Why do we have illness? Why do we need cures? Illness – like death and taxes, is unavoidable. We will all die, regardless of our wishes and plans. When we die, our doctor will write down the cause of death, our main illness – unless we are lucky enough live so long it’s classified as old age. As we grow older, we accumulate (and often deny) minor illnesses. Many of them will be incurable, we will have them until our inevitable death.
On the other hand, many illnesses can be cured.
First Principle: Every (curable) illness can be cured.
“Every illness can be cured” is the foundation of The Healthicine Theory of Cures. It is based on the simple principle: “If you think you can, you can.”
If an illness cannot be cured, is it really an illness? Yes, but not a curable illness. When we define all illnesses as ‘those that can be cured‘, if it cannot be cured, it is not a curable illness. Q.E.D.
To cure any illness, we must answer the question “What is an illness?” There are many definitions of illness, disease, disorder, medical condition. We need one that meets our purpose, our goal – to cure every illness.
An illness is a negative medical condition with negative signs and symptoms, and a present cause.
Every curable illness can be cured by addressing the present cause. An illness is cured when the cause has been addressed, when signs and symptoms have faded and gone, and when no more medicines are necessary.
Many medical conditions are not illnesses, although they may be the result of an illness. An amputated leg is a medical condition, but is not actively progressing. An illness is abnormal and negative. Many positive conditions, like excellent healthiness, are abnormal, but not negative.
We can only cure a specific instance or case of an illness. We should not expect to cure a general class of diseases, like cancer, arthritis, or diabetes. Even antibiotics, the most powerful medical cures known today, do not cure every infection. A specific patient, with a cancer, with arthritis, with diabetes, might be cured. There are always cases where it is not possible to cure the illness before it kills the patient. There are many cases, where we do not know today, how to cure specific types of illness. But every (curable) illness can be cured.
According to current medical practice (there being no current overall medical theory), many illnesses like the common cold, influenza, and measles cure themselves. Nonsense. They are cured by health. Health cures them naturally. Few illnesses are cured by medicines. Most illnesses can only be cured with healthiness.
Principle: Every (curable) illness has present causes.
Every case of an illness is present, by definition. If it is not present, no cure is needed. To be present, an illness must have one or more present causes. Many diseases are complex, having more than one cause.
A simple illness, an element of illness has only a single cause. But simple illnesses are rare, and often easily cured. Even the simplest of diseases might have many interacting causes and reactions. Today’s medicine often fails to classify disease by cause. This is a simple common error. Many different illnesses of the heart, with many different causes, are classified as heart disease. Cancers are generally first classified by their location, breast cancer, prostate cancer, lung cancer, etc. If we are to cure any case of illness, then we must classify every illness by its present cause. This is done sometimes. It needs to be a fundamental part of diagnosis.
There are three elementary types of present causes of illness.
An illness can be cause by a faulty process like a faulty diet, a deficiency or excess of exercise or rest or any process essential to life and health. Illnesses caused by a faulty process are cured by changing the process. Process cures must be maintained to maintain the cure.
An illness can be caused by a negative attribute, a thing, like a dental cavity that creates infections, a blood clot that causes a stroke or even a faulty shoe that causes a blister. Illnesses caused by negative attributes are cured by transforming the attribute into something healthy, or something normal that does not cause illness.
Don’t be confused by past causes. Past causes can’t be addressed to produce a cure. We can only cure an illness by addressing a present cause.
An injury is the present cause of an injury illness. The past cause of an injury cannot be accessed to cure. Injuries are cured by healing, a natural process.
The cause of an illness might be a process, an attribute, or an injury in the body, the mind, the spirits, the community, or the environment of the patient.
Healing occurs during the progression of the illness, and continues after it has been cured.
Healing is an important type of cure. Healing is always active, a part of life, and is part of the natural progression of every illness. In some cases, healing can continue, or take many years.
It is important to clearly distinguish between transformation and healing – often confused, even by people who cure. Transformation is change. We might cure a damaged tooth with a transformation filling, a cap, or removal. Transformations often require healing. Healing is a natural transformation. Medical transformations are more intentional changes, intentional cures.
Healing is not perfect. No cure is perfect. If we wish to cure, we must be willing to accept imperfect cures.
Cure: An illness is cured when the progression is stopped by addressing present causes.
If an illness is still progressing, it has not been cured. However, sometimes illnesses become dormant, or the progression is below our ability to detect it. The key to knowing if an illness has been cured, is in knowing the causes. Our current treatments for cancer are designed to ‘kill all the cancer cells’, and thus stop the progression. But there is no attempt to identify nor to address the causes. This is why we have many ‘cancer survivors’, but no cancer cures. Until we know the causes of a specific case of cancer, we cannot know that the causes have been addressed. We cannot recognize a cure, even when it happens. Perhaps you’ve heard of someone who claims to be cured? Cure can be claimed, but not proven. Cured is not defined, not testable, for any cancer. Cancers might be cured, we can’t see the cures.
Signs and Symptoms
If the causes have not been addressed, the illness has not been cured. Maybe only the symptoms have been addressed. It is not possible to cure symptoms. Treating symptoms might deny or hide illness, but cannot cure it.
A single case of an illness can have more than one cure.
When we look at the concept of an illness, with each illness having a cause, or perhaps many causes, it becomes clear that a single illness might have many different cures. Even simple illnesses might have more than one cure. A trivial example: scurvy, caused by a dietary deficiency of Vitamin C, is cured by any dietary change that provides necessary foods containing Vitamin C. Many foods contain Vitamin C. Which cure is better? The best cure might be different in each case, unique to the patient, to their dietary habits, their food supplies and preferences. However, scurvy cannot be cured with supplemental Vitamin C, a treatment recommended by many medical references. Vitamin C supplements do not change the dietary process. When the medicine stops, the signs and symptoms return. The cause was never addressed, the illness was never cured.
An illness with a process cause has a chain of present causes. Each link in the chain provides a potential cure. The challenge, when we aim to cure, is to find the best cure, the most efficient and effective cure. Of course every patient is different, and every individual case of an illness is unique, possibly having unique cures with similar consequences.
Many patients have more than one illness.
The common cold can be caused by hundreds of different organisms. It is possible to have ‘two colds and a flu‘ at the same time. In more complex situations, a patient might be suffering from obesity, coronary artery disease, diabetes, and at the same time, to have two colds and a flu.
In some cases, the best cure will cure several of the illnesses at once. The healthy body will cure two colds and a flu, in a relatively short time period, although longer than a single infection. Curing diabetes, might also address the causes of obesity – and cure more than one illness at the same time.
Treating Symptoms does not cure.
Most of today’s medicines, both conventional and alternative medicines, address symptoms, but not the cause. Treating symptoms, while ignoring the cause, does not address the progression of the illness – and in some cases can actually aid its progression. Treating symptoms alone does not, cannot cure, although treating symptoms in some cases – like the common cold, can help the body to cure the illness. In other cases, treating symptoms can be useful to help the patient through the cure. But cure, not symptom treatments, should always be the goal.
Cures are not magic. Medicine should not be magical, not mystical.
Many of today’s medical treatments, both conventional and alternative treatments, use a ‘mystical’ model. We don’t understand why it works, but it works. Works is can often be defined as does not cure in both conventional and alternative medicine. If we are to truly understand cures, we need to get resolve the mysticism. The key to removing the magic from medicine is understanding and addressing causes, creating cures.
There are no spontaneous cures.
So called ‘spontaneous cures’ occur when an illnesses disappears without a medicine. Every cure happens for a simple reason – the present causes have been addressed. Every case of spontaneous remission is an opportunity to better understand the causes of illness.
Anecdotal evidence vs Clinical Studies.
The vast majority of clinical studies measure effects on symptoms of disease, because those are the most profitable medicines. Very few, if any, clinical studies actually measure cures. Cured is not defined and not tested in most clinical studies. Measurement of symptoms, often the basis of so-called evidence based medicine, is often not relevant to the study of cures.
Each case of an illness is a unique anecdote, although there are many common threads that help us to find, and to address the causes. Modern medicine fears and shames anecdotal evidence, which must be embraced if we are to learn to cure. For many of today’s diseases, like cancers, diabetes, and most chronic diseases, the only proof of a cure is anecdotal, because every case of a cure is a single case, an anecdote.
Placebos do not cure.
The complexity of placebos, placebo responses, and placebo effects is much more than we can address here. But we must clearly state that placebos do not, and cannot, cure.
Can this be true? Surely there are thousands of reports, stories, anecdotes, even studies where placebos actually cured a disease? What about ‘warts’. Dr. Andrew Weil advises us that almost every doctor has a story of a wart cure – and they often assume the disease was cured by the ‘placebo effect’.
Placebo effect is simply an effect, an observation, like spontaneous remission, that cannot be explained. If a placebo was administered, and a cure came about, but cannot be explained – then either the placebo did not cure, or it was not a placebo. Q.E.D.
Most placebos, are not prescribed as cures. They are prescribed to address symptoms.
Most of Today’s Medicines Do Not Cure.
In the top 50 medicines, by sales in 2013, there is not a single cure. Every one of the top 50 medicines, and most of the top 100 medicines, simply address signs and symptoms of disease – but do not cure. They are not designed to cure, and cannot cure. We might believe this is because medicines that cure illness – don’t make more sales once the illness is cured, that medicines that treat signs and symptoms sell more as signs and symptoms progress.
The truth is simpler. Most medicines don’t cure because most illnesses can only be cured by health, not by medicines. Heart disease is a health condition – it can only be cured by health, not by medicine. Many of today’s medicines are sophisticated placebos, nothing more.
Most alternative medicines do not cure.
We might wish to believe that, if an alternative medicine cures, it will be adopted by the medical establishment – and no longer be an alternative medicines. This is a myth. There are no cures for most diseases because cured is not defined. Cured is not defined, for any non-infectious disease. If a non-infectious disease is cured by an alternative treatment, the cure is simply ignored. Nobody cares if you cure your arthritis, obesity, depression or diabetes.
Most alternative medicines, like most prescription medicines, and most placebos, simply address signs and symptoms of illness. The debate of conventional vs alternative medicines is only a debate over:
“which medicines, conventional or alternative, DO NOT CURE better”
Conclusion: Theory of Cure
If modern medicine is to progress to curing every illness, it must embrace the first principle: “Every curable illness can be cured.” There are many illnesses, many very common illnesses today, classified as incurable. Patients are advised to learn to live with their disease, saying, in effect your disease cannot be cured. We can do better.
Which of Today’s Illnesses cannot be Cured?
Modern medicine groups illnesses into diseases. Every illness can be cured, but it is not possible to cure a ‘group of illnesses’. The confusion between illness: what a specific patient has, and a disease: what the doctor diagnoses to aid in treatment, leads to confusion about cures. There are diseases on our lists today, which cannot be cured. They are not curable illnesses. If it cannot be cured, it is not an illness.
Today, an illness might be classified as in curable disease simply because cured is not defined. It is not possible to prove that arthritis, diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and many other diseases are cured. There is no test for cured.
Let’s take a look at today’s top killer ‘diseases’:
1. Heart Disease – the top killer disease, is clearly a disease of unhealthiness. Finding and addressing individual causes will cure many cases of heart disease. However heart diseases and cardiovascular diseases often require significant healing as well. Why do we believe heart disease is incurable? One of the primary reasons is simply that cured is not defined for heart disease. It is not possible to demonstrate a cure – because cure is not defined, therefor, the ill-logic goes: heart disease is incurable.
2. Cancers – a large class of diseases. No one studies the cause of individual cancers today, so there is, in current medical theory, no way to cure cancer. There is also no test for a cancer ‘cured’. Cancers are complex. Causes are complex as well. Cancers require an initial cause, which may or may not be ongoing, but they also require additional causes that facilitate growth and allow the cancer to grow without detection, without a fight from the healthy body. These present causes are the only opportunities to cure a case of cancer. Once we learn to study and address causes, many cancers will be cured. There are many claims of cancer cures that should be examined so that we can learn to cure cancers consistently. They are ignored today, or actively denied.
3. Chronic lower respiratory disease (COPD) – COPD is an injury, caused by smoking. The injury is the present cause. COPD might be healed. Often it is not a curable illness. If it cannot be healed, COPD is a handicap, not a curable illness. Like many handicaps, it grows worse as we grow older.
4. Stoke is also an injury, the result of a crisis. It is an injury that can take a long time to heal, and complete healing might not be possible. No cure is perfect. .
5. Alzheimer’s disease -we don’t know the causes nor the chain of events that lead to Alzheimer’s. There might be many causes, many chains. Current treatments for Alzheimer’s focus on symptoms, not on cause. But there are causes. Once we learn to identify specific causes in specific cases – we will begin to heal, and cure the illness. However, Alzheimer’s, like many diseases, causes damage or disabilities, which must be healed, not ‘cured’.
6. Diabetes is curable. Diabetes is not curable. Today’s medicine uses the same name for two different conditions. Type 1 diabetes closer to a disability than an illness. It cannot be ‘cured’, because the cause is gone. Type 1 is the present cause of other illnesses. Type 2 diabetes has an ongoing cause and is curable. There are many cases of diabetes cures that should be examined so that we can learn to cure diabetes consistently.
7. Kidney diseases are curable in many cases. There are many ongoing causes of kidney disease and when the individual causes are addressed the disease will be addressed. Like many diseases, kidney disease can also be a disability, or be caused by a disability, which is incurable. In those cases, kidney disease can only be ‘treated’, but not cured. The challenge is to know which is which. However, when a kidney disease is easily cured, it is often considered not kidney disease, perhaps just an infection.
8. Influenza, the common cold, pneumonia – can be cured. In many cases the best cure is health, and the healthy body will cure the diseases. In some cases, the body needs or can benefit from medicines.
How to Cure?
I am not a doctor, the above list was prepared by simply applying a theory of cures to common diseases.
If most conventional medicines do not cure, and most alternative medicines do not cure, and placebos can’t cure, and there are no spontaneous cures, how can we find cures?
We can only find cures by looking for the cured, on a case by case basis. We need to study those who are cured, to learn if they were really cured, to understand what actually caused their illness, and how they were cured. Today, anyone who claims to be cured is ignored – they don’t need any medicines.
When we look for cured, openly and honestly, we will learn that the cause of many illnesses is simply unhealthiness and the cure for most, if not all illness is healthiness. Once we remove the cause, what is left is healthiness – and illnesses are cured.
to your health, tracy
This post was originally written in April 2015, as I began my quest to understand the concepts of cure, cures, curing and cured. It has now been updated to include the concepts published in the book: The Elements of Cure, published in 2019.
