Intro To Primer On Disease – NaPodPoMo

In this episode of Self Powered Healing, I’m starting a series of episodes that are going to explore disease from various perspectives. I’ll be looking at different models for health and disease, as well as a few disease theories.

You may not know the term disease theories, but you’re familiar with one for sure, and that’s the germ theory, which is the primary disease theory, according to our Western medicine system.  

Germ theory was introduced by Louis Pasteur in the mid to late 1800s. Germ theory is the currently accepted scientific theory for many diseases, and it states that microorganisms known as pathogens or germs can cause disease.  

There is another theory, known as terrain theory, that has a different explanation for these same diseases. That’s something I’ve learned just within the past year. four or five years now, and it seems to want to invalidate much of what I learned in college when I was studying microbiology.  

Why does it all matter, though? Why is it important to know if there’s more than one theory of disease?  

Well, actually, it could be more important than you think.  

Look at it this way. If a disease is caused by a germ, then the approach to treatment, at least in Western medicine, might be an antibiotic or antiviral, and the approach to prevention is through a vaccine. At least that’s what we seem to be doing.  

But what happens if that theory is wrong? That treatment may not be solving the problem, and it could be causing more harm than good.  

You can’t really talk about healing without talking about disease and understanding where it might come from, because that will influence your approach to solving it. And that will be what I talk about in the next several episodes of Self Powered Healing. I’ll be talking about a few theories of disease and illness, and also looking at different approaches to health.  

Western medicine tends to look solely at the body and define processes within the body. Sometimes looking at one particular system separate from the rest of the body, which is how we have all our specialists today. But other theories look at the whole body. They look at the body as a whole, even taking the approach that looks at the mind and the body.  

That’s the approach taken by traditional Chinese medicine and Ayurveda, which have been around for thousands of years. Also, some fairly new theories look at the body and the mind together in looking at disease and how to heal.  

I’ll be talking about some of these theories, though I won’t be able to cover them all because there are just so many. It’s really likely to blow your mind as it has mine.  

Oh, speaking of science, that’s going to be the topic of my next episode. Stay tuned.

Thanks for listening today. If you have any comments on this episode or on the whole NaPodPoMo concept in general, you can visit this page to leave comments either on this page or at SelfPoweredHealing.com/November2024. You can also find a listing and link for all November’s episodes on that same page: SelfPoweredHealing.com/November2024.  

By the way, Self Powered Healing is still looking for interviews with people who want to share a story of healing. Do you have a healing story? I would love to hear about it and see if maybe you could share it on our show. So if you’re interested in sharing, then visit selfpoweredhealing.com/share to schedule a chat.  

You aren’t committing at this point. You’re just having a chat with me to see what’s going on. It will be confidential unless or until you decide you want to share. And if you get there and there’s not a convenient time for you, send me a message because we’ll always find a time.  

And remember this always,  