There are exactly three types of curing, based on cause.
In the theory of cure, we find three elementary types of causes of healthiness and illness, potentially leading to three types of illness, cured respectively with three types of cures: healing, curing, and caring.
Healing Cures
We are familiar with healing cures, because most illnesses are cured by healing. We get a bruise, or a cut, or a puncture from a mosquito – and it heals. The more damage the slower the curing. Once the healing stops, the cure is completed. The injury is gone, although there might be some remnants. The less damage, the more perfect the cure. No cure is perfect, so no healing cure is perfect. Cures move us forward, not back to a previous status. Sometimes healing leaves a scar. Sometimes, the damage is too great, and healing can only close off the damage, but not produce a complete repair.
Curing Cures
In the theory of cure, we cure when we intentionally address the present cause of the illness. If we have a bacterial infection, and we kill the bacteria with an antibiotic, that’s a medical cure. If a surgeon removes the bacteria – that’s a medical cure. If the infection is small, and we simply scratch it away – it’s also a cure, but not medical. If we have been stranded in the desert, we drink water to cure our dehydrated status. Curing cures, like healing cures are one-time cures. We cure and the illness is gone. It might occur again, if the cause occurs again.
Caring Cures
When we are dehydrated from our desert experience, a one-time cure is needed, and sufficient. But if we are dehydrated because are not drinking enough water every day, the cure is to care for ourselves, to drink sufficient water every day, a caring cure. Caring cures are ongoing. When an illness is caused by a failure to care for ourselves – a one-time cure is not sufficient, an ongoing cure is necessary.
A Curable Element of illness
In this discussion, we are focusing on simple illnesses, elementary illnesses, to gain a clear understanding of the concepts, a clear foundation. An elementary illness, or an element of illness has a single cause. It is cured by addressing the single cause. When that cause has been addressed – the illness is gone. If the cause occurs again, a new illness is present, and a new cure is needed.
An illness consists of the intersection of a present cause and a set of negative consequences, resulting from that cause as illustrated in this figure:
Cure: Address the Cause of an Illness
When an illness is present, the cause is present. To cure, we must address the present cause. Working to address past causes, or future causes, might prevent future illnesses, but it cannot cure a present illness.
Healing, curing, and caring address different types of causes.
Healing addresses injury causes. The injury has past causes – but the injury is the cause of distress, the cause of signs and symptoms of the illness. When the injury is healed, cured, the signs and symptoms fade away.
Although modern medicine recognizes healing as a cure, healing cures are generally ignored. They don’t require medical attention. A patient with a stab wound visits a hospital, gets a blood transfusion, perhaps some stitches, and is sent home to heal.
Curing addresses attribute causes. The bacteria causing an infection is a thing, which when successfully addressed – killed or removed – results in a cure. Most infections are cured by natural forces, by healing, but some are severe enough to require intentional action like antibacterial medicine, or surgery.
Medical curing is recognized medically – although rarely documented as a cure. When a surgeon operates on a hernia, it’s a surgical cure, billed as a surgery, not a cure. Non-medical curing is generally ignored. When a grandchild clips the grandmother’s ingrown toenail, curing it, the surgery is not considered medical. When a doctor or nurse does the same – it’s medical, medically billable, but not documented as a cure.
Caring cures address lifestyle causes, often addressing chronic causes. If we don’t get enough healthy food, we suffer malnutrition. The cure is not a healthy meal, it is healthy eating. There are many different types of malnutrition, and many other lifestyle causes of illness. In each case, the cure is to care for ourselves. When we fall into a damaging habit, like smoking, we develop smoker’s cough. The cure is a negative action: not smoking.
Caring cures are not one-time cures. The cure must be maintained to maintain the cured status. Before the illness, the cure action is maintained without conscious attention. Sometimes, when illness is present, the cure can also occur without conscious intent. Sometimes, after we start eating a healthy diet to cure an illness, the cure becomes part of us, maintained without conscious intent to cure.
Caring cures come first from self-care. But, sometimes we need help. Children need help from parents to maintain healthiness and to cure when lifestyle illnesses occur. Sometimes a cure comes from a sibling – feeding an aging senior can no longer care for themselves, or from a care home.
Most caring is not curing. Most of the time, we care for ourselves without any illness, without any desire to cure. Caring can be viewed as a preventative when no illness is present, a cure when a lifestyle illness occurs.
Modern medicine rarely, if at all, acknowledges caring as curing. Palliative care is a medical term for caring with no intention to cure, caring after the medical system has given up on curing. Even when palliative care cures – for example curing a patient’s chronic dehydration – the cure is rarely recognized, much less documented. Caring often cures illnesses that are chronic, but modern medicine generally judges chronic diseases as incurable.
Causes of Illness
A present case of illness has a present cause. Any illness might have many different past causes, which we can speculate backwards in a chain as in the ditty, “for want of a nail…”
An illness is cured by addressing its present cause(s). There are three fundamentally different types of causes.
The three elementary causes of illness are injuries, attributes (things), and processes (lifestyle causes), as illustrated in the above diagram.
Note: there are no clear distinctions between the three different types of illness, we distinguish by curing, by successfully addressing the cause.
Injury illnesses are the most common – and most injuries are trivial, easily cured by the natural forces of health and healing.
Attribute illnesses are caused by things, attributes. The attribute cause might be a barrier, like a brick wall, or perhaps a hole. The attribute must be changed, transformed, such that it no longer causes illness, to produce a cure. An illness caused by a thorn, a bacteria, or an ingrown toenail are cured when the cause is addressed, transformed, or removed.
Injuries are also attributes and an injury illness is cured when the injury is transformed by healing. The distinction between healing and curing, in the theory of cure, is the intent. When we cure without conscious intent – it’s healing. When we cure with conscious intention – it’s curing.
Causal illnesses are caused by life processes. We often think of lifestyle illnesses as chronic and incurable, but this limited vision can result in a failure to cure many curable illnesses and failure to recognize many cures when they occur. Causal illnesses are cured by processes changes, addition, removal or change, transformation of a process that must be maintained to maintain the cured status.
The distinction between an attribute illness and a causal illness is judged by the cure. When a one-time transformation produces a cure, the illness was an attribute illness. On the other hand, when a cure requires an ongoing process, the illness was a causal illness.
A simple case of dehydration is cured by drinking sufficient water to address the dehydrated status. However, an ongoing case, a case of chronic dehydration, requires an ongoing action – regularly drinking sufficient water. Of course, dehydration can have many other causes – but those are not simple, not elementary cases.
The three different types of illness, injuries, attributes, an causal illnesses are cured respectively by healing, curing, and caring.
Healing, Curing, and Caring
In this image, we can see that healing, curing, and caring actions match perfectly with the different causes and different types of illness in the circle.
Not all Healing, Curing, or Caring Actions are Cures
No cure is perfect.
Healing cures are not perfect – they are forward transformations. Sometimes, healing does not cure, sometimes healing is deficient or excessive, resulting in failure to cure or negative consequences from the cure process. Healing, however, is usually naturally curative.
Attribute cures work when they successfully address the cause of the illness, and fail when they do not – and result in partial cures when the cause is only partially addressed. Of course, not all of our intentional curative actions result in cures and neither do all of our intentional transformations. Life is about intention.
Modern medicine has no concept of a causal cure, a cure that must be maintained, must be cared for, to prevent the recurrence of illness. Caring is often dismissed as non-curative. For example, palliative care is delivered without any intention to cure. However, many illnesses require ongoing caring actions to maintain the cure. We need to understand this to build a comprehensive understanding of curing, caring, and healing.
Most Diseases are not Elementary Illnesses
Most cases of elementary illnesses are trivial, easily cured – so easily that we dismiss the cure and often even dismiss the illness. We get a minor cut, a bruise, indigestion, a headache – and we simply ignore it. It’s not important. It heals. Life goes on.
A case of disease is an illness recognized, diagnosed by a medical professional. We rarely take our elementary illness to the doctor – because we can cure it ourselves. The exceptions are lifestyle chronic illnesses, like tennis elbow and smoker’s cough, where we know, in theory, the cause and the cure, but choose instead to ask for medical assistance.
Most diseases are defined such that multiple causes are present. Compound and complex illnesses require compound and complex curative actions.
Modern medicine, however, often wants to find simple cures, one-time cures, complete cures, permanent cures – and thus cannot recognize cure elements, which are partial cures. The vocabulary of cure, in our current medical paradigm, does not have words for the concepts of cure elements, partial cures, temporary cures, repeating cures, and process cures. The cure for smoker’s cough, easily understood by patient’s, friends and family, and medical professionals, cannot be recognized as a cure even after it occurs, because modern medicine has no concept of a negative process cure “stop the smoking process.”
To cure more illnesses, to improve our cures, we must cure and recognize cured cases and the causes of the cures.
to your health, tracy
Author: A New Theory of Cure
