"I guess you don't think I should take antibiotics do you?"
As an alternative health care practitioner, this is a question people sometimes ask, fully expecting me to say that I don't think they should take antibiotics. Actually, I make no categorical judgments against antibiotics. Used at the appropriate time, in the appropriate manner, antibiotics can be an absolutely crucial part of a correcting your health problem. It's important to figure out what the appropriate time and manner is for you.
The way we approach our health and well-being is based partially on the paradigm through which we view what it means to be healthy, and how we achieve health. By definition a paradigm is a pattern, model, mold, ideal, or standard. A paradigm is not made up of practices and techniques (although certain practices and techniques may seem more in alignment with particular paradigms). A paradigm is rather more like a particular way of being which structures your thoughts and actions as you view things from a particular point of view. It is a way of understanding and analyzing that defines how you view the world, - even so far as what you think is possible.
Western medicine follows protocols based on a particular paradigm about health which defines the actions, techniques and practices that it deems most successful in achieving health and welt-being.
For the most part, Western medicine prides itself on being based on the scientific method. The scientific method is generally thought to be superior to other paradigms because it purports to be objective and free of personal, subjective biases. This objectivity is assumed to give a more exact, truthful view of what's happening. In order to promote this independent view of reality, much effort goes into following procedures that protect against subjective, personal interpretation.
There is a reliance on machines and technology to assure exact measurements, accurate analysis and consistent repeatability. Diagnostic testing, technology and machine measurements are routinely trusted more than fallible human judgments. The intellect is honored above other ways of knowing because truth is seen as fixed and replicable. Analytical, linear thinking is relied upon to reach the one exact cause of a problem and, by eliminating that cause the problem, disease, or illness can be eliminated.
Disease and illness are viewed as something that is either broken and in need of being fixed, or as an invasion by some dangerous outside agent, such as bacterial or germs, which need to be eliminated. Health is defined narrowly as the absence of disease.
In order to eliminate these dangerous elements, or fix the broken part, protocols that employ the strongest, most active element, and are the most aggressive, are used to bring about the eradication of the disease as quickly as possible. Because these practices must be stronger and more aggressive than the disease they are removing, they tend to carry negative side effects that may be dangerous. The use of such cures, of course, requires a highly trained expert to administer the prescribed program.
The protocols of Western Medicine are totally congruent with this paradigm. The strongest, most active, most aggressive methods are used for eradication. The effort to win the battle in the fight over disease is a struggle for survival. Western medicine is an excellent, effective approach for emergency, life saving medicine - but these strong, active and aggressive methods are not well suited for rebuilding, recuperation and regeneration. Such intensive techniques are definitely not to be refused and abandoned because they do have an essential use in serious, emergency and life threatening situations.
What If It's Not An Emergency Or A Life Threatening Situation?
Potential problems arise, however, when such practices and techniques are used in situations that are not serious, emergency and life threatening. How can you decide when it is time for you to use such aggressive techniques?
There is a logical decision making process that you can guide yourself through as you determine the level of treatment and remedies you need in a particular circumstance. This process is not a means of self diagnosis, nor is it meant to replace the informed opinion of your trusted health care practitioners. But rather it is a set of guidelines that empower you in understanding more about the choices that you have available to you - and it is a decision making checklist to move you through different levels of treatment until you reach the point where you feel that you are safely and effectively working with your condition.
Here is an orderly sequence of actions that can be applied to health care situations which assists in safely deciding which options to chose and when to chose them.
The Six Steps To Reasonable Health Care Decisions.
1 - The process begins with the creative step of returning to the source of the problem, where self-correction can take place. During this time you can rest, sleep or meditate. It is a returning to the stillness and silence. Even emergency medical technicians are often trained to simply be in the situation when they arrive at an emergency site - if only for a second or two - before they begin to assess the situation.
2 - From this point, you can proceed in an orderly fashion through becoming informed about what's happening to you and learning the pros and cons of your available options for working with your specific condition.
3 - The next step is to begin nourishing yourself and regenerating, repatterning and rebuilding your body.
4 - Only after you have these steps in place do you look to the possibility of resolving your condition by pushing beyond the limits of your present state through stimulating or sedating.
5 - If these actions do not bring about the desired completion and integration, move into using remedies that act in a more drug-like manner overriding the current symptoms and giving the body time to be relieved of the stress of the symptoms long enough to activate and employ its own self-healing actions.
6 - The last step in the process would be to use techniques that break across your normal boundaries and flow patterns in the body. These remedies are most often toxic to the body because they directly intervene in the natural energy flow of the body. Surgery and chemotherapy are good examples of this step.
Taking All The Steps You Need - How To Help Yourself.
In a safe and complete system of care, all of these steps are addressed. If the steps are applied in sequence from the beginning to the point where the problem is resolved unnecessarily aggressive actions are avoided. Each step builds an expanding foundation of resources for the body to heal itself in the next step.
The steps are ordered according to the probability that they are likely to result in negative side effects. Surgery and chemotherapy are obviously more likely to create serious side effects than is collecting information. You set a time limit that feels comfortable for you for moving from one step to the next.
How quickly or slowly you move through the steps depends upon the actual situation, your support system, past experiences, your body of knowledge, and even your gut feelings. This creates a recognition of what your needs are for you at the time and the level of intervention needed to correct the problem.
It is not surgery or taking an antibiotic itself that is likely to cause the most harm, but rather that these more aggressive and potentially harmful actions would be used as a first step without due consideration and the support built into the proceeding steps.
By using this decision making process you can help take away the guess work, confusion, fear and the lack of power often present in health care decisions.
Copyright (c) 2008 Mary Ann Copson
Mary Ann Copson is the founder of the Evenstar Mood & Energy Wellness Center. With Master's Degrees in Human Development and Psychology and Counseling, Mary Ann is a Certified Licensed Nutritionist; Certified Holistic Health Practitioner; Brain Chemistry Profile Clinician. Find your Health, Wellness and Lifestyle Coach and reconnect to your physical, emotional, mental, psychological and spiritual natural rhythms at
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