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When does natural medicine not work?

If you've been reading or listening to the podcast for a while, you know I'm a big believer in natural / alternative / integrative medicine — or in other words, original medicine.

I personally haven't used pharmaceuticals for almost 7 years now.

Most of my life, since childhood, I took painkillers, cold meds, and the like at every opportunity. When I developed a "chronic" disease, I was on a daily cocktail of prescriptions every morning for a decade — and every few years another drug was added. So the drugs didn't heal the disease; they just helped the symptoms, slightly.

Over time I understood it's not for nothing that pharma drugs come with so many side effects. First of all, they're not meant to heal — they're meant to manage the disease or symptoms.

Which lets you keep doing the same things that hurt the body.

You ate chocolate, got a headache, took an acetaminophen — and canceled out the body's pain mechanism, which was telling you don't eat chocolate.

Even though I talk a lot about natural medicine, when people get sick they often ask me what to do. That's because they don't have a direct relationship with a natural practitioner. I refer them to a Chinese medicine practitioner, Ayurvedic, naturopath, or homeopath.

For people who've never been to one — they typically treat with a combination of nutrition, herbs, tinctures, acupuncture, touch, and more.

Beyond that, they physically examine you. They don't just look at you, ask questions, and type into a computer.

They check your pulse, tongue, eyes, pressure points, and more.

Pressure points? They press on different areas of the upper and lower belly, back, neck, throat, head, and so on.

You can learn a lot about a person and their health through touch.

Basic.

Natural practitioners have two main goals:

Prevention — getting you to understand yourself, your needs, how to eat right, which herbs to take, or how to balance the system so you stay healthy or so your body is strong enough to handle challenges.

During illness — understanding the root of the problem and guiding healing through changes or with support from herbs and tinctures.

There's no such thing as "disease management" in their world.

But then some people go once or twice, try an herbal tincture or acupuncture, and say: Hey, this isn't helping at all.

And it's true. It really isn't helping.

Here's why it "isn't helping":

First, compared to strong pharmaceuticals, there usually isn't an immediate effect like with paracetamol or antibiotics.

(Even though pharma works fast, there's a price — they're petroleum-based, and that's a very strong substance no matter how you spin it.)

The second reason it "isn't helping" — let me give an indirect example with a story about myself.

When I do laundry, I wash my clothes with vinegar or baking soda — because I don't want scented chemicals and harsh detergents that disrupt hormones on my clothes.

It works amazingly for me.

If I were an auto mechanic with grease on my clothes, it probably wouldn't work well.

I've been eating natural food for years now, not taking drugs, not spraying or rubbing synthetic substances on my body. So my body responds much faster to gentle things.

Most of the population eats processed food, takes drugs, and continuously puts toxins into their body in one way or another.

If you fill your body with toxins, an herbal tincture probably won't work — or won't be felt at first.

That's why homeopathy works so well on infants and small children. Their bodies are so sensitive and pure they respond beautifully to the homeopathic remedy.

In 2019 I was traveling in Indonesia with my dad and brother.

My dad heard there were healers there and asked us to take him to one.

We were surprised he asked.

We drove one evening to meet the healer. He didn't speak Hebrew or English but had a translator.

The healer examined my dad, touched different parts of his body, and told him he couldn't help him — all his channels were blocked.

That didn't really surprise me. My dad smokes, doesn't eat well, hasn't done much for his health in recent years.

But it irritated my dad.

The healer told him to go do acupuncture several times to release the blockages, and only then to come back. He said he had no ability to help while the body was in that state.

As someone who's been to acupuncture many times in my life — a few things:

• It works amazingly. Sometimes I went in with pain and came out without it. In with stagnation and out without it. In tired and out energized.
• You need a really good acupuncturist to see results.
• When it started working, I was in a different place with my health. I was doing everything else to support my health with my food and lifestyle choices.

And — the first times I went to an acupuncturist, it did nothing for me. (Those were also acupuncturists I went to without a referral.)

We tend to look at things in black and white.

You try a homeopath, an Ayurvedic practitioner, or acupuncturist once or twice. It doesn't work. You decide it's not effective.

But life is more complex. And so are you.

The same way you went to a doctor or took a drug many times that didn't heal you — and you didn't give up — that's how it should be here too.

This isn't zero to a hundred.

It's a process of cleaning that requires persistence, ongoing changes, and finding the right practitioners (luckily, many of them have been on my podcast or are inside my courses).

A friend told me a beautiful sentence yesterday:

"Small changes will always beat dramatic upheavals."

Small changes today will always beat hard pharmaceutical treatments, diagnoses, and surgeries later.

So start with small changes. A 1% change a day, every day, leads to hundreds of percent of change in a year.

One push-up today, two tomorrow. One extra piece of fruit today — a year later you're eating like a king.

Every day, a small change.

Shabbat shalom dear ones.

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