As a holistic health practitioner, I find myself teaching the same things over and over again.  I think of these things as the basics, since basically everyone needs to know them.  Pretty self-evident right?  You might be surprised.

What do “the basics” include? 

• Teaching why bloodwork may not be giving the whole health picture
• Teaching how and when the body self repairs
• Teaching the foundational building blocks the body needs in order to function properly  (Hint: it’s more than just food and exercise) 
• Explaining why a holistic consultation takes so much longer than 10 minutes 
• Explaining why something that happened ages ago is actually relevant to your current health issue  
• Teaching how and why your emotions have a physical effect on your body and health
• Explaining how and why things like essential oils, herbs, Bach flowers, and homeopathic remedies work
• Explaining the effect of your environment on your health 
• And so much more

(I find myself teaching “the basics” so much that I decided to write it all down in my book, Beautifully Transformed.  You can learn more and purchase your copy on our Shop page.)

While I do spend lots of time teaching “the basics”, I think one of the most important concepts that I fight is the idea of the magic pill.  Our society has been trained to want everything quicker and more convenient.  No time to cook dinner?  Just pull around to the drive through and grab something hot on your way home.  No time to go shopping?  Order online and get your things delivered right to you.  No time to sit around and wait?  Just skip the line by checking in online.  Sick and hurting?  ‘Ain’t nobody got time for that!  Just take this magic pill and you’ll feel better in no time at all.  Sigh.  That last one is a doozy, because of course there is no such thing as a magic pill.  

Humans weren’t designed to run at top speed all the time.  The body has a natural rhythm that it needs to follow.  Part of that rhythm is taking time to slow down and rest so that the body can actually do some repair work.  Ask any mechanic what happens to an engine that never gets turned off.  Or ask an IT guy about a computer that constantly runs.  I’ll give you the short answer.  BAD THINGS.  Machines that are constantly running break down quickly.  Wear and tear jump from merely cumulative to exponential.  The human body is no different. 

When we ask a doctor to give us a pill to just “fix” it so that we can get back to our busy lives, we’re not doing ourselves any favors.  Those pills aren’t actually fixing anything.  They work by overriding the system, which usually causes more issues in both the short and long term.  We’re familiar with the short term issues.  They’re called side effects and usually require yet another pill to override them.  It’s the long term effects that we neither realize nor take into account.  For starters, you can only override the system for so long.  Eventually that override stops working.  Many times we refer to this as building a tolerance.  As in, “Oh yeah, I can’t take that pill anymore.  My body has built a tolerance to it and now it doesn’t work at all.”  Sound familiar?  What’s even worse though, is that the damage continues to accumulate even while we’re busy pressing the override button.  In fact, it accumulates faster since we’re feeling fine and don’t even realize we’re causing more damage.  For example, let’s say you’re experiencing knee pain.  You’re prescribed steroids for the pain.  You take them and feel so much better!  No pain means you can keep doing the things you always wanted to do, but couldn’t because it hurt too much.  Then one day you stop taking the steroids.  Perhaps they just don’t work like they used to.  Or perhaps they’ve become difficult to obtain.  Once you’re no longer taking them, you notice that not only is your knee pain back but now it’s even worse than it was before!  The earlier lack of pain caused you to not even realize that you were causing additional damage to the knee with how you were using it.  Now it’s too late.  The damage is too extensive.  Surgery is the only other option the doctor has for you, with all of its associated risks.       

This is just one small example, but it gives you some idea of the dangers of “magic pill” thinking.  The body is a self-repairing unit.  In order to effect repairs it needs time, energy, and proper materials.  I understand the siren call of just not wanting to hurt anymore, but the body uses pain as a message.  Pain can be a signal that something is wrong and needs attention.  Pain can also be a part of healing, a sign that things are in the midst of repair.  Think of it like a renovation, things always look a whole lot worse before they start looking better.  So when we just cut off the pain signal, we are depriving ourselves of much needed information.  We equate no pain with no problems, which is accurate if we’re not hitting the override button.  However, when we are hitting that override button, no pain does not equal no problem even though that’s exactly how we treat it.  Thus damage continues to accumulate and worsen without our knowledge.  

I think part of the allure of magic pill thinking is our innate resistance to change.  A magic pill allows us to continue life as we know it, but without acknowledging the consequences of our choices.  Magic pills feed into the idea that our health is just something that happens to us, something we have absolutely no control over.  “Oh, this condition?  I inherited it.  My bad luck in the gene lottery you know.  I can’t help it.  I was made that way.”  While there may be some truth to the gene and predisposition argument, it does not absolve us from our own choices.  Have we truly taken the time to examine our own lifestyles and see how those choices are affecting our health or are we just seeking the magic pill so that we can keep going?  Life, after all, must continue at a frantic pace.  

What if the truth is something scarier?  What if the truth is that we have plenty of control over our health and we just didn’t realize it?  What if, in order to experience better health, we have to make some actual changes to our lives?  Making changes is difficult.  Ask anyone who is attempting to build new habits and break old ones.  It isn’t easy.  It takes serious resolve to keep going and choosing to start again after backsliding.  It takes effort.  It takes sacrifice.  It takes a willingness to make hard decisions and stick with them.

So, is magic pill thinking tempting?  You bet it is!  Believing in the magic pill conveniently shifts the blame for a health condition to something other than personal choices.  Who wouldn’t be tempted by that?  No one enjoys saying, “Yeah, this disaster is all my fault.”  Blame shifting is something we’re all guilty of at times.  The question then becomes, is this really something you can afford to do when it comes to your health?  Personally, I would say no, but that’s me.  In the end, this is something each person has to decide for themselves.  

Do I seek the magic pill and let things continue to deteriorate while thinking that there’s nothing else I can do OR do I seek to learn what those signals mean so that I can make choices that will allow my body to do its self-healing thing?   

If you’re ready to start learning about what your body has been attempting to communicate, a consultation is the best place to start.  We’ll look at your specific symptoms and experiences in order to get a clear idea of what your body is communicating before making an individual health plan to facilitate that self-healing.  Schedule your appointment today.