We all know people who push themselves until they collapse with a flu, or who suddenly come down with a disease when faced with a wedding where they would come face to face with an ex. We have seen people with chronic stress develop autoimmune disease or chronic fatigue. Perhaps disease is the body’s way of dealing with stresses that might otherwise overwhelm it. Perhaps we should reconsider the adaptive value of disease.
In febrile disease we should look at the value of fever and how it can help. In children over one year of age, fever has the value of increasing the temperature to fight the pathogens, making the child tired enough to get sleep and to challenge the immune system and strengthen it. So what should the strategy be? Modern Chinese medicine cools down fevers with cool diaphoretics like mint, but the Shang Han Lun, the classic treatise on disease caused by cold suggests only using warming diaphoretics, whether for Wind Cold or Wind Heat. And that would reinforce the fever reaction, allowing the patient to sweat out the pathogen.
If we start by looking at disease as the body’s best effort to deal with both physical and emotional stress, then our attitude changes significantly. Do we want to “cure” a condition when it may be saving the person from a more serious situation? Will our chronic fatigue patient get enough relief from an insane lifestyle unless her body is allowed to rest? Should an overweight patient with bulimia be counseled to restrict her food when she is currently dealing with control issues?
I have had occasion to consider this myself, when while going through a period of extreme stress, I put on weight and ignored the insulin resistance protocols which I know work well for me. I was focused on survival, and chose not to avoid the carbohydrates which trigger neurological comfort eventhough I knew I would eventually have to break the addiction. Now I know that there are better ways of dealing with stress, but I didn’t have as profound a neurological connection with qi gong as I did with chocolate so frankly it wouldn’t have worked in the pinch. (Note to self: now that things are better, it is time to reinforce that qi gong connection.)
In Chinese medicine, when someone cannot deal with stressors of life, the body adapts by storing it in the blood, in special vessels called luos. Some kinds can be seen as varicosities, and in Chinese classical medicine the vessels are pricked with a lancet to release the emotional stress from the body. This may seem like nonsense to the western mind until you see people going through changes right before your eyes with the treatment. In light of this, surgically stripping away varicose veins is likely to interfere with the emotions stored, without proper release.
By honoring the role of disease, we can make more profound in the way we 
affect our clients. I once referred a client who wanted to stop smoking to the student clinic where I work. The man had been smoking for 40 years, was taking ginseng, a heating herb. He showed signs of the condition we call Excess Heat and his student intern immediately suggested that he stop taking such a heating herb. But the student failed to recognize that someone who had been inhaling a pack a day of fire-inducing cigarettes needed to replace the fire with something more benign before he could cool down. Without an external source of heat, the patient quickly went into a tailspin and was without motivation until he self-medicated with cigarettes again.
In the case of a smoker, smoking provides certain goods in addition to all of its deficits. If a smoker uses cigarettes to disengage from work periodically, spend some time out in the sun, chatting with friends and breathing deeply, he will not succeed at quitting unless he finds other means of engaging in those activities.
I suggest we deal with patients’ life-style issues by “widening the path” they have shown they can follow. So substituting a more-benign substance that plays a similar role to one that potentially addicts while building them up underneath is a better strategy.
For books discussing the idea of Darwinian medicine, see:
http://astore.amazon.com/acupandherbby-20?_encoding=UTF8&node=6
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