 Sometimes when you get really sick, medicine is obviously the answer. And sometimes when people get sick, physical medicine is not necessarily the answer. One of the things I see so much in my private practice is that for many of us, our diseases are the diseases of modern civilization. And what that means is they are not only the diseases of our modern material life, our food and how little we move and how stagnant we are, but also the person's psycho-emotional life or the psycho-spiritual life, if you like that term, of the person. Now, in my opinion, there is one thing that is the highest form of medicine, and that's what we're talking about here today in this video. Hey guys, I'm Dr. Alex Hein, author of the health book, Master of the Day, and doctor of acupuncture and traditional Chinese medicine. So before we jump into this video, there are two very important links right below the video. The first is for a free guide, which is five daily rituals that can potentially help you add years to your life with traditional Chinese medicine, and the second is if you'd like to become a patient of mine locally in Los Angeles or virtually via telemedicine, you can reach out to my private practice with the links below this video here. I can think back to a patient that I had when I was still in grad school on our medical program, and when I was doing the intake and the survey of basically what was going on, I was saying, you know, how are you doing? Any medications? Any past medical history that's useful or interesting or concerning? And she said, no, no medications, no surgeries, no procedures, nothing. And I said, okay, well, how are you sleeping? Tell me about your sleep a little bit and tell me what's going on. And she said, oh, you know, sometimes I have some issues. I take trisodone for my sleep. I was like, okay, so you take one medication and she's like, yeah, yeah, okay, one. And then I say, you know, how are you day to day in terms of mood? And she's like, well, I have a lot of anxiety and sometimes depression. So I do take an antidepressant and this is what it's called and this is the dosage and I said, okay, so two medications. And then she said, you know, I have some, some urinary issues from time to time, frequent urination and sometimes, you know, chronic UTIs and yeast infections. So I do take this quite often as well. So, okay, frequent antibiotics and another medication from time to time. And basically as our survey and as our medical intake went on and on and on, she was taking five medications. When, when I asked if she took any medication, she said, no. And she sort of gave a sheepish smile when she said, oh, I guess it's actually, I do take a lot of stuff. Now, what was interesting is that as we weren't able to work together, she was still taking those medications because she didn't want to change any of them. But she didn't actually change any aspect of her life. And I think this is frankly more common than uncommon. And for so many of us, we are self-medicating literally with a medication. And every day we conduct our lives like business as usual, right? There's nothing different. There's no change. There's no significant upheaval required. And what I see is one of the greatest benefits of traditional medications is it helps with symptoms. And one of the greatest downside is it helps with symptoms. Because when you take someone who's having migraines that are a 10 out of 10 that are disabling, that keep them out of their job, that is going to push someone on a quest for healing, hopefully. Now, on the other side, let's say you take a migraine medication that puts it down to, let's say, a four. They can go through their whole life like that, miserably, but still functionally. And in some ways, you have disabled them from a very primal purpose, which is the hunger, the hunter, that is in search of something, in this case, healing. For many of us, we are searching for some kind of healing. And the greatest form of healing is not needing any sort of medication or herb or intervention whatsoever. The greatest intervention and the highest form of healing is when your life is your medicine. Now, there's a great quote in one of our ancient medical texts that says, tonification with herbs is not as good as tonification with food. Tonification with food is not as good as no need for tonification at all. So if you don't need to take, let's say, a medicine, then you shouldn't take a medicine. And if you don't need to take a very specialized diet, then you shouldn't take a very specialized diet. And that at the very peak of everything is that the way your life is arranged, your sleep, your food, your lifestyle, your job and how many hours you work and even the climate that you work and the relationships that you're in, the highest level is that every individual piece of your life actually is the medicine that keeps your health in balance and optimizes your longevity. So what does it look like if your life is your medicine, right? I think back to my great grandmother who originally came from Lithuania and her family was in the Midwest originally, but she had quite severe asthma and it was a seasonal change that often stirred up her asthma. Now the physician at the time was clearly a very wise man because he said, you know, if you guys are able, it would help your children if you're able to move to the West where it's drier. So they moved to Southern California, which is better for my great-grandma's asthma. And go figure, it is better for my own asthma as well. So the dampness is very often the singular factor that produces a lot of these issues for asthmatics like me. So for me, having life as medicine also involves a geographical area that doesn't stir up bothersome symptoms. Maybe someone is more prone to depression and living in the Pacific Northwest or living in Norway is not good for them. Just from a psychoemotional point of view, a mental illness, mental health point of view. Maybe for you, let's just say you're more sensitive person and you know that you don't have as much of a resilience towards stress, right? You're not as resilient with physical stress. You know that about yourself. You know that you can't work 67 hours because your body just collapses and you get sick. If that's the case, maybe choosing the careers that you go into are going to be a piece of your healing and not choosing something like medicine or law or something where you're working regularly 70 plus hours. So this kind of self-awareness, where do I live? What is my lifestyle like? How many hours do I want to work? That is the highest intersection of the lifestyle I want and the health I want. How many kids do I have? How much time do I take off from work? What am I eating? How am I spending my evenings? What would it look like to make your life your medicine? I mean, I've heard of people becoming self-employed purely because they have a chronic illness and they have issues with insomnia. So that they decide that they want to start their workday only afternoon because their symptoms are unpredictable and always changing. And when their insomnia or the depression flares up, they need to be able to sleep until 11 to feel well. That is making your life your medicine, highly customizing your life towards something that is really catered towards your long-term wellness and your long-term healing. Now I think this is something that is very aspirational for many of us but it is something that we should always keep in mind because like that ancient medical doctor said, tonification, basically no need for tonification is the best of all. So what would your life look like every day? Every little specific quadrant, every hour. If your life was oriented around your medicine, healing, not productivity, not getting things done but towards your healing. Think about that.