 With this infectious disease going around that everybody is worried about, I see something on social media from more natural slanted practitioners that I fundamentally do not agree with. And it is this idea that the body always heals, that the body can handle this crazy viral infection going around, that my immune system is going to be the thing that saves me and these kind of little quote snippets that seem plausible in theory, but in clinical practice I strongly disagree with and I thought that I would share this being in the natural medicine side because I think it would be damaging to a lot of people. Hey guys, Dr. Alex Hine, Doctor of Chinese Medicine and author of the health book, Master of the Day on Amazon. Now before we jump in, two very important links right below this video. The first is if you want to become a patient of mine locally or online via telemedicine there is a link to my private practice, contact info right below this video. The second is if you want to get this free download, four daily rituals that can potentially add to your life with Chinese medicine, the link below will be for that free guide and my weekly video newsletter. So does the body always heal? I'll give you a few examples of when it doesn't. I see a lot of people, number one, who are healthy people, always have been healthy, always have taken good care of themselves and yet they have chronic digestive problems, chronic anxiety, chronic sleep problems. We are talking congruent people, they are really doing the work and yet they're not getting better. They're stuck in this stalemate, this cop between life and death thing. Why don't they heal? What about the person who's really, really disciplined about diet and exercise and sleep and yet they get chronic sinus infections? They're an otherwise relatively healthy person and yet they get stuck in this pattern where they get these chronic low-grade sinus infections for months and on and on it goes for years or the person who no matter how good they take care of themselves, they just seem to get colds easily or they just seem to have light or fragmented sleep or they just feel tired all the time. In these cases, I know tons of people in addition to lifelong vegetarians and vegans that get cancer, all of these people I know that take good care of themselves and yet have health problems. So why are these people not healing and does the body really always heal? Now I know the body is always trying to heal, right? You give it the resources it needs, you give it the rest, you remove whatever the barriers are to healing, whether the barriers in inner is outer, it is environmental, it is stress, it's whatever and it will always try to heal. But clinically, one thing I see is that the body often gets stuck with the door ajar and I use this analogy a lot because it's obvious when someone who does not take care of their health has a problem, but it's less obvious when someone who takes good care of their health continues to have problems for a long time. And an idea I've shared in many of my videos is that why people get sick is just as important as why they don't heal when they are doing everything in their power. That is just as important of a question. So do, does the body always heal? In terms of symptoms, I don't see that to be true. So what does it really take to heal? You know, the example of the low grade sinus infections, the gut problems, the insomnia or the kind of person who's always at a tendency towards autoimmunity or whatever it is. What I find is that you have a combination of nature and nurture, nature being your inborn constitution, right? The genetic material you've inherited from your parents will predispose you. If your parents have bipolar, so high chance that one of your kids is going to have it right when they have three kids. If your parents have in your genetic lineage like mine, there's asthma, allergies and eczema, high percentage that that is heritable. That genetic information is going to pass down that weak constitution or at least that chink in your armor, right? So I have asthma, my youngest brother has asthma, my sister had asthma and I grew it. That's three out of four people of kids, right? Those constitutional genetic factors are always going to be there in certain family lineages. And some families are far, far worse, where the parents are really so sickly that they can barely work their whole lives. And that gets transmitted to another child as well. So does the body always heal? No. Why does it not heal? One is weak constitution. This has been discussed for thousands of years. In ancient times, people use this word constitution. There's a show, I think it's called The Last Kingdom and Prince Alfred or the King Alfred. He's always talking about hoping that his offspring don't inherit his weak constitution. He has some kind of gut problem. And you see this genetically running in families. Did that person do anything bad to inherit that? They didn't do anything to inherit that. That's just genetics. So this idea of constitution is so fundamentally important because it really dictates the terrain that you're coming into life with and what it has a tendency towards and what it is susceptible towards. And those are really part of each person's heroes healing journey, right? The the Campbell hero journey, but the hero healing journey, the descent to hell and then heating the call and then going through that. Now my final thought in his rant is you hear this a lot with COVID, right? People say I believe that my immune system is strong and nature gives me everything I need to fight it off. Well, congratulations. If there was no need for medicine in history, humans would never have invented and sought out medicine and gone through sophisticated routes for thousands of years to save the lives of their own family. Healthy people get sick and die of viral infections to right, including what's been going around. And although we would disagree in Chinese medicine, what healthy is to many people and why people are more susceptible than others. The big thing is that you have an immune system, but that doesn't mean it's going to protect you from everything. Certain people are always going to be stuck in this kind of hinge function between fully healing and not fully healing and feeling too bad to really live, but being too alive and actually die. Certain people are always going to be in that state without some kind of treatment. And I think the ultimate testament is, you know, even in Chinese medicine for thousands of years, it's been stated that there is what is considered food-grade medicine and what is actual medicine, and that when someone catches an infection, for example, to treat it aggressively to make sure that it does not progress further because constitution and immunity are only some of the factors involved in surviving something going around. The other is really the strength of the pathogen. There was a book called The Treatise on Epidemics or Pestilence, I guess you could call it. And he said that regardless, if it is a nasty pathogen, the disease will be severe in many people. And that's just the nature of this bug that's been going around. So do I fundamentally agree that the body wants to heal? Yes. Clinically, do I see it? Sometimes. And a lot of the time not. That's why people come to see me and come to see other practitioners. For a lot of people, if the yang is too weak, the general vitality, the immune system, the resources, then healing is always going to be lingering between life and death. And we need to give it an impulse so that it can really make a breakthrough. Alright guys, it's all I have for today. Again, you want to come see me in my private practice or online via telemedicine, you can contact my private practice contact info right below this video. There's also a free download for you below to join my weekly video newsletter. Alright, before you go, check out these two other videos that can help you with this exact idea.