Our self-healing ability.          by Dr. Kris Van Kerckhoven (Belgium - Europe)

What is it and how can we enhance (or: improve/enable/incite…) it?

I will not discuss the ‘classics’ of illness and health here, i.e. an unhealthy diet with, on the one hand a shortage of vitamins and minerals, and on the other hand too many harmful substances and a lack of exercise leading to energy blockages and bad circulation. Of course one must eat healthily and get enough exercise, but there is more to it than that. Often, understanding health and illness is like putting together pieces of a puzzle. What follows is just like that — you will see many pieces of our health puzzle, some specific disease complaints, and some reasons behind them. Look at these pieces and observe what happens when we can see the relationships between the pieces as well as the whole picture.

Let me start at the beginning. When healthy children get sick or hurt themselves, they have all the necessary instruments on board to cure themselves. Children heal quickly. They don’t have any blockages, so their energy flows freely and their body is their best doctor. If we compare this to some older people, then it’s obvious that their wounds don’t heal that easily anymore and that diseases often become ‘chronic’.

Consider the self-healing power, which is still intact in a child. It works when there is an acute illness or infectious disease. The child gets a fever and feels tired. This fatigue compels it to rest. The child is in pain, so it doesn’t feel like walking around. It has no appetite and therefore can hardly eat anything. In short, the body gets these symptoms to be able to concentrate on healing. If you want your child or yourself to heal as quickly as possible, the best thing to do is not to take any medication, but to follow your body’s internal language. In case of an infectious disease, give the disease a few days, in expectation of recovery. Do this in confidence. Healing can occur. Put the child in bed (because it feels tired) with a lot of blankets on top of it, because when you are feverish, you feel cold, and let the child eat when it feels hungry. Often you don’t  - or hardly - eat in such a case.

Fever has a function. Because your temperature rises when you’re feverish, your immune system works faster, and bacteria and viruses are weakened. It is therefore very illogical and even counteractive to take antipyretics and artificially cool the body. Rest, so that the energy of your body can go to your immune system. And not eating? What good could that do? Well, a high blood sugar level counteracts the immune system. Bacteria and viruses need sugar to grow and multiply. So, depriving them of sugar is beneficial and usually the body’s natural response.

Let’s look at the chronic diseases, as acute illnesses heal in the end, whatever you do. My experience as a doctor is that too few questions are usually asked when a patient has a chronic disease and that treatment is started far too soon and is mainly symptomatic in nature. A few examples of common chronic diseases are rheumatism, back, neck and shoulder complaints, chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS), fibromyalgia (FM), and myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME).

First of all, let’s look at the complaints one by one:

1. Rheumatism: the immune system is overactive, so antibodies are produced against the body’s own cells. As a result, inflammatory reactions occur in the joints. Moreover, these reactions are fierce and can eventually even lead to real deformation of the joints.

2. Back, neck and shoulder complaints: back and neck complaints often go together with disc complaints (bulging of the intervertebral disc or hernia). Back, neck, and shoulder complaints involve tense muscles. As a result of this, the patient can get ‘stuck’ (lumbago, frozen shoulder).

When having back and neck complaints, the nerve can be affected with radiant pain and numbness. Paralysis can even occur.

3. With CFS,FM, and ME, an alternating pattern of many fluctuating symptoms occurs, and usually there are also complaints of fatigue and exhaustion, muscle tensions, pain in tissues, muscles, joints, inflammation, poor sleep, a touch of flu, anxiety, as well as back, neck and shoulder complaints. There is magnesium loss, often a headache or migraine, and gastrointestinal disorders (sometimes even leaky gut and intestinal candida). Concentration and memory problems occur, and a general feeling of not being able to recover. In the morning there is a feeling of exhaustion, like being hit by a tram or having run a marathon, rather than a feeling of being refreshed. Often there are also immunity problems, such as allergies or intolerances, thyroid disease, lupus, eczema, rheumatism or infectious diseases.

Why is the immune system overactive or disordered in the case of rheumatism, eczema, or CFS, FM, or ME? What actually regulates a good functioning immune system?

The immune system is very complex, but if we have to name one substance that plays a crucial role, it is cortisol. Cortisol has a regulatory function, in particular an inhibitory effect on immunity and the inflammatory reaction. In short, autoimmunity or an overactive immune system and unrestrained inflammatory reactions are signs of cortisol deficiency.

Why would a disc bulge? Because too many burdens are laid on the back?

That is a possibility. But if that were always the case, only dockworkers, movers and bricklayers would have back complaints and that is not the case. Why can a disc bulge at a normal load? Because the dorsal muscles are too tense. So, muscle relaxants are often given in the treatment. Muscle tension is normal, but if there is too much tension too often, then there is no balance. Tension is normally followed by relaxation. That points in the direction of the Orthosympathic Nervous System (OSNS). So, to put it briefly again, a disc bulges as a result of an overload of muscle tension. This also applies to shoulder complaints. And that’s due to overactivity of the OSNS.

How can anyone be already so exhausted in the morning?

In a healthy person, the cortisol levels rise when getting up in the morning. Cortisol has the following effects on the Central Nervous System (CNS): alertness, a feeling of energy, and a feeling of having rested enough. Why would anyone sleep badly? There are many reasons, ranging from psychological symptoms to too much worry and different types of pain. But it is interesting that a good night’s sleep fundamentally requires activation of the Parasympathic Nervous System (PSNS).

Why do you sometimes have a touch of flu?

In humans, temperature is regulated by the hypothalamus. A touch of flu occurs via a disruption of the hypothalamus. Why do you lose magnesium? The magnesium balance in the human body is controlled by aldosterone. So, a loss of magnesium can indicate a problem with aldosterone. That is interesting, because aldosterone is made in the adrenal glands, and so is cortisol. So we can go a step further and ask: why are there cortisol and aldosterone abnormalities? Because there is something wrong with the adrenal glands. But we have already discussed the hypothalamus. The adrenal glands and the hypothalamus are both located in the so-called HPA-axis (Hypothalamus – Pituitary – Adrenal). And it is exactly the hypothalamus that plays a crucial role in regulating the balance of the OSNS and the PSNS.  The pieces of the puzzle are beginning to fit together. Why does your stomach ache and why do you have intestinal problems? A good digestion can only be achieved thanks to a well functioning PSNS. If there are problems, perhaps it is due to an overactive OSNS. Additionally, headaches and migraine are also muscular tension diseases, because these involve tension headaches as a result of the contraction of the muscles around the skull. Migraines are caused by a muscular tension around the blood vessels in the brain. Muscular tension is also an indication of an overactive OSNS.

If we put together all of these pieces of the puzzle and keep asking ourselves why, in the end we come to a final question: why is the hypothalamus not properly regulated? Is the hypothalamus activated by emotions and stress?

Absolutely, howeverr it’s important to make a distinction between primary (non-psychological) and secondary (psychological) emotions.An example of a primary emotion: you are standing in a green pasture and you feel relaxed. You hear something behind you, you look around and all of a sudden you find yourself face to face with a bull! At that moment (and even before you are able to think, hence completely independently of your psyche and totally instinctively!) the hypothalamus is activated. This regulates two things at the same time: the switch from PSNS to OSNS and the activation of the HPA-axis, which results in an increase of cortisol.

If you act on such a primary emotion, or in other words, if you perform the (short) action your body has just given you the energy for, then this hypothalamus activation is merely temporary. In other words: you run away, you jump over the fence and then everything goes back to square one (the hypothalamus normalises, the OSNS weakens, the PSNS is strengthened, and the cortisol level drops again).

If you do NOT act on a primary emotion (for example, if you don’t run away from the bull, if you convince yourself that you can handle the situation, but actually you can’t, if you do some breathing exercises and yoga and think that’ll do just fine, if you try to ‘let go’, or swallow some pills to suppress the complaints), then the hypothalamus remains overactive, the adrenaline level remains very high and if this situation is chronic (i.e. weeks, months, or years on end), exhaustion symptoms and other problems will develop. Your adrenal glands will become exhausted, your cortisol will no longer be able to react properly to stress, you will lose magnesium, the inflammatory processes will work overtime, as will your OSNS, etc.

So when you’re suddenly standing in front of that bull and you have all kinds of chronic complaints like exhaustion, muscular tension, and inflammations, in my opinion it is a wrong and short-sighted attitude to ask for a pill to be able to cope with the situation. On the other hand, addressing your self-healing powers is far more satisfactory. Medication will try to suppress some of your complaints, but will never be able to have a permanent effect, because you’re not eliminating the cause of the illness. Therefore you better run away from the bull, as you would normally do and not go against your nature. Get yourself to safety. After such a strenuous moment there should be relaxation. The body does what is necessary naturally.

You address your self-healing power by trying to obtain a well-functioning HPA-axis and a well-balanced OSNS and PSNS. This can be achieved when you stop suppressing your primary emotions and when you learn to act accordingly. It is quite a process to learn what primary and secondary emotions actually are. Because working with the secondary (the psychological) emotions doesn’t help, doing so can even make things worse. It is certainly difficult to learn to respond to your primary emotions and not to suppress these emotions any longer. Changing bad habits is not always simple.

Moreover, it may help to do some physical exercise, because suppressed emotions settle themselves in your body. Often this is learned behaviour, which is sometimes difficult to recognize. Positive thinking, faith in nature, or being spiritually active are also effective because they are all PSNS-stimulators.

To some, these insights may seem new, but none of them really are. You can easily find them all in medical literature, except perhaps for the distinction between primary and secondary emotions. Yet in medical practice, little is done with this knowledge. There is still an almost sacred belief in medication.

This can, however, be changed through scientific research and through open communication with others. And this is exactly one of the life goals of the undersigned.

Do you wish to learn more about the author? Please visit: http://krisvankerckhoven.blogspot.be/

07-05-2015, 15:16 geschreven door catherine wheels  

04-05-2015, 00:00 geschreven door catherine wheels