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If you are sick and want to get well.... you need to heal!  Does your body have the ability to heal or do you think you need to take drugs to heal?  This is a mystery that usually doctors would like to keep from you.  For mysteries usually can be revealed by magic, as by magicians in a black cloak pulling a rabbit out of the hat.  Likewise, doctors in a white cloak, like the power of giving drugs to sick patients to heal them. 

The question is: Do drugs really heal a sick patient? This article endeavors to answer this mystery.

Healing means making whole!  It has been a magic power and mystery that ancient medicine men and healers appeared to use to heal their sick people.  Although the Greeks did not fully understand healing, "the ancient Greeks perceived medicine as a gift from the gods." Osborn: Greek Medicine  Greek mythology is full of symbolic legends and allegories explaining the nature and origins of the art of healing. But at the core of Greek vision of healing was health "Hygiene is the science of self healing. It is the art of personal health maintenance and disease prevention. Ancient Greek Medicine is basically just an elaborate and sophisticated system of hygiene."  Osborn: Greek Medicine

Ancient records of healing dating back to the Egyptians, Greeks and Chinese reveal that medicine and healing were practiced as an art and science of those days. 2300 years ago, the concept of just treating, or covering up the symptoms of illness was foreign to the Greek doctor, Hippocrates, and the people of his time. Instead, he insisted that prevention of disease was the primary focus of healthcare and this was achieved through a diet of nutritional food and exercise to prevent sickness and improve one’s overall health. He was quoted as saying, "Let food be thy medicine, thy medicine shall be thy food". His teachings stressed the importance of prevention of disease, not just the treatment of symptoms.

Yes, ancient healers including native American healing, often used plant based medications accompanied by rituals that resembled religious ceremonies. And yes, many of their patients did heal and regain good health. Their social status in the tribe was enough reward as compensation.

Native American healing  Length 2:59 mns.

Today, medical doctors prescribe a variety of mediations with the assumption that these potions will help heal the sick.  But the evidence is weak or missing to support such assumptions.

Here is a simplistic explanation of the beginning of natural body healing: ... inflammation that may include all or some of the symptoms of redness, temperature, swelling, and pain. Sorochan: Pain Ouch it hurts 2011

Rey Marvin Espina - ACUTE INFLAMMATION 2009

Physiology of healing:  What happens when your body is healing?  Medical doctor, Julie Silver, is a physiatrist specializing in the field of physical medicine and rehabilitation, explains how the body reacts to injury:  Silver: Super healing 2008

Medical doctors confirm that the body can heal itself:

Recognize healing in your body: To understand healing as a body process, you need to be aware that we have many body sensors that can detect the status of your health. You need to listen to your body and understand that your body is really trying to tell you is that the symptoms like pain and swelling or inflammation are trying to heal you. Pain is an intelligent messenger of your injury. It can direct you to avoid further injury. But pain killers dull the pain and artificially block the pain messages. Heal listen to your body

Lets face it honestly: When you are injured, your body reacts with immediate pain and swelling in the injured body area. You may want to get medications to relieve suffering from pain and discomfort from a doctor if you are injured; or you have an infection and need antibiotics. However, getting such medication help does not necessarily speed up healing.

Injury, Pain & Healing: Dr. Prodromos succinctly explains all of this: "Our bodies are amazingly good at telling us what is ok to do with an injury and what is not. All we have to do is be good listeners to what our bodies are telling us. Avoiding pain allows healing. Persisting in painful activities causes more damage and slows healing. What could be simpler?" Prodromos: No pills healin

"Pain signals us that damage or death has occurred to the cells in the affected area. The problem is that we tend to want to heal even faster and attempt to provide treatments or medications to improve on Mother Nature – and we can’t. This basic natural healing rate is, in fact, the best we can do. We have nothing that can accelerate it, but we can – and do – slow our down our recoveries in misguided attempts to improve it. This is all well established in the scientific literature. However the popularity of these treatments is not about science. Instead it is about giving people what they want, even if it doesn’t really exist. The business of selling treatments and medications to hasten healing from musculoskeletal injuries is a gigantic and very profitable industry. Often the treatments and medications are wrapped in complicated medical jargon. These treatments usually make us “feel good” (pain relieving pills, massages, braces, sports creams etc.) even though they are not helping us get better. The claims of success are not lies, just carefully worded inferences of success, which are nonetheless misleading. However, patients are looking for something that works and there is no end of sources to satisfy this desire even though none are effective." Prodromos: No pills healing

Danger of pain killers:

How Do Pain Relievers Work? - George Zaidan  length 4:15mns.

"When you take an NSAID [ ibuprofen, naproxen, high-dose asperin ], you feel better because the drug blocks the feelings of pain that your body is producing. However, NSAIDs do not get rid of the pain; they only keep you from feeling it for awhile. Pain is you body’s way of telling you that something is wrong and damage is being done to some part of your body. When you don’t feel the pain, you may use the injured area more and actually hurt it more because you are not feeling the pain. When the medication wears off, the pain is worse than before. Or, if you keep taking the pain pills, eventually the pain gets so bad that you can feel it even while you are still taking the drugs. If treated promptly, many pains can be resolved and the damage reversed. If you wait until the pain (and therefore the damage) is much worse, it may be much more difficult to eliminate the pain. For example, a patient with a partially torn rotator cuff in the shoulder can usually heal if they rest their shoulder. However taking pain medications or getting cortisone shots will diminish their pain and allow greater use of the arm. This results in an increased chance that they will tear the tendon completely and require surgery – which could and should have been avoided." Prodromos: No pills healing

"Multiple studies have shown that using NSAIDs can slow the healing of broken bones, damaged ligament and other tissues. If you are trying to heal the damage done to a knee, shoulder or other joint, using NSAIDs can significantly lengthen the healing time." Prodromos: No pills healing

"Ironically this is because these drugs do exactly what they are advertised to do: i.e. block inflammation. The problem is that inflammation is part of the necessary steps in healing: a normal, necessary and useful response."  Prodromos: No pills healing

Some exceptions:  "In cases where the normal inflammatory mechanism is not working properly, such as in auto immune diseases like rheumatoid arthritis or lupus, interfering with the inflammatory cascade is beneficial. In these situations, the body’s immune system is attacking itself and blocking inflammation diminishes this self destruction. It is for diseases such as these that NSAIDs are a good treatment. However in injured patients with normal immune systems, blockade of the inflammatory cascade is only interfering with a step in what is otherwise a remarkably effective self healing mechanism. This mechanism has been honed over millions of years of evolution to heal us with maximum speed and efficacy."  Prodromos: No pills healing

What About Ice or Cold Therapy?  "It may surprise you to know that there is no evidence that cooling an injured part helps it heal. Cold has two effects. It can decrease blood flow to an area and decreases swelling. But our bodies specifically increase blood flow to an area to bring nutrients there to help healing. So why do we think it is useful to diminish this natural response to injury? The answer is that there is no reason to think that it is useful except that it gives patients something to do to feel that they are helping the area to heal; and it gives practitioners something to prescribe. There is no reason to think that cold is harmful either (except for the occasional skin ice burn) but you should be aware that all the trouble of keeping an area cold is probably not helping."  Prodromos: No pills healing

Why are the Above Described Non-Helpful Treatments so Popular?   "The reason that all these methods stay popular is twofold. First, people, understandably, want to avoid pain and get back to doing everything they were doing before the injury as quickly as possible. The big reason however, is that clever marketing has left consumers with the impression that these medications help them heal faster. The ads don’t come out and say this directly. They can’t because it is simply not true. But the impression is implied. In my experience most patients do not like taking pills or using other treatments that are only pain killers. The appeal of these treatments is that patients believe they speed up healing. Once they are told that faster healing does not occur, they usually want to stop taking the medications. This is particularly true once they realize how these products can actually interfere with healing, and have severe side effects as well."  Prodromos: No pills healing

We have a fantastic natural healing mechanism honed over millions of years of evolution to heal our wounds. When you reduce, modify, or eliminate activities that cause pain, you give your body’s natural healing abilities the chance to work. This is your absolute best opportunity to heal.

Best Food Healers:  Whether a patient's wound is the result of an injury or surgery, proper healing requires optimal nutrition. Wound healing sets off a complex chain of events that involves increased cellular activity and an intensified metabolic demand for nutrients.  Patients who don't have enough nutrients to meet this increased demand are at risk for delayed healing, infection, longer hospital stays, and even death.

The following foods help healing:  Axe: Foods that heal 2016  Sorochan Co-factors

Calcium – The major mineral in bones is calcium, so try to include foods high in this important mineral such as sea vegetables, green leafy vegetables, salmon, sardines with bones, and unsweetened cultured dairy like yogurt, kefir, and amasai.  

Vitamin K foods – Kale, broccoli, spinach, and other greens are high in vitamin K1, and raw dairy products like cheese and kefir are high in vitamin K2 which is essential for blood clotting, bone formation and healing.

Amino acids – The body cannot rebuild lost tissue without proteins or amino acids [protein]. You can get amino acids from white meat and vegetables seeds like peas, beans and nuts.  Amino acids are rich in healing minerals like zinc, copper, manganese, chromium, magnesium and molybdenum.  Amino acids also facilitate the transport of these minerals to healing sites.

Vitamin C – Is essential for manufacturing collagen an essential component of skin and tissues. Increase your intake of vitamin C rich fruits and vegetables such as citrus fruits, bell peppers, strawberries, and tomatoes.

Vitamin D - essential for healing. Works as cofactor.

Zinc – The chemical reactions necessary to rebuild the bone requires zinc. To increase your intake of zinc, add white meat, pumpkin seeds, and spinach to your diet.

Organic sulfur [MSM] -- sulfur reduces pain and heals. It is overlooked as an essential nutrient of health

Magnesium --  can help alleviate pain

B-complex vitamins - help in the healing process

Boron -- involved in metabolism of humans, essential in bone healing, ease pain and inflammation

Hyaluronic acid and cereasmide -- has anti-inflammatory effect; helps heal ody

Iodine -- all body cells need iodine and not just the thyroid gland. All body cells need adequate amounts of iodine to function optimally, activate immune system and help healing. Ingest  Lugol's solution

The idea that all of these suggested nutrients help in the healing process is still true but now somewhat outdated and has been updated by methylation. Methylation is the addition of a methyl group  [CH3 ] to another molecule that act as switches that control body metabolism and body processes, including healing.  Methylation unifies nutrients and requires that all nutrients work together in unision. The whole is greater than the part!

In the methylation process, these nutrients need each other and other helpers, or co-factors, to heal the body. These do not work by themselves! For example, vitamin D works best when magnesium, zinc, calcium, iodine, organic sulfur, vitamin K2, vitamin A, vitamin C and boron are available, in proper amounts, at the same time in the body. The mineral co-factors are bound together with amino acids to form metallic-enzymes and co-enzymes. These assist co-factors in metabolic transactions that speed up healing processes.

Why healing can take longer for a multiple injuries: The body has limitations on the healing resources. You may have more than one health problem to fix in the body. Unhealed parts of a body system that have not completely healed as in an incubating disease may interfere and slow down the healing of another more immediate injury problem. You and your doctor may not know this. So if you were to accidentally injure a body joint, or become bacteriogically infected [cold or flu'], it may take longer for you to heal the injured part of the body. The healing process will slow down when you have more than one body problem to heal. This issue is usually overlooked or ignored by medical doctors; for they do not have a complete and accurate picture of all your body systems that may be broken and need fixing. So, you may have an incubating disease while at the same time suffering from a bone fracture. Thus, instead of the bone fracture healing in about two months, it may take much, much longer, for many of the same healing chemistry that is needed to fix the bone may also being siphoned off by healing the incubating disease.

Although good research is missing on the healing of multiple body parts, this author surmises that the body likes to heal all broken parts at the same time and as quickly as possible. The whole is bigger and more important than the part!

Nothing seems to works .... what's wrong?  Recent research recognizes that the bacteria in the large intestine [colon] do have a big impact on your health.  Yes, many aspects of well-being may be impacted by a surplus of bad bacteria in the colon, including healing. So you need to balance out the the good bacteria [80%] with the bad bacteria [20%]. Once you have done this and stabilized the colon bacteria, then the immune system will work better, faster and healing will also be quicker.

Best healing therapy? Rest and stop using the injured body. Time-out! Give your body time to heal! Eat a proper balance of foods that provide the nutrients for healing and methylation!

Besides realizing that we our body can heal naturally, we also need to heal the medical system. Doctors need to upgrade their skills of healing. Dr. Mark Hyman  Hyman: Healing autoimmune diseases  suggests encouraging medical doctors to retrain in Functional Medicine:

Atul Gawande: Healing medicine

Summary:

Drugs do not heal! A good balanced diet provides the nutrients, along with exercise, that in unison help the body to heal in a natural way. Pain and inflammation are part of the healing process. Some nutrients, like magnesium , vitamins C and D-3 and their co-factors can help in relieving pain and inflammation. When the body is exposed to sunlight, sunlight itself has healing powers.

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Feedback to author email: wsorochan@gmail.com