What are your symptoms telling you?
The body is a marvel of a machine. Underneath the skin, millions of processes and functions are taking place to keep us in homeostasis.
We often blame our bodies when they get sick, ill and tired, wishing they could just get better, but what we sometimes forget is that our bodies are always trying to keep us well. When we push them too far they communicate with us and let us know that they’re struggling to keep that important homeostasis. How do they do that? Through symptoms.
Symptoms are our friends. It’s the body’s way of showing us that something’s not quite right.
How do symptoms work?
In Kinesiology, most people come to see us when they have symptoms that they want to address. However, Kinesiology is actually a preventative therapy. We aim to keep your body balanced and well so that symptoms don’t have an opportunity to manifest.
So how do symptoms even come about in the body? It might help if I break this down into a timeline.
Long before symptoms present themselves in the body, the first thing that happens is an imbalance. This could be something small like eating certain foods which your body doesn’t like, tripping over or having an upsetting argument. If these things start happening more frequently the imbalance accumulates and the body starts needing to compensate.
These compensations could be feeling a little under the weather, overtired or having a few vague, mild symptoms that don’t cause any distress. However, if we ignore these feelings and don’t begin addressing the imbalance, these compensations grow into functional changes which are far more noticeable. These could include back pain, headaches, IBS, anxiety or skin conditions.
These symptoms are the body’s alarm system. There’s smoke in the building and it’s desperately trying to get your attention!
How do we commonly treat symptoms?
When it gets to the stage when we’re experiencing functional changes in the body, we have a choice. Either address the symptoms and seek relief or ignore them and hope they go away.
Often most of us are too busy to stop and take a look at what might be happening. It’s easy to ignore symptoms, take a painkiller, think “I’m sure they’ll go at some point”.
There’s also the difficulty of knowing where to turn for help. With so many options for conventional, as well as complementary, medicine, it can be overwhelming and confusing to know what next steps to take. So often we don’t take them and hope that if we just carry on the symptoms will go at some point.
There’s also the element of fear, it’s much safer to try and carry on as normal because when we start to dig, we might uncover something that we don’t want to deal with. We might realise we have to change our diet, take medication, look into surgery or spend lots of money fixing the problem. And it’s scary to imagine that. It’s out of our comfort zone.
Many of us choose to manage or suppress the symptoms. I understand why, it’s the easier choice. But it’s like putting a sticker over the empty fuel gauge of a car, out of sight and out of mind, but by not filling up the tank we’ll eventually be forced to pull over when we run out of fuel.
How does Kinesiology work with symptoms?
When we ignore symptoms, not only do they persist but they also create deeper changes in the body. This is when, after many years of neglect, the body’s imbalances are so deeply rooted that they become pathological.
Dis-ease doesn’t come out of nowhere. It develops over years, sometimes decades, and is finally revealed and diagnosed when the body is in a critical stage - the fire in the building is out of control and all the smoke alarms are blaring.
Let’s not get to that burning building stage. I encourage you to listen to what your body is telling you. In Kinesiology we work on finding and correcting these subtle imbalances, aiding the body so it can return to its natural state of homeostasis.
I always tell my clients that it’s never too late to turn your health around, there’s always hope and your body is capable of incredible turnarounds.
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