Do you have confusing, ambiguous symptoms that you’ve fallen down all sorts of rabbit holes about but still don’t have clear answers for? Welcome, so do most people who end up at Whole Body Healing!
It may feel like your recovery depends on finding the right doctor or the right specialist, someone who can give you the correct label or diagnosis. This, you think, will lead to the right treatment plan and finally, clear answers!
Unfortunately, this is not usually the case. Truly, there is nothing magical about a diagnosis. The only time it is pertinent is if it is needed to access life saving medications or work/school accommodations. If you want to pursue a diagnosis for those specific purposes, by all means! However, a diagnosis will not give you any information about how your condition developed or what to do to reverse it.
Diagnoses are developed to reflect certain patterns of symptoms that doctors tend to see in their patients. Sometimes this will also include common lab markers that tend to occur with those symptoms. It may point to a certain organ or immunodeficiency, or another thing that is “wrong”. It is focused on the symptoms of what we would call “malfunctioning” in the body. Look here, you are not producing enough thyroid hormone, or your liver enzymes are high. Doctors will then use these lab markers and the corresponding symptoms to provide a diagnosis (so they can bill insurance and get paid!) and to provide a medication that will “fix” the “malfunction”. For example, let’s give you a medication that brings your liver markers down, or, let’s give you medications to increase the amount of thyroid hormone in your body, or let’s reduce your histamine levels with this medication.
They are fixing the problem by blocking the symptom. And that is not what I would call healing. That is the most surface level of treatment you can possibly provide someone, giving someone’s experience an arbitrary name through observed patterns without any consideration to the underlying functionality of why these symptoms are arising in the first place. Because a diagnosis gives no information about WHY a pattern has emerged, it is almost totally irrelevant to actually reversing the issue. Simply observing symptoms and tracing them back to root causes, and differentiating between potential likely triggering events and imbalances, is going to give far more information about how you can recover. But insurance doesn’t reimburse for this service, and there are no simple medications to address these deeper issues.
Another reason why seeing a specialist can be a waste of time and money is that by definition, a “specialist” generally focuses in on one very specific organ or body system. In reality, the body is not divided up into these discrete parts. We cannot realistically target organs and systems so specifically. Everything in the body, mind and spirit works together to create a synergy of healing and recovery. It is a misguided and mechanistic view of the body to hone in on one specific problem without paying attention to the bigger, systemic imbalances that can manifest in many organs and many body systems. Most chronic illness is correlated with systemic and chronic inflammation- and there is no one specialized protocol that will address this underlying issue.
For many people, having an official label can quell anxiety. It can be scary when you are having vague but debilitating symptoms and don’t have a clear framework for what is happening. But my argument is that pursuing a diagnosis will simply send you down a path of squashing symptoms. Looking at your symptoms through the framework of systemic inflammation, and your body trying to keep you alive in the context of a highly stressful environment, leads us to the simple conclusion that we have to lower stress in your overall being every way that we can.
Most root causes we can address gently and simultaneously through foundational protocols that shift your nutrition (nutrient levels and microbiome balance), support your detox pathways, and calm your brain and nervous system. We don’t need to do copious amounts of expensive testing to know that you would benefit from these basic starting points. And yes, in the long term, sometimes it is appropriate to target a specific underlying issue such as parasites, heavy metals, or deeper trauma recovery work. But in my years of practice, I see that most people make remarkable recoveries just by getting the basics in. This is a much more affordable and accessible way to start on your health journey- no diagnosis, expensive testing, or anxiety required.
Systemic inflammation means that your gut microbiome is imbalanced, your detox pathways are congested, and your nervous system is dysregulated. I don’t think I’ve ever encountered a client that these three factors weren’t true for. If you have chronic illness, these are issues we need to address. People jump into expensive, harsh protocols that overload their bank account and their body when they could have started with the basics and likely seen more results.
So, with all this in mind, my answers to the common questions we get will always be the same.
Yes, you can start healing now without a diagnosis and without expensive test results. Even if all the tests came back positive, I would have put you on the same foundational protocols to give your body the best fighting chance.
Yes, we can address all your different diagnoses or symptoms together. You don’t have to be on a different protocol for every issue you have. Most chronic illnesses still come down to the same core issue, chronic inflammation, and when we work on the foundations all of these varied symptoms tend to resolve together.
That is why we start all of our new clients in our group coaching subscription program, Immune Resilience. You get six classes a month emphasizing all of the foundations so that you can get a solid start on your recovery journey without getting pulled down unnecessary rabbit holes!
Are you interested? You can cancel your subscription any time if you decide it is not for you. Check it out using the link below:
