The Burning of Atlanta
During the American Civil War, the North had a problem: The factories in Atlanta kept churning out whatever the Southern troops needed and the North just could not get the upper hand. So the North finally went in and burned Atlanta to the ground to cut the supply chain.
During the Cold War, at some point America raised its military spending from something like two percent to three percent and Russia raised its military spending from something like twenty percent to thirty percent. It was a huge burden on the Russian economy and was just KILLING them and America was still handily outspending them because we had a stronger, healthier economy than they did.
The thing that seems to get forgotten by modern medicine is that the body is the battlefield in this war on invaders, like bacteria or viruses. If you burn it all to the ground and salt the fields, you might kill the infection, but can the patient survive it?
This nuke it from orbit approach is fine if you are willing to kill the individual to protect the welfare of other people. It's not so fine if you are trying to restore the sick individual in question to good health.
Your so-called immune system -- and that's a misleading phrase and a pet peeve of mine -- is what you need to be looking to strengthen so the body can fight its own battle. Antibiotics and other drugs very often assault the invaders and the host equally and the end result is steadily declining health if you have a chronic condition that routinely requires medical care.
The open dirty little secret of modern medicine is that we trade short term gains for long term costs. That's how doctors justify getting paid.
You go in with an infection, they write you a prescription for a drug, you take the drug and the infection goes away. Which is all well, fine and dandy if you are in general good health and having a little hiccup for some reason.
But if you have a chronic condition, those drugs all come with a multi-page handout of potential side effects. And when repeated use adds up and undermines your health, your doctor washes his hands of responsibility for what he did to you and blames it on your condition while still taking credit for the short-term gains when they happen -- IF they happen, which they may not once your health has really gone to hell here.
The way you reverse that process is you trade short-term costs for long-term gains. And it's a little tricky to do that when you are in a weakened state because you have a limited capacity to pay those short-term costs and live to tell the tale, so you have to make sure you aren't paying too high a price in the short term.
But that's the path out of this mess and if you do it right, you should also see gains pretty quickly AND this approach is generally gentler and less torturous in my experience. Though to be clear, there will be side effects. "There's no such thing as a free lunch" and anything that actually moves that needle in a meaningful way will involve some fallout.
If you are on maintenance drugs, you don't have to quit your maintenance drugs. First, get nutritional support going. Look for the weakest link and address that first.
As stated elsewhere, before the maintenance drugs go, first you should stop needing to go to the ER every time you turn around and take "extra" drugs on top of the maintenance drugs. Learn to count those gains. People are real bad about NOT counting that as "taking less medication."
I did fairly quickly set a goal of trying to go to the ER less and I began using a variety of antibiotic alternatives to try to actively ramp down my use of antibiotics. I was initially doing multiple different things daily, such as heat treatments daily, poultice daily and sinus washes daily.
Strong drugs are a nuke it from orbit approach. You move them out of your life by actively looking for gentler methods and those gentler methods will by definition not one-for-one substitute for that approach. You will need several little things to replace that one big gun.
But over time, the infections will die WITHOUT destroying the host. And life will begin to return. Your body will stop being a bombed out husk and then your own immune system can fight its own battles with relatively little support.
Eventually, doing things like staying hydrated and eating right will often be enough to help your body win the war on infection. And you need to eat and drink everyday anyway just to stay alive, so at that point it boils down to living right.
If it doesn't make sense yet: Keep journaling, keep reading, keep working on your nutrition. It will eventually start to make more sense.
During the Cold War, at some point America raised its military spending from something like two percent to three percent and Russia raised its military spending from something like twenty percent to thirty percent. It was a huge burden on the Russian economy and was just KILLING them and America was still handily outspending them because we had a stronger, healthier economy than they did.
The thing that seems to get forgotten by modern medicine is that the body is the battlefield in this war on invaders, like bacteria or viruses. If you burn it all to the ground and salt the fields, you might kill the infection, but can the patient survive it?
This nuke it from orbit approach is fine if you are willing to kill the individual to protect the welfare of other people. It's not so fine if you are trying to restore the sick individual in question to good health.
Your so-called immune system -- and that's a misleading phrase and a pet peeve of mine -- is what you need to be looking to strengthen so the body can fight its own battle. Antibiotics and other drugs very often assault the invaders and the host equally and the end result is steadily declining health if you have a chronic condition that routinely requires medical care.
The open dirty little secret of modern medicine is that we trade short term gains for long term costs. That's how doctors justify getting paid.
You go in with an infection, they write you a prescription for a drug, you take the drug and the infection goes away. Which is all well, fine and dandy if you are in general good health and having a little hiccup for some reason.
But if you have a chronic condition, those drugs all come with a multi-page handout of potential side effects. And when repeated use adds up and undermines your health, your doctor washes his hands of responsibility for what he did to you and blames it on your condition while still taking credit for the short-term gains when they happen -- IF they happen, which they may not once your health has really gone to hell here.
The way you reverse that process is you trade short-term costs for long-term gains. And it's a little tricky to do that when you are in a weakened state because you have a limited capacity to pay those short-term costs and live to tell the tale, so you have to make sure you aren't paying too high a price in the short term.
But that's the path out of this mess and if you do it right, you should also see gains pretty quickly AND this approach is generally gentler and less torturous in my experience. Though to be clear, there will be side effects. "There's no such thing as a free lunch" and anything that actually moves that needle in a meaningful way will involve some fallout.
If you are on maintenance drugs, you don't have to quit your maintenance drugs. First, get nutritional support going. Look for the weakest link and address that first.
As stated elsewhere, before the maintenance drugs go, first you should stop needing to go to the ER every time you turn around and take "extra" drugs on top of the maintenance drugs. Learn to count those gains. People are real bad about NOT counting that as "taking less medication."
I did fairly quickly set a goal of trying to go to the ER less and I began using a variety of antibiotic alternatives to try to actively ramp down my use of antibiotics. I was initially doing multiple different things daily, such as heat treatments daily, poultice daily and sinus washes daily.
Strong drugs are a nuke it from orbit approach. You move them out of your life by actively looking for gentler methods and those gentler methods will by definition not one-for-one substitute for that approach. You will need several little things to replace that one big gun.
But over time, the infections will die WITHOUT destroying the host. And life will begin to return. Your body will stop being a bombed out husk and then your own immune system can fight its own battles with relatively little support.
Eventually, doing things like staying hydrated and eating right will often be enough to help your body win the war on infection. And you need to eat and drink everyday anyway just to stay alive, so at that point it boils down to living right.
If it doesn't make sense yet: Keep journaling, keep reading, keep working on your nutrition. It will eventually start to make more sense.
