Is your prescription a medicine, a symptomicine, or a crutch? What is a medicine? What is a symptomicine? What is a crutch? Is your alternative treatment a medicine, a symptomicine, or a crutch?

Webster’s: a medicine is “a substance that is used in treating disease or relieving pain and that is usually in the form of a pill or a liquid“. This definition is quite broad. A medicine might cure a disease. More often it’s just used to treat a disease, or relieve symptoms. Most medicines make no claim to cure. Most just prop you up, so you can ‘live with your disease’.

A medicine that cures your illness is a curative – but curatives don’t cure, the action of taking the medicine cures. However, most medicines only treat symptoms – most medicines are symptomicines.

Symptomicine: a medicine that only treats signs or symptoms of an illness. A symptomicine might be an approved drug that reduces our pain or other symptoms of disease without curing. It might be an alternative health product. It might even be a preventative, like a vaccine, reducing our symptoms of “fear of disease” without curing anything.

Crutch: props up an unhealthy or failing system. A crutch can be temporary, to wait for or facilitate a cure, or a permanent attachment, with no hope of a cure.

Some medicines, like painkillers are like a crutch. They prop you up until you can get better. Other crutch medicines are designed to “hold you up” forever. This design ensures ongoing sales. A real crutch is only sold once. A crutch drug has ongoing sales potential.

Are most medicines cures, symptomicines, or crutches? What do you think? If it cures the disease, it is a true medicine, a cure, otherwise, it is probably a symptomicine or a crutch.

In 2013, I researched the 100 best selling medicines. Most make no claim to cure. Less than 5 of the 100 best selling medicines sold in 2013 have potential to cure any illness. Ninety-five percent cannot cure, any disease. Are these all symptomicines?

I just checked the top selling medicines of 2024 – and little has changed since 2013. Not one of the top ten best sellers of 2024 actually cures any disease – they are all either symptomicines or crutches. Here’s the 2024 list:

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Best Selling Medicines in 2024

Keytruda strengthens the body’s immune response against cancer, but can cause immune disease. Does not cure. Crutch.

Ozempic (semaglutide) increases insulin production and reduces liver sugar production in type 2 diabetes patients. Does not cure. Crutch.

Biktarvy prevents the HIV from multiplying and decreases viral load. Does not cure. Symptomicine.

Eliquis – prevent blood clots. Does not cure. Crutch.

Dupixent used to treat eczema, eosinophilic or oral-corticosteroid-dependent asthma, chronic rhinosinusitis with nasal polyps, COPD with an eosinophilic phenotype, eosinophilic esophagitis (EOE), or prurigo nodularis. Does not cure. Symptomicine.

Skyrizi used to treat autoimmune diseases. Does not cure. Symptomicine.

Darzalex used to treat multiple myeloma. Does not cure. Crutch

Stelara used to treat autoimmune diseases. Does not cure. Symptomicine.

Opdivo used to treat cancers. Does not cure. Crutch.

Humira used to treat inflammatory conditions. Does not cure. Symptomicine.

Best Selling Medicines in 2013

The top ten best selling drugs of 2013: Abilify, Nexium, Humira, Crestor, Cymbalta, Advair Diskus, Enbrel, Remicade, Copaxone, Neulasta. Here’s what Drugs.Com says about each of them:

Abilify: is used to treat the symptoms of psychotic conditions. No longer in top 100.
Nexium: is used to treat symptoms of gastroesophageal reflux disease. No longer in top 20.
Humira: reduces the effects [symptoms and possibly damage] of a substance in the body that can cause inflammation. Number 3 in 2024.
Crestor: reduces levels of “bad” cholesterol (low-density lipoprotein, or LDL) and triglycerides in the blood, while increasing levels of “good” cholesterol (high-density lipoprotein, or HDL) Crutch. No longer in the top 20.
Cymbalta: affects chemicals in the brain that may become unbalanced and cause depression. Crutch. No longer in the top 20.
Advair Diskus: prevents the release of substances in the body that cause inflammation. Crutch. No longer in top 100.
Enebrel: is used to treat the symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis, psoriatic arthritis, or ankylosing spondylitis, and to prevent joint damage caused by these conditions. No longer in the top 100.
Remicade: is used to treat [symptoms of] rheumatoid arthritis, psoriatic arthritis, ulcerative colitis, Crohn’s disease, and ankylosing spondylitis. No longer in the top 20.
Copaxone: will not cure MS, but it can make relapses [symptoms] occur less often. No longer in the top 100.
Neulasta: stimulates the growth of white blood cells in your body. It is used to prevent neutropenia, a lack of certain white blood cells caused by receiving chemotherapy. Crutch. No longer in the top 100.

Symptomicine or Crutch?

Most approved medicines are symptomicines, used to manage signs and symptoms, not curing any disease. Your disease will not get better when you take these drugs. You might feel better – even as your illness grows worse and worse.

Some are crutches. Crestor, Cymbalta, Advair Diskus, do not directly affect symptoms of your disease. Neither do they cure. What do they do? They change some of the health balances in your body, like a crutch supports our balance. Our natural cholesterol balances, brain chemical balances, and inflammation balances are part of our healthiness and part of our illness. Are these the best treatment for our diseases? No. They do not cure. We might classify these medicines as ‘imbalancers’. But a more accurate term would be ‘crutches’. They are used when our doctor thinks we are out of balance, to shift us back into balance, in the hope that this will make us less sick from our disease.

If you have ever used a crutch, you know one thing – the best thing about a crutch is when you throw it away. When you regain your health. Unfortunately most medical crutches are designed to be bought and used for life. They make no attempt to cure, no attempt to heal your body nor to restore your ‘natural balance’, your health.

The action of some drugs is more complex. Copaxone ‘makes relapses [of MS] occur less often’. But what are ‘relapses’ of MS? According to MS Active Source “A multiple sclerosis relapse is the rapid onset of new, or worsening of previous, symptoms that last at least 24 hours.” Copoxone does not address the disease of MS, only the symptoms.

Neulasta stimulates the growth of white blood cells. It changes the natural balance of your body, stimulating production of more white blood cells. Neulasta is an imbalancer, like Crestor, Cymbalta, and Advair Diskus. It’s a crutch, but it’s a very specific crutch, used to help you deal with the damage that chemotherapy has caused. We might also classify it as a symptomicine, because it fights against the symptoms of chemotherapy white blood cell death.

Conclusions

In summary, of the top ten best selling medicines of 2024, not one cure. In the top ten of 2013, there are no cures.

A symptomicine is a crutch, for symptoms that the patient notices. A crutch is just a symptomicine, for signs that the doctor notices.

The top ten best selling medicines of 2014 don’t cure anything, – no change from 2013. Is medicine progressing, or just sales?

Why does this happen? It’s actually very simple. Medicines that cure a disease don’t have big sales, because they work themselves out of a job. Medicines that don’t cure, but ‘make you feel better’, can sell you a subscription to ‘feeling better’, even as your disease gets worse. These are the best sellers, the medicines that make the most money. If you were a drug company, which drug would you prefer to design, test, and sell? Symptomicines and crutches.

What about green medicines? What about alternative medicines? Are most alternative medicines also only symptomicines? I have not done an in depth analysis, but the same logic probably holds. The medicines that sell most, do not cure.

Whether you are considering patent medicines, prescription medicines, or green medicines, ask one simple question: can this medicine cure my disease – or is it only a symptomicine?

Where are the Cures?

How many cures have been awarded the Nobel Prize in the last 50 years? Not one. The last time a CURE won the Nobel Prize in Medicine was 1945 – 80 years of no Nobel Prize winning cures. We need a new paradigm.

If you have an illness, and you are looking for a cure – a symptomicine might give temporary relief, but if you want a cure, you need to look beyond symptomicines.

To find cures, we need to look beyond medicines, to health. Most cures come from health, not from medicines, as we learned in the post “Diseases cured – but not by Medicines-medicines”.

to your health, tracy
Author: A New Theory of Cure

“A thorn in the flesh would ultimately be cured by Nature. It would heal out; but this would be a painful, a tedious, perhaps a dangerous process. The surgeon extracts the thorn; the case is now a simple wound that heals in a day.”
Strachan, John M, Nature in the Cure of Disease : a lecture, 1861

Theory of Cure

A cure is a cure. An element of cure, an elementary cure is present when a causal element of illness has been successfully addressed.

Extracting the thorn is a cure. If a doctor extracts the thorn, we might call it a medical cure – but few doctors, when extracting thorns, claim to cure. Instead, they might suggest that the patient cures through healing, that a cure cannot be broken into elements, and therefore – the doctor did not “cure,” they only aided the cure.

In the theory of cure, a cure, an element of cure is an intentional action to address a cause of the illness. It makes no difference if the cure is accomplished by self, perhaps by a dog biting the wound, pushing the thorn out, by a grandmother with a tweezers, or perhaps a grandchild operating on grandad, or a nurse or surgeon in a clinic or hospital. It’s the same action.

A cure.

Cure Quotes is a collection of over 3000 quotations about cure. Clicking on the cure quote link provides a random cure quote.

to your health, tracy
Author: A New Theory of Cure

“Every cure has functions: healthing and addressing the present cause.”

 Every case of illness has two potential cures: to health the patient, or to attack the present external cause. In many cases, the best path, and the safest path is to improve healthiness. In other cases, most especially in emergencies, we must address the external cause. In some cases, the best cure is a blend of both cures. This illustration shows the two functions:

When a failure of Healthiness is the Cause

Alternative practitioners often speak of curing by addressing the terrain – often described as the unhealthiness of the afflicted. Healthiness is wider and deeper than the common concept of terrain, which is generally limited to the physical body.

A person’s illness might emerge, be caused, when healthiness in diet, body, mind, spirits, communities, or environments falls. These domains are the wider terrain. In each case, the cure is to improve the specific deficient healthiness. In some cases, an illness accumulates unhealthiness causes – and many cure many improvements in healthiness are needed.

There are two types of illness caused by unhealthinesses, status illnesses and lifestyle illnesses.

A status illness occurs when a healthiness drops enough to cause illness. When we don’t drink enough water, eat enough healthy food, get enough healthy exercise or rest, we might suffer a status illness slowly or quickly quickly. Simple dehydration, a hangover, scurvy, and injuries are status illnesses.

Lifestyle illnesses are slower. The are typically caused when our actions are only mildly unhealthy, but the unhealthiness and the damage accumulates. Sometimes, the foods we eat are only mildly unhealthy, but the unhealthy consumption becomes part of our life, eating junk food every day, smoking or drinking too much, or not getting sufficient rest of body, mind, or spirits can all lead to lifestyle illnesses. Lifestyle illnesses are chronic, persisting until the unhealthy actions and their consequences are addressed.

Note: Some cases of hangover are both a status illness and part of a lifestyle illness – in which case it requires two cures.

Chronic depression, for example, can be caused by many lifestyle factors. It can be caused by chronic dietary problems – deficiencies or excesses. It can be caused the ongoing pressure of chronic physical (bodily), mental, and spirit issues, like being physically confined to a house or a wheelchair. It can also be caused by abuse in a community – an external cause.

How do we recognize, or prove an illness is caused by unhealthiness? By the cure – the cure proves the cause. If we cure an illness by improving healthiness alone, the illness was caused by unhealthiness. If changing the diet cures a case of depression – the cause was an unhealthy diet. If changing the patient’s mind and spirit cures the depression – even though they are still confined, unhealthiness was the cause. If we partially cure it, by addressing one or more of the causes – it’s a partial cure. However, in our current medical paradigm, depression is considered to be incurable and has no ability to understand partial cures of any disease.

Most illnesses are unhealthiness illnesses. Most status illnesses are easily cured. Lifestyle illnesses are difficult, but not impossible to cure, the cure takes time and requires persistence. We know how to cure unhealthiness illnesses. But, cures for unhealthiness illnesses are not medical. No medicines improve healthiness. As a result, few, if any cures that come from improving healthiness can be recognized medically. Modern medicine declares, almost with pride, “there is no cure for … the common cold, influenza, a hangover, or alcoholism” and denies cure claims. I’ve had many colds, influenza few times – and yes, a hangover or two – all cured. There are claims of alcoholics cured, but like the common cold cured, nobody cares. The cure is not a medicine.

When the cause is External

Many causes of illness are located external to the diet, body, mind, spirits, communities, or environments, the six healthiness domains. Our diet might be disrupted by winter. Our bodies might be attacked by a bacteria, or a tiger. Our minds might be disrupted by external misinformation or propaganda. Our spirits might be weakened by events that break our faith in self or others. Our communities might be disrupted by competition or war. Our environments might be disrupted by a volcano, or a neighboring factory or other source of pollution. These causes are “not us.”

Physical or mental abuse is an external illness – even though the specific injuries are internal. These cases require an external cure to address the abuse, and an internal – healthiness cure – to address the injury consequences.

A case of depression might be caused by physical or mental abuse by self or others. It can be caused by isolation – by intentional solitary confinement. Only a cure proves a cause. If the depression is cured by removing abuse, or by being let out of solitary confinement – that was the cause.

As with healthiness illnesses, a case of externally caused illness might have several causes, requiring several cures, or several externally caused illnesses might be present at the same time. However, medically, few illnesses are recognized as having two cure causes.

Many medical treatments to address external causes are actions that decrease healthiness, even if only temporarily, often attacking specific healthinesses in the faith, or hope that the patient will recover from both the treatment and the illness. An antibiotic attacks all bacteria, good and bad, under the assumption that the good bacteria will recover but the bad bacteria will not. Curing a badly broken arm sometimes requires medical actions that temporarily make it worse.

Most externally caused illnesses are chronic. Why? If an external cause is temporary, the resulting illness is a status illness – the temporary cause is no longer present. If we have a thorn in our finger or a nail in our shoe – we remove it, and are left with an injury, a status illness that requires healing. Most externally caused illnesses that are not chronic are cured so easily, like removing a thorn, that we ignore the cure action.

On the other hand, when an external cause is present over time, the illness is chronic. The cure is to address the chronic nature of the cause. Chronic abuse cannot be cured by healing the injuries, nor by fighting the abuser, the cure is to separate the abused and the chronic abuser.

Medicines rarely address chronic causes. There is no medicine that can cure chronic eating, leading to obesity, no medicine that can cure smoker’s cough created by chronic smoking. There are no medicines that can cure chronic abuse by another person or a community. Most chronic illnesses cannot be cured by medications.

Injuries

Injuries exist in the boundary between healthiness causes and external causes. As a result, they often require both cures – external actions and internal healing.

An injury is a hole in our healthiness. It might be a hole in our body, our mind, our spirits, or our communities. The injury is both “us” and “not us.” We are not the accumulation of blood in a bruise, even though it is inside of us. We are not the hole. But the hole must be filled – with us. And if there is damaged flesh, it becomes a scab that is scraped away or falls of.

Healing is a process of discarding what is not us, and replacing it with new “us.”

Illnesses often produce in injuries. Unfortunately, in many cases of disease, no diagnosis is possible until injuries occur. Mild illnesses, mild cases of illness and injury are seldom diagnosed – their cures – natural healings, are too easy. We get a normal case of a minor cut, a bruise, the common cold, influenza, COVID, and in most cases, we don’t even visit a doctor. If we do visit a doctor – we are sent home to heal, without any medical treatment or cure.

Severe injuries require medical attention. Ongoing injuries, perhaps caused by a lifestyle illness or by an ongoing external causes are often treated without attention to cause, without intention to cure.

Chronic Illnesses

Chronic illnesses, whether they are lifestyle illnesses or have chronic external causes are cured by caring. When we care for ourselves, we cure our lifestyle illnesses. When our communities care for our injuries, they cure specific cases. When our communities help us to change our lifestyle – or address an ongoing cause that is external to us, that’s a caring cure.

How can we tell?

How do we know if the cause is internal, a healthiness, requiring personal changes, or external requiring other actions?

The cure proves the cause.

If we cured a case of illness by improving a healthiness, then unhealthiness was the cure cause.

If we cured a case of illness by addressing an external cause, that cause was the cure cause. Note: If we fail to cure the illness with medicines, we need to look at improving healthiness as an alternative.

Variations of Curing

How can we tell if the illness is a status illness, cured with a one-time cure when the status is changed, or a process illness, a lifestyle illness or caused by an ongoing process external to the client?

Healing cures injury illnesses, status illnesses.

Curing actions address causes of status illnesses that cannot be healed.

Caring actions cure by addressing ongoing causes.

In each situation, most cures come from non-medical actions. But non-medical cures are ignored by medical professionals.

When choosing to address causes of illness with healthiness, or by attacking causes, one important difference must be understood.

Healthiness cures Sum

Actions that improve healthiness sum, harmonize, and multiply to improve healthiness. When we improve the the healthiness of our diet with healthy foods and our bodies, minds, and spirits with healthy exercise and rest, we improve healthiness in many ways. We might cure our illness without a clear understanding of the specific cause. But a cure is a cure. Who’s to complain about other improvements in healthiness?

Attacking Causes can Sum to decrease Healthiness

When we attack the cause of an infection with an antibiotic, we also attack our own healthy bacteria. When we take many antibiotics at once, more healthy bacteria perhaps even our healthy cells can suffer. Most drugs are poisonous, and poisons sum in the negative. When we remove inflamed tonsils or gall bladders with surgery, we lose our tonsils and our gall bladders, as opposed to healing them. When we take a painkiller instead of addressing the cause, we intentionally decrease healthiness, although in some cases this can aid a healing cure. We know that painkillers combined, or combined with other drugs like alcohol, can kill.

The Best Cures

How can we tell which cure is best? In some cases, improving healthiness is the best cure. In other cases, addressing an external cause is necessary. We might cure the common cold with chicken soup and rest, a slow cure. But we cure severe pneumonia with antibiotics – before the infection kills the patient.

When we can cure with healthiness, without medical actions – the cure is safer. But healthy cures are often slow. In emergency cases, we need severe actions, the risk of not curing is more important than the risk of actions.

Early Cures

When we can catch or diagnose the illness earlier, we can find and make more effective healthiness cures.

Medical protocols, on the other hand, often delay diagnosis until an illness reaches a critical state, because medical treatments are dangerous.

Modern medicine makes no claim to cure injuries – injuries are cured by healing. But improving healthiness is the best cure aid for healing. When we eat healthy foods, get healthy exercise and rest, our healing proceeds faster and the results are better. When our healthiness is low, healing slows.

Both Cures

In some cases, both cures are required. A case of depression, or arthritis, or hypertension might have many causes, which sum to create an illness. In other cases there might be many causes which can independently create the illness. A case of depression might be caused by malnutrition, or by toxic poisons or drugs, or by work or family stress, or by physical or mental abuse. Or it might be caused by all of them occurring at once. In these cases, a shotgun cure technique is often most effective. A shotgun cure consists of addressing as many causes as possible at once.

The best shotgun cures are multiple actions to improve healthiness. Who’s to complain if some unhealthinesses – not related to the illness – are improved?

Medical shotgun cures are dangerous. Using a shotgun technique to attack multiple external causes at once with drugs or surgeries – can be very dangerous.

How do we learn the best cures? By practicing. By curing.

Unfortunately, modern medicine ignores most cases of cured. Most cures occur without medicines.Subscribed

to your health, tracy
Founder: Healthicine, the Arts and Sciences of Health and Healthiness
Author: A New Theory of Cure

This post was first published on my Substack.

There are exactly three types of curing, based on cause.

In the theory of cure, we find three elementary types of causes of healthiness and illness, potentially leading to three types of illness, cured respectively with three types of cures: healing, curing, and caring.

Healing Cures

We are familiar with healing cures, because most illnesses are cured by healing. We get a bruise, or a cut, or a puncture from a mosquito – and it heals. The more damage the slower the curing. Once the healing stops, the cure is completed. The injury is gone, although there might be some remnants. The less damage, the more perfect the cure. No cure is perfect, so no healing cure is perfect. Cures move us forward, not back to a previous status. Sometimes healing leaves a scar. Sometimes, the damage is too great, and healing can only close off the damage, but not produce a complete repair.

Curing Cures

In the theory of cure, we cure when we intentionally address the present cause of the illness. If we have a bacterial infection, and we kill the bacteria with an antibiotic, that’s a medical cure. If a surgeon removes the bacteria – that’s a medical cure. If the infection is small, and we simply scratch it away – it’s also a cure, but not medical. If we have been stranded in the desert, we drink water to cure our dehydrated status. Curing cures, like healing cures are one-time cures. We cure and the illness is gone. It might occur again, if the cause occurs again.

Caring Cures

When we are dehydrated from our desert experience, a one-time cure is needed, and sufficient. But if we are dehydrated because are not drinking enough water every day, the cure is to care for ourselves, to drink sufficient water every day, a caring cure. Caring cures are ongoing. When an illness is caused by a failure to care for ourselves – a one-time cure is not sufficient, an ongoing cure is necessary.

A Curable Element of illness

In this discussion, we are focusing on simple illnesses, elementary illnesses, to gain a clear understanding of the concepts, a clear foundation. An elementary illness, or an element of illness has a single cause. It is cured by addressing the single cause. When that cause has been addressed – the illness is gone. If the cause occurs again, a new illness is present, and a new cure is needed.

An illness consists of the intersection of a present cause and a set of negative consequences, resulting from that cause as illustrated in this figure:

Cure: Address the Cause of an Illness

When an illness is present, the cause is present. To cure, we must address the present cause. Working to address past causes, or future causes, might prevent future illnesses, but it cannot cure a present illness.

Healing, curing, and caring address different types of causes.

Healing addresses injury causes. The injury has past causes – but the injury is the cause of distress, the cause of signs and symptoms of the illness. When the injury is healed, cured, the signs and symptoms fade away.

Although modern medicine recognizes healing as a cure, healing cures are generally ignored. They don’t require medical attention. A patient with a stab wound visits a hospital, gets a blood transfusion, perhaps some stitches, and is sent home to heal.

Curing addresses attribute causes. The bacteria causing an infection is a thing, which when successfully addressed – killed or removed – results in a cure. Most infections are cured by natural forces, by healing, but some are severe enough to require intentional action like antibacterial medicine, or surgery.

Medical curing is recognized medically – although rarely documented as a cure. When a surgeon operates on a hernia, it’s a surgical cure, billed as a surgery, not a cure. Non-medical curing is generally ignored. When a grandchild clips the grandmother’s ingrown toenail, curing it, the surgery is not considered medical. When a doctor or nurse does the same – it’s medical, medically billable, but not documented as a cure.

Caring cures address lifestyle causes, often addressing chronic causes. If we don’t get enough healthy food, we suffer malnutrition. The cure is not a healthy meal, it is healthy eating. There are many different types of malnutrition, and many other lifestyle causes of illness. In each case, the cure is to care for ourselves. When we fall into a damaging habit, like smoking, we develop smoker’s cough. The cure is a negative action: not smoking.

Caring cures are not one-time cures. The cure must be maintained to maintain the cured status. Before the illness, the cure action is maintained without conscious attention. Sometimes, when illness is present, the cure can also occur without conscious intent. Sometimes, after we start eating a healthy diet to cure an illness, the cure becomes part of us, maintained without conscious intent to cure.

Caring cures come first from self-care. But, sometimes we need help. Children need help from parents to maintain healthiness and to cure when lifestyle illnesses occur. Sometimes a cure comes from a sibling – feeding an aging senior can no longer care for themselves, or from a care home.

Most caring is not curing. Most of the time, we care for ourselves without any illness, without any desire to cure. Caring can be viewed as a preventative when no illness is present, a cure when a lifestyle illness occurs.

Modern medicine rarely, if at all, acknowledges caring as curing. Palliative care is a medical term for caring with no intention to cure, caring after the medical system has given up on curing. Even when palliative care cures – for example curing a patient’s chronic dehydration – the cure is rarely recognized, much less documented. Caring often cures illnesses that are chronic, but modern medicine generally judges chronic diseases as incurable.

Causes of Illness

A present case of illness has a present cause. Any illness might have many different past causes, which we can speculate backwards in a chain as in the ditty, “for want of a nail…”

An illness is cured by addressing its present cause(s). There are three fundamentally different types of causes.

The three elementary causes of illness are injuries, attributes (things), and processes (lifestyle causes), as illustrated in the above diagram.

Note: there are no clear distinctions between the three different types of illness, we distinguish by curing, by successfully addressing the cause.

Injury illnesses are the most common – and most injuries are trivial, easily cured by the natural forces of health and healing.

Attribute illnesses are caused by things, attributes. The attribute cause might be a barrier, like a brick wall, or perhaps a hole. The attribute must be changed, transformed, such that it no longer causes illness, to produce a cure. An illness caused by a thorn, a bacteria, or an ingrown toenail are cured when the cause is addressed, transformed, or removed.

Injuries are also attributes and an injury illness is cured when the injury is transformed by healing. The distinction between healing and curing, in the theory of cure, is the intent. When we cure without conscious intent – it’s healing. When we cure with conscious intention – it’s curing.

Causal illnesses are caused by life processes. We often think of lifestyle illnesses as chronic and incurable, but this limited vision can result in a failure to cure many curable illnesses and failure to recognize many cures when they occur. Causal illnesses are cured by processes changes, addition, removal or change, transformation of a process that must be maintained to maintain the cured status.

The distinction between an attribute illness and a causal illness is judged by the cure. When a one-time transformation produces a cure, the illness was an attribute illness. On the other hand, when a cure requires an ongoing process, the illness was a causal illness.

A simple case of dehydration is cured by drinking sufficient water to address the dehydrated status. However, an ongoing case, a case of chronic dehydration, requires an ongoing action – regularly drinking sufficient water. Of course, dehydration can have many other causes – but those are not simple, not elementary cases.

The three different types of illness, injuries, attributes, an causal illnesses are cured respectively by healing, curing, and caring.

Healing, Curing, and Caring

In this image, we can see that healing, curing, and caring actions match perfectly with the different causes and different types of illness in the circle.

Not all Healing, Curing, or Caring Actions are Cures

No cure is perfect.

Healing cures are not perfect – they are forward transformations. Sometimes, healing does not cure, sometimes healing is deficient or excessive, resulting in failure to cure or negative consequences from the cure process. Healing, however, is usually naturally curative.

Attribute cures work when they successfully address the cause of the illness, and fail when they do not – and result in partial cures when the cause is only partially addressed. Of course, not all of our intentional curative actions result in cures and neither do all of our intentional transformations. Life is about intention.

Modern medicine has no concept of a causal cure, a cure that must be maintained, must be cared for, to prevent the recurrence of illness. Caring is often dismissed as non-curative. For example, palliative care is delivered without any intention to cure. However, many illnesses require ongoing caring actions to maintain the cure. We need to understand this to build a comprehensive understanding of curing, caring, and healing.

Most Diseases are not Elementary Illnesses

Most cases of elementary illnesses are trivial, easily cured – so easily that we dismiss the cure and often even dismiss the illness. We get a minor cut, a bruise, indigestion, a headache – and we simply ignore it. It’s not important. It heals. Life goes on.

A case of disease is an illness recognized, diagnosed by a medical professional. We rarely take our elementary illness to the doctor – because we can cure it ourselves. The exceptions are lifestyle chronic illnesses, like tennis elbow and smoker’s cough, where we know, in theory, the cause and the cure, but choose instead to ask for medical assistance.

Most diseases are defined such that multiple causes are present. Compound and complex illnesses require compound and complex curative actions.

Modern medicine, however, often wants to find simple cures, one-time cures, complete cures, permanent cures – and thus cannot recognize cure elements, which are partial cures. The vocabulary of cure, in our current medical paradigm, does not have words for the concepts of cure elements, partial cures, temporary cures, repeating cures, and process cures. The cure for smoker’s cough, easily understood by patient’s, friends and family, and medical professionals, cannot be recognized as a cure even after it occurs, because modern medicine has no concept of a negative process cure “stop the smoking process.”

To cure more illnesses, to improve our cures, we must cure and recognize cured cases and the causes of the cures.

to your health, tracy
Author: A New Theory of Cure

Have you made your New Year’s resolutions? It’s not too late… and it’s never to late to add another. Did you know that New Year’s resolutions often cure, sometimes even when we fail to keep them? How can this be possible?

A New Year’s resolution is a promise to change ourselves. Sometimes, even when the promise fails, a change succeeds.

Cures

A cure is a change to the cause of an illness.

An illness is cured when it’s cause has been successfully addressed, when the signs and symptoms of illness have faded and gone, when no more medicines are needed. Most illnesses are minor, easily cured. We don’t even take medicines for many of our illnesses. We just cure them naturally. Most medicines don’t cure. Most cures don’t come from medicines.

Most cures are trivial. Most illnesses are trivial, and easily cured. We get a cold, indigestion, food poisoning, influenza, COVID, a cut, a bruise, a burn – and it is cured by our natural healthiness. These cures are so trivial that they are completely ignored by our current medical paradigm. We have no medical test for “common cold cured” nor for a bruise “cured.”

Some illnesses are repeating, cured one case a a time. In a different case, the same type of illness might be cured once and for all by a different cure. An ingrown toenail is cured by a simple surgery – but it may reoccur if the cause is not addressed.

In the theory of cure, there are three types of illnesses we might cure with a New Year’s resolution: illnesses, diseases, and sicknesses. What’s the difference?

Illness, Disease, Sickness

“A person goes to the doctor with an illness – and goes home with a disease.” – source unknown. Their work gives them time off for “sickness.“

Illness, disease, and sickness – and cure as well, are judgements. The difference is who makes the judgement.

An illness is what we feel, what we want to be rid of, what we want cured. It is cured when we believe it has been cured. It might have been diagnosed – or it might not be a diagnosable disease.

A disease is what a doctor diagnoses. Some diseases, like osteoporosis, are diagnosable, although the patient senses no illness. A disease is cured when the doctor says it is cured. Unfortunately, most doctors avoid the word “cured.” There is no medical test for common cold cured, nor for osteoporosis cured.

A sickness is what our communities perceive as an illness. A sickness might match an illness or disease – or be the totally independent view of a community that accuses “He’s sick!” Although often cured, our communities rarely judge a sickness to be cured, although we might sometimes hear the phrase “That cured him!”

In the theory of cure, a curable illness might be an illness, disease, or sickness. The theory of cure is about curable illnesses – and for simplicity often uses the term illness for all curable illnesses.

A New Year’s resolution normally cures a chronic or repeating illness, like a chronic Sunday morning hangover, that the person addresses themselves on a case by case basis, without visiting a doctor. It might cure a disease, like hypertension, that the patient never noticed. It might cure work or school tardiness, a sickness that the person is aware of, and the employee is aware of – but no doctor is expected to treat. Or, it might cure an illness like being overweight, the patient’s view, that was diagnosed as the disease obesity by a doctor, and observed by friends and even strangers in unflattering comments about their sickness. Unfortunately, none of these three can be “cured” and proven to be cured in our current medical paradigm. Modern medicine ignores most cures. It also ignores the causes of most cures – they are not medical.

Attribute Illness Cures

An attribute illness, a curable attribute illness has a cause that is a thing, and the illness is cured when the cause is changed, transformed such that the signs and symptoms of the illness disappear.

New Year’s resolutions tend to be processes (or the intentional abstinence from an unhealthy proces, like eating or drinking too much) not things. We promise to be good, to take care of ourselves. We don’t see buying a new car as a “resolution” – even if it is an expensive cure for a flat tire. Driving a new car (and not the old – potentially unsafe car) is a healthy process caused by the purchase. There are many examples of attribute cures that might occur at New Year’s.

However, most curable attribute illnesses are easily cured during the year. We don’t need to make a New Year’s resolution to cure a cut, a bruise, an ingrown toenail. Even the common cold, influenza, and COVID are easily cured by our natural healthiness – without the need for a New Year’s resolution. Of course, when we are healthier, we get fewer colds – and cure them faster. The same is true of any curable illness. Even when a New Year’s resolution doesn’t cure, our goal is to improve our healthiness – and the result often creates or improves our cures.

A New Year’s resolution that cures an attribute illness would need to address a cause that has been with us for some time, causing an illness. Such an illness might appear to be cured by coincidence, or accident – or perhaps a miracle?

Peter bought a new pair of shoes to celebrate the new year. He threw his old tattered boots in the garbage, and his feet took on new life. That pesky ingrown toenail, that was happening every six weeks or so, simply faded away. Cured. It wasn’t until six months later he realized he had been cured. And the cause of the cure? No longer important.

The illness was never diagnosed by a doctor. Peter had cured himself, one case at a time as the problem grew large enough to annoy him. And now it’s gone. We might ask, “was the illness cured by the new shoes, or by getting rid of the old shoes?” That’s just an academic discussion – a cure is a cure.

Of course, not every new shoe cures an illness – even when illness is present. Someone who buys a fashion shoe, one only worn once a month, or perhaps once a year – will not cure any shoe illness. To cure, the causal attribute must be changed. The cure proves the cause.

We might cure an old illness with many different changes in our selves, or our possessions. We might cure an illness, disease, or sickness with a one-time attribute, change to our diet, our body, our mind, our spirits, our communities, or our environments. But none of these cures are medical – they cannot be documented medically. Medical cures require a medicine.

Causal Illness Cures

A causal illness is caused by a life process and cured by a change to, a transformation of a life process – which also might be a new process, or the ongoing removal of a process. A causal illness cure is distinguished from the an attribute illness cure – because it requires an ongoing action (or ongoing intentional negative action). Causal illnesses are generally repeating or chronic – and we must address the repeating or chronic nature of the cause to produce a cure. We might cure scurvy, an attribute illness, with supplemental Vitamin C, but we can’t cure an ongoing Vitamin C deficiency with a one-time supplement consumption, the processes that cause the disease must be addressed.

Most illnesses cured by New Year’s resolutions are causal illnesses – illnesses with a process cause – often referred to as lifestyle illnesses. Life is a process. Living is a complex process of exercise, rest, and harmonies in our diet, body, mind, spirits, communities, and environments. When we change a life process, sometimes we cause illness, sometimes we cure.

Jane had “smoker’s cough.” All her friends knew the cause of her sickness, her illness – was her smoking habit. Sometimes, while she was smoking, someone would mutter under their breath, “… have another cigarette.” Jane, and all her friends, knew the cure. On new year’s eve, Jane resolved to quit smoking – and she quit – and six months later, less than a year, the cough was gone. Cured. But, there was no diagnosis. This cure, like the new shoes cure, is not a recognized medical cure, but it is a cure nonetheless.

New Year’s Resolutions

“Unhappiness is our brain’s natural default state. Happiness is a complex skill that we can build to relieve this natural unhappiness.” – Why You’re Unhappy, Loretta Graziano Breuning, 2023.

We make resolutions because we are unhappy with our lives. We often think of being unhappy as abnormal, but, Loretta Breuning advises – we are naturally unhappy. Why? Because unhappiness drives us to better situations. When we are unhappy on New Year’s Eve, we make resolutions to improve our health, our happiness.

The top new year’s resolutions according to Bing are:

1. Get fit and healthy
2. Learn a new skill
3. Read more books
4. Travel more
5. Reduce stress
6. Save more money
7. Spend more time with loved ones
8. Volunteer your time
9. Get organized
10. Live life to the fullest

We don’t choose a new year’s resolution because we are perfect. We don’t choose a resolution because we are healthy. We focus our attention on our problems, on our current illnesses – in many cases, on illnesses that are below the threshold of a medical diagnoses. We make a resolution, because we want a cure.

1. Get fit and healthyWhen we improve the healthiness of diet, body, mind, spirits, and communities many illnesses can be cured. There are dozens, possibly thousands of possibilities, even just in diet. Eating unhealthy foods can lead to ongoing deficiencies and toxicities. Healthing our diet – can cure. Healthing is a verb. Sometimes a cure comes not just from a healthy change, but from a more forceful action, like curing obesity with a carnivore diet. But officially, obesity is incurable. Our medical systems do not track cures, much less cures created by dietary changes. When we promise to improve health our body with exercise perhaps even with healthy rest, many illnesses can be cured. In many cases – the illness that is cured was below the level of a diagnosis, not medically recognized.
2. Learn a new skillLearning a new skill is an attribute change. We change our abilities and as a result, many problems, including illnesses, might be cured by our new abilities.
3. Read more booksReading is a process. Reading “more books” can facilitate ongoing improvements in our life by exposing us to more ideas, making us more aware of ourselves, our illnesses – and finding cures. We don’t need to read a health book to learn how to cure our car, to understand our neighbors, or to relax after a stressful day at work. When we cure by reading – a specific cure might be difficult to recognize. Life goes on. Healthier.
4. Travel moreWe often die from the legs up. We start with a cane progress to a walker, then a wheelchair, and finally to a hospital bed. As we die, we stop travelling. Travel proves we are still alive, exercises our aliveness. Travelling can sometimes cure specific cases of disease. SAD – seasonal affective disorder is caused by the absence of sunlight in the north – and a case of SAD might be cured by a trip to the south. Modern medicine recognizes treatments for SAD, but not cures.
5. Reduce stressStress can be healthy, or unhealthy. When we resolve to reduce stress, we are often resolving to remove unhealthy stress on our mind or spirits – not our body. Illness, disease, and sickness are judgements. As mental stress rises, unhealthiness often rises slowly – creating illnesses we are barely aware of, vague, nagging problems that cannot be diagnosed – but are real. In some cases, symptoms of stress rise up and fall back as our stress rises and falls or as our healthiness falls and rises. Reducing stress cures. In most cases – the illness that is cured was not recognized as an illness, much less a cured case.
6. Save more moneyCan saving money cure illness, sickness, or disease? Saving does not cure directly, but focusing our attention on saving money – we can reduce stress. Spending responsibly also improves confidence in ourselves. And we have money set aside, in case we get sick.
7. Spend more time with loved onesOur healthiness and our unhealthiness is not limited to diet, body, mind and spirits. We might be loved in our local communities, or perhaps trapped in unhealthy communities. Sometimes, our families are unhealthy communities. Our “loved ones” are our healthy communities. Communities are about helping others. Spending more time with our loved ones improves our healthiness – and can cure illnesses in many ways. But when gramma cures us with a minor surgery to a broken fingernail, or cures our nonsense with a conversational whack on the side of the head – our medical systems look the other way. The cure is not medical.
8. Volunteer your timeWhen we volunteer, we health ourselves and our communities. We raise our confidence, our spirits, and reduce our stress. Volunteering can cure problems – illnesses – in our communities, even as it cures the volunteer.
9. Get organizedDisorganized lives are stressful. Stress causes illness. When we are disorganized – we are less able to spend time with loved ones. When we are disorganized, it’s harder to volunteer, to help others. Getting organized facilitates curative actions. But getting organized is complicated – there are dozens of ways to be disorganized, and thousands of ways to get organized, to cure a disorganized life, one resolution at a time.
10. Live life to the fullestDepression is depressing. Not travelling can be depressing. When we resolve to live life to the fullest, we enable problem solving, enabling cures.

Many New Year’s resolutions are causal cures – often intended to cure illnesses that are rarely if ever diagnosed.

Of course sometimes they work, and sometimes not.

When a new year’s resolution works, we seldom notice, and rarely use the “cured” word. I resolved to quit smoking on New Year’s Eve in 1979. I cured my smoker’s cough, although it was minor. I prevented worse diseases from occurring. But, once I quit, once I cured it, I forgot about the cough.

When our doctors encounter a New Year’s resolution cure, often many months later, they might say something like “I don’t know what’ you’re doing, but keep doing it.”

And when our resolve fails – we forget that as well. It’s easy to make a resolution – and then forget about it. We should not view this as a failure. Making a resolution can be the first step to a cure, a step that sometimes needs to be repeated. To quote Mark Twain,

“Quitting smoking is the easiest thing in the world.
I know because I’ve done it a thousand times.”

Resolving is a natural, healthy process. We notice a problem. It might be an illness, or below the level of illness. We know it can’t be solved in an instant, nor a day, nor a week, so we resolve – for the year. We might hope the resolution sticks longer.

We resolve – we try to change something to solve the problem, to cure it. Sometimes we succeed. And life goes on. We forget about it. Sometimes we fail. And life goes on. And we try something else. Or we put up with the problem. Life is versatile, tolerant, always changing. Change can cause illness, and change can cure. Dead things have no intentions, no resolutions to change. Dead things don’t experience illnesses, nor cures.

Life is curative. Resolving is a curative act. New Year’s Resolutions are designed to cure.

to your health, tracy
Author: A New Theory of Cure

What do Oxford and Webster say?

Two doctors meet for lunch in the hospital cafeteria.  Jan is an old hand, crusty, and a bit intolerant of silliness.  Jamie is a new intern, just out of university. They’ve been paired together for work, and thus, for lunches. As they sit down, Jamie feels the glow of excitement of becoming a doctor.

“I can hardly wait to start curing people,” Jamie gushes.

“Cure? What do you mean by ‘cure’?” Jan asks sternly.

“You know, to help them get rid of their diseases.  To free people from disease.” Jamie is speaking rapidly, enthusiastically.

“Maybe you should check a dictionary.” Jan replies curtly.

“What?“

“Well, if you check your dictionary, you might be surprised at the meaning of ‘cure’. You might take note of ‘disease’ as well.  If illness is what the patient has, and disease is our classification system used in diagnosis, not every illness can be diagnosed as a disease. And cured? That’s a real challenge.“

Jamie types into the phone for a moment and reads, triumphantly: “Cure: ‘the act of making someone healthy again after an illness‘ according to Webster.”

“Curing happens after the illness is gone?,” Jan challenges, “I thought that was healing? Doesn’t curing happen when the patient is sick? Are you sure that’s what Webster says?“

“Hmm”, Jamie is flustered, “Google shows the definition from Webster’s Learner’s Dictionary first“, she mumbles a bit, scrolling down.

“So, first we give learners a wrong definition for cure? Do they correct it when people learn better English?” Jan smiles sarcastically. “By the way, we don’t make patients healthy, we treat them for serious medical conditions, and send them home, to heal.“

“Here,” replies Jamie, attempting to move the conversation in a positive direction, “it says… well, it’s complicated.“

Jan provides a bit of support, “There are lots of different meanings for the word cure, in different situations. But you said you want to get busy ‘curing people’. Is there a definition like that?“

“It says ‘to stop (a disease) by using drugs or other medical treatments‘, that’s what I meant.” Jan smiles, then adds, shaking her head, “then it says, once more, ‘the act of making someone healthy again after an illness‘“.

“Curing someone is stopping their disease. That makes some sense, although they’ve switched from illness to disease. Do we cure the illness, or the disease, or the patient, the ‘someone’? What if we stop the disease, but doesn’t make them healthy, is it a cure?” Jan queries.

“You’re just getting technical now, being pedantic.” Jamie grins.

“We could look pedantic up too, but let’s stick to cure.  The first definition is simply nonsense- healing after an illness doesn’t cure an illness. Healing is part of growth, always active, before, during and after an illness. Healing progresses irrespective of the illness or disease, also irrespective of the cause, because healing repairs injuries, not diseases. The other definition is OK, except for the medicine restriction.“

“Restriction?” Jamie seems puzzled.

“It is, of course, possible to cure an illness, without a ‘drug or medical treatment‘,” Jan taps a knife on the tray for emphasis. “That definition is clearly medical chauvinism.”

“Medical chauvinism? Like, give me an example!” Jamie challenges.

“How do you cure simple dehydration? ” Jan asks, smiling.

“Hmm…technically, dehydration is cured with water – I guess it’s not a medicine, nor a medical treatment, except, when you are dehydrated, then it’s a medical treatment!” Jamie responds confusedly.

“Well, that’s nonsense.  What if you are only partly dehydrated, or undiagnosed dehydration – is it a medicine?  What if you self diagnose and self-treat, is it a medicine?  Is it a medicine if a doctor prescribes it, or if a medical person recommends it, but otherwise not? Is a bottle of water a medicine if it’s sold in a pharmacy with a label saying “can be used to prevent, treat, or cure dehydration‘, but not if it’s sold in a health food store, with a label saying ‘pure, healthy, spring water?‘ Lots of illnesses are cured without medicines. In addition, although many are cured by the presence of something, others by an absence, or by removing the cause. Obesity, arsenic poisoning, and shin splints are not cured by ‘something’, they are cured by ‘not something’.“

Jan continues, “Of course dehydration diagnosed is usually not a disease – it’s often a symptom of another problem like diarrhea and vomiting, so giving water as a medicine doesn’t address the cause. But it does address a present problem. Severe ongoing dehydration caused by lack of water is rare, because our bodies tell us when we need to drink water. Simple dehydration is normally cured by health, before any diagnosis is required.“

“An illness can be cured by health?” Jamie looks surprised.

“By actions that make you healthier. Lots of things are essential to health. If you don’t get them, or don’t get enough, you get sick – if you get too much, you get sick. Health is about balance and harmony, the ability to maintain and make use of the balances of life.” Jan replies, pausing to collect his thoughts, “Maybe we need a better dictionary.“

“I’ll check Oxford,” Jamie proposes, thumbing the phone again, “The Oxford Dictionary for English Learners: ‘to make a person or an animal healthy again after an illness’, duh – almost exactly the same as Webster’s.  Why do dictionaries think curing happens ‘after’ the illness?“

“Dictionaries don’t create language – they attempt to tell us how language is used.  Writing a learner’s dictionary is more difficult. They need to simplify, which can easily lead to simple errors. What does the full definition say?” Jan asks.

“I’m reading it, but I’m not liking it,” Jamie replies, “It says ‘relieve (a person or animal) of the symptoms of a disease or condition‘. But, we cure illness, don’t we –  not symptoms?“

“There’s often confusion between the symptoms and disease.”  Jan pauses, thoughtfully.

Jamie interrupts, “Then it says ”Eliminate (a disease or condition) with medical treatment‘. Oxford also misses cures without medicines. Is there no logical, scientific, medical definition of cure?“

“Well, lunch is almost over – why don’t you check some medical books. Maybe you’ll find a better definition.  Let’s talk more about this tomorrow.” Jan picks up the empty dishes and places them on a tray.

But before they leave the cafeteria, Jan has to ask “What do you think ‘cure’ means now?“

“I think cure means to stop the illness,” Jamie replies.

“That’s a good start,” Jan replies, “Let’s see what tomorrow brings.“

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What do you thing CURE means? Where would you look to find a scientific or medical definition of cure?

to your health, tracy
Author: A New Theory of Cure

“It Didn’t Happen.”

Do you know someone who has been cured by a chiropractor? Maybe you, yourself, have been cured by a chiropractor? What happens after a chiropractor cures your illness? You’ve been cured. Your chiropractor cured you. But nobody else cares.

A few weeks ago, I was having coffee with a friend, Dee. After catching up on friends, family, and old co-workers, the topic of chiropractors came up.  Dee’s voice changed a bit, and she began “I’ll tell you a story.“

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“About a year ago,” she said quietly, “I went to my doctor because I couldn’t raise my left arm.” 

She lifted her arm to about chest level, to demonstrate, and continued, “The shoulder was jammed and painful. When I tried to lift my arm any higher – it was very painful and not possible.“

She continued: “I went to see my doctor. He listened to my problem, and said ‘I could prescribe some anti-inflammatory medicines, but they won’t address the cause. I’d recommend you see a chiropractor.’ “

“I was surprised that a doctor would recommend a chiropractor,” She raised her eyebrows a bit, “When I visited the chiropractor, he manipulated my arm and shoulder, movement was improved, but not perfect. There was much less pain. The chiropractor gave me a series of exercises for my arm and shoulder.“

She concluded with a satisfactory smile, “I did the exercises, over the course of a few weeks. The problem went away.“

I noticed that Dee didn’t say “cure“, she didn’t say “I was cured” or “the problem was cured“, instead she said “it went away“.

I suspect, if I talk to the chiropractor, he wouldn’t say “I cured her” either. Claiming to cure can be dangerous.

And… if she talked to her doctor, a similar waffling phrase “The problem went away” might be used, rather than “The chiropractor was able to cure it.” Any doctor who suggests a chiropractor “cured” someone would risk serious admonishment by their peers.

Was Dee cured? Did the chiropractor cure Dee? Did the doctor’s recommendation cure Dee? These thoughts swirled in my mind, as Dee began again, thoughtfully.

“I think I know what happened,” she continued, “A few weeks before the problem, I was wearing a very tight one-suit.  I had to take it off quickly to go to the bathroom. I twisted my shoulder taking it off.  At the time, it was just a bit sore and I brushed it off.  Gradually, over a few weeks the problem got worse and worse.  So I decided to go to the doctor.” She was surprised to learn that the doctor made no attempt to cure her.

Now maybe you’re thinking “but that’s just an anecdote“.  After all, it wasn’t a clinical study, it’s just an anecdotal story. Know this. Every cure is a single case.

Every cure is an anecdote. Most clinical studies do not contain a definition of cure, and cannot document a cure if it occurs. Cancer research studies measure the positive effects and negative consequences, or risks of “treatments”. No study of a cancer treatment contains a definition of cured.

What happens after a chiropractic cure? It goes away.

The same thing that happens after any cure. It goes away. The illness goes away and the cure as well.

There are no cured statistics for any disease. If you had a common cold, or the flu, cured by health – “it went away“. Conventional medicine says “There is no cure for the common cold (influenza, measles, etc.)” There are statistics for influenza and measles, for deaths caused by influenza or measles, but none for influenza or measles cured.

If you get a sliver in your hand, and it gets infected, health fights the infection. Usually, “it goes away“, cured by health. If it doesn’t go away, you might visit a doctor, and be prescribed an antibiotic. If the antibiotic cures – the infection “goes away“. If you check the medical reference texts – and the product labels – for your antibiotic, you seldom find the word “cure“. Antibiotics are “treatments” for infections. There is a medical test for an infection cured, the dangerous bacteria is gone. But the word cure is rarely used. There are no statistics for infections cured.

And chiropractors? There are no scientific or medical tests for any medical condition cured by a chiropractor. When a chiropractor cures, the problem “goes away“. Was it cured?

Cured is not defined for frozen shoulder. A doctor might diagnose frozen shoulder, but they can’t diagnose “frozen shoulder cured”. There is no cure documented in current medical texts. WebMD documents Frozen Shoulder – exactly as it was experienced by Dee (except for the bathroom run). WebMD recommends treatments, anti-inflammatory drugs like ibuprofen or aspirin or “a stronger medication“. WebMD says “Your treatment might also include going to a physical therapist for strengthening and stretching exercises to improve your range of motion.” But the word “cure” is not used. WebMD does not suggest visiting a chiropractor.

WebMD does not use the word “cure” for frozen shoulder. The word cure appears once on the WebMD page – in an advertisement offering “Shoulder Joint Pain Cure”, which leads to ads for chiropractors, naturopaths, and even aromatherapists. Can any of them cure?

The Mayo Clinic documents “Frozen shoulder, also known as adhesive capsulitis“. They also suggest a physical therapist – but not a chiropractor.  And the word cure is not mentioned. The Mayo Clinic documents symptoms, diseases and conditions, but not cures and not cured cases. What happens after a physical therapist cures a case of frozen shoulder? It disappears. Exactly the same thing that happens after a chiropractor cures one.

No authoritative medical reference documents a cure for frozen shoulder. No authoritative medical reference text documents a cure for any medical condition cured by chiropractors.

Of course there are lots of critics claiming that chiropractors are fake doctors and the practices of chiropractors are pseudoscience.  Is there any truth to these claims? Who can we ask? We might ask some major league baseball teams, like the Baltimore Orioles, the Boston Red Sox, New York Mets, and the New York Yankees, or some top level basketball players like Micheal Jordan and Derrick Rose, or football teams like the Dallas Cowboys, the Denver Broncos, the Greenbay Packers, the Miami Dolphins and more, who have chiropractors on staff. These teams, many with values in the billions of dollars – choose to pay chiropractor salaries – for chiropractic results, for chiropractic cures.

What happens after a chiropractor cures a basketball player, or a baseball player? What happens to they cure? It goes away. The medical condition goes away.  The person goes back to their life. The sports superstar gets back onto the field of play. But, according to the official medical view, it wasn’t cured by an approved medicine or treatment, so it’s not important. The cure goes away as well.  It wasn’t really there.  It never happened. Nothing to see here. Look away. Look away.

A New Theory of Cure documents the three basic cures for any medical condition. Frozen shoulder requires two cures – exercise to stretch and transform the shoulder to a healthier state, and healing, aided by exercise, to repair the damage that occurs as a result of the injury and the transformation. The third type of cure – a causal cure, is not needed because frozen shoulder has no ongoing cause creating the injury.

When we study cures, it’s easily understood. But, our medical systems prefer treatments over cures, document treatments but not their curative successes. Many medical dictionaries do not contain the word “cure”.  No medical reference text defines cure, much less providing a scientific definition.

So cures disappear.  They “go away“. Undocumented. Their causes are also undocumented. And the patients? They go on with their lives. And the doctors? They go on to the next patient. Nobody cares about the cured once a cure has been accomplished.

to your health, tracy
Author: A New Theory of Cure

Have you ever been cured by a homeopath?

Do you know anyone who has been cured by a homeopath? What happens after a homeopath cures your illness? You’ve been cured. You care. Your homeopath cares. Maybe your family cares. But officially, nobody else cares. Officially, homeopathic medicines are “just water.”

What does the science say? We can find homeopathic cures in medical science, but, we need to look beyond treatments. Most clinical studies measure “treatments that don’t cure“. We might want to believe researchers are searching for “cancer cures“. But no. Cancer cured, for example, is not medically defined. We have no test for a case of cancer cured.  Of over than 70,000 current and past cancer clinical studies listed at ClinicalTrials.gov, not one contains an accepted, testable, scientific, medical definition of cancer cured that can be used in medical practice. When a clinical trial encounters a cured case – no cure can be recognized. Cancer clinical trials measure treatment benefits, but not cures.

Some clinical trials do contain tests for cured. Some clinical studies of homeopathic treatments find cured patients. What happens after a homeopathic cure is found?  It disappears. Over time, it disappears even more. But, let’s look at a simpler disease, warts.

Cure for Warts?

Is there a cure for warts? Conventional medicine has no cure for warts. Tests for warts cured are weak and inconsistent. However – we do have a clinical study that tested for warts cured.

In 1996 the clinical study Homoeopathic versus placebo therapy of children with warts on the hands: a randomized, double-blind clinical trial. treated 60 children with warts. According to the published research, 6 patients were cured in the study. Five of the cured were treated with the homeopathic medicine.

What happened to all of the cures?  What happened to the cures from homeopathic treatments? They disappeared.  The scientific, peer-reviewed, published research study conclusion simply ignored the cured, stating: “There was no apparent difference between the effects of homoeopathic therapy and placebo in children with common warts under the conditions of this study.”  Five cures (16 percent of patients) in the homeopathic treatment arm of the study were ignored.  There was no further analysis.  The same is true of the cure in the placebo arm of the study. No medical researchers made any attempt to understand the cause of any cure. The cures, the presence and number of cures – were at odds with the study conclusions, apparently at odds with the study goals, so they disappeared.

Disappeared Again

Two years later, homeopathic cures were more disappeared — is that possible? In 1998, some of the same researchers undertook and published a second study.  The same number of participants. The same homeopathic medicine. The same placebo arm. And the results? How many patients were cured?  We don’t know.

In the second study, designed – in scientific theory – to test if the results could be replicated, cures were not counted.  Cures not part of the study parameters, and thus did not appear in the published results. All cured cases were simply ignored.

What happens after a homeopathic cure?  Patients might be cured, but the cures disappear from the medical view. It’s not just warts. Cured is not defined scientifically for any disease cured by homeopathy. Warts cured are not medically defined for any disease cured by homeopathy.

It is possible to cure an infectious disease, and prove it was cured by testing for the infection after treatment. But…. those cases can be cured by an approved medicine. The test for cured is: treat with an approved drug, retest for infection. If the infection is no longer present – it’s a cure. But homeopathic medicines are not approved for infections, so the test is not valid. If an infection is cured by a homeopathic medicine, it doesn’t count.

It’s not just homeopathic cures that disappear. No doctor, clinic, hospital, or medical system COUNTS infections cured by any treatment. Cures are counted in clinical studies – but in actual practice, they aren’t counted. There are no statistics for cured of any disease, so there are no statistics of homeopathic cures. Patients can be cured, but their cures don’t count.

The clinical trial Homeopathic medicinal products for preventing and treating acute respiratory tract infections in children, published in 2018, clearly illustrates the confusion around the word cure in clinical trials.  This was a meta-study. Most studies found were excluded due to poor quality or poor fit for analysis. Although the study objectives are to evaluate treatments, the word cure occurs over 80 times in the report.

Cured was defined several different ways, depending on the study being evaluated. The following quotes, from the meta-study illustrate the different functional definitions of cured the researchers encountered.

• Cure: defined as the reduction or resolution of symptoms of ARTIs (fever/body temperature, cough, pain, malaise/feeling of illness, rhinorrhoea, etc.) in the short‐ (up to 14 days) and long‐term (up to 3 months).
• Cure was defined as no severe persistent fever or pain after 24 hours and no moderate persistent fever or pain after 48 hours.
• Cure was defined as a symptom score of zero and a Tympanic Membrane Examination score of zero.
• Jacobs 2001 defined cure as no symptoms or a significant reduction in symptoms.
• None of the time points for cure were the same across the two studies (Jacobs 2016; Sinha 2012)
• Sinha 2012 provided long‐term cure data for day 21 of illness, and Jacobs 2001 for week 6 of illness.
• in Jacobs 2001 the cure rate was higher among children receiving homeopathy, while in Sinha 2012 the cure rate was higher in children receiving conventional treatment.

It is interesting that researchers use the word cure but not cured to define the cured state.

It’s clear that there is no independent definition of cured. Cure is defined independently by specific researchers in each study.

We have no scientific definition of cured.  Conventional medical bureaucracies have no Theory of Cure. Phrases like long term cure and cure rate have little or nothing to do with the condition of the patient, their disease, or its causes. Use of the word cure, rarely references any present cause of illness. Instead, cure tests measure signs and symptoms – consequences of illness.

Most clinical trials of homeopathy measure treatments that do not cure. This is the standard for almost all clinical trials. Cured is rarely defined and cannot be tested. We, for example, research into Homeopathy for treatment of irritable bowel syndrome. Cured is not defined for irritable bowel syndrome. If a cure occurs – it cannot be recognized and thus cannot be documented. Cures, when they occur, disappear. They are outside of the scope of the study.

Cured is not defined medically for any non-infectious disease. When any cure occurs for non-infectious diseases, no cure can be documented. The cured illness simply disappears.

Homeopathy is not the reason for this blindness. It’s just another casualty. No clinical study can find a cure for irritable bowel syndrome – until cured is medically defined.

Although the common mantra of homeopathy is “like cures like” (similia similibus curentur), cured is not defined in homeopathy either. Most use of the word cured in homeopathic research refers to symptoms, not disease. For example, “Symptom distribution according to predefined classes (common symptoms increased in intensity and/or duration-, cured, old, new and exceptional)” – is a nonsensical homeopathic definition of cured.

Unfortunately, conventional medicine also has no definition of cured for most diseases. Therefore, it cannot rebut homeopathic claims of cured. Instead, conventional medical practitioners, researchers, and their followers claim “homeopathic treatments cannot possibly work“. Works, in medical science, generally means helps with signs and symptoms of disease, but does not cure. If it cures, we could use the word “cure”.

What diseases do homeopaths cure? 

Homeopathic doctors don’t rely on “just water,” but those who criticize homeopathy only focus on claims that the water cannot cure. Actual cures are simply ignored. We simply don’t know what diseases or medical conditions might be cured by a homeopath. We don’t even know what diseases or medical conditions have been cured by homeopathy. When a homeopath cures a patient’s illness – the cured status and the cause of the cure are ignored by conventional medicine. The cures are ignored by homeopathic medicine as well. We have no statistics for cured by homeopathy.

What happens after a homeopathic cure?  It disappears. Cured is not medically defined for most diseases treated with homeopathic medicines.  The cured status disappears from the view of conventional medicine. It also disappears from the view of homeopathic medicine. Homeopathy aims to cure symptoms, not illness, not disease. Cures, accomplished by homeopathic treatments, are not even counted by homeopaths.

When a cure occurs in most clinical trials, the cure disappears. Cures in clinical trials of non-infectious diseases disappear, because cured is not medically defined for any non-infectious disease.

In conventional medical practice cured cases disappear as well. It makes no difference if the medical practitioner is an oncologist, a psychologist, a dentist, an obstetrician, or a general practitioner. No conventional medical practitioner counts cured cases.

When a cure occurs in a chiropractic medical practice, the cure disappears, even though many chiropractic cures are trivial to prove cured. The cure disappears.

So, when a homeopathic cure occurs, the cure disappears, but it’s not about homeopathy, it’s about cured.

To find scientific answers about cures by homeopathy, or by any other conventional or alternative medical treatment, we need to study cure, cures, curing, and cured. Attempts to measure the non-curative effects of homeopathic treatments vs placebos or vs conventional medicine, only asks the question:

“which treatment FAILS TO CURE better”

It’s a nonsense question. Without a definition of cured – we have no idea if the treatment cured the illness, or moved the condition towards a cured state, or away from one – ultimately making a cure harder. We can’t tell. To count cures, we need to count cured cases.

To study cures scientifically, we need to study cured. We need a theory of cure. A New Theory of Cure defines cures in a comprehensive fashion, providing a solid foundation for studies of treatments that cure.

to your health, tracy
Author: A New Theory of Cure

It’s over 20 years since I met my first disappearing patient. A nurse in her early 40s, let’s call her Kate.  Kate was diagnosed with breast cancer. As a nurse, she had often seen the results of treatments for breast cancer, and frankly, she was terrified, and determined. She was not having surgery, chemotherapy, nor radiation.

But, Kate worked in a hospital with the doctors who diagnosed her cancer. She worked with the surgeon, who urged her to schedule her surgery “as soon as possible.” At first she was furious “If it’s here today, it must have been here last year.  Why didn’t you find it last year.“

The next thing Kate did was slow down. Her cancer was small. She knew it not an acute illness. There was no need for immediate action. She had been tested for breast cancer last year. No cancer was found. She knew it took years for cancers to develop. It had not metastasized.  It was not growing rapidly, not affecting her health in any way. She knew, from experience, that she had lots of time. So, she took some time, to do some research.

We met in Canada. It didn’t take her long to remind herself that, in Canada and the USA, treatments for cancer are akin to law. No doctor, no clinic, no hospital dared deviate from the three Standards of Care for cancer. She new there were no Standards of Cure for cancers.

Kate didn’t look for magic cures.  She didn’t search for the latest conventional or alternative cancer cure. She wasn’t interested in curing herself. She was a nurse, not a doctor.

Instead, she searched for the cured. Of course there is a problem – our medical systems have no definition of cured for cancer. There is no medical nor scientific test for cancer cured. Modern medicine tracks cancer cure rates, statistical measures of “presumed to be cured” because cured patients cannot be medically recognized. This is still true today.

She wanted to find patient who were diagnosed with cancer, and no longer had cancer. She knew, from her work, from conversations with patients and staff, that these people existed, but they were invisible. No doctor, clinic, hospital nor medical system tracks cured for any disease. Cured patients don’t need medical treatments.

It didn’t take long to find patients who claimed they were cured. They hadn’t disappeared from life, they weren’t invisible. They were eating, drinking, living, loving, full, healthy and prosperous lives. But according to the medical records, cured didn’t exist. It’s as if they were never cured. Just like the common cold, influenza, measles, and COVID, there are no medical records of cured.

The medical system dismissed these cures anecdotal. Know this, every case of cured, for any disease, is a single case, a story, an anecdote. Cured patients are ignored. No doctor attempts to understand what happened to cured patients. They just move on. There are lots of sick people. Our medical systems diagnose sick people, treat sick patients, document sick patients. Cured patients were not sick.

Kate met with a few of them. She was not interested in debates about clinical science vs anecdotal evidence. Her interests were personal. She talked, listened, and compared stories. Several spoke about a clinic that made no claim to cure cancer; that did not use medicines to treat cancers. Yet somehow, many patients were cured. The clinic was not in Canada, not in the USA. Kate had to go to Mexico to learn more.

There are lots of so-called alternative medical clinics in Mexico, and in many other countries.  Are some of them curing cancers? Are some of them scams, just taking money from desperate patients? Do they only work sometimes, only in some cases? Would they work for Kate’s cancer? Kate didn’t know. She did more research. She called the clinic.

The staff made no claim to cure cancer. Claiming to cure cancer is not just forbidden, it’s dangerous, even for a clinic outside of North America. They suggested Kate visit the clinic, to see for herself what happens there. There was no charge for a visit, and no promises. Her only cost was to pay for travel to Mexico.  

Kate made her decision. She was familiar with cancer diagnosis in Canada. She had undergone a physical examination, a mammogram, that detected a lump in her breast. Then she’d had a biopsy, where tissue was taken from the lump and sent to a lab for analysis. The lab technician examined the sample and said it was ‘cancer.‘ Once a diagnosis is cancer, everyone swings into action. Kate also knew that mammograms have both a false positive rate and a false negative rate. Many people who are diagnosed with a possible cancer by a mammogram do not actually have cancer. She knew, from her medical experience, that cancer biopsies also have a false positive rate and a false negative rate.

She didn’t really know for certain if she had cancer.  Her surgeon, on the other hand, was pressing her to schedule treatment.

Kate knew one thing.  She had time. She cashed out some savings and booked a holiday in Mexico. A short visit to the clinic convinced her, an experienced nurse, without any desire to return home and consider the decision. She signed up, paid the fee and entered the clinic.

At the clinic, Kate was surprised to learn there was no attempt to validate the cancer diagnosis. The staff at the clinic checked the presence and size of the lump on her breast. But they didn’t repeat the biopsy. The clinic read her diagnostic reports, but did not investigate them further. In place of a diagnosis, there was a thorough analysis of her health of body, mind, spirits, and communities, by a suite of several different doctors. “Two full days of tests and interviews”, she told me “no waiting in line.”

Kate was asked about her family’s medical histories. She gave blood samples. She was questioned extensively about her diet. Doctors examined her lungs, her heart, liver, and other bodily organs with various tests. Her immune system was tested.  There were extensive interviews about her life, her work, her family and social relationships.

At that time, Kate, I didn’t realize this was not a medical analysis, it was a health analysis. The tests and the questions fit perfectly to the hierarchy of healthicine: genetics, nutrition, cells, tissues, organs, bodily systems, body, mind, spirits, communities, and environments.

Kate’s genetics were analyzed. Her nutritional status was analyzed, not just analyzing what she ate, and what she preferred to eat, but also by asking what she didn’t like to eat, what she deliberately never ate, what foods she was allergic to. Her cells and tissues were analyzed directly, through blood samples and physical examination, and indirectly through medical history. Many of her organs were tested for healthiness. Her bodily systems, immune system, circulatory system, respiratory system, hormonal systems and more were analyzed and assessed. Her physical body was measured, weighed, and examined carefully. Her mental health was assessed, as was her emotional, spirit, and spiritual healthiness. She was in good spirits, even in light of a potentially fatal illness. The doctors discussed her family, her relationships with her children, her spouse, her parents, her work communities, and more.

A few days later, Kate met with a group 6 or 7 doctors to discuss her health, not her illness, her healthiness. Diagnosing disease is difficult.  Analyzing healthiness is more complex. It took several hours for Kate to hear and understand what they had learned about her healthinesses and her unhealthinesses.

Then they prescribed two weeks of healthiness training, tailored to Kate’s specific situation. She spent the two weeks at the clinic, practicing, learning to be healthier, not in theory, instead, learning what Kate needed to do to make her diet, her body, her mind, her spirits, and even her relationships with her communities healthier. She said that, “after two weeks of learning and practice at the clinic, my breast lump had already started to shrink”.

Kate went back to Canada and put her leaning into action. The lump disappeared. Her diagnosis was still there, on paper, but her cancer had disappeared. She was retested at her hospital. Result: NED. No Evidence of Disease. No cancer could be found.

Then Kate began disappearing. 

When the surgeon asked, she explained that she was not going to surgery. He looked away and wouldn’t look her in the eye.

She didn’t disappear from her family.  She went back to her family. She didn’t disappear from her job.  She went back to her job. She disappeared from the cancer system.  Her cancer disappeared, so, as a cancer patient, she disappeared.

Was she cured? We don’t know. There is no scientific nor medical definition of cancer cured.  We have no medical or scientific test to prove a patient is cured of cancer or not. We have no cancer statistics for people who are cured of cancer. Patients who are cured are not counted.  No breast cancer patients are officially cured.  If their cancer goes away, they disappear from the system. Diagnostic statistics remain, cured statistics don’t exist. If their cancer is killed by radiation, chemotherapy or surgery, they are not counted as cured, they are counted as a survivor. Did they survive the cancer? Or the treatment?

Most cancer survivors live in fear of the cancer’s re-appearance, as if the disease is only hiding, never cured. Symptoms are said to be in remission, but their cancer is not called cured.

I met Kate five years after her experience. She still has no cancer. She paid, from her own pocket, for her trip to a clinic in Mexico. After the trip, her cancer disappeared. She had medical insurance. But her insurance wouldn’t pay for her trip. Insurance pays for approved treatments, not for cures, regardless of success or failure. Cured cases disappear.

There are three ways for a cancer patient to disappear. They might be cured by an approved treatment, they might cured by health. Or, they might be cured by a medicine or treatment that is not approved.  In all cases, our medical systems ignore the cured. If the treatment was approved, the patient is tracked. If it was not an approved treatment, only the approved portion of the treatment, the diagnosis, is documented. Cured is not documented for any patient, for any case of cancer.

I have since met several cancer patients who have disappeared in various ways. Not just cancer patients. I often meet people who claim to be cured of arthritis. I know one person who claims to be cured of myopia. Years ago, I talked to someone who cured their Parkinson’s disease in New Zealand. These cures, like Kate’s cancer, were simply ignored. I’ve met more by internet, email, etc. Maybe you have similar stories?

Medical Theory

In our current medical practice, cancers are treated like injuries – the cause is considered to be in the past. Treatments target the cancer cells, the result of the cause. There are thousands of potential causes in the past – which might be used to prevent cancers, but not to cure them.

Theory of Cure

In the new theory of cure, a cure addresses the present cause of an illness. In some cases, like a minor skin cancer, we can cure by removing the melanoma surgically. In other cases, like a slow moving breast cancer, the cause is present in the life of the patient. The cure is to address the present cause. But it can be very difficult to find and address different present causes of individual cases of cancer.

What to do?

The Mexican clinic used a shotgun approach. They identified as many health factors as possible that might be contributing to the cancer – and addressed as many as possible. If, or when they address the present causes in a specific case, the cancer is cured. Which was the cause? Because of the shotgun technique – we can’t tell. Is it important? The cancer is cured. And what about the causes of unhealthiness that were not causing the cancer? Well, they too were improved. The side effect of the shotgun healthiness approach is a broad swath of improved healthiness.

Once Cured

There is no way for me to determine if a disappeared cancer patient actually had cancer, if their treatment cured their cancer, if their body cured their cancer, or if they still have cancer. We can only tell if there is another cancer diagnosis.  The absence of a diagnosis is not considered a cure, medically, it’s just NED – No Evidence of Disease. In the theory of cure, a new case of cancer, not a remission, might occur if the causes reoccur. The prior case was cured.

Doctors, clinics, hospitals, and medical researchers have no tests for a cancer cured. We have no medical technique or technology to recognize, much less document a cancer cured. So, we have no statistics for cancers cured.

Many cured patients don’t disappear quietly. They speak out. They write books and newspaper articles. They blog. But it doesn’t matter. They still don’t count. Once cured, they disappear from the medical system. No medical system studies individual cured cases, their causes, their cures. We have no techniques to document cured cases for any chronic disease from cancers to arthritis, diabetes, heart disease, even obesity, and many more.  As a result, there are no statistics of cured cases of any chronic illness. For diseases where “there is no cure for…” like the common cold, influenza, measles, and COVID, we have no definition of cured and no ability to detect a cured case either, much less to identify the cause of the cure.

Once they are cured, they disappear. Health doesn’t cure illness, it disappears illness. Modern medicine doesn’t count people whose disease has disappeared.

to your health, tracy

ps. If you are, or if you know someone who disappeared their incurable illness, drop a note in the comments, or send me an email. I’m always interested in these cases, and I hope that someday, our medical systems will be interested in them as well.

The original version of post, published on Healthicine.org in 2015. It has been republished by several other sites – sometimes even without my knowledge, much less credit. This version has been brought up to date with the latest concepts of the New Theory of Cure.

Have you ever been cured? Were you cured by a medicine? or perhaps not?

Can you name a disease that can be cured, but cannot be cured with medicines? Can you name two? Five? More? How many diseases are there that are easily cured – but cannot be cured by medicines?

What is a disease? What is a medicine? Are medicines defined by the diseases they treat? What is a cure? A cure is the end of an illness.  

Continue reading “Diseases Cured, not by Medicines”