Is the answer to our health right under our nose?

Medicine is predominantly viewed as something we take or administer, when we feel unwell or are sick or injured.

Medicine has become a solution that we apply to remove an ailment or an ill or to help us better manage our symptoms. We go to medicine to make us feel better, fix us up or to reduce our symptoms.

This standpoint both applies to conventional medicine and modalities such as naturopathy and other ‘alternative’ therapies that we turn to and rely on for help and support. Essentially, we use the doctor or these modalities as a ‘fix’, but the point is – we return to the very way we lived before – and the problem inevitably arises again, even though it may not be in the exact same way as before. Is there something wrong with this picture?

Despite all the amazing advancements in medicine and surgical techniques, coupled with ground breaking research and a deeper understanding of how the human body functions, the rate of illness and disease is escalating.

The statistics show that we are damaging the body more quickly than the advancements of medicine can keep up with. Plus, medicine is witnessing a growth in complexity of disease and illness, and multi-symptomatic conditions requiring a number of specialists all treating the patient at once.

We can’t really say we are healthy, can we? Or, even if we ignore the rate of disease and illness, we only have to look at the rate of obesity, including these days in our young, to see that we are not well. There are many more examples we could look at.

Why is this? . . . What is going wrong?

What is it that science, medicine and humanity are not seeing or are omitting from the equation?

Perhaps the answer is right under our nose – perhaps it starts by paying more attention to our body . . .

Why is it that we tend to ignore the body until we have obvious symptoms like pain, fatigue, digestive issues or poor health etc. that stop us functioning as well as we would like to, before we pay attention?
What if the body had been trying to tell us well before the symptoms appeared that something wasn’t quite right?
What if instead of waiting for an illness or debilitating condition we took the time to stop and tune in to our body on a regular basis?
Could we have noticed that things were starting to go wrong and have dealt with them sooner if we had paid more attention to the body and the messages it was giving us?
Would listening to the body allow us to be more in charge of our health and wellbeing?

What does that mean?

It means really paying attention to the body, listening to its messages and noticing things like feeling sick or bloated after eating, feeling agitated and shaky after drinking coffee, having a hangover after a night out drinking, being in pain after going too hard at the gym and so on.

Isn’t this the way the body tells us that coffee does not work for me, that food you ate isn’t right for your digestion or that alcohol is too toxic for me to deal with?
Aren’t these the body’s ways of talking to us?

What if the key to good health starts with the body and listening to what it has to say?

Is this the missing link?

Filed under

Health, Medicine, Ill health, Sickness

By Dr Rachel Hall, Dentist

Dentist, business owner, writer, author and presenter. Family woman, guitarist, photographer, passionate about health, wellbeing and community. Lover of Vietnamese food, fast cars, social media, café culture and people.
Photography: Dean Whitling, Brisbane based photographer and film maker of 13 years.

Dean shoots photos and videos for corporate portraits, architecture, products, events, marketing material, advertising & website content. Dean's philosophy - create photos and videos that have magic about them.