Originally published on Substack: https://jimmurdoch.substack.com/p/the-fallacy-of-health

It has occurred to me that in the various areas of health treatment that many conditions are treated as though they are permanent and present for the rest of the person’s life. Then it occurred to me that the long term treatment of such health conditions may even be causing more ailments or actually making the original condition worse.

Take for example the eyes. We suddenly see blurred, go to the optician, get our eyes tested and are then prescribed glasses. No one asks “How long should I wear them?” And no optician suggests “Try them for a few weeks then see how your eyesight is without the glasses.” No! Glasses prescribed are deemed as permanent. You are from then on a glasses wearer. And each time you go for an eyesight test you are prescribed slightly stronger lenses, meaning your eyesight is getting worse over time.

Then there are the teeth. You get a toothache, or you simply go for a checkup and are told that a tooth has a hole and needs to be filled. So the treatment is deemed permanent. The hole needs dealing with because it will not go away on its own, or so we are told. So how is the hole treated? The dentist makes the hole bigger in order to fill it with some artificial filler. Later in life those fillings will begin to crack and come away. The treatment is the same, make the hole bigger and add new filler. The problem with this method of treating a very small hole is that the bigger the hole is made by the dentist, the less tooth there remains, until eventually the tooth cannot be saved.

General health treatment is no different. You go to the doctor with an ailment and you are prescribed medicine. More often than not the medicine is from then on a permanent daily part of your life, for the rest of your life. No mention is made, usually, of the side effects of the medicine. Read the inserts of any medication you are taking and you will be shocked at the long list of side effects. Once you complain of a side effect, more often than not you are given an additional drug to counteract the side effects of the first drug. But wait, the second drug also has side effects. And on and on it goes. Your health worsens as it becomes dependent on medication.

What has become clear to me over the years is that none of the above approaches to healing are looking at the causes of the ailment. They treat only the symptoms. And even if the treatment has no bad side effects the untreated cause remains and may get worse. And let us not forget that each of these treatment methods are built around a business model of profit. There is no profit in making people healthy.

I am all for alternative health treatment where the modalities seek to get to the root of the problem, deal with the problem, which is often emotional, and thus remove the cause and eliminate the symptom.

My eyesight has improved dramatically since I stopped wearing glasses or lenses years ago. Exercise is also important for the eyes, look into the distance often to keep the eye muscles flexible. There is rumoured an alternative treatment for holes in teeth, but I have yet to discover exactly what that is.

The moral of this article is: every symptom has a cause. Find the cause and avoid permanent treatments and live healthier.