24 www.petloverscompanion.com • 703.780.4400 Self healing A concept common to alternative therapies is that the individual has the ability to heal themselves and so therapy should be directed at aiding that process. Therefore the doctor does not cause the healing to occur; they only facilitate the process. The more options the doctor has available to offer the patient, the more efficient the doctor can be at affecting the curative process. Symptoms Health is not the absence of symptoms, but the absence of disease. Many approaches view symptoms in quite a different way than we do in Western medicine. Symptoms are created by the body when it is in the process of trying to reestablish a state a health. We all recognize that a fever, for example, is a positive process when a microbial invader is present. The elevated body temperature will have a negative effect on the organism and help to activate the host immune system. A prolonged fever, however, can create problems of its own. The conventional approach is to stop the process, that is, give a medicine to bring down the fever. This action will unfortunately shut down the healing process and prevent the individual from being able to rid itself of the pathogen. The holistic approach is to try to figure out why the body was unable to finish the healing process on its own and help it to do so. In chronic disease situations this approach can often take longer than the conventional approach, but the individual will be healthier for finishing the process on its own. It has “learned” how to effect a curative reaction from start to finish. Our knowledge of the details of healing are not yet complete, so the attempt to micromanage the process tends to perpetuate the state of ill-health and although those particular symptoms may be resolved the individual tends to continue to have problems that recur or manifest elsewhere. This is not another disease, just another manifestation of the state of ill-health. The individual often presents with acute symptoms that are not a disease itself, but simply an acute manifestation of a chronic disease state. That is, the individual is never well, they NORTHERN VIRGINIA PET SITTERS Learn more about our pet sitters, see ads thought the book and listings starting on page xx See the marked boxes to find a pet sitter in yuour area. Company Name/Page Julie’s Pooch Pad (p. 21) Sit-A-Pet (p. 31) Walking the Dogs (p.35) Becky’s Pet Care (p. 2) CATS ONLY AT Home Cat Care (p. 19) AuPurr Cat Care (p. 23) Alexandria Annandale Arlington Ashburn/South Riding Bailey’s Crossroads Burke/Fairfax Station Centreville/Chantilly Clifton Dumfries/Triangle Dunn Loring Fairfax Falls Church Gainesville Great Falls Herndon/Reston Leesburg Lorton Manassas/Bristow McLean Oakton/Vienna Springfield Stafford Sterling Woodbridge/Dale City
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