Chapter 4
The Paradigm Shift – Testing Instead for the CAUSE of the Problem!
We suggested in the last chapter that a paradigm shift was needed.
It has simply not been satisfying, not been wholly effective for us in the medical profession, let alone for our patients, to test only for identifiable symptoms, and then to treat our patients for those symptoms.
It is critical that our testing probe quite a bit deeper; that it probe, in fact, to the very depth of the CAUSE of those symptoms; and then to see if that will allow us physicians to help you conquer your symptoms by attacking them at that root. The intent here, of course, the hope that we have, is that we might find ways to eliminate those menacing symptoms for you once and for all.
For that reason, we recognized the need for a testing system that probes quite a bit deeper, almost without regard to specific symptoms a patient might be having.
The testing that has now been developed scrutinizes the basic makeup of the body’s tissues, fluids, chemistry, and organic functioning at its very source to measure that makeup and functioning against what is optimum. If there are symptoms that a person is experiencing, invariably they are related to some malfunctioning of the biological matrix we just introduced you to. By locating the cause, we can readily suggest the changes necessary to bring the body’s biological and chemical matrix back up to normal health. This is precisely what the MAP does.
Corvettes! ..and the Bio-Chemical Matrix!
Look at it this way.
If you pull up to a red light in that back-up Corvette you only drive on Sundays, and the guy in the ’57 Chevy next to you yells over that your front left tire’s low on air, what are you gonna do? I’m guessing the Corvette’s important to you, so you’re probably going to stop at a gas station and pump some air into that tire. That’ll take care of the symptom for now.
But you know what? I bet you’re not going to stop there. I’ll bet when you get that baby back home, you’re going to take a pretty close look at that tire to figure out why the heck it lost air in the first place. And no doubt, I’ll bet that, as soon as you find that fork tine stuck into it from last Sunday’s picnic with your honey out at that secluded park with the sweet pond, I’ll bet you’ll pull that Michelin all-weather off of there and run it right over to Tires R’ Us or something to bring it back up to snuff.
If you don’t get to the cause of the tire’s problem, you’re going to be adding new air probably every week, until the fork tine finally pops out of there on a bumpy road in the middle of nowhere, and likely at a time when you left the spare in the garage to drop some excess weight so you could impress her with the car’s spunk off the line. This sort of brings up stress again, doesn’t it?
What the MAP does is attempt to attack the problems causing your chronic symptoms at their root causes, rather than to merely keep pumping the tire up with air.
Using the MAP for Super Health!
Hmph, maybe we shouldn’t just stop at diagnosing the cause of symptoms when someone is so grossly out of balance that they can actually see and feel the symptoms. Mayb we can do quite a bit better than that!
In fact, wouldn’t it be a whole lot better even if you could detect when things are only beginning to go awry in your body, when your body chemistry is only a little off, maybe not even capable of causing any noticeable symptoms at all? When you look at things this way, it might seem a little peculiar, but it really can be said that there are really NO disease states. Just a package of symptoms that we’ve come to give a disease name to. What they really tell us is that the body’s biochemistry, and therefore its functioning, its matrix, is a little out of balance.
All we really have to do is study the map and see how to get to where we want to be.
How the MAP Test Differs from a Conventional Physical Exam
Now maybe you’re wondering why, if doctors are always taking blood from us for our testing, why isn’t it needed for the MAP?
For one thing, you can easily take the MAP test right at home. If you drew your own blood, you might stain the couch or something. Besides, there’s that little risk of infection that we’d like to remain aware of too. To be sure, the blood sample is not needed for the MAP simply because, owing to considerable refinements in the software used to analyze the MAP, we get all of the same readings from a combination of the other two fluids, saliva and urine, which most of us can obtain without any damage to the couch or ourselves at all.
How to Know What’s Causing What???
The question remains here: If anything can cause anything, then how do we know what’s causing what? Until we can answer this question, your symptoms will remain nothing more than a reflection of an imbalance in your body chemistry that is produced by an unknown cause.
Not terribly encouraging, is it?
Let’s take another common ailment. Let’s consider rheumatoid arthritis, or joint pain. The type of arthritis is named rheumatoid if a substance called RA Factor is found to be present in the blood. The question becomes, at this stage, does the presence of the RA Factor cause the joint pain, or is there another something that is out of balance in the body’s functions that is causing the RA Factor to appear in the blood?
Clearly, unless we become capable of discovering the root causes of the symptoms we see, we will be confined to doing nothing more than assigning a name to a recognized group of symptoms. We can name the symptoms, and then we can treat those symptoms; but this will not in itself enable us to ever get to the real root of the problem causing that joint irritation.
When we restrict ourselves to just treating the symptoms, is it any wonder that they come back all the time? Is it any wonder that we end up calling the disease a chronic disease? If we never correct the cause, those symptoms are surely going to be chronic, no matter how much we treat them! And the best we’re going to be able to do as the medical profession is to continually manage those symptoms, …without ever erasing their causes.
And this is where a MAP can be a critical help in getting to the very basic root of an imbalance in the body, to what is the cause of the emergence of those symptoms.
The point of all this is just this: very often chronic symptoms are actually brought on ourselves by our making choices for behaviors that, over the long term, eventually create imbalances in our physical and chemical matrix. When these imbalances finally get bad enough that we notice them in physical symptoms, it is only then that we ever go see a doctor to figure out what’s going on. If doctors are taught, as we are, to primarily look for physical causes only, then we as patients may have to wait for quite a while, that is, for the symptoms to get pronounced enough, for those symptoms to be detectable to where we can finally give them a name and prescribe our standardized treatments.
Some New Thoughts On An Old Idea!
As I started this writing, I began by telling you that I wanted to share some new thoughts about an old idea. That old idea is that of the source of disease.
Modern medicine has arrived where it is today in part owing to a scientific and philosophical debate that culminated in the 19th century.
On one side of the debate was a French microbiologist named Antoine Beauchamp. On the other side, another French microbiologist who may be more familiar to you, named Louis Pasteur. Both of these men strongly disagreed with each other concerning the cause of disease. Pasteur argued that the primary cause of disease was nonchangeable microbes, a theory called monomorphism.
Pasteur argued that the microbes were static and unchangeable; and that diseases were caused by these bacteria when they invade the body from the outside. You probably know this theory better simply as the germ theory.
Beauchamp, on the other hand, argued that these microbes were not static and unchangeable, but that they could evolve through different stages of development and change forms. He further suggested that these microorganisms would actually change shape as the health of an individual became more and more negatively affected by it. Unlike Pasteur, then, his theory posited that disease actually comes from inside the body, not, as Pasteur thought, from outside of it.
A third theory developed in the course of the debate that suggested that the interior environment of the body was most important to the disease process. This theory also believed that the microbes changed and evolved, but added that they did so in direct response to the unique environment present in a particular body.
Therefore, according to this composite theory, disease inside the body develops and produces its variety of unique symptoms dependent on the particular biochemical environment in which it is growing.
This argument is said to have changed the face of medicine.
Ultimately, Pasteur is credited with the initial win here; but is said to have reversed himself on his deathbed, stating his evolved belief that the microbe is, in fact, nothing; while the internal environment is everything. You’d think they’d have posthumously put Pasteur out to pasture.
Unfortunately, the medical road at that time was already heavily influenced, if not wholly excited about the germ theory. It was just too late to turn things around. As a consequence, the method that has dominated this past century of medical treatment is to identify the microscopic invader and destroy it!
In retrospect, it is fair to say that this conventional stranglehold has, in fact, been necessary and productive in that it has peaked public awareness and frustration simply by its lack of satisfying results. At the same time, of course, it has sown the seeds for the serious exploration of alternative and complementary therapies by this same frustrated public.
If we listen very carefully and can hear these cries for help at their very early stages, we’re much more likely to be successful at correcting the potentially damaging condition they are warning us about. The longer it takes us to hear them, the more difficult is going to be our path back to whole health.
Even worse, the physical symptoms seem to bring on feelings that, at least on the surface, seem completely unrelated. They may result, for instance, in feelings of remorse, depression, anger, resentment, lack of self-esteem, loneliness, worry, abandonment,0 lack, frustration, and even anxiety. Often, of course, you’ll experience chronic pain along with these feelings, and your frustration will only increase when, despite repeated attempts, the source or root cause of the pain seems to elude detection once again. Maybe you try out a few specific prescribed exercises; maybe you try out a few different drugs, with all the potential side effects that they bring to the table; and yet you still find little improvement in the pain or in the feelings.
Believe it or not, the medical profession even has a name for this type of chronic condition. If your enjoyment of life is constantly hampered by these types of symptoms, you may be suffering from what is referred to as VCD, a Vicious Cycle Disorder.
The Doctor Will See You Now!
If this is some of the scenario that you seem to be experiencing day after day, year after year, then Vicious Cycle Disorder may actually be at the root of all your problems.
VCD-The Root of all Evil!
Now, you know as well as I that naming a medical malady is certainly not the same as curing it. We can name cancer too.
But here’s some good news. About 90% of chronic disease symptoms actually have their root in VCD. And that’s where we have had terrific success in treating these conditions and eliminating those symptoms from people’s lives. The biological and chemical causes of VCD in any individual can now be uncovered, and then significantly modified or often even wholly eliminated.
On the other hand, the bad news is that …you yourself have created the conditions that are bringing on these symptoms.
Wait a minute! Don’t get mad at me! I’m trying to help out here.
The point is simply that any behavior that we engage in repeatedly will certainly have its influence on our lives: what we eat, how we choose to recreate, how much or how little we exercise, what we put into or take out of our personal relationships, how much purpose we find with what we do each day. Any negative behavior—thought, word, or action–repeated to excess, then, can be a cause of VCD.
What I hope to accomplish with this brief publication is to show you how VCD develops, what you can do about it, and how doing so has the potential to virtually eliminate the symptoms of your chronic illness.
Patients who have all types of seemingly unrelated symptoms that cannot be pinned down with a single clear diagnosis are understandably frustrated. That’s why I give a name to these symptoms. I simply call them a Vicious Cycle Disorder. And I think that says it all. It is normally a recurrent physical symptom causing significant discomfort whose source may be closely related to something going on in a person’s virtual environment, something that continues to bring them undue stress of some kind. It can be associated with regret, remorse, depression, unhappiness, anger, insecurity, or lack of fulfillment.
The bottom line is—ultimately, it is likely a result of the choices you yourself have made, the habits you yourself have formed, usually over the course of a lifetime.
Making a CHOICE for Health!
It’s tough being human. If things we do feel good, we tend to do them more often; if they cause us pain or discomfort of any kind, we tend to avoid them. Not a bad way to live, for all outward appearances, it seems.
But sometimes, the stuff that feels good is really not all that good for us all the time over a whole bunch of years. Think ice cream, maybe. Donuts come to mind, too. Love ‘em both! How about mastering the remote from the cushy comfort of the couch? And things that don’t feel so good are actually often really worth doing. Running distance in November is not something that I normally look forward to, for instance. For President George H. Bush, it was broccoli.
Here’s the rub: whenever we choose a certain behavior, so too do we choose the ultimate consequences. I guess sometimes we just have to remind ourselves of …the obvious. Don’t feel bad. It’s easy to forget over time, y’know. But be assured that when our repetitive behaviors get out of hand, they usually result in Vicious Cycle Disorders.