Perhaps it’s just the dairy foods you avoid, or maybe it’s all carbohydrates. Perhaps you eat a low-cholesterol diet. Or maybe you are walking daily and stopped smoking six weeks ago. No matter what you do in your day, each action tells the story of your health.

Each person is unique, not only in their fingerprints but also in how they react to their environment and how they respond to illness. How you choose to treat your illnesses depends partly upon your up-bringing and partly on your own thoughts that you maintain.

The other thing that determines how your body will react to an illness is whether or not you pay attention to the signs that are sent by your body. If you listen to what is being "said", you have a better chance of avoiding chronic illnesses. When an illness begins, the signs tell you what to do; if the illness isn’t treated correctly, a person usually alters his/her life to accommodate the illness, to make their life "okay".

In this first part of this article, I will discuss NEW CONDITIONS—those that are not a flare or exacerbation of a chronic condition or a part of a chronic condition. As all chronic conditions start somewhere, usually with a minor health condition that "gets out of hand," it’s always best to start at the beginning…..

When a person develops an illness for the first time, an illness that is not a flare of a chronic condition, the signs and symptoms the person receives are clues of what to do to heal the illness, or are signs telling you what the body is doing to heal the illness.

For example, if you get the flu, the usual signs are fever, body aches, fatigue, lack of appetite, nausea, sneezing, and coughing. Let’s examine this:

Fever: the body raises its temperature to slow the spread of the virus, to give your body more time for the immune system to find the virus and eliminate it.

Body aches: when the immune system is suddenly pushed into action (as with the presence of a virus), the bones ache because the bones are the main location that the antibodies are made—it shows that the antibodies are being made over-time

Fatigue: to make the extra antibodies, more energy is needed, so require more rest. Also when you sleep, the antibodies are made extra-fast.

Lack of appetite and Nausea: it takes energy to digest food, and that energy is needed to fight the virus, so the body doesn’t want to take energy from making antibodies to have to digest food. You’re also less apt to eat if you’re nauseated.

Sneezing: the virus usually enters through the nose, so sneezing, stuffiness and extra discharge are ways the body slows and tries to eliminate the virus.

Coughing: coughing keeps the virus out of the lungs; if it enters the lungs you could get pneumonia, which is worse than just having the virus.

If you do not heed the signs at this point, or suppress them though chemical means (i.e. medical drugs), are you helping yourself with the virus? If all the efforts of the body are trying to minimize how strongly the virus takes hold and to remove it as quickly as possible, if you interfere with these efforts, the virus will go deeper within the body and take longer to be removed. And, you may develop deeper illnesses such as pneumonia, sinus infections or severe fatigue.

Make a note of how you feel, think and respond to things on a normal, ordinary day. This is your "norm". Perhaps you have a lot of energy, get cranky at 4 p.m. and freeze whenever the temperature gets to be 50 or less. Knowing how you are normally will signal when things change.

Long before a person gets the characteristic physical symptoms of an illness, they will see a change in their thought patterns, emotions, energy level, and/or how they react to their environment. So if you normally have a lot of energy, if you find you are more tired, that is a sign that something has changed. If you are now cranky all day long, that too is a change. If you decide to wear a sweater to work when it’s 80 outside…yes, that too is a change.

You may not see or feel that anything is physically wrong at this point. But it is a clue to watch for what is next. If you can catch a virus early, you can assist your body in its efforts to remove the virus. An example is to take the homeopathic Oscillococcinum (Oscillo for short). If you take this within 48 hours of the first signs of a respiratory virus, studies have shown that your cold symptoms are lessened by 50% and the duration of the cold is reduced to being only a couple of days. Another option is to suck on Zinc lozenges: if you start sucking on these within 24 hours of the onset of cold symptoms, studies have shown you can also diminish the symptoms and lessen the length of the virus. Wouldn’t you like to suffer less and for a shorter amount of time but still come out healthy?

Zinc and Oscillo are not chemical drugs so they work with your body to support its efforts. Your body will still do the work without being held back; you may still get symptoms to keep the virus from moving fast, but your body will still do the work, and after its done removing the virus your body will be stronger and more able to fight the virus again should you get exposed again.

Okay…that’s a virus. What about something that can become a chronic condition, such as a sinus infection? It is not uncommon for a person to get a sinus infection. The usual symptoms are foul discharge that is yellow or green and foul-smelling, sinus congestion, swelling in the sinuses, post-nasal discharge, and headache in the forehead and/or cheeks; sometimes people get pain in their top teeth, bad breath, inability to breathe out of their nose, and altered sense of taste.

Those are the usual physical symptoms; they are common for just about everyone who develops a sinus infection. What symptoms are unique to you? These are the symptoms that will direct you to help yourself heal….

What foods or drinks are you craving or don’t want to have? If you suddenly crave strawberries, and you usually don’t crave them, it’s a sign that your body needs something from the strawberries so eat them (unless you are allergic to them). On the other hand, if you always eat strawberries and now just looking at them turns your stomach, don’t eat them.

How is your energy level? If you are usually energetic and now you’re tired, it means you need to rest.

Do you feel the need to be outside or have fresh air? If so, then go outside or get some fresh air.

Generally, when you have a new illness (not a flare of a current chronic illness), you will get signs that are different from your norm. These are to be followed because they are directions from your body to help you heal and be comfortable during the illness.

When a new illness strikes, your body is using all its efforts to get the body back into balance. Sometimes it needs different foods, rest, fresh air, a warm bath, etc. By doing the things your body is telling you to do, you are helping yourself heal.

Your body does not want to develop chronic, long-term health conditions. The body is not made to be ill forever. Yes, it’ll get a virus here and a sprained ankle there. But the body is designed to heal the ailment and regain balance, becoming stronger each time it heals a condition.

How Does an Acute Condition Become a Chronic Condition?

Only when an acute, new condition isn’t healed does it become a chronic issue. As mentioned previously, the body sends signs that something isn’t right before the physical signs of an illness appear. If a person doesn’t recognize these changes as significant, the physical symptoms appear; most people don’t ignore those.

Even if a person doesn’t assist the body at this point either, the body usually does its job to eliminate the cause of the imbalance and physical symptoms. The body returns to balance and is stronger.

But that doesn’t always happen does it?

There are several reasons why the body doesn’t return to balance:

The body’s efforts are suppressed or reduced: this is the number one reason, and the number one way is through a chemical drug. Using the example above of the flu: if a person takes a fever-reducing agent, the virus isn’t slowed so it moves quicker and infects deeper. If a person takes a cough suppressant, the virus can go deeper into the lungs and cause pneumonia. If a person takes an anti-nausea agent so he can eat, he can develop an inflamed stomach. When the body is faced with an illness that is more serious than the virus (such as pneumonia), it has to change its healing focus away from the virus to heal the more-serious illness. In doing so, the virus continues to invade the body and becomes "dormant," meaning it’ll stay there for a long time, weakening the body because the immune system doesn’t remove dormant viruses easily, if ever. But the presence of the dormant virus can weaken the body just enough to allow other health issues to crop up. A common example is Chicken Pox. When Chicken Pox does not heal correctly, the virus can lay dormant for many years in the nervous system. When stressful times strikes, the virus is activated and produces a painful rash called Shingles.

A different health issue appears as a result of the first health issue: this was kind of discussed in the first reason. To reiterate: a person develops pneumonia so healing the pneumonia takes precedence over the healing of a virus.

An organ is surgically removed: example, if a person gets a "gallbladder attack" and the gallbladder is removed; the imbalance will remain and cannot be healed completely because the gallbladder is missing.

The healing ability of the body weakens: when a new illness appears, the body works strongly to remove the imbalance and restore the body to balance. If the body isn’t supported in its efforts, the strength of the "fight" weakens. In time, the ability to heal becomes so weak that the illness cannot be removed by the body without help—the help is usually the right homeopathic remedy.

Only when the body’s healing ability is too weak can a disease become chronic. Think of a chronic sinus infection. You’ll always have signs of the infection so long as it remains, but after a while, you ignore them. You may have swelling and discharge all the time, but it becomes a part of life for you. Only when it gets really bad again do you give it attention.

The same is true for your body. When it gets too weak to do anything about the sinus infection, it moves onto other things. Only when it gets a little stronger does it again try to remove the sinus infection—unfortunately, when this occurs, most people think their sinus infection is worse and work to suppress the symptoms again, thus again weakening the body’s healing abilities so the sinus infection remains…..and the cycle continues….

Part 2 of this article will focus on healing of Chronic Diseases and Chronic Complaints.

For now, if you get new symptoms or a change from what is normal for you, PAY ATTENTION….you owe it to yourself to avoid chronic diseases.

Best wishes…

Dr. Ronda

Disclaimer: The information provided by Dr. Ronda is for educational purposes only. It is important that you not make health decisions or stop any medication without first consulting your personal physician or health care provider.