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Annie Mason

What does it mean to be WELL?

Updated: Aug 26, 2023


Some new understandings about wellness.


We all want to be healthy and many of us want to be active in looking after ourselves, but there is so much out there that is confusing and contradictory. I wanted to go right back to the beginning before I started that journey and look at the thinking about what health and illness is and what are the main approaches to managing your health. So here is what I’ve come up with:


1. Models of Health and Illness: Different approaches to health.

2. Perspectives on health: Traditional vs. Western or a blend of both?

3. The latest Principles of Wellness and Illness: Some emerging ideas.

4. Business of Wellness and Illness: The reality of the health Industry.

5. Causes of Illness: Toxins and Trauma


Models of Health and Illness

Before we can talk about any sort of illness, we need to go back a step and start with what we understand about wellness. Our body is one complete and perfectly interconnected creation. It is designed and tuned to make us one of the most amazing animals, on the planet.


To simplify our understanding of our body we can think that that we are made of several components that are highly dependent upon each other:


1. The physiological (biological) body: a complex physical network of cells, divided into purpose driven systems, working together like magic to bring the body to life. To breath and move. To digest food and process sensations. To heal and reproduce. This can be called the bio body. This biological body and its state of health is traditionally called your physical health.


2. The psychological/emotional body: an even more complex network of emotions and thoughts in our conscious and subconscious mind that respond to our environment and physical body. They respond to our sensations, thoughts, and experiences. They read our genes and determine our behaviours ultimately forming us into an entity that makes us a unique person. This psychological body and the state of its health is traditionally called your mental health.


3. The social /cultural body: we are social beings and function as a part of a social group. We cannot exist outside the part we play socially. Social isolation

Imp on both physiological and psychological health.


This understanding of 3 areas is called the Biopsychosocial Model. It views health and, therefore illness as the product of all 3 physiological, psychological, and sociocultural aspects. What we see increasingly is that this explanation is not quite enough.


I am going to add the current understandings of two more bodies:


4. The energetic body: I don’t totally understand Quantum Physics but in its simplest it states that all matter has energy. We are electrochemical creatures. All that is physiology is governed by electro chemical fields. We now know that our cells respond to vibrations and hold electromagnetic fields. What is even more amazing is that our cell vibrations influence each other! This thinking has gained wide acceptance as we come to understand Quantum Physics and the electrochemical pathways of the body. This energy in humans is called a Biofield and is dynamic flow of energy – inside and outside of the body. You could call it our life force. Ancient civilizations have tried to understand it- now we can see it and hear it! It is the ultimate regulator and is controlled by our Brain. It is our quantum “conductor”- the bridge between the mind and the body.


5. The Spiritual body: I was unsure about what it was to be ‘spiritual’ and have tried to come to a better understanding by reading Eckhardt Tolle. For those who embrace this understanding, please forgive my simplistic explanation. This is about an acceptance of something greater and more powerful than self. It is the power of life itself. It is God, the universe or a higher self.


When all the 5 aspects of our body are balanced, connected and working together -we are well. When any link in the chain is broken -we are unwell or ill. It really is that simple.



Perspectives of Health and Wellness

You will notice that the principles below come from a particular perspective on health.


The way we see our health is strongly influenced by the way we see the world. The medical system we create is also a product this world view. Our world is entering a new era. The old Era (called the Modern Era) has since Industrialisation bought us very many positive world changes and, also some very many negative ones. It was a logical scientific world, where things are observable and measurable and if you can’t prove it, it doesn’t exist. It is a world of order and structure. The new era (called the Post- Modern Era) says that truth and reality are often now understood as representing points of view bounded by history and context rather than being objective, immutable facts. [1] Simply put, Post Modernists say that our reality must be open to change and what we thought to be true before, may not be. It also says, “just because we can prove it, does not mean it is not possible or does not exist”. It says we should build new dimensions on what we already know. It promises to be exciting, and we are all along for the ride.


Our western medical system operates under a model call the Biomedical Model. This is a Modernist model of health. Health is understood mostly in terms of biological factors, such as genetic predispositions or physiological dysfunctions. Even systems within the physical body, are seen and treated as discrete entities, and the links between the physical and psychosocial and energy bodies are frequently overlooked. Illness is seen in terms of something abnormal mostly in “biological functioning”. This model understands the body best when it is logical, predictable, and observable and requires data to be validated and tested. It is a model where we hand ourselves over to “scientifically trained experts” who have enormous influence over our health decisions. In this model the psycho/emotional and energy/spiritual bodies are placed “outside” medical thinking. They are too messy, have less defined systems, are unpredictable, inconsistent, highly individualised, and hard to observe and validate. They just don’t “follow the rules”. It is not that evidence does not exist, it is that we can’t see or prove it in the same way.


Post- Modern thinkers would suggest that this approach is no longer enough. We need to consider what we can’t see or prove but know to be true. We must consider intuition, self- management and responsibility and the power of the body to heal. We need to see health not as a product to be profited from but the rights of all individuals.


If you do not consider illness with its causes in the biological, psychological, emotional, social and energy aspects of our body, you will find yourself with a very inadequate explanation of all aspects of health, and a complete inability to bring about healing.


We are seeing the promising signs of an overlap between the two views. It does not have to be one or another.



The latest Principles of Wellness and Illness

In past decades we have seen some major developments in what we know about health. Some of these are seismic and will change the way we care for ourselves. Let’s look at them.


OUR GENES: We can change how our genes are expressed.

I started my professional life as a nurse and then a teacher, in a world that told me that our genes were fixed. I learnt that many patient’s illnesses or a child’s learning potential were both pre-determined. I struggled with that. When my son was diagnosed with dyslexia, I began to ask questions. Firstly, had something triggered his dyslexia gene to become active as it wasn’t in his older brother and secondly, if it could be activated then surely it could be turned off. These were the questions that not only mothers, nurses and teachers were asking, but thankfully so were researchers and scientists. The result is we know we were partly wrong. This new understanding is probably the biggest change in medical thinking in our lifetimes.


We were right in that genes are set and, we can’t change them. This is called genetics. What we now know is that we can however change how they are expressed. This is called epi- genetics.


It means we have a predisposition or possibility to be a certain way as coded into our genes, but it is the physical and emotional life that we live, that determines which features of our genes show themselves. The exciting thing about this understanding is exactly as we had all hoped, if gene expression can be turned on, then it can be turned off!


OUR BRAINS: We can change our brains for better or worse.

In the same way that we thought we could not change our genes, we believed that we could not change our brains. We believed their capacity to be set and regrowth, repair and the re-establishment of neural pathways was not possible. With the development of scanning technology and the ability to identify chemical reactions in the brain, we are discovering we were wrong. It can be healed. The flip side is that we have also discovered that it can also be harmed by our environment. The idea of ‘leaky brain’ suggests that the barrier designed to keep toxins out of our brain has been damaged by an onslaught of environmental factors and toxins that would have once been kept out are now moving across the brain blood barrier. The rise in neurological conditions like Alzheimer’s and Autism and just the tip of the iceberg. So, we have to protect it.


Our brain is highly susceptible to our environment, it can be made well or unwell, depending on environmental factors.


OUR GUTS: Our guts are much more than digestion

In an isolated system approach, we think of the gut as the place where digestion takes place. We now know it is SO much more than that. It is the brains ‘first base’ and gut issue very quickly become brain issues. The idea of ‘leaky gut’ is that like the brain we have a barrier that only lets ‘good-stuff’ through from the gut to the blood. If it is damaged, then the wrong stuff gets through and goes directly to the brain and starts that chain reaction of body changes. This is made worse if the brain barrier is also damaged and the second line of defence isn’t working.


Our gut is our first defence, if it cant regulate what passes into the blood stream, the brain receives harmful toxins and sets off a cascade of body changes.


STRESS AND TRAUMA: Cause Illness


Above all else our bodies are designed to keep us alive. They have a complex system of alerts and responses, all designed to keep us safe. Our senses, organs and indeed every cell, knows what is optimal for our survival and what changes warn it that we are at risk. Every day our body deals with a multitude of demands and potential risks and manages them without impacting upon us in a negative way. It turns on chemicals when we need them to act, think or respond and turns them off once the situation is sorted out. It just gets on with it. Sometimes the body can’t manage these demands risks several things happen:


Stress: Stress is a feeling of being emotionally overwhelmed, anxious, or unable to cope with life’s demands. It is a sign that the body is ‘watching’ these demands as it considers them as potential risks. It is working out how much you can manage. It turns on its sympathetic nervous system in readiness in case you have to ‘fight-or-flight’. It’s like its revving the engine in your car to make a quick getaway. The stress response which is designed to get you through demanding ‘moments’ and it should be turned off once we sort things out. But for many people it becomes chronic, and the body leaves the engine running. This can be because the demands are either too great or just never ending.


Trauma: Trauma is at the next level. A traumatic event is one where the body isn’t watching and waiting to see if we can manage it, the body jumps straight into fight-or-flight because it decides the threat is life threatening. This is our primal fear response that is activated when we see a tiger. Like the stress response, the body should ‘stand down’ once the threat passes. In many cases this happens but sometimes this response gets ‘stuck’ and is constantly reactivated as our brain senses incorrectly that we are in danger.


These two natural protective bodily responses serve a purpose in keeping as alive, but their constant activation is VERY harmful. Put simply, the biochemical response for the two is the same. The Hypothalamus sets the response in motion and sends messages to the pituitary gland and adrenal medulla and cortisol and adrenalin are produced. With these 2 in motion lots happens to the body. Cortisol releases stored glucose from the liver (for energy) and to controlling swelling after a possible injury. The immune system stops while this happens. Being in this state chronically contributes to high blood pressure, promotes the formation of artery-clogging deposits, and causes brain changes that may contribute to anxiety, depression, and addiction and may also contribute to obesity- and that’s just the ones we can prove!

When the body is in the ‘stress response’ all bets are off. No repair, growth or even non- essential functioning, can be attended to. The body is too busy fighting tigers.

These both start a cascade of biochemical changes that affect us right down to our genetic cellular level. Illness happens when our systems are overwhelmed by the stressors or trauma.



A BODY UNDER STRESS- EMOTIONAL /PHYSICAL


PRODUCES CORTISOL


BEGINS A CASCADE OF BIOCHEMICAL CHANGES


TOXINS: Cause Illness

Our bodies are perfectly tuned organisms that do amazing things every second of every day from the moment we are conceived. But they do operate optimally within a narrow range of conditions. They work best when there are no foreign chemicals or organisms in their ‘space’. So, when something foreign enters their body, to keep us alive they respond to that threat in hundreds, no thousands of ways, setting off a cascade of chemical responses, that make changes in every single cell. There are some ways to classify toxins:


1. Environmental: Heavy Metals, chemicals, EMF

2. Opportunistic Organisms: bacteria, virus, fungus, parasites, mould

3. Food and Food Additives: GMF, irradiation

4. Medications:


The most amazing implication of these understanding is that we can use it to track “backwards” and identify processes or chains of illness which go right back to the changes in our cells and genes. As a result of this we can now make a massive statement, that 10 years ago would have been unheard of.


Most illness is the result of the interplay of 2 elements that alter the way the brain and body function:

Stress/Trauma

Toxins


START WITH THE CAUSE NOT THE SYMPTOMS

In the past medicine was only able to identify and treat the symptoms a person displayed. The diagnosis was a just a description of these symptom (e.g., a bloated stomach) as we did not have the ability to understand or find the cause. That all change in the nineteenth century. We could see microorganisms, bones, bacteria, and our understanding of the body became so much more sophisticated. We could now finally begin to see and treat the underlying cause. Symptoms became the indicators to a real diagnosis. The result was a profound improvement in medicine.


When looking at understanding any human condition, establishing a diagnosis, and planning for treatment, you have to understand the cause.


This cause based approached is now the way that identification of illness works. Yet, there is two issues.


The first is that the cause is seldom just “one step back”. It is usually multiple steps back. There is a question at every step. Why did that happen? What is my body doing for me? A chain of chemical changes must be unpacked to find the true source. Maybe its magnesium, or iron or a hormone. Finding the cause is time consuming and so often treatment is the “best guess” based on probability rather than the whole picture.

We miss so much when we only see symptoms and consider that to be the illness. When we don’t have the time or the resources to “backtrack” to the underlying cause we stop somewhere along the line and begin to treat the symptom. The result is at the best A LOT of ineffective treatment that is expensive and heart breaking for suffers and, at the worst the inability to heal the suffer.

Obesity is a symptom not a disease. A symptom of something wrong in the digestion of food and storage and use of nutrients. What is the cause? If the cause is gut related, we can treat the gut. Reducing food intake may have little impact unless too much food is the cause?

It is a symptom not a disease.

High Blood pressure is a symptom not a disease. A symptom of pressure issues in the heart. What is the cause?

Arthritis is a symptom not a disease. A symptom of an auto-immune system responding incorrectly. What is the cause? Steroids stop the autoimmune response but don’t find the reason it was overactivated.


Secondly, let’s look at mental illness. In the 1950’s a theory was that mental illness was caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain. It was partially right.


The brains of those who have mental illness are different chemically. But that is a result of the mental illness, not the cause.


In my search for an understanding of mental health illness, I was completely astounded to discover the disturbing DSM-5 (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders). This is the main professional resource for the diagnosis of all mental health issues. It highlights all that is wrong with our approach to mental health. Instead of the expected explanations based upon the underlying cause, it offers an astounding array of over 300 disorders, many of which are simply symptoms with no mention of the circumstances that may be the basis of the illness. This approach seems counter- intuitive. Suffers can simply chose the 2 or 3 symptoms that suits them the best and if they can’t choose there will be a psychiatrist willing to do it for them depending on the time of the day, the mood they are in, the trend of the day and the information the sufferer provides. How does Reactive Attachment Disorder sound for starters? Or the ever popular, Borderline -Personality Disorder. Maybe you’d rather Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder, Non- Suicidal Self Injury, Intermittent Explosive Disorder, Dysregulated Social Engagement Disorder, or even Disruptive-Impulse Control Disorder. [2]The list goes on! It is no wonder that mental health sufferers end up with a list of diagnosis as long as your arm, none of which adequately describe them or lead to an effective treatment pathway.


If doctors can't agree on what is wrong with their patient, there can be no way that they can provide proper treatment. When there is no relationship between diagnosis and cause, a mis-labelled patient is bound to be a mistreated patient. [3]


THE INTERCONNECTED BODY

Our physical body and psychological body are designed to work together and to respond to each other in a delicate “dance”. There is a ripple, or tsunami effect on other parts of our body when one part is unwell. It seems unthinkable that we would consider mental health and physical health as two separate disconnected bodies, but that is exactly how the current medical system works.


When my daughter became unwell with depression the physical illnesses were not far behind. They were not “in her mind”. Appendicitis, loose shoulder joints, kidney stones and a bladder condition, cannot be fabricated for attention (which was implied by one doctor). The longer the mental illness goes on the more the physical symptoms increase and eventually the auto immune system shuts down and there is a cascade of seemingly unrelated issues.


Today, millions of dollars go into physical medical treatments for trauma suffers. Many doctors are more comfortable treating the physical symptom that fall within their specific field of expertise then having the underlying triggers identified and treated first. The initial response to physical symptoms is most likely to treat them with medication or surgery. The best you can hope for in many cases is some short-term symptomatic relief.

Those with mental health issues have 3x the rate of hospital admissions, 4x the cancer diagnosis and die on average 5 years earlier than those without. Many trauma suffers, develop Auto Immune diseases later in life. If your mind wants to die to get away from the pain- is it surprising that your body will be receiving the same messages and it will destroy you from the inside out by telling your auto immune system to attack you?


The tragedy is that it is ironically at times, VERY hard for patients with a mental health issue to receive quality medical care even when the issue IS predominantly physical in origin. We have been refused treatment for shoulder repair surgery on the grounds that her mental health state made her too “complex a case”. We have also been referred to a psychiatrist for treatment before surgery for a chronically dislocated shoulder could take place.

THE SELF HEALING BODY

Imagine your body as a beautiful crystal bowl partly filled with still pure water. Perfect in every way. When you add a toxin or a trauma a pebble drops into the bowl. The first pebbles are dropped in before you are even born. As you pass through life more pebbles are dropped in then some large stones so that the water level in your bowl rises. Then one day the water reaches the top and starts to overflow. The bowl always had the potential to overflow but it was the pebbles and stones that caused it to spill. It was not one pebble alone, but the multiple pebbles over many years. When our bowls overflow, we show symptoms of physical or psychological illness. And once the flow starts it will continue with multiple symptoms and illness that may seem unrelated. The bowl will continue to overflow until we remove some pebbles and stones and even rocks and boulders.


Our bodies can withstand enormous strain, but all these stressors are held in the body and build up until the body “cracks”.


The body is designed to heal. Its job is to keep us alive, and it has been perfectly designed to do just that. Our cells divide and renew to keep us in a state of balance. We see the magic from a single cut, a broken bone, or an infection. Somewhere along the way we forgot how powerful our mind and body are when they get together, and we stopped listening. We must remember that our autonomic nervous system has two major operating systems — the sympathetic nervous system, which produces the body's stress response, also known as "fight or flight"; and the parasympathetic nervous system, which produces the body's relaxation response, also known as "rest and digest." This is our homeostatic state when the body is in equilibrium.


Here’s the catch, the body's natural self-repair mechanisms only fully function when the nervous system is in relaxation response. If it is under stress, it can’t do its job.

Our stress response is there for a reason but were meant to be limited only to life threatening dangers, but many of us are in fight-or-flight all the time, so our natural self- repair systems are turned off. We only see illness when something stops the body from doing its magic. And, we are seeing illness unlike anything we have seen before. People talk about an auto- immune epidemic, identifying Cancer spikes and the Autism crisis. Yes, there are many reasons, but our bodies inability to self- heal needs to be considered.




The Business of Wellness and Illness

I have to make note of one final factor that we need to consider in any health discussion. That is the economic reality of health. This is the unavoidable truth that makes health care unobtainable for many people.

Profit before Healing

Today modern medicine is a money-making business. The influence and power of large pharmaceutical and medical insurance companies is openly discussed. There is little doubt that their interest is directed into profit-making interventions. The simple quick fix, high turn around medical interventions are balanced with the chronic diseases that guarantee a long term “cash flow”. Some would suggest that insurance companies, and many doctors, do not have the need or desire to take on the “complex” cases. They are already making enough profit. It is easier and more lucrative to treat a physical symptom, often repeatedly, than to put the effort and time into really finding the cause. If I was truly cynical (maybe I am) I would suggest that the industry has a vested interest in keeping us just sick enough, that we continue to “need” the treatment they provide. Healing is not always a good business move.


The mental health business is even more worrying. When the DSM-5 found its way into the larger culture, suddenly millions of people were suddenly receiving diagnosis for panic attacks and depression. The mental health business was well and truly launched. But it hasn’t been a simple as they had hoped. The fact that treatment can be complex, long term, draining, expensive and just really hard work, makes it a business that pharmaceutical and insurance companies are keeping at harms length. They are “cherry picking” what they fund, what they support and what they research so that they can guarantee a return for their dollar.


We need to acknowledge, that decisions about our health are often made not on medical grounds but business ones. In Australia today there is insufficient transparency in political donations to guarantee that this “business” does not extend to the political decisions made by our government.


The control of Knowledge and Research

I would also suggest that to keep this very lucrative business model going, the industry needs to keep control of medical knowledge. They need to ensure that only the research that supports the most profitable products becomes public. The government entrust most medical research to the large pharmaceutical companies. It’s like leaving the mouse in charge of the cheese. These companies have every reason to discredit alternatives as they need us to be reliant on them. They need to disempower us so that they can maintain their very tenuous control over the health industry. They rely on us putting ourselves in the hands of the “experts” and to sit back and wait for it all to be “fixed”. They have taught us for a very long time that this is how it works. And we accept it.


It is not that we can’t better understand our psych/social health, improve our treatment outcomes and see innovation. It is simply that we don’t want to.

[1] Corey Page 368 [2] Van Der Kolk, B. (2015) The Body Keeps the Score. Penguin Books. P 164 [3] Van Der Kolk, B. (2015) The Body Keeps the Score. Penguin Books. P 165


So, there you have it, some background thinking that may help you as you journey towards understanding your own health.

Good luck!


[2] Van Der Kolk, B. (2015) The Body Keeps the Score. Penguin Books. P 164 [3] Van Der Kolk, B. (2015) The Body Keeps the Score. Penguin Books. P 165

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