Keep listening to your body and it will save you one day

Medication is the easy answer for most of our problems but almost always the incorrect one. This knowledge is slowly trickling down to our doctors who for the past two centuries have been bred on seeing medication as a solution to all our health problems.

But whose fault is this? The doctors are just reacting to the demands of their patients. Diagnostic tests are on the rise and many a time the doctor prescribes without even ascertaining your case fully.

Did you know that doctors spend on an average less than 7-10 minutes per patient and in many cases far less than that? When the patient has lived with a problem for the last couple of months, how can the doctor diagnose it in such a short span of time?

Most doctors go by cases they have already seen which means that they use that exposure to typecast and diagnose patients. Any experienced doctor knows that a patient’s symptoms cannot be analyzed in a very short time. Each one of us is a different human being and treatments don’t work the same.

Did you know that predators never feed on unhealthy prey? They don’t have a doctor around to tell them what to do isn’t it?

Health care starts with you and no one else

All human beings are born with incredible knowledge about their bodies. We learn every single day of our lives about how things affect us. It is equally true that we suppress our knowledge by relying on the expertise of a doctor.

Who lives within our body 24/7? Who suffers the aches and pains? Who undergoes the trials of treatments? Who constantly works around a problem by managing with it? The answer is a resounding YOU.

But first we must observe the problem and if possible diagnose it. You might think that it is the doctor’s job to diagnose and treat. But what is our job? Where does our responsibility to our own body end? How do we help ourselves and perhaps help the doctor to do his job better?

If we listen to our body, we may be able to deal with problems before they can turn into serious issues. If we observe ourselves, we may learn that patience with the symptoms is essential. If we know our body we may not seek solutions for it and learn to work around problems. Our body will heal itself but we need to help it by carrying out minor but critical tasks.

Self exploration is the key.

Listening to your own body is a basic art

We may have forgotten how to view our own bodies. We are an intelligent biomechanical device and we are very prescient about all things happening around us except to our own selves.

We must learn to characterize ourselves so that we know subtle deviations from the normal. This means that when we are healthy and normal, we must remember what defines us.

Parents who listen to their children describing problems will learn very quickly because children are crystal clear in their expression. They communicate basic symptoms correlating to an immediate event in their lives.

Sleep patterns

Sleep is by far the best judge of a person’s health. If you don’t wake up feeling refreshed then it is time for you to find out what the problem is and fix it. But our focus now is to learn from sleep. How long do we normally sleep? Is our sleep instantaneous? When we wake up how much time do we need to be fully awake?

There are many indicators that help us understand our body better but this is a good start. If we are able to evaluate ourself with these parameters then we are able to notice disruptions in our sleeping patterns which in turn will lead us to deeper questions about what is happening. The state of mind before and after sleep is very important. Some people are naturally calm while others are agitated. Either way that state of mind is normal to us!

Later on when we are comparing sleep patterns there are many interesting questions that will arise because of the changes we have detected. Are we sleeping earlier and waking later? Do we suddenly sleep after eating food? Why was today’s dream violent? Are we not shifting our body when we sleep off of the bed? Are there any physical changes when we wake up that last for small periods of time like rashes? Do we smell something different when we wake up?

Energy Levels and Emotions

Each body has a unique energy footprint and we don’t need to be rocket scientists to figure it out. This is one facet of our body we feel intensely connected. Some of us are always low on energy and others are crackling with the good stuff! But being low on energy means more serious problems await either in the immediate future or in the long term. It is sometimes very difficult to understand energy patterns because we constantly compare ourselves to others but there are basic outlines that help us in our quest.

The first thing to understand is that we are very different from each other as far as energy and emotions are concerned. It is critical to baselines ourselves on the level of energy available to us on any normal day. We need to observe the ebb and flow of energy within our body. Energy is not a constant force within us. It fluctuates with our moods, motivations and other emotions.

Since we spend energy and absorb it as well, there is a steady pattern of energy creation, distribution and dissipation. We understand ourselves better if we are intimately aware of our energy patterns.

When we question the energy levels we will notice unrelated questions that keep popping up. Why do we seem to have more/less energy during a conflict? Do we feel tired at all? Why do I feel that I have more energy after exercise? During certain days of the week why do I get easily tired? Why do I seem to have less energy even though I ate enough? Why is my energy level so irregular? Why do I feel angry suddenly? I feel depressed after I wake up, why?

Bodily Discharges

There is a very old term in computer science called GIGO (Garbage In Garbage Out) and this is applicable to us. But it is also possible that our body is producing unusual substances without any provocation. Remember that when our body is discharging it also expends energy. Observing our bodily discharges is the most significant advancement in our learning. Many things about us fall into distinct patterns that we can reconcile ourselves to when we observe and learn.

Every animal is careful about revealing too much about itself from its bodily discharges. It instinctively knows that its health condition can be revealed. This is why animals sniff bodily discharges and sometimes even from the source! Learn a lot about what agrees with you and what doesn’t by just drawing a reference line regarding your discharges. If our body does not agree with something, it will let you know in no uncertain terms. If we are having emotional problems, your discharges will tell you. If you don’t sleep well, the evidence will be relayed to us.

Interestingly, we never seek to question our bodily discharges because we are many a time repulsed by it. We consider it unrelated to our body once it leaves us. This is patently untrue. Ask and you will be rewarded with the right answer. Question the frequency and the trigger for a certain occurrence. Are we too sweaty? Are we sneezing all the time? Is it easy for us to pass motion? You would be surprised. The color will reveal a lot more about our reaction to food, events in our life, stress and happiness.

General Appearance, Posture and Mobility

Our appearance is a gateway to our health. One look at us is enough to tell an entire story. In fact most human beings learn to monitor themselves at a very young age. We tend to look at ourselves in the mirror, feel our face, examine our hair, peek inside our nose, stare at our eye and in general examine our physical appearance quite thoroughly.

So this is one area where because of our vanity or insecurity, we are very well versed. But even so, we must look a little deeper and understand our normal:

• Texture of the skin, hair, lumps, birthmarks…
• Size and shape of any part of the body
• Color of skin, eyes, pupils, gums, teeth, nails…
• Hardness or softness of any body part or muscle including nails
• The way we walk, run, move, lie down or sit

We would be astonished about the number of problems that can be caught at early stages purely based on appearance. A very good doctor will take a look at us and know that we are suffering from something that does not show any other symptoms yet. As we question it is important to fight the kind of despair that accompanies extreme honesty about our physical appearance

Conclusion: How does all of this help me?

This is hard work isn’t it? But we have to be exhaustive only for the first time and train to recognize our self. Once we have done that it is easy to see discord. We can identify patterns and irregularities.

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Our body is born with a blueprint which has defects and features too. We need to learn about ourselves when we are at an early stage in our lives so that we can use that knowledge when we get older to sustain ourselves. It is also important to reconcile with certain characteristics and work around them than try to change them using external aid.

There are many schools of medicine like Allopathy, Homeopathy, Ayurveda, Unani, Acupressure, Hydrotherapy… the list goes on endlessly. There are many healthy habits that you read about and it is always good to follow them. We are in a position to decide what is best.

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A doctor will make us do a bunch of tests according to a pre-determined protocol. He will not even bother about our symptoms because most patients don’t know how to express accurately. If we are more knowledgeable about our body it will help us enormously even when we are considering prescribed treatments.

If only the doctor had known the exact sequence of events that happened when we went to him, it is quite possible that his treatment might be quite different.

If we know that we have certain skin eruptions after eating fried food, we will not seek an active cure for it. Instead we will lay off of fried food as much as possible.

If we had been blessed (you heard it right) with poor digestion, we will not be so ready to stuff all kinds of food down our throat and hope that medicines can save us.

If we are unable to find a food reason for our loose motions, then we know enough about our selves to probe further and seek help when necessary.

We will not take pain killers so easily nor pop those antacids. We will steer away from any steroidal medication because their effect on us will be visible immediately. We will watch what we eat and be careful when going on binges.

In fact if we do learn about our self, then we may try natural therapies because by then they will make sense to us.

The greatest gift we can give our child is the ability to monitor and manage its health. Our children will thank us for the rest of their lives.

A healthier life can be yours if you listen to your body regularly.