toxins in the air, water, and food, highly-processed food with less nutrition, and constant emotional stress. Happily, your body is designed to monitor, maintain, and repair itself continually.
Chronic health problems begin when your body lags behind in the maintenance and healing process, with the damage happening more rapidly than your body can repair it. This "getting behind" occurs because of some specific stress or damage of a type that your body can't heal.
The process usually starts slowly, with your body compensating for and hiding the damage from you. It can take years for the unrepaired damage to get entirely out of control and force your body to have symptoms. By this time, your body has many malfunctions, but no clear cause for them.
Your health has become a vast tangle of failed attempts by your body to heal itself.
With this confused, tangled, complex damage, it's not a wonder that doctors are at a standstill trying to figure out a solution to these health problems.
