Right now, many are pretty shocked at the death toll COVID-19 is racking up around the globe, especially in Italy. With many media outlets super-hyping this disease, many are afraid of getting this and wonder “If I get this, am I going to die?”. Some things to consider with this, 81% of known cases are considered mild to moderate, and many experts are stating that there is likely many more that are asymptomatic, meaning they are not exhibiting symptoms but still creating the antibodies naturally to defend against this.1 Yes, 14% of known cases are considered severe requiring hospitalization, and 5% critical requiring intensive care.2 As more time goes by, we are getting more information as scientists and doctors have had a chance to look at and compile data and statistics. For example, Italy’s national health authority recently released a study looking at 18% of the country’s coronavirus fatalities, or 2,003 patients and found that 99.2% had 1 or more other active illnesses with a whopping 48.5% of those having 3 or more!3, 4 So, what is this telling us? One major thing in the report was that most of the people were older (median age was 80.5 years old), and typically older individuals tend to have a harder time fighting off illness. Though it also tells us, kind of bluntly, the more sicknesses you have, the more likely you are to die… pretty common thinking I would say, and in my opinion to have truly helped many of these individuals we would have had to intervene years ago, not just within the last few moments of their lives. If we start thinking about true prevention techniques and taking a serious look at our overall health and wellness years before serious illness develops, this would go a long way in helping to not just safeguard, but also not overwhelm the western medical emergency system in the future, while also decreasing the suffering of people overall.
It is interesting the number of new clients that tell me “I never or rarely get sick”. While initially, that may sound good, from a natural health standpoint that is often an indicator of a weakened immune system that is not reacting well, or the person just isn’t aware of what is going on within their own body. Realize, most major sickness and disease rarely ever just come out of the blue, and there needs to be some sort of catalyst that often has gone unnoticed or ignored for a while. Most major illnesses take years, or even decades, to fully develop into something that overwhelms the system, and recent research is suggesting that even unresolved emotional trauma from childhood can play a huge role in this.5 This is one reason why western medical, mental health, and natural health professionals all agree that regular checkups and visits for early intervention are important, even if you think you’re healthy. Without early interventions of things that are preventable or potentially reversible, things build-up in the system causing various weak-points and deficiencies to build up. Get enough of them and when a sudden illness hits the system, like the seasonal cold, flu, or COVID-19, the system can easily get overwhelmed requiring life-saving emergency measures. What the higher rates of severe and critical COVID-19 cases are telling us, in my opinion, is that we’re not doing enough in truly gaining and maintaining good health and wellness.
In my practice, I regularly see people that have a specific issue going on, oftentimes for years by the time they have come to see me, and are intrigued when I start asking very specific questions about a specific age-range in their childhood around a specific theme and then talking to them about how over time that unresolved trauma gets stuck in their cells, disrupts the system and causes other physiological changes that cascade over time and later could be causing some of the symptoms they are experiencing. An example might be someone with recurring issues revolving around the lungs, and we start talking about as a child not receiving the love they needed or expected from their parents, as well as the later part of the pregnancy was either harder for their mother, or something major had happened – and when we work on that past trauma through non-verbal therapy techniques from systems like Colorpuncture, and their condition improves, they become a believer. Another common thing I hear from clients is that before they started seeing me if they were to get sick, it would generally last one to two weeks, and are now amazed at how quickly they normally get over something, and it wasn’t overall as bad or severe. What this tells me is that by working on your past trauma and the other health issues going on, your system as a whole is in a much better position when exposed to infection.
Now also realize, natural medicine is not a “magic cure-all” and while we do have faster acting traditional remedies including correct foods, herbs, color light frequencies, homeopathics, and more that we can use for sudden things like cold and flu to help support the natural processes of the body, we don’t just snap our fingers and make everything better, it is truly something that takes skill, guidance, education, and time. I was once told by a well-respected acupuncturist that in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), the rule of thumb they use to tell a person how long they will have to see them for a specific issue is to take how many years they have had that issue, and that is how many months they will have to see the TCM practitioner for the issue (and likely 2 to 4 times a week during that duration). Logically then, if you are 50-years old, and we now know many of these issues can be traced back to having its roots in childhood (including preverbal and prenatal), then you could realistically then think about 50-months to work on things or about 4.2 years. Something I tell many of my clients is “Good Health and Wellness isn’t something that just happens… it’s something that you truly work at every day. Additionally, daily stressors and things to help push us off our centers happen all day long, you will never be done working on your health.” A benefit for the clients able to work with me is that I have a diverse base of training with therapies ranging from assisting with non-verbal psychotherapy aspects for the mind and emotions to therapies that also help influence the body and physical state of being, and I’m consistently taking additional training and updating my skill sets to gain an even broader and deeper range of knowledge. Another benefit is that I work on educating my clients, over time, on wellness concepts specific to them so they are able to see me less frequently while also gaining more control of their own health and wellness.
Sadly, many today don’t know the first thing about how to take care of their health and wellness, partially because conflicting information comes out in new studies looking at something in a specific way and oftentimes is too broad to really talk about specific types of people. Other times they might not understand the value in it or haven’t been taught it. Others might have come to the conclusion that it is impossible for them to be, or feel unworthy of being, healthy. Another is that there has been a fight, especially in the United States, between Western Medicine and Natural Medicine for well over 120 years at this point, and there’s a fair amount of distrust at times between these two systems. Personally, I think that these systems need to work together in helping society. Each has their strong and weak areas. Western Medicine tends to be fantastic with emergency medicine, diagnostics, and surgery. Natural Medicine is great, in my opinion, at preventative care, support, and helping to head off sickness and disease progression. The whole concept of natural medicine revolves around the concept of assisting the body in doing what it does best naturally and that’s to heal itself – at least when it is given the correct resources. In holistic medicine we look at the entire system, not just one thing, to try and figure out where the break down has happened to cause XYZ and how we need to support the overall system in that specific individual.
With many experts stating that we need to be prepared in the future for more pandemic level issues6, partially due to mutations in viruses and bacteria, we need these two systems working together, and we need people to start looking at and taking their overall health seriously so when new things come up, their system is in a much better position to heal itself. I think your body will thank you, and to be honest… it will be much less damaging to the economy moving forward. While yes, people will always die – it is a part of life – I wonder how many could have had less suffering, or been saved, if these two systems worked together and people utilized the fantastic benefits of both. As a side note, one benefit that we’ve seen so far with this pandemic is that people can work together.
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