 You know, for most of us in the modern world, what we deal with a lot is chronic illness. It's not necessarily dying of tuberculosis or dying of cholera somewhere, but if you're in the developed world, we struggle a lot with long term low grade or moderate grade illness that really saps the quality of life. Now, one thing I've seen in my patients and even in my own healing journey was that there are two fundamental questions that are very important to recognize and acknowledge if you want to feel well again, really permanently. So in this video, let's talk about what those two questions are and why they are so important. What's up guys? Dr. Alex Hein, author of the health book, Master of the Day, and doctor of Chinese medicine and licensed acupuncturist. So before we jump in, two very important links right below the video. The first is if you'd like to become a patient of mine locally in Los Angeles or virtually via telemedicine, the contact info for my private practice in clinic is right below this video. And the second is that there's a free download, which is 40 of the rituals that could potentially help you add years to your life with Chinese medicine. So question number one fundamentally is why did I get sick, right? Why did I get sick in the first place? I've seen many, many people come to see me and they all have a variation on this question. I take such good care of myself or I didn't abuse myself and yet I got really sick and I'm still sick years later. So why did I get sick? Me of all people. My friend over there eats Taco Bell every damn day and his digestion is fine. And I'm over here eating kale salads and I have severe gut problems that I'm coming to see you for. And I think the answer is almost always the same. It's nature and nurture to some degree, right? It is our genetics and our environment. It is our inborn constitution and our personal decisions, choices, and things that happen to us, experiences that happen to us. So this idea of why did I get sick is very important because one, there is such a thing as a weak constitution. There are people who are just genetically more sickly than others. And that's just the luck of the draw, right? That's just a roll of the dice. Every parent here watching this video knows that there are some kids when they eat food they never complain about their stomach and there are some kids they eat the same exact food as their brother or their sister and they're always complaining about their stomach being weird or stomach aches or before school they're, you know, they're more emotional and more sensitive. That's just genetics. Most of the time, you know, in addition to there can be childhood trauma and experiences with parents or the kids mirror the parents' emotional psychological state, but humans are not a tabla rasa. We are not a blank slate, right? We come into this world with predispositions and those are the things that are really genetics in the constitution. Now the second most important question is why am I still sick? I see this all the time. People who take such good care of themselves and yet they are still sick and still with the same low grade symptoms that bother them and there are people who don't take good care of themselves and are also still sick. So it seems a bit futile to take such good care of yourself and still be sick in the long run, but this is so many of the people that I see and I fall into this category as well. As a kid, raised in a very healthy environment, never took medications, never took antibiotics, always had lifelong digestive problems and that just runs in my maternal line. Everyone has GI problems. That's just a genetic rule of the dice thing. But why do people stay sick? Very important question. The three things that I see first are just this idea of a weak constitution. You know, Chinese medicine acknowledges and recognizes that some people through no fault of their own or nothing they have done will have more illness. Eating the same foods, doing a good lifestyle, bad lifestyle, whatever, doing the same thing they see everyone else doing will be more sick than the others. And that's just weak constitution. It's more prone to illness and that person is just going to have to be extra careful whatever it is that is their susceptibility. Maybe it's dietary, maybe what they struggle with is migraines, maybe they're more prone to insomnia or light sleep or anxiety or depression and they are going to have to come up with better coping mechanisms in the future to offset what's really a genetic short changing for lack of a better word. That's just going to be the chink in your armor. And just like I have to be extra careful about my gut because that is a genetic thing I inherited that it's not about fairness, it just is. And so I have to be extra cognizant and extra aware of that. The second thing that I see is what I call damage to young. So it's very common in our field to see people, the sequela, the follow up after long-term illness, the damage after repeated rounds of antibiotics. Sometimes people post steroids develop severe reactions. I've seen this many times, you know, edema all over the body, the face, I've seen this most often from repeated antibiotic usage or sometimes just one round of antibiotics and people are never treated seriously. They're never taken seriously when they go back to the prescribing physician who then says there's no link between your antibiotics and your now anxiety or depression. Seen this probably 15% of my initial patients, first hundred patients in my office were post antibiotics on set of a new illness. Chinese medicine visualizes this as damage to young. So essential vital resources were damaged that have to be replenished because these people are often pushed immediately into a chronic illness pattern for years. They often come to me after two, three years of that initial event, post steroids, prednisone, post antibiotics, and then they're never the same since that's damaged to a vital resource in Chinese medicine that we have to then replenish using formulas. The third thing that I see is obviously our personal decisions, right? Our personal decisions obviously determine the chronicity of illness, not every illness, but many of them. You know, the archetypal one being the diabetic who continues to eat, you know, sugar and sweets and doesn't exercise, despite the threats of the physician who says, we're going to need to amputate your foot or your leg if you don't start eating healthier and get your blood sugar down and improve your high blood pressure. Right. So these three things are really essential to know, in my opinion, that why we get sick is just one question, but why we stay sick is another very, very important question. And not everything is your fault, not everything is in our control, but understanding these three factors can often be very helpful in the healing journey. All right. So that's what I have for today for you guys. Otherwise, catch you in these other related videos over there.