Medical specialties may have their place, but sometimes they baffle me.
While training with my punching bag two days ago, I struck with my left hand at a bad angle and instantly felt a searing pain shoot through my wrist and into my arm. Whatever reminded me of it today, I am unsure, because it doesn’t hurt anymore. Right after this happened, I stripped off my training gloves, quickly grasped my left hand with my right, pointed my elbows outward at chest height, and pulled my hand away from my elbow, gradually increasing the pull until I felt everything click back into place.
Now, I am not a chiropractor, though I visited one when I was very young. He helped remove my chronic earaches by adjusting my neck. Obviously there can be more to medicine than some of us learn. But human bodies are extremely complex and interdependent systems, and without caution and insight, specializations can become a black hole that bury everything else.
Ask an oncologist how to treat your cancer, and you will likely be told that chemotherapy is the only logical choice. A radiologist will most likely suggest radiation first. A surgeon will want to remove as much of the tumor as possible. A holistic doctor may suggest something else entirely. All of these positions can have merit, and all of them might help, but you are still your own best advocate. Only you know your body and your responses to treatments over the years better than anyone else.
Comedian Eddie Izzard once joked that no matter what is ailing you, a chiropractor will always suggest that they should “crack your bones” to make you feel better. His delivery in that show was hilarious, and he still makes a very good point.
I recently heard of “ozone IVs” for the first time. If your medical specialty is infusing ozone to enrich the blood’s oxygen content and cleanse and energize cells throughout the body, you may know well what conditions this can help. You will be quick to sing the praises of the ozone IVs, and you will tell everyone why they do such good. You may even say that there can be no harm in them, so everyone can benefit, whatever their condition. And you may be right. But so may be the homeopath, the acupuncturist, and even the pharmacologist, who thinks that the benefits of the drug of the month will far outweigh the risks, if you feel you need help.
The point is never to overlook either the advantages or the disadvantages of a treatment – of any treatment – and never to close yourself off from something that can help you. I take very few medicines, even for my occasional allergies, because I find that everything else works better day and night when I have fewer medicines in my system. I know people who take 12 a day, and they cannot imagine skipping any of them, because of the benefits they provide to those people. Everything works differently on everyone, and this must be kept in mind to treat anyone successfully, with any discipline.
I would visit a biontologist monthly or even weekly if a reputable one were close, because I believe from my studies that this is something that has no downside and can only help realign all of your systems to function at their maximum efficiency. And there is science to support that; hence my studies. But I also think that it only makes sense to consider all options, and what they can do right and wrong, and take whatever treatments you may need at any given time to help your body heal itself.
The danger in all of this comes when any specialization, or any evangelism toward a specialization, blinds you to other possibilities that could help you more, or help better, or do more good or less harm in the first place. The right answer to anything in life is rarely so cut and dry.
Real life is messy, and we live in the gray areas every day. Be vigilant, question everything (even yourself if you seek wisdom and improvement), and learn all you can. If you have friends, relatives, and trusted medical advisers, so much the better. But whether you do or not, you are still your own best advocate, first and always.