 So I fielded this very common question from maybe 10 or 15 patients and the question is very similar to my own experience being a sick person a chronically sick person who also took very good care of himself and just did not understand why that was happening. Now I thought in this video today I would take some time to answer this question I take such good care of myself why did this happen to me. Hey guys Dr. Alex Hine author of the health book master the day Chinese medicine doctor now before we jump into this video today there are two very important links the first right below this video is if you would like to become a patient of mine locally in Los Angeles or virtually in California get telemedicine there's a link below to contact me in my private practice. The second is if you'd like to download the free guide for daily rituals that can potentially help you add years to your life with Chinese medicine it's right there down below the video you'll get that free guide and you'll also get my weekly video newsletter. So let's read through this email from Mika because I hear this quite a lot and I thought it quite a lot in my own healing journey and I was very discouraged because I saw myself taking such exceptional care of myself and to still be sick when I saw other people neglecting their health and have no problems was very frustrating. So here's a Mika said she said dear Dr. Alex I was wondering if you could offer your input on a situation that has baffled me for some time now I feel like I'm the healthiest person I know at least in terms of my habits but I always seem to have problems with my skin my digestion I get sick easily and I've trouble sleeping everyone around me seems to take terrible care of themselves and yet they have none of these issues that I have why I thought I would share a bit about my own experience because I'm pretty sure in my own healing journey I echoed word for word what Mika had just asked me and Mika is even a composite of many dozens of patients some I had seen as a student and some that I see now but I share it because I felt it and I still remember the first time I went to an integrative or alternative health practitioner and I said you know I was going for my digestive health and I said I'm very frustrated my friends go out and eat Taco Bell you know we were whatever 21 22 my friends are going out eating Taco Bell every day and they don't have problems with bowel movements or their appetite or these other problems how is it possible that they are eating garbage and they have good regular digestion and I'm over here being very meticulous about eating healthy and I'm always complaining about my digestion and from that I got a very interesting response so this first mentor of mine was a Chinese medicine doctor primarily an acupuncturist but he gave me some herbs that were very effective for helping my digestion and they weren't necessarily a super specialized very specific custom formula it was a very broad spectrum formula and he said because what you have is a hardware problem and what he meant was that it is my constitution it is my body that has the problem and not the food so that's why someone with very good digestion can eat whatever and their digestion will stay generally very good or it'll run through them quicker and then they'll be back to being fine while someone else eating a specialized healthy diet still has problems on healthy food so unhealthy food can sometimes be far far worse so he said you have a hardware problem now this comes back to the idea of understanding constitution I was watching this show called The Last Kingdom and in that show there's a king I think King Alfred and he's always sickly in the movies complaining about his gut and he's being sickly and he said you know I hope that my children or my son does not inherit my fragile constitution now throughout history constitution was a very important and easily observed factor in illness these days we just call it genetics but understanding that your parents had certain genetic predispositions towards illnesses towards body types towards the way they carry fat or how much muscle they carry in the same way we have genetic predispositions towards let's just call it susceptibilities now I've talked about this idea of understanding the chink in your armor because it often is the template that then you layer your life on right so you're your genetic predisposition and then you have lifestyle and epigenetic factors and I think that for many of us that take good care of ourselves that are still sick honestly just have weak constitutions and that's not a very reassuring answer I know but it's just a fact that some kids come into this world more sickly some come in more robust and they have generally good health good digestion and if they get sick it's acute and it's big but then they get better faster and other kids are more prone to this chronic underlying long-term months years of illness and that's going to be their constant companion throughout their life to some degree this idea of weak constitution I think can be many things it is a combination of what Chinese medicine calls prenatal or genetic factors and then I wonder even what's the effect of pregnant women being on pharmaceuticals that's definitely has some kind of potentially even epigenetic effects and even I wonder what's happening in the early you know the early environment and early childhood I don't know what the effects are of you know American food quality versus European food quality both the kinds of wheat that we grow and maybe the pesticides that we use and the exposure I mean I was reading a paper on amphibians that are becoming uh transgender or androgynous because of the the birth control that's being urinated out and then into the water supply so these amphibians that are susceptible and have I think very porous skin that are obviously in the water some of their life are actually having these interesting effects on the expression of their sex and their gender there's a lot environmentally that may be affecting our health and our constitution but I think honestly the big one is that some kids really do have weaker constitutions than others and they tend to be more sickly for no other reason that's just the role of the dice sometimes how it goes so I thought I would share this because I don't know if that's very reassuring but I do find that with Chinese medicine especially Chinese formulas you can repair a constitution to the point where someone goes from having migraines daily or gut problems daily to a few times a year and that is as effective as a close to a quote cure as you can get but that will always be their weak point and that's important to know so that's all I have for you today again you'd like to become a patient of mine locally in Los Angeles or throughout California via telemedicine check the link below this video to contact my private practice there's also a free guide down below for daily rituals that can possibly help you add years to your life with traditional Chinese medicine all right you guys that is all I have for today check these related videos out that will help you as well