How Can We Begin To Trust the Wisdom of Our Symptoms?

Our bodies are talking to us through symptoms — but in Western medicine, we often mask, rather than listen.

I am not a doctor, and I by no means want to discredit modern Western medicine. But I do want to challenge how we frame disease and, especially, its symptoms, by offering an alternative perspective.

To begin, let’s clearly define each.

A disease is an abnormal condition of a part, organ, or system of an organism resulting from various causes, such as infection, inflammation, environmental factors, or genetic defect, characterized by a group of symptoms.

A symptom is a physical or mental feature which is regarded as indicating a condition of disease, particularly such a feature that is apparent to the patient.

How we define diseases and symptoms determines how we treat them

We can only find a solution to a problem if we know what the problem is in the first place. When doctors are tasked to solve our health problems, they diagnose what is wrong based on the symptoms we exhibit, and they determine treatments based on the diagnosed disease.

This approach can work very well, as illustrated by a simple example:

A patient diagnosed with the flu will endure symptoms such as high fever, coughing, and a sore throat. They are a display of the body’s immune system fighting the root cause, the influenza virus, which it’s capable to do without treatment. Therefore the prescription is rest, and the prevention is a vaccine.

Then there are patients who are diagnosed with disorders such as “Irritable Bowel Syndrome” (IBS), which is “a group of intestinal symptoms that typically occur together”, such as cramping, abdominal pain, bloating and constipation. It’s estimated that around 10–15% of US adults suffer from IBS. The cause, however, is unknown. And since the cause is unknown, treatment is usually restricted to easing symptoms, which can often involve medication.

We can find a similar pattern in mood disorders, let’s take for example one of the most common ones, depression.

The main symptoms of depression are feelings of emptiness, sadness or hopelessness, loss of interest, suicidal thoughts, decreased sexual desire, fatigue, difficulty concentrating and insomnia. There is a diverse range of potential causes, from family history to childhood trauma, brain structure, and other medical conditions, as well as substance abuse. Around 7% of US adults have a Major Depressive episode in a given year.

The standard Western treatment for depression, medication such as SSRIs, is not only ineffective with a large share of patients but often doesn’t treat the root cause for most patients. Because manipulating the brain’s serotonin release would assume that the only or major cause is brain chemistry, which may be the case but often it’s not. It disregards lifestyle choice, diet, suppressed emotion, trauma, and anything else that may impact our mood. But instead of getting to the actual root cause, we prescribe anti-depressants to mask the feelings and mental states that make everyday life unbearable. If the patient can afford it, it may be complemented with talk therapy. But we don’t investigate the root cause of family history, or actually analyze brain scans, or work to release trauma stored away in the patient’s subconscious.

Many people are helped by medication.

However, when it’s time to get off the medication once we feel better, it’s not unlikely that symptoms will resurface, since we haven’t treated the root cause.

Symptoms are our body’s main tool to talk to us, which is difficult when we mute rather than listen

This poses a dilemma for the patient: By taking the medication we mask the symptoms, which may prevent us from identifying the root cause. With that, the sustainability and effectiveness of the treatment become questionable.

Most people don’t like the idea of taking medication for the rest of their life.

But what, then, is the alternative?

Our bodies want to be healthy, they strive for homeostasis at all times. When we display symptoms, it means there is something going on that prevents our body from doing so.

What if the IBS is caused by a damaged gut lining, a food intolerance, or excessive stress? If we never go through the process of testing hypotheses and letting our bodies react, we have no chance of curing ourselves.

What if the depression is caused by childhood abuse or is simply the result of a nutritional deficiency that was the cause of the depleted brain chemistry to begin with? Taking medication will shut down our chance to investigate what is throwing our mood out of balance.

When we intervene in the bodies intelligent communication system, we won’t know what changes are actually improving our health — we lose the opportunity to test and see.

Our symptoms will persist for as long as we don’t make changes that address the root cause

Let’s use an intriguing and extreme anecdote to illustrate the persistence of symptoms:

In ancient Shamanism around the world, shamans are often referred to as “wounded healers” who have suffered severe illness at some point in their life. Symptoms often resemble what Western medicine would categorize as psychiatric disorders (hearing voices, seeing things, and so on). Rather than being diagnosed with a psychosis, ancient cultures will view these symptoms as a sign of the individual’s special gifts and calling to become a healer. The only way to permanently overcome these conditions and symptoms is to “answer the calling” and enter the lengthy and painful process of Shamanic initiation. The symptoms will not go away until the individual answers their calling to become a shaman.

Similarly, feelings of emptiness that are a result of a void created during childhood will not subside if we take medication. Unless we make the beliefs that we adopted as a result of early trauma conscious and find ways to release them, these mental states will continue to accompany us. We may mask our bowel discomfort with medication but our bowels will not heal until we identify that our gut is sensitive to gluten or that we need to leave the job that is robbing us of our last nerve every day.

True healing awaits when we go into dialogue with our body

The path to uncover and treat the root cause is rarely the easier one, but it’s often the more rewarding one.

An IBS patient may eliminate various foods from their diet and have every intention to heal their gut only to find that the problem is not gut or diet-related, but rather behavioral. Someone with depression may spend years in psychotherapy to uncover wounds of the past, only to find they are not able to fully heal and release them through talk therapy or by taking medication.

But what we do get when we embark — and remain — on this genuine healing journey is wisdom and, eventually, freedom. As well as the intimate understanding that if we recognize physical symptoms as a valid communication channel between our mind, body, and soul, we can find ways to listen and respond in a way that brings about lasting wellness.

The emerging field of functional medicine offers hope but face a big obstacle: Big pharma

What if instead of mass diagnosing conditions such as IBS and depression based on common symptoms, we would truly diagnose and treat the root cause?

Unfortunately, in Western medicine, we have systems and structures in place that counteract such efforts. The share of Americans taking anti-depressants increased from 8% in 2002 to 13% of 2014. Big pharma makes over $200 billion on medication each year. Yet, the share of depression continues to rise. Research is financed by Big pharma and will thus primarily go into commercially viable treatments — changes your diet or lifestyle don’t make anyone any money, after all.

But there is hope: In the emerging fields of functional medicine, integrative health and ancient Eastern medicines, the doctrine of treating root causes is far more prevalent. Functional doctors may combine Western medicine with holistic health practices with the aim to treat the root cause in the most natural way possible. The integrative approach to health is gaining popularity across the country. Treatments such as Acupuncture, a modality from Traditional Chinese Medicine that manages the body’s energy (or Qi) are becoming more common as research proves their validity. Large clinical trials on psychedelic-assisted therapies and plant medicines are rolling out across the globe. And there is the wellness movement with all its superfoods, yoga, and meditation (and perhaps sometimes more obscure treatments).

The judge is still out on whether these “root cause” approaches are more effective than “symptom treatments”. There may be limited scientific evidence for many of these approaches, but there is a difference between the absence of evidence and the evidence of absence.

As long as these treatments lack scientific research, they will continue to not be recognized by insurances. And this will make it hard for practitioners to scale new (and ancient) alternative concepts. Providing access for those patients that are ill-served by current treatment protocols will continue to be a key challenge.