Since the last two years, having the unwanted chance to do a deep dive into the 21th Century Health Care System, (especially) because of Atrial Fibrillation (AFib, AF), I was always wondering that the words “Treatment“, “Fix” and “Cure” were commonly used in the same context. In my understanding these words are completely different in their origin of meaning. This mixup could be very misleading in the way how to deal with a condition like AFib. That’s why I think it is important to keep “apples and pears” appart.
A Treatment, as I understand it, at least does not mean anything as long it is not focussed on a specific “Outcome”. I would focus the wanted outcome for example onto “Getting healthy again and rid of AFib”. Treating AFib alone does not automatically mean getting rid of this condition. Every idiot can create many treatments for AFib as long as it is unclear what the wanted outcome is. For example “clapping in the hands” or “rolling your eyes each in different directions, at the same time” could be considered as a treatment as well but it will be hard to explain how this will lead to a specific “Outcome” a “normal thinking” person wants typically to achieve.
“Getting healthy again and rid of AFib (of course)” in my understanding can be seen as a as a specific and wanted “Outcome” (seen from the “patients” perspective) or in other words as a Cure.
If you search out the internet you often find a mixup of “Treatment” and “Cure“. Here I learned to ask the simple question “What is the outcome of the treatment, is it a Cure, a (Quick-)Fix or does it lead to ‘Nowhere‘?”
A (Quick-)Fix is an “Output(!)” of a treatment, but it does nearly never lead to a Cure (your wanted outcome).
Note: By the way there is also a big difference between “Output” and “Outcome”. “Output” can be anything you get and “Outcome” is a valuable result you really need.
For example you can probably fix your high bloodpressure values as a symptom with blood pressure agents (Fix = Output) but that doesn’t mean that you have cured the root cause of that symptom (Cure = Outcome). Cure (Outcome) and Fix (Output) are often mixed up. A (Quick-)Fix often results in some new problems or an ending up in a status quo or as I would say “Dead End Street”.
Note: As another practical example for symptom fixing in AFib you can see that lowering your blood pressure by medication does not improve your CHA2DS2-VASc Score.
Treatments resulting in (Quick-)Fixes often have their cause in a lack of knowledge of the root cause of a specific problem, they are like putting a “new painting” on a rusty broken unsafe car (it looks good, but the car is still rusty and unsafe).
Note: Another misunderstanding in modern medicine sometimes results out of the mindset that “root cause” means there is only one single cause (or factor) for a specific medical condition. In fact very often we can find more than one cause that leads to a specific condition, what means the root cause can be multifactorial.
(Quick-)Fixes often reveal themselves by showing more sideeffects and risks than keeping the problem as it is and they often result in an endless loop of more and more treatments.
A cure mostly shows no negative sideffects but often needs some more and smart work.
I know this all sound very pedantic, but in my experience this is an important essential in a self cure journey “Rucksack”.
Another very important point is that with a lack of knowledge (including a lack of connectivity and trust to your body and soul) it is, in my eyes, nearly impossible to get to a cure by finding the right treatment. It mostly ends up somewhere in “Nowhere”, a (Quick-)Fix and/or in a “Dead End Street”. The good news is I learned there is always a chance getting out of that “Dead End Street”-devils circle by improving your knowledge, as a result finding the right treatment, improving your knowledge again and then moving forward to a cure.
To figured this out I have put this all together in the following (improvable!) chart:
The red thread:
Some important hints for me that I am on the “Highway of Healing” (shown by the thin red thread in diagram) were:
- A Cure is the wanted outcome of all people participating in the healing process.
- My condition improves steadily.
- The trust and connectivity to my body and soul is increasing.
- The treatment is adressing the real root cause of my (individual) problem.
- I don’t here statements like (top three):
- It’s your age, you are getting older.
- It is your genetic condition.
- You had bad luck.
- All people that are participating in the healing process life and breath the different meaning of “Treatment”, “(Quick-)Fix” and “Cure”.
- The treatment does improve my condition and is not making it more worse.
- The risk of the treatment is not higher than keeping the problem as it is.
- The knowledge about my condition and senseful treatments gains steadily.
Exceptions to the rule:
Please don’t misunderstand me, this is a simplified incomplete “model” created out of my experience. Of course I know that there are exceptions of “my assumptions” I have stated.
Sometimes…:
- …the diagnosis is wrong, but the treatment is right and people get cured.
- …the diagnosis is wrong and the treatment too put people get cured anyway.
- etc.
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