What do you believe? Do you believe this . . . most people believe symptoms are the disease so they often take drugs, herbs or supplements to suppress symptoms in the false belief that a medical or psychiatric problem is resolved if symptoms disappear. These myths may stem from deep, unconscious fears handed down to us from ages past when diarrhea was equated with typhoid fever or a cough could mean that one has tuberculosis. TB did kill about one billion human beings in the 1800s, so one can understand why people are afraid of symptoms and believe they are the disease itself.
Only recently have we come to understand that symptoms suggest something very different. Symptoms are actually the result of the body trying to heal itself in some way. Diarrhea and cough could very rarely signify a lethal problem and should be investigated if they become chronic problems, but actually these symptoms are protective detoxification mechanisms which the body employs to remove toxins from gastrointestinal and respiratory tracts respectively.
Fatigue can signify malnutrition and therefore tiredness could be a natural response of the body to conserve calories. Nausea is a protective signal from the body instructing us to fast, because the GI tract is dealing with something toxic or infectious and does not want to devote its limited resources to digesting food. Joint pain is a clear protective signal to rest an inflamed joint. Depression could result from overdoing our fight/flight sympathetic nervous system and the consequent burnout protectively forces us to rest.
Symptoms are the result of the body trying to heal itself in some way, but those symptoms can be maladaptive. If diarrhea causes severe dehydration, or if a cough prevents sleep, obviously these symptoms, however valid as healing mechanisms, are maladaptive and may need to be suppressed with herbal or drug therapies. But usually, symptoms are perfectly adaptive attempts of the body to heal, and should be understood from that perspective and modified only if they spill over into a maladaptive pattern.
For instance, fever is a protective mechanism designed to injure infectious organisms which do not reproduce as well at higher temperatures. However, brain injury or seizures can occur if fever gets too high, so medication may be needed to keep it under 104 degrees to prevent such adverse maladaptive responses.
Three Kinds of Chronic Symptoms
Chronic symptoms are usually not lethal, but they can be life-limiting. The three main kinds of chronic symptoms are:
1- fatigue,
2- pain (emotional or physical) and
3- dysfunction (occupational, social, academic, interpersonal).
I am often asked, “Doc, how should these be treated?” Or, “What can I take to make these symptoms go away?” This is the wrong question, and the age old dictum – if you ask the wrong questions you get the wrong answers – applies here. Many chronic medical and psychiatric problems never resolve because the wrong questions are asked about how to resolve them.
Dr. Charles Gant’s new book has just been released. I have read it and it is excellent. 