Is anything more striking, puzzling and mysterious to the health care scene than people carrying terminal or critical breakdown conditions in their systems without knowing it? Grapefruit and larger-sized tumors, major blood vessels on the verge of rupturing, dangerous build-ups of stones in the kidneys or gall bladder, vertebral bones or discs about to collapse, and neither the individual nor their doctors are aware of it. Who doesn’t know someone who was apparently healthy one day, and the next was in critical care or in terminal condition?

What is the first thing a person will do when pain or other symptoms appear? Usually, absolutely nothing. “Ignore it, maybe it will go away,” is the universal self-prescription. When does this ignoring of symptoms first occur in life? The answer, as professional as well as common observation shows, is in infancy and childhood. Just how common are sleep troubles, colic and digestive problems, skin conditions, low resistance, allergies, growing pains, and behavioral disturbances in the early years of life? Of course, the patients here (children) aren’t ignoring the problem. As many parents know, kids scream loud and clear in concentrating all their energies to get the world to pay attention to their problem. Most of us instinctively know there’s a message being relayed, even if we try to rationalize it away: “Her teeth are coming in; it’s noisy around the house; he hasn’t been getting enough attention...” This is the child communicating that something is wrong in the only language it knows.

A guiding principle in our clinic in the care of children and infants is that little ones will always tell you of the existence of a problem. They will always express, in one way or another, any disturbance in their system. Natural and holistic doctors and practitioners with experience know these are early signs of the body/mind not functioning, out of proper regulation and control, and under some form of internal stress. It’s as if we are seeing these cases in a state of freshness, or pure cause, expressing themselves through the clear, unobstructed, nature-given channel!

And what is this pure cause, at its earliest stage of effect? Based on our assessment and results with these conditions, the cause of the first steps in declines of health are subtle disturbances of the nerve and acupuncture meridian systems, of nutritional/biochemical systems, and other energy networks and pathways. These are the sites and centers of inner connection and communication of the body/mind at any age! You could even say these are the means by which the body/mind is internally unified, or made whole. It is the difference between us being a lifeless collection of matter and chemicals versus the indescribably complex, responsive, growing and adaptive organism we are meant to be – at any age!

So, what becomes of the countless infants who never receive the attention and relief they are calling for? Almost always, the assumption and appearance is that they will “grow out of” their conditions. Be it “growing pains” or bed-wetting, parents are often told that the best they can do is wait and hope the children grow out of them. (This is standard operating procedures for many adults as well!) The medical justification for this is that the majority of all conditions are “self-limiting,” meaning they will resolve themselves spontaneously.

But what does this mean? Unfortunately, what it really means is that the symptoms will go away – symptoms that are the body’s natural communication that something is not functioning properly. And, as symptoms go away, our internal alarm system shuts down. This has nothing to do with the underlying dysfunction or problem being corrected. To the contrary, this is the blue-print for compounding the levels of body/mind disconnect and loss of inner control and regulation.

Most of us first learn (or, are programmed) to suppress and deny our feelings, sensations and inner messages very early in life. Suppress them because the proper correction is not supplied; deny them because the explicit and implicit message from those in control and authority is that “there is nothing wrong with you.” This is how important natural health care in childhood becomes! This age is the model application of holistic health care – and, correspondingly, the most efficient and rewarding. It’s just what the doctor should have ordered! At Total Health and similar practices, care for infants and children is encouraged and promoted from the earliest days of life.

The following is a dramatic case which epitomizes the extreme to which another form (in this case, prescription drugging) of suppression of inner body-mind communication and connection can go due to the failure to diagnose and treat the actual causal issues.

Daniel was a very alert boy with a great attitude and vitality. However, by the tender age of ten, he was also addicted to the drugs Dexedrine (prescription speed) and Prozac. How did this happen? From 7 years of age, Daniel had been unable to control himself in class. He couldn’t sit still or refrain from fussing with other kids; he couldn’t focus on his work or follow instructions. No one has to emphasize the epidemic nature of ADHD in our children. Daniel’s mother, with some experience in non-medical care, felt there had to be another solution to the prescribed medications, even though no professional suggested anything else. But attempting to cut down on Daniel’s medications led to serious reactions—extreme mood swings, with outbursts of violence. This family was caught in a major life dilemma.

After becoming a patient, and receiving an individualized, systematic program of nerve and meridian system balancing, substance and biochemistry intolerance correction, and nutritional supplementation, Daniel rapidly began to express and reflect the person he really was. Within a little more than two months, he was able to discontinue his drug dependency – to his mom’s delight and his teacher’s astonishment. When last seen, Daniel was functioning at the top of his class.

What is the full lesson here? Besides the obvious possible harmful drug utilization, the only ultimate solution for these conditions and all their endless ramifications is to re-establish the inner communication, connection and regulation that bring back the perfect operating of the body/mind. This is the result of natural therapy conducted in the appropriate way, and is the actual health-restoring mechanism itself. Healing cannot occur without this condition. With it, healing occurs spontaneously, naturally and unfailingly, as an inseparable expression of life in balance.

Our next column will continue with the importance of awakening as a prerequisite for all healing and transformation.