 One of the most interesting questions I get a lot is what have you learned by both being a patient for ten years and now seeing Patients of your own and in this video I want to share some interesting insights that Chinese medicine and acupuncture have taught me Especially if you are a person that is a patient and you have a chronic illness And you're not getting solutions or answers from all the people that have seen you Hey guys, I'm Alex Hein current doctoral student in classical or traditional Chinese medicine and author of the book master of the day So the very first lesson for me is that you usually are the best healer in your healing process So it's really common like for me with digestive problems I would go to all these doctors or started in the Western system worth the new dietician the GI specialist the general practitioner And all of them would you know, they would make assumptions like the GI doctor did a little bit of abdominal palpation And he was like you feel a little bit stressed, right? Like life's pretty tough. I was like nope Not at all. I have a really easy life and he's like yeah a little bit stressed I know what you mean and like the dude didn't listen at all And he was just kind of trying to put words in my mouth and so he wanted to give me a diagnosis of IBS Even though I don't have IBS and I hadn't before more of that diagnosis of exclusion And so he was trying to make a link between stress and like my bowel habits changing But they didn't change under stress. In fact, they were worse on vacation And so I think you have to understand your own self and the way you do that is just by tracking what you know to be true And it may be exactly what the physician says or it may be different and it may be unique to you So if you you know, you put together I have a document on my computer called IBS quote the definitive document and every single thing I've tested on my body is in that document to try to figure out a Solution so that may be a good start as well The second thing that I learned quite a lot that Chinese medicine specifically has helped me learn is to look at Symptom pictures rather than symptoms look at patterns and relationships not individual symptoms So for example the trick or the problem when you think about conventional medicine is that you go to one doctor for one piece Of your body you go to the GI doctor instead of the whole body doctor You go to the toe doctor when you have gout you it's very zoomed in and very myopic look at medicine Which is kind of surprising because the human body is a system and Chinese medicine has known this for a long time Which I think is a very strong advantage where it looks at okay. Maybe you have digestive problems What else do you have? Do you have problems with your period? Do you have problems conceiving? Do you have thinning and dry hair? Do you have dry skin? Do you have fatigue? We look at the whole picture and all of those symptoms can fall into one picture Rather than going on this wild goose hunt where you're trying to figure out why do I have dry hair all of a sudden? Why am I so tired? Why am I anemic? Why can't I sleep? Why do I feel cranky? All of these could put you on a lifeline a lifelong search for that cure for that problem But it's better to look at the whole picture Holistically like in Chinese medicine for example that picture is called blood deficiency a lot of the time in your own life For example like for me with digestion it could be like oh, I think it's gluten. Oh, I think it's this one thing or it's dairy Rather than looking at very isolated for example macronutrients like protein fats and carbs for me to look at the big-kick picture like start with the foundation am I eating whole Natural unrefined food and then if you're not getting results there then go into something more specific The third thing I learned was to focus on the big levers in your life and not the little things So big things are for example overall rest and stress a person's diet from a look of truly big picture Like someone going from the standard American diet eating McDonald's three times a day to eating like brown rice With vegetables and a healthy kind of protein. That's a big zero to one shift And I think the trick again is we get so caught up in that one symptom and that one thing not working That we forget look at the big picture am I happy do I eat well? Do I rest well does my life of purpose and meaning look at the big stones in the picture and look at your whole life Don't just look at diet. I find that American culture is very myopic and thinks that health when they think health They just think diet. That's it. It's super uncommon in other parts of the world where like in Europe for example The way of life is what's emphasized So really long vacation times maternity leave for a very long time just Taking pleasure having long meals drinking the wine like it's just a very different look at the whole big picture and when you look at the blue zones and These regions of the world where people live to be over a hundred and statistically significant just very high percentages These people over half of the criteria predicting that longevity have nothing to do with diet So ask yourself am I focusing on the entire picture? The fourth thing for me was to kind of reevaluate your beliefs about your illness your condition and about healing So for example for me one thing I noticed was that people with a chronic illness tend to become overly sensitive over a period of time and a good example of this is in zombie acts where Chronic and zombie acts at some point in Zomnia may be situational Irregular work hours stress going through divorce something like that But if it progresses to like the multiple month multiple year or decades Then it becomes a deeper psycho emotional issue and so much of what? Anchors and illness in the chronic area is the belief like oh if I move that way I'm gonna tweak my back and so we guard it and then that further leads to stagnation and stiffness or Oh, if I eat like that one piece of bread that has gluten I'm gonna have bloody diarrhea like it's just the world's gonna end and then we become Hypersensitive to every little thing every little oh What is that bloating? What is that? What is that weird sensation? Every little thing becomes a big thing and this kind of neurotic type trait I have experienced too with that just a problems and it it Revolves around this belief that the body is fragile, but your body is not fragile. It is the most Sophisticated machine that has made it through evolution thus far. It is strong and it's capable of healing itself But if you have the belief that it's not then that's gonna keep anchoring itself over and over so doing a lot of Cognitive restructuring around the perception of your illness is huge It's one of the most important things, especially with pain and the last thing here is to understand your own constitution And what affects it? This is something that Chinese medicine has helped me a lot with so for example thinking about me with digestive problems since childhood I like to think of it as a Constitutional prespositions towards digestive problems and they can go away But they can just as easily come back if I imbalance my body again And that may be the way that my body uniquely shows stress So number one it teaches you where the chinks are in your armor, but maybe hey Maybe you have to live life differently from your friends and family For that health condition to go away and to stay away. Maybe it is stress Maybe it is certain kinds of foods. Maybe it's a certain lifestyle Maybe it's migraines or issues with your menses It's very important to understand how your body breaks down when there's breakdown so you can prevent that in the future So I hope that helps. These are some of my biggest lessons being a patient for 10 years now seeing patients of my own Before you go, I want you to leave a comment there below. Let me know for you What is it multi-year chronic illness you've dealt with and what seemed to work so far? All right guys Thanks for watching this video before you go you can grab my free guide how to add 10 years to your life with classical Chinese medicine at alexhine.com forward slash free and you can grab that also in the link there below and check out these latest two videos right here