In the previous episode, I spoke about my framework for diagnosis and why it is so critically important to have this framework in place no matter what the presenting complaint is. I appreciate that this may have been too complex or difficult to digest from a patient's perspective, or maybe even not useful at all! Thus in this second episode, I want to create a helpful guide on what to expect and how to navigate the world of healthcare professionals from the patient’s perspective.

Maybe you have hurt your back and don’t know whether you should see an osteopath or chiropractor? Maybe you have already been in the healthcare system for years chasing scan after scan with no firm diagnosis or way forward? It is exactly these issues that I want to address and hopefully make your lives that little bit easier. A lot of these issues arise due to poor clinical practice can be offset if you know what to ask, say or expect.

The first (and arguably most important) phenomenon to understand is the landscape of allopathic medicine and what it is. What I mean by this, is that we need to understand what health issues we have in our modern society and if the system that exists can actually deal with these issues in the first place.

The short answer is that it, by definition, CANNOT.

We live in a pandemic of CHRONIC disease. The allopathic model (i.e. modern medicine as you know it) is good for dealing with ACUTE care issues, such as strokes, car accidents, fractures and so on. Not chronic issues such as the ones that currently plague the world.

Aside from this, allopathic medicine focuses on treating symptoms. Not root causes. Fixing a symptom will NEVER fix a disease process or any other health related complaints. In order to heal and get better, one needs to address the underlying reasons for that symptom expression. Let me explain this further by giving a brief meta level overview on how our bodies breakdown when chronically stressed (by stress I am talking about total allostatic load on the body).

We have multiple systems in our bodies such as the cardiovascular, respiratory and gastroenterological systems just to name a few. When these systems become dysfunctional, disturbed or start to change in anyway, they will create signs or symptoms that we may or may not notice through changes in the physiology that underlies these systems (i.e chronically increased blood sugar damages nerves over time, damaged neves exhibit neurological symptoms such as numbness pins and needles, weakness and so on). The signs or symptoms we thus feel or see and go to the doctor with are the end expression of dysfunction in these systems that potentially started a long time ago. These are often not immediate, they often take a while to build up. Examples include the gradual increase in blood pressure due to smoking. Most of the time you do not know of feel when your blood pressure is high. Yet every second that it is too high, means increased pressure in our cardiovascular system that has the potential to predispose multiple conditions from strokes and heart attacks to - all without feeling a thing! If some of us do notice these subtle signs and symptoms, we often end up dismissing them due to getting older.