We, at Vital Health, use the phrase “We are the Health Detectives” quite often. But what does that mean?
Because we live in a world of sometimes “simple” solutions when it comes to health challenges, we miss the bigger picture of what may be causing the problem in the first place. For instance, if we have a headache, we just take Ibuprofen, aspirin or whatever works to get rid of it. We don’t generally stop and ask “but what is causing my headache?” We just respond by taking an antidote. Maybe you have heartburn and you just take an acid-stopping drug, or joint pain and you take an anti-inflammatory. But what is causing these symptoms?
That is where the Health Detectives concept comes in. We are looking for causation. There are many causes for headaches. Headaches can be caused from dehydration, sinus congestion, hormonal imbalances, toxicity issues, neck problems or even something serious. Taking an aspirin when it is a dehydration, sinus congestion, hormonal imbalance, etc. may help temporarily, but will it remedy the problem? It is critical to find the WHY.
Let’s relate it to our car. In order to drive effectively, you need wheels, an engine, a steering wheel and a frame to keep it all together. If you are missing pieces, such as the axles, you won’t go far. If your car isn’t working, you’re likely to take it to a mechanic who will run diagnostics on it, find the problem, then fix it. It is no different in the body. We have lots of working parts that need to work harmoniously together. Yeah, we can lose a body part, such as a gallbladder and your body will still function, but not like it used to. We can lose the tires and still have the wheels, but does it still drive the same?
When our car has a problem, a warning indicator lights up to tell us there is a problem. Our bodies have warning indicators too – they’re called “symptoms”. Just as we wouldn’t put a piece of duct tape over the warning indicator light in our car, we shouldn’t do that with our body either. Taking ibuprofen or an acid-stopping med or anti-inflammatory drug is akin to the duct tape.
Our body can be complex. It generally tells us in more than one way what is wrong. Putting the symptoms together is like putting together the pieces of a puzzle. Every symptom is a piece. The best way to treat someone is to treat the picture, and all it reveals to us, at the same time, rather than treat the puzzle piece – the individual symptom. It takes detective work to see how all the pieces fit together to come up with a causative factor, and then treat that.
Going beyond the normal diagnostics and delving deeper into things that can go wrong is what Health Detectives do. Also, putting it all together like a puzzle and treating the picture is what Vital Health does.
©2021 Holly A. Carling, O.M.D., L.Ac., Ph.D.
