Don’t Shoot the Messenger

I’m going to commit some medical heresy. Ready… Symptoms are not your enemy. Actually, symptoms are your friends.

What?

If you stop reading at this point, I get it. But for those of you willing to hear another perspective, those of you with an open mind, read on!

OK, how can symptoms be my friend?

First, let’s delve into the current prevailing thinking on symptoms, that is, symptoms are something that need to be gotten rid of as quickly as possible and then we can go on our merry way because we are healthy again. For example a fever. Fevers are treated quickly and efficiently with aspirin or some other over-the-counter remedy. High-blood pressure is medicated quickly with sometimes several different pharmaceuticals and typically blood pressure comes down. Cholesterol? Take a statin. Whatever symptom presents itself needs to be dealt with, from the outside.

But is this a wise choice? Does a lack of symptoms mean we are healthy?

In a word, no. To both questions.

Symptoms are the body’s warning system that something is out of balance. They are messengers, not enemies. Have you ever heard the expression, don’t shoot the messenger? Of course you have. Yet this is exactly how our medical system works.  A lot of time and resources are consumed attempting to get rid of symptoms. All the while our bodies are begging to be heard. We end up shooting the messenger instead!

Seems backwards to me.

A better approach would be to ask the never obvious question. What is the body trying to say with these symptoms?

Here are a few examples to consider. And a few considerations for what our bodies might be trying to tell us.

Fevers? Fevers are a common symptom to tell us we are under attack. It is a defense mechanism. Raising our internal temperature is an elegant way for the body to make an inhospitable internal environment for any would be intruders. We encounter bugs and germs daily, hourly, and our immune system usually deals with them automatically. Part of the defense is to make the intruders unwelcome by turning up the heat. What is the body saying? “Hey let me do what I was designed to do; turn up the heat!” But typically we prefer to get rid of the fever. We shoot the messenger. And by the way there is no correlation between the intensity of the fever and the virulence of the intruder. According to the late Dr. Mendelssohn, brain damage doesn’t occur until 107′. So relax a little and let your body work. Does it really make sense to stop the fever? Is it really the enemy or a friend?

Blood pressure? Elevated blood pressure is a pretty common symptom. Consider with elevated blood pressure the liver and the kidneys, the two primary filters in the body, are often congested, they get sluggish, they can’t filter the blood fast enough and pressure mounts. If your kidneys and liver are asking for help, does it make sense to artificially bring the blood pressure down to “normal” levels? Is high-blood pressure a friend or foe?

Cholesterol? Nothing strikes fear into people like “your cholesterol is too high”. (a more comprehensive discussion on cholesterol is in the works.) Simply put, your body needs cholesterol in every single cell, totaling trillions of cells. Cholesterol is produced in the liver and carried in the blood stream all over the place for repairs of cell walls and to make hormones. Your body knows how much it needs to make all this work. And if you don’t eat enough of it, like eggs, your body will just make more to get the balance right. And everyone is different. Shocking. Does it make sense to artificially suppress this mechanism in order to meet the random 200 number? I have known two men, my father being one, who both had heart attacks with there cholesterol in the 170’s. Both were on statins. So, what could a higher level of cholesterol mean? It could mean that you need more cholesterol! It could also mean your gallbladder is sluggish and unable to process and dispose of the LDL cholesterol. Why not look at gallbladder function? Because shooting the messenger, bringing down that pesky cholesterol number with a drug, is a lot more fun!

So, let me ask the question one more time, is getting rid of the symptom, ie suppressing it, really dealing with the problem? Or are we just shooting the messenger?

Are symptoms really the enemy?

Before you begin a new drug or have something cut out, check with us. Bringing your body back into balance, with nutrition and/or exercise and/or supplements, while paying attention to what your body might be telling us through symptoms, is a better way to go.

Trust me.

Symptoms are your friends.

Cheers,

KS

Reprinted with permission from Swaim Chiropractic.  

Image from iStock/AmnajKhetsamtip.