What causes the disease? What triggers, promotes your recovery? What does it mean to cure? Who or what heals? The doctor? The medications she/he prescribes? The ultrasound beam? Maybe the surgical knife/scalpel? Have you ever thought about these questions? If not, now I’ll help you.
Your body is a complex system
The operation of a single cell in your body is incredibly complicated. Just think about it! It creates new cells instead of your dead cells. Your body renews your skin, nails, hair, blood cells, immune system, digestive enzymes, hormones, etc. It produces a wide variety of substances, proteins, enzymes, hormones, etc., and “spreads them” in your body to where they are actually needed most. It’s like a huge factory.
There are many things that affect the way your body works, such as the weather, the quantity and quality of your nutrition, and your physical activity level. What’s more, …your momentary emotions, sorrows, desires, fears!!! And much more.
What controls the functioning of the body?
Your brain serves as the “body control centre”. It works like a computer that controls machinery, and your nervous system enmeshes your body, brings information back and forth between your cells, organs, and your brain.
To put it very simply, the control can be divided into two main parts.
The involuntary (vegetative or autonomic) nervous system (ANS), which operates automatically, independently of your will. It controls, coordinates, regulates, and monitors the automated operation of billions of your cells using electrical impulses. This determines how many times your heart beats in one minute for a given activity, how much sweat is needed in order to cool your body down to its preferred temperature, how much insulin, trypsin, bile acid and so on, you need to be able to digest food, or how many white blood cells are required for the integrity of your immune system, etc.
You cannot influence these things with your will.
The voluntary (somatic) nervous system (SNS), which can be controlled deliberately. For example, you can determine when to perform an action. Here, you can initiate the operation/action of movement yourself, however, in this case, too, certain automatisms are controlled by the brain. For example, you think of lifting your coffee cup from the table to your mouth. However, you do not consciously control the order in which your muscles contract, or with what intensity and strength they need to contract. Based on the estimated cup weight, distance, etc., the brain calculates the necessary “settings” and “sends” a movement execution command stimulus down to the muscles.
The importance of logistics
As in every factory that works effectively, even in your body, precise logistics ensures the smooth operation. Imagine yourself in the assembly hall of a car factory. The automobile parts are in piles, the cars are also being made, however at the last station, suddenly, they run out of wheel bolts, so the wheels cannot be put in place. Due to the few missing bolts, the entire manufacturing process is stuck, because without wheels, no car can roll off the production line. The whole car plant is paralyzed.
They start investigating the case. It may turn out that there are enough screws in the warehouse, but they did not get to the assembly line in time. (However, it may have happened that they did not order the right type of bolts and something else arrived from the warehouse, …or the warehouseman made a mistake and issued something else, …or the forklift broke down and there were no means of transport to transfer them. It could also have been the case that an external shipment did not arrive on time, …because the carriers were on strike or the road was washed away by flood, etc.).
A thousand reasons could have led to the fact that the production was stopped – the process became “sick”.
How does the disease develop?
To put the process very simply: even your body can only function healthily if all the raw materials are available for renewal, and in the right amount and quality. If anything, even the slightest trace element, is missing, the function runs the wrong way and the disease can develop.
Many times, a quite simple reason, such as the lack of a mineral (calcium, magnesium, potassium, etc.), leads to the inability of your cells to function effectively, thus your body’s immune system is not able to defend itself effectively against a pathogen. Other times, an excessive intake of a substance (such as sugar) leads to problems.
But there can be thousands of other reasons why a “small grain of dust” can get into the machine, so that you would eventually get sick. Injuries, stress, overwork, accidents, malnutrition, and lack of exercise can all trigger unfavourable processes which “turn into” disease over time.
What does it mean to cure?
You may already understand that there can be millions of causes for the disease, let’s also look at how to prevent it!
Returning again to the example of the factory, the shift manager will come and find out the reason for the shutdown. As soon as the right type of bolts arrives, car production can be restarted and the products can be manufactured.
In the complex system of your body, the processes are even more complicated than in a factory, making it harder to find a cure. Healing is an action to restore a healthy condition that is performed or directed by the healer.
A healer can be anyone who can help you find the path to healing. He or she could even be the neighbour who suggests: “Put ice on it!” in case of a twisted ankle. However, anyone who suggests in the same case that you should put your ankle in warm water, is not a healer, as in this case, the heat will be more harmful (increases the bleeding and swelling).
At the medical university, one of the first admonitions for medical students is the proverb: “Medicus curat, natura sanat“. That is, the doctor cures, (but) nature heals.
Some doctors quickly forget this, walking up and down with a huge swollen ego, being extremely confident that they are the great healers. Yet in most cases, the doctor has at most contributed to the recovery! He removed the obstacle that stood in the way of healing or was just beginning to use a method that restored the self-healing processes.
In fact, your own body will heal you!
The role of the doctor, nurse, physical therapist, etc. is to guide your body on this self-healing path. In the case of appendicitis, the doctor surgically removes the inflamed appendix – without this intervention, your body really would not be able to heal. But the healing, the wound healing already depends on your body.
Isn’t that clear? I believe you!
Just think back to when you broke a bone. The doctor examines you and states the fact of bone fracture, gypsum fixation is applied right away. You don’t get any medicine, don’t even see the doctors until 3 months later and TA-DAH, your broken bone is healed!
But who the hell healed you? The doctors? The gypsum/plaster cast? NO… your body.
Another example: you cut deep into your finger with a knife. Who heals the wound? Who repairs it? You didn’t even see a doctor, did you???
Your body’s natural ability to self-heal and regenerate is enormous, these processes must be assisted in order to heal.
What is symptomatic therapy?
A method that does not cure the disease, but makes a symptom “invisible.” Your shoulder hurts, and you get a painkiller. It doesn’t help anything in the healing process, but you don’t suffer as much.
You will get an antihypertensive drug for your high blood pressure. It suppresses the blood pressure but the medication does not cure high blood pressure. This is shown by the fact that if you accidentally do not take the medicine, your blood pressure will rise.
Symptomatic therapy is just like when a toddler covers his/her eyes during the hide-and-seek game and thinks he/she is hiding. The disease is still there, destroying your body, your organs – but it just doesn’t show up because “it is masked by the received systemic medication”.
Physical therapy methods promote the healing process
It’s a fact that physical therapy methods help and are proven to work, they can only be harmful when used completely incorrectly. The use of ultrasound, soft laser, pulsed magnetic field, microcurrent or other natural methods may be beneficial for you. Of course, each one works differently and you can expect a different effect from it. If you use the right one, it will definitely help. This is a proven fact.
If you’ve gotten this far with reading this article, you already understand that it’s not the ultrasound beam, laser light, magnetic field, electric current, etc., that heals, but those physiological processes that they initiate in your body during and after treatment.
Most diseases are such conditions in which your body’s own self-healing processes stop. For example, the cells of inflamed tissues do not produce energy, the production of “self-repairing materials” stops (protein synthesis) and thus they do not heal. We need something to push them out of this frozen state.
Treatment, physical therapy, does nothing but helps initiate the beneficial processes. However, the healing itself is done by nature, that is, your body!
The right tool and the right application
However, for the adequate effect, you need to choose the right tool and apply it in the right way. Everyone and every disease is unique, that is, a specialist in this field has to tell you what you need to use. You can learn from him/her also which type of treatment to use.
Why is it important to choose the right tool?
Let’s take a kitchen example: You need pot for cooking, baking. You need different types of cookware for preparing different types of dishes e.g., when cooking a soup, baking a roast, or a cake. You use different sized pots if you cook only for yourself, for the family, or for a larger group of friends.
If you only have a cake tin, you won’t make soup for the family. Do you understand what I’m trying to explain to you?
Just because you have an ultrasound device, you may not be able to treat a particular problem with it.
Why is it important to use the device properly?
If the treatment is not carried out in an appropriate manner, for example, if you treat for too short a time, too few times or with the wrong intensity, you will not get the effect either. If you overdo it, you can even hurt yourself.
A very simple example is sunbathing. 20-30 minutes of sunbathing will warm you up pleasantly and when repeated for a few days, you’ll get a tan. If you sit in the shade in a dress, the sun will have little effect on you, you certainly won’t get a tan, although you may warm up a bit. On the other hand, if you lie down for 3 hours in the sun, you will not only get a tan, but doing so will actually destroy your skin.
How fast does physical therapy work?
Physical therapy methods are usually do not work rapidly, in most cases they may take several weeks, up to 30-40 treatments, or even more to take effect. This is precisely because it is not directly these treatments that heal, but the regenerative processes in your body – and they are this slow. Thus, a bone fracture heals in about 2-3 months, and a cut wound in 10 days. Your body can also deal with a persistent inflammation in a few weeks.
But there is certainly no miracle cure that can help in days.
You may ask why do they only give 10 treatments in the outpatient clinics and why not as many as you need for your recovery? This is simply a financial issue. That’s how many treatments are covered by the health insurance.
Home medical devices are designed to enable you to continue treatments at home until you recover. At the moment, in most of European countries, few home medical devices are covered (partially or fully) by the insurance and can be prescribed.
Please, read my article titled “What can home medical technology be used for?“.
Indication is science
Expertise is required to determine which methods will help and which are excluded from use, in case of a given diagnosis.
The doctor, the physical therapist, the physiotherapist, masseur, etc. are the specialists who, in the light of the results of the medical examination, can recommend treatment methods and help you.
Unfortunately, many of these professionals do not take the time to follow up on the latest methods and help you with treatment options beyond medication or surgery.
If you want to heal, look for a professional who is not only aware of the medications but also the use of natural energies (i.e., physical therapy methods).