psyche

As someone leaning towards primary care, I found this blogpost quite interesting. In it, the doc states that ~85% of the ten most common ailments brought to the attention of family docs has no definite material cause. http://acountrydoctorwrites.wordpress.com/2009/09/13/the-power-of-words/ In other words, it's all in their head, which is the phrase that many use to dismiss it. My response is that most people have some degree of fear of public speaking. Stage fright is absolutely "just in your head" but explain that to someone who's about to lose their lunch before a speech. It's every bit as real as a material pain like a broken bone. Over the past ten years, I've become more interested in some eastern modalities. Western medicine is great at putting Humpty Dumpty back together but not so good at dealing with chronic disease. In other words, if I get into a car wreck, I want a top notch Western trained surgeon. But for my periodical shoulder pain which has both a material cause (old football injury) as well as a psychic component (stress), nevermind external causalities such as cold fronts, or the odd hurricane (holy crap did hurricane Ike last year kill my shoulder), Western medicine has been horrible at helping me to deal with it. Two rounds of physical therapy and a sports medicine orthopedist gave me no relief. Accupuncture, however.....that had some surprising effects. I'm becoming fascinated by the mind-body connection and how it relates to health and healing.