Have you been to one doctor after another, one hospital after another, trying to figure out why you’re feeling so sick and nobody seems to know what’s wrong with you? So many times I’ve heard my patients bitterly complaining, “My doctor said everything is fine. Then, why do I feel so bad?”
If you’re suffering from a multitude of medical symptoms such as severe fatigue, irritability, muscle and joint pain, mood swings, palpitations, vague chest and abdominal pain, and you’ve been evaluated by many specialists, you might be suffering from “incurable patient syndrome.”
After 20 years of practicing traditional Internal Medicine and Complementary and Alternative Medicine, I’m convinced that there is no such thing as an incurable disease. However, there are plenty of incurable patients. An incurable patient and an incurable disease are separate, independent phenomena.
An incurable disease can be defined as a condition that is not curable by traditional western medicine or alternative medical care for that particular medical problem. In my practice, I have helped many patients suffering from suspected incurable medical conditions when I was able to integrate Alternative/ Complementary medical care with traditional Internal medicine.
Some of the most overlooked areas by medical professionals that can lead to an understanding of the “incurable” conditions include a patient’s general poor diet and nutrition, food allergies, hidden dental–medical problems, chronic parasitic and fungal infections, environmental toxicities especially heavy metal toxicity, and petrochemical based environmental illness. This is a short list of common causes of illness that are rarely addressed by traditional Internal medicine but lead to very curable conditions.
Incurable patients, on the other hand, may not necessarily have a true medical problem. In this situation their expectations will never be fulfilled and they will never be satisfied. They go through the journey of looking for a solution by visiting one doctor after another. Is there hope for “incurable” patients? Yes.
In many of these situations, it is not a medical doctor that is necessary but an honest self-evaluation or counseling assistance to assess your condition of Body/Mind/Spirit. Your “incurable” medical conditions may actually be a result of your unresolved emotional state. This is not to say that you should automatically accept a statement from a medical doctor that “it’s all in your head.” Rather, it’s very important to be honest with yourself in asking if your emotional state may be causing, or not allowing the healing, of your symptoms.
Once one’s emotional state can be healthfully resolved, the “incurable” patient may experience “spontaneous” healing when all medical therapies had failed. “Incurable patient syndrome” and “spontaneous healing” create a unique human experience that defies medical explanations. The concept of energy medicine and natural self healing is a foreign concept for science-based western medicine but is understood in Alternative/Complementary medicine for this type of patient.
Removal of suppressed guilt, fear, shame or self-doubt can trigger a major shift in one’s hormonal, psychological and immune response. Conventional medical professionals dismiss the phenomenon as a placebo effect or at best spontaneous healing. But the resolution of strong emotional issues can allow the body to heal itself.