Uncategorized – A NEW Theory of Cure

Cure Theory Fundamentals

admin — Tue, 12 May 2026 17:36:58 +0000

I have just published a new paper on Academia.edu and on Researchgate.net: Cure Theory Fundamentals.

The paper Cure Theory Fundamentals provides a comprehensive foundation for a theory of cure of any curable illness by identifying the two basic types of illness, the four domains of illness consequences – body, mind, spirts, and communities, and finding causes in the six domains of life, diet, body, mind, spirits, communities, and environments.

The theory begins with the tautology that a curable illness is a case of illness that can be cured, and leads to concepts and understandings that can be applied to any curable problem in an intentional system – living or not living.

The paper is an update, clarification, and extension of the concepts in the papers Theory of Cure and The Nature and Evolution of Healing Caring and Curing. It is the result of ten years of ongoing research into the concepts of cure, cures, curing, and cured, of the two types of illness causes: status and lifestyle processes, and the three types of cures: healing, radical cures, and caring cures.

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

Theory of Cure Ten Years 2026

admin — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 15:13:45 +0000

I began developing the theory of cure when, in 2016, I discovered that no medical dictionary, nor medical publication contained a philosophical, theoretical, or scientific definition of cure that is generally accepted and used in medical practice. Over the next ten years, I have published several books, papers, articles, and blog posts, gradually developing and improving on a general theory of cure. Last year, in 2025, I began a complete overhaul, not of the core theory, rather, a consolidation of the wording used to describe the concepts. This paper is the first publication with those changes. The theory of cure of April 2026, is the result of ten years of research and work preparing a comprehensive theory of cure.

Introduction:

None of today’s medical practices, and no historical medical practice has any theory of cure for all diseases. The very concept of disease suffers a similar deficit. Although our medical systems often use the word cure, especially in regulations and marketing, the concept of cure remains undefined. Most medical texts confuse the words cure and cured, and make only poor distinctions, if at all, between is cured and has been cured. Bureaucratically, a cure is an approved product, not an action, not a process. No doctor, clinic, hospital, medical system, nor insurance company counts cured cases, much less maintains or analyzes statistics of cured cases of any specific disease, much less any general studies of cured. Medically, most diseases, from the arthritis, to the common cold, from cancers to zika virus disease, are considered incurable – even though most cases are cured. We have no theory, barely a basic understanding of cure. When we ask any doctor, in any conventional or alternative practice of medicine, any medical researcher, any medical philosopher for a definition of cure –we rarely receive a response, much less any agreement. This is the problem to be resolved by any general theory of cure.

Presence: Health, Illness, Cause, and Consequences

The fundamental starting point to understanding cure is presence. The presence of health, the presence of illness, the presence of causes and consequences of health and illness. We can only cure a specific present case of illness. When an illness is present, its causes and consequences are also present. To cure is to address the causes, such that the negative consequences are no longer occurring – such that the case of illness is no longer present. It has been cured.

A cure is an action, a process undertaken in the present to address causes of illness, to create a new status: cured, in the new present, to move the illness, its causes and negative consequences into the past.

No causes, signs, symptoms, nor consequences of illnesses, by themselves, constitute an illness. The presence of an illness, by definition, consists of present causes and the negative consequences of those causes.

Curable Illness

An illness is that which is present, that which we desire to cure, to be cured. The theory of cure is about curable illnesses. A curable illness is one that can be cured. A curable illness consists of a set of causes and negative consequences that are linked such that when the causes are addressed, the negative consequences stop occurring and the illness is cured. References to illness, in his text, refer to curable cases of illness. Disease is a medical term. A case of disease might be curable, or not.

A case of illness is a judgement that a negative situation is present and in need of our attention. The presence of an illness, of its causes and consequences, might be faint or strong, and might be steady, fluctuating, repeating, growing, or shrinking over time. Cured is a judgement that an illness is no longer present, that the illness causes have been successfully addressed, or are no longer present.

Negative Consequences

We typically judge an illness by its negative consequences. As we study cure, we can also learn to judge a case of illness by its causes. Throughout our lives we experience many signs and symptoms that might be an illness, most of which we simply ignore, or address in the moment, and life goes on. We are hungry and we eat. When we are suffering from malnutrition, food cures. The difference is one of degree, a judgement. We feel pain and we move away from the cause. We judge an illness to be present when the negative consequences of an illness are severe or persistent enough to warrant concerted attention, when we desire a cure.

Every case of illness has two components: cause and negative consequences. These components are interdependent. Causes are responsible for negative consequences. When the cause is successfully addressed, the negative consequences stop occurring. If the negative consequences are no longer occurring, the cause, even if it is still present, is no longer causing those negative consequences. The illness is no longer present. It has been cured.

The Four Domains of Illness Consequences

The negative consequences of an illness occur in the four living domains of life and healthiness: body, mind, spirits, and communities. Negative consequences in diets or environments are not considered illnesses.

Body: Our bodies are physical. Illness is most obvious in the body. We feel physical discomfort or pain that persists and identify it as an illness to be cured. As we become more ill, our bodies lose their ability to function effectively. Other people, community members, medical professionals, and sometimes even machines can see or measure negative consequences of illness on our body.

Mind: Our minds observe, remember, calculate, and plan future actions. Illness consequences in the mind are more difficult to detect. Our mind easily rationalizes its errors and failures. But, when we are ill, these faculties begin to fail. Others might detect problems before we notice them, and denial is often a factor.

Spirits: Our spirits drive us forward, give us direction in the face of changing life circumstances. When we become depressed or manic, when we lose our motivation, desire, or direction in life, our spirits are suffering negative consequences.

Communities: All life forms, all living individuals, live in communities, participate in communities. Our lives and health are affected by our communities and by other communities. When we suffer illness, negative consequences can affect us, our interactions with our communities, and the way different communities interact with us.

All life forms, not just humans, have physical bodies, even those without brains have some sense of a mind, some ability to observe internal and external environments, to make life decisions, to remember past events, and plan future actions. All living entities have the spirits of life, or they fade away and die. All living individuals are part of many communities, of the communities of life. Any individual living entity can suffer cases of illness and those illnesses can have short-term or long-term negative consequences on body, mind, spirits and communities.

We often deny the presence of our illnesses – not just mental illnesses. Denial can be a positive or negative force depending on the case. We might deny or successfully ignore an illness until it is cured by natural or other forces. In other cases, denial can facilitate growth of cause and consequences, leading to more severe illness and injuries.

Cause

The fundamental starting point in any theory of cure is an understanding of cure cause. We cure by addressing the causes of an illness. To understand cure, we need to study and understand cause and effect.

Unfortunately, many philosophical conversations about cause and effect, are about past events like “a caused b.” The theory of cure, on the other hand, functions only in the present. Understanding the theory of cure requires a different concept of cause and effect.

A case of illness exists in the present. The cause of a case of illness, the cure cause, exists in the present. The consequences of the cause exist in the present. The cure must come about in the present, to move the illness into the past. Past illnesses become faint memories. Past causes can no longer be proven – they are gone. Future causes are hypothetical. Future illnesses are speculation.

Causes and Consequences

The cure cause of an illness is the cause which, when successfully addressed, results in a cured status. Cure causes exist in the present, with the present illness consequences. Together, these comprise the illness. If either disappears, the illness is cured.

Only a present case of illness can be cured.

The Six Domains of Life Causes

Causes of life, of healthiness, and of illness are present in six domains: diet, body, mind, spirits, communities, and environments. Body, mind, spirits and communities are living domains. Diet and environmental factors might be living or not and can be internal to the living entity, or external.

Diet: our diet changes throughout our lives and can produce healthiness or cause illness, even both at the same time. Our diet includes not just what we eat and drink, but also what we absorb through our lungs and our skin. Our understanding of diet must include abstinence, the intentional or unintentional absence of consumption.

Body, Mind, Spirts, and Communities: form the living individual and require sustenance, exercise and rest. Healthiness of body, mind, spirits, and communities rise and fall throughout any individual’s life. When the healthiness of body, mind, spirits, or communities fall, it can cause negative consequences in other aspects of healthiness, leading to illness.

Environments: an individual lives in many external environments and has many internal environments of body, mind, spirits, and communities. Our environmental factors, like all causal factors, can promote healthiness, or cause illness in different situations.

It is important to understand that most causes of illness are also causes of healthiness in different circumstances. Life takes healthy advantage of factors in diet, body, mind, spirits, communities, and environments to live, to grow, to heal, to reproduce and to evolve. Most causes only create illness in rare or exceptional circumstances.

Thus, we begin our understanding of illness and cures at the root, the causes of illness. The cause of a case of illness is that which, when successfully addressed, produces a cured status. The cause of an illness can only be proven by a cure. A cured result proves the cause.

Two Causes of Illness

To cure is to address the illness’s present cause, it’s cure cause. There are two types of cure causes of illness, which we can view nouns and verbs. In the theory of cure, these are called status, or attribute causes and lifestyle, or process causes.

Status Causes: An illness might be caused by the presence, absence, deficiency or excess of some status or attribute of diet, body, mind, spirits, communities, or environments. An illness that is caused by a status is cured by changing the status such that it no longer causes illness. The presence of a cured state proves the cause. Status cures are one-time cures. If the status cause occurs again, a new case of illness might occur.

Injury Causes are in the past. Excessive stress can cause injuries to body, mind, spirits, or communities. However, the stress that caused an injury is gone. Only the injury is present, causing negative signs and symptoms. From a cure perspective, the injury itself is a negative status, the cure cause. Injuries are defined as illnesses that are cured by healing, although many severe injuries require additional cures. When an injury is healed, an illness has been cured. Like all status cures – injury cures are on-time cures.

Lifestyle Causes: Life consists of many processes, including the intentional avoidance of specific processes, in diet or environment, that, for the most part are healthy. Lifestyle or process causes of illness can be present in diet, body, mind, spirits, communities, or environments. When a life process has negative consequences, we might judge an illness to be present. To cure requires a change to the life process cause. Process cures require ongoing curative action (or ongoing intentional inaction). If the cure process is stopped, a new case of illness might occur.

There are gradations, but no clear distinctions between the different types of causes of illness. An injury is a present status. A status might be a measure of a process, and a process cause might alternatively be seen as a series of status causes. In addition, as an illness persists or grows it can cause changes to present status, including injuries, as well as changes to lifestyle processes. As we improve our practices of curing, we can improve our understanding. The simplest distinction between a status cause and a process cause of illness is simply that illness resulting from a status is cured by changing the status, but to cure an illness caused by a process requires an ongoing process.

This next image illustrates the two causes of illness, status and lifestyle causes, in relation to each other.

STATUS CAUSE: A negative status or attribute can be

– a thing or status that causes illness

– the absence of something that causes healthiness

– an injury.

The cure is to change the status, a one-time change.

LIFESTYLE: A negative process or lifestyle can be

– an ongoing life process

– the absence of a process

– a process might be periodic, seasonal, or otherwise repeating

– many of our life processes change over time.

The cure is to change the process, with an ongoing process.

Note: an attribute of a process that, once changed, does not require ongong actions is a status cause, not a lifestyle cause.

Three Types of Illness

There are three fundamental types of illness, based on these causes.

Status Illness: the signs, symptoms, and negative consequences of a status illness being caused by a present attribute of diet, body, mind, spirits, communities, or environments, which can be accessed and changed to produce a cured status.

An Injury Illness was caused by a stress in the past. Injuries are also status illnesses. The injury is the present status, the cause of signs, symptoms, and negative consequences. Injuries are defined as illnesses cured by healing.

Lifestyle Illness the signs, symptoms, and negative consequences of a lifestyle illness are being caused and maintained by an ongoing life process of the afflicted individual’s diet, body, mind, spirits, communities, or environments which can be addressed, changed to produce a cured state.

Note: An infection is a status illness, not a lifestyle illness – although it is a process of the infection lifeform, it is a status of the ill individual, cured with a one-time cure, not an ongoing process.

An illness can cause illness. Most status and lifestyle illnesses are not diagnosed as diseases until after they cause injuries. An injury illness can cause a change in life statuses or processes, causing additional status and lifestyle illnesses. A lifestyle illness can cause injuries or changes in status, leading to status illnesses. A status illness can cause us to change our life processes, causing a lifestyle illness.

An illness cause is a status or a process in diet, body, mind, spirits, communities, or environments. The negative consequences of any illness cause might be present in body, minds, spirits, and communities of the individual. However, an illness is not something we can isolate to a specific domain or set of domains. The illness is a concept, the realization or conceptualization that the cause and consequences are linked. When the link is broken, when the cause in diet, body, mind, spirits, communities or environments is successfully addressed – the illness concept disappears.

This image illustrates the gradations of status illnesses, injuries, lifestyle illnesses.

Illnesses are defined by their cures. A cure proves the cause, proving the type of illness.

Status Illnesses: When an illness is cured by a one-time transformation of the cause, it was a status illness.

An Injury Illness: is a status illness, cured when the injury is cured by healing.

Lifestyle Illness: can only be cured by an ongoing process which must be maintained to maintain the cured status.

Any cause of illness might be cured by many different, many alternative cure actions. Cure actions consist of changes to attributes or processes in diet, body, mind, spirits, communities, or environments. The cure proves the cause.

Just as there are no clear distinctions between different types of causes, there are gradations, and but no clear distinctions between injury illnesses, status illnesses, and lifestyle illnesses. We make distinctions by curing. Different cases of a similar illness or disease might be cured by a status change or by a process change. Only a cure proves the cause. Only a cured state defines the illness type.

The Three Cures:

Every cure is a result of a change to, a transformation of cause, in diet, body, mind, spirits, communities, or environments. Cures do not need to transform the individual – only the cause of their illness. Of course, many changes that address the cause of an illness also change the individual in some way.

Radical Cures are one-time changes to specific life attributes or statuses that are causing an illness. The status cause is changed, transformed, to produce a cured state. Status illnesses might be cured by intentional actions of the individual, or their communities, or in severe, difficult, or risky cases by medical communities. Sometimes, a radical cure’s change occurs by coincidence, accident, or some random force. Once cured, the illness is gone. If the cause occurs again, a new case of illness might occur.

Healing Cures are the natural curative process present in body, mind, spirits, and communities. Healing cures injury status illnesses, curing most cases of bodily cuts, bruises, sprains, minor broken bones; most mental and spirit cases of depression, mania, loss of drive; and most cases of community caused illnesses like abuse and burnout. Life is naturally curative. Healing processes are generally based in growth, but healing often requires destruction or removal of unwanted attributes and processes. Most cases of injury illnesses are minor, easily cured without any intentional curative actions or processes. When an illness is cured by healing processes in body, mind, spirits, or communities, it was an injury illness.

When an illness is cured by a radical cure or by healing, it was a status illness.

Caring actions are ongoing processes of individuals self care, or communities that maintain life and healthiness and when illness occurs, are often able to cure. Most caring activities have no curative intent – and do not cure any illness.

Caring Cures can come from the individual, caring for themselves, or from our communities caring for individuals and communities. Our medical communities also provide care for those who are ill. Caring cures are preventative cures. They are ongoing processes (or the intentional absence of a process), that must be maintained to maintain the cured status and prevent future cases of illness. Once a lifestyle illness is cured, if the curative process stops or fails, a new case of illness might occur.

RADICAL CURING: consists of making status changes to body, mind, spirits, communities, or environments to produce a cured status.

HEALING CURES: make radical changes to body, mind, spirits, or communities to address an injury’s present cause, the injury.

CARING CURES: are changes to life processes of diet, body, mind, spirits, communities, and environments to create a cured status of a lifestyle illness.

The success of a cure proves the type of illness.

The cure, a successful cure, proves the cause, because addressing, removing the cause has produced a cured state, cured the illness.

In the theory of cure, when an illness is cured by ongoing processes of caring for diet, body, mind, spirits, communities or environments, by self or by others, it was a lifestyle illness. Note: diet is a process, such that most cures brought about by changes to diet cure lifestyle illnesses, not status illnesses. Poisoned is a status, cured by a transformation, poisoning, however, can be a process illness, cured by a lifestyle change. This image illustrates the three cures and the gradations between them.

As with different types of causes and illnesses, there is no clear distinction between radical cures, healing cures, and caring cures. We can learn more by practicing curing than by complex theoretical analysis.

Healing, Caring, and Radical Curing

We can combine these three images into one to illustrate the entire theory, from causes to illnesses to cures.

It is important to understand that most causes of illness don’t cause illness most of the time. In addition, most cases of illness are minor and easily cured. Most healing cures, caring cures, and even radical cures, are not medical. This has always been so.

With this firm understanding of cause, illness, and cure, we begin a study of the concept of an elementary illness, an illness element, and use that concept to construct or model more challenging, compound and complex illnesses and to understand their cures.

Elementary Cause, Elementary Cure

An elementary case of illness has a single cause such that addressing that single cause produces a cured state or status. Most cases of illness start as elementary illnesses, and most are cured while they are elementary.

This next image illustrates a model illness element, the hole it creates, and the cure. Many variations are possible. This image illustrates a status illness, cured by a single cure action. Once cured, the cure process is no longer required. However, in the case of a lifestyle illness, the cure action might have been present before the illness, or not, and must be maintained after the cure is attained to prevent future cases of illness. After the cure, the specific level or levels of healthiness involved might not recover perfectly, or in some cases they might recover higher, healthier than before the illness. Every case is unique.

The illness cause is shown to be present with the illness. It does not cause the illness and then exit; that would be a past cause, no longer present to be addressed, not useful to cure.

Throughout a case of illness, the hole, the signs, symptoms, and damage caused by the illness cause often waxes and wanes over time due many factors. We might fight signs and symptoms with intention, or with medicines that do not cure, like painkillers. Healing is always active, always fighting injuries created by the illness. The illness cause might be present in diet, body, mind, spirits, communities, or environments. It might be a simple status or attribute, as illustrated in this image, or a complex process. Over time, the cause might be:

o temporary, such that no cure action is required

o repeating, not occurring and then reoccurring during the timespan

o periodic, repeating according to some specific pattern of the individual’s lifestyle, an environmental factor like the seasons, or some other repeating factor.

o chronic, an attribute or status that persists until it is addressed

o lifestyle, a chronic process that persists until a process is adopted to address the cause.

As we can see in this image, it is possible to have an illness that does not reach the level of disease diagnosis. When we study all cases of illness, we will find that most are cured before they reach a level of diagnosis. Some might never reach a level of diagnosis, even as they are never cured.

A cure cause is a cause of illness which, when successfully addressed, results in a cured status.

A cure element is a process that addresses the present cause of an illness element causing the negative signs, symptoms, consequences and their progression to fade and stop, thus ending, curing the illness. Some negative consequences might still be present and might be judged as independent illness elements. Most cure processes function by improving healthiness. However, many cure actions trade one aspect of healthiness for another, often in the expectation that the decreased healthiness will recover. Sometimes a curative action that reduces overall healthiness is required, perhaps due to the belief or understanding that the risks presented by the illness are less than the risks of the cure.

Elementary cases of illness, while remaining uncured, can acquire more causes, becoming compound or complex, requiring multiple cure elements.

We can use the concept of an illness element to construct a model of any curable compound or complex case of illness. Of course, some cases of diseases or other medical conditions might not be curable, at which point they depart from the framework of the theory of cure.

When an illness has multiple cure causes, multiple cure elements are required to cure the overall illness. These cures might, depending on the case, be completed simultaneously or they might need to be completed in specific sequence.

Partial Cures – Complete Cures

When a cure cause is partially addressed, a partial cure might occur. A partial cure can also occur when some, but not all cure causes of an illness are addressed. It can be difficult to determine that a partial cure has occurred.

A complete cure indicates that all cure causes of the specific illness, which might be a set of illness elements, have been fully addressed.

No cure is perfect. Life goes on. No cure is permanent. Causes can reoccur.

Compound Illness

A compound illness case has multiple present cure causes producing similar illnesses, similar signs symptoms, and negative consequences, such that multiple cure processes are required to produce an overall cure. Addressing fewer than all of the cure causes – produces a partial cure. As previously noted, it can be difficult to prove a partially cured status. A compound illness might consist of any combination of each type of elementary illnesses: status causes, injuries, or lifestyle illnesses, each causing signs and symptoms considered to be a single illness.

A secondary illness is an illness that was caused by another illness. The primary illness might be past, such that the secondary illness has been caused by the primary, or in the present, such that the secondary illness is being caused by the primary, creating a complex illness.

Complex Illness

A complex illness is exists when one present illness is causing another. Curing the secondary illness often fails because a new case is constantly at risk of being created by the primary illness. Curing a primary illness, on the other hand, often facilitates a natural, or healing cure of the secondary illness. In some cases, intentional cure actions are needed for both the primary and the secondary illnesses.

Disease

Most elementary illnesses are cured so easily that there is no need for medical attention, much less a disease diagnosis, even when a diagnosis might be possible. Our medical systems routinely ignore elementary illnesses and their cures. They do not warrant medical attention.

As a result, most cases of disease are compound or complex cases of illness, consisting of multiple elements of illness, requiring multiple cures. Sometimes, an elementary illness is considered so severe that it is designated to be a case of disease.

Any curable case of illness or disease can be mapped to a set of curable illness elements, either an elementary illness or a combination of illnesses elements, possibly a compound or complex illness.

Cases of incurable illnesses are outside of scope of the theory of cure. Incurable is a belief that might be accepted but can never proven. Incurability is disproven by a cure.

Curing

Every cause of an illness might be addressed in many different ways. “One cure” is a marketing term, a marketer’s dream, not a useful concept in the theory of cure. From this perspective, we can see many different kinds of cures, which leads us to many ways to cure and many more ways to improve our cures.

Healing Cures come from nature and can cure injuries not just of body, but also of injuries to our minds, our spirits, and our communities. Healing is unconscious curing, not limited to simple physical concepts of injuries. When we are injured by many illnesses, from the common cold, influenza, measles, and COVID and many others, our natural healthiness cures the illness, as healing simultaneously addresses the damage.

When we are healthier, we cure our illnesses more quickly and easily. Healing is based not just on the healthiness of our bodies, it is also influenced and aided by the healthiness of our minds, our spirits, and our communities. When our bodies, minds, spirits, and communities are healthier, we cure our injuries – and many illnesses – faster, more easily, and more effectively.

When we act to make ourselves, our bodies, minds, spirits, and our communities healthier, we can improve all types of cures.

Caring Cures come from our communities. Caring is an ongoing process, not a single action. It is a statement of faith in each other, in the value of others. Our first community, of me, myself and I, takes its curative powers from our caring for self, from our spirits, our drive to live, to survive, to thrive. When we are ill, or when members of our communities are ill, we act as communities to cure and to make curing more effective. When we act as a caring community, we can see preventative cures as powerful curing force. A cure is the best preventative of further illness.

When we develop life processes to look after ourselves and others, we also improve our caring cures. When we build and support the communities around us, when we make our communities healthier, we improve our community cures. There is no “one community.” To improve our cures we need a science to improve all communities. When our communities develop processes to make all communities healthier – we improve our cures, we cure faster, more effectively, and our cures become safer.

Radical Cures come from healthy changes to the attributes and statuses not just to our bodies, but in every domain of health, of life – and of illness: diet, body, mind, spirits, communities, and environments. Radical cures can sometimes be accidental, coincidental, or random. When we take control, when we make it our intention to address present causes of illness – we cure more cases of illness, and can learn to make our cures safer and more effective.

Every curable case of illness can be cured. To cure is to successfully address the causes of an illness. There are many different ways to address any cause of illness. Many different cures. The search for “the cure for a disease” has long proven to be a failed concept. We might successfully address any cause of a case of illness, might cure any illness, with changes to our diets, our bodies, our minds, our spirits, our communities, or our environments. We can only know for certain when we succeed. We might cure by changing specific statuses, or attributes – one-time cures, or we might cure by changing our lifestyle, our life processes of diet, body, mind, spirits, communities, or environments. Limiting our cure actions to specific products, actions, or medical systems limits our ability to cure.

Some cases of illness cannot be cured. Sometimes, we die. Sometimes, it’s more effective to tolerate, to live with a specific illness than to risk a dangerous cure attempt.

Imperfect Cures are cures. No cure is perfect. No wound heals perfectly, but wounds are healed. No radical cure is perfect. No caring cure, no ongoing cure process is perfect. In many cases, we must accept partial cures. In other cases, partial cures are necessary steps on our path to a complete cure. Sometimes a failed cure points the way to a successful cure, by proving that our theory of cause was wrong, forcing us to look for a new cause or a new ways to address a cause.

No cure is permanent. Causes of health and illness are causes of life. Life goes on. Life is about change, not about perfection. Only death is permanent.

When we cure, we succeed. When we cure, the cure proves the cause.

Conclusion:

The theory of cure provides a clear framework for understanding the concepts of curable illnesses, their causes and their cures, beginning with elements of illness, of cause, and of cure that can be combined to understand compound and complex illnesses, to work towards their cures and understand when cured cases are attained.

“In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they are not the same.”

The theory of cure is a framework that can be used in practice, to explore the boundaries between cure theory and practice, to create more and better cures of any illness. But the theory cannot point us to cures for incurable illnesses. When we encounter an incurable illness, we need the serenity prayer.

“God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change;

courage to change the things I can; and

the wisdom to know the difference.”

Incurable illnesses cannot be cured. Curable illnesses can be cured.

When we step back from specific illnesses to see the bigger picture, we can see that most illnesses are trivial, easily cure. Most cases of illness are curable, but incurable illnesses persist – so we see each of them for a longer period of time. When we move closer, each disease becomes a set of individual cases of illness. Each is unique, and therefore each cure is unique. When we step back and look at negative consequences, we see them in body, mind, spirits, and communities. When we step back and look at causes, we can find them attributes and processes of diet, body, mind, spirits, communities, and environments.

Distancia meliorat visionem. (Distance improves our vision.)

When we step away from illness, to examine other problems in life, from our flat tire to our flagging economy, we can see similarities. Some cases can be fixed (cured) some cannot. Of those that can be fixed, some might be fixed with one-time cure actions – status changes, while others require ongoing actions, process changes, to maintain the cure and to prevent future occurrences. We step away to see the big picture, but we need to step closer to see individual cases. Both views are important.

The theory of cure can be applied to solving (curing) solvable (curable) problems in living and non-living systems.

To your health,
Tracy Kolenchuk,
Founder: Healthicine
Author: A New Theory of Cure

April 2026

CURED is not Medical

admin — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 11:55:58 +0000

What is the most important phrase in medicine? Many people might guess “YOU’RE CURED.” But no. Cured is not medical. How can I know this? Maybe it’s because I’m not a doctor? I know what happens when a case of disease is cured. Nothing.

Cured cases are no longer medical. Were they ever medical? They are cured.

We have is no medical definition of cured. We have no medical records of cured cases of any disease in medical practice. None. No doctor, medical clinic, hospital, medical system, nor medical insurance company documents, much less tracks cured cases.

Cured is not medical.

No medical researcher can track cured cases of any disease, because there is no data. Once a case of disease has been cured, the cases is simply ignored. Medical systems ignore cured cases and move on. They have work to do.

It’s worse. We have no recognized test of CURED for most diseases. Any disease.

The common cold is INCURABLE!

“There is no cure for the common cold…”

It’s a common trope. I’ve had lost of colds. So have you. All of them cured (unless you have one right now – which will be cured soon. It’s nonsense.

Cured cases are not medical.

CURED – is not Medically Defined

Old news and new. William Lewis’s A Complete Dictionary of the Whole Materia Medica, written in the late 1700s, does not contain an entry for cure, although the word cure appears over 100 times. A Medicinal Dictionary Including Physic Surgery Anatomy Chymistry And Botany, 1748, by R James, skips from curcuma to curmi, not defining cure or cured although the word cure appears many times. The London Medical Dictionary: Including under Distinct Heads Every Branch of Medicine, (Parr, 1809) skips from CURD to CURIMENTOS – having no entry for cure although the cure word appears hundreds of times in the text. Robert Hooper’s A Compendious Medical Dictionary published in 1809 skips from CURCUMA to CUTICLE, having no entry for cure, even though the word cure appears many times. Many, perhaps most medical dictionaries do not contain an entry for cure. Of course the word cure is used often in medical dictionaries, without a definition. Beeton’s Medical Dictionary, 1850 skips from curcuma to current. Cure is not defined. A Dictionary of Medicine, by Sir Richard Quain, 1880, does not contain an entry for cure, skipping from cupping to cutis. The words cure and cured are used hundreds of times. A Dictionary of Domestic Medicine, by John Henry Clarke, 1890, skips from crying to cuts. Although the word cure is used often, there is no entry for cure.

Two hundred years ago, cured was not medical.

A Dictionary of Medical Science, 1903, defines cure as “course of treatment; restoration to health; remedy; restorative,” but does not define cured distinguish between treatments that do not cure and any that do – and does not defined cured. The word cure is used often in the text.

James Burnet (m.d.) author of A Dictionary of Medical Treatment, 1922, does not make an entry for cure, skipping from CRETINISM to CYSTITIS. Longman Medical Dictionary, 1982, skips from cryptorchidism to Curettage, without an entry for cure.

Today, we see little change.

Black’s Medical Dictionary, 1944 skips from curdled milk to curette. The, 2008 – 41st Edition skips from Culdoscopy to Curette. CURE is not defined, although it appears dozens of times. Cured appears over 20 times, but is also not defined. Cured is not medical.

Dictionary of Medical Terms (Barron), 2004, does not contain an entry for cure, skipping from curare to curet, but incurable is defined, using the word cure, as being such that a cure is currently impossible within the realm of known medical practice.” Cured is also not defined, although it states “about one-third of patients with newly diagnosed cancers are ultimately permanently cured.”

Diccionario Medico, 2008 (the Spanish edition of the Concise Medical Dictionary of Oxford University Press – does not contain an entry for “curar” – the Spanish word for cure, much less the word “curado” Spanish for cured.

The Oxford Handbook of Clinical Medicine 2017, Tenth Edition asks: “Illusory correlation: Associated events are presumed to be causal. But was it treatment or time that cured the patient?” and advises “Radiotherapy10 is used in >50% of all cancer and forms part of treatment in 40% of those considered cured.” – CONSIDERED CURED. There is no test, no possibility of PROVING CURED. Cured is not medical.

The Un Panda Concise Pocket Medical Dictionary, 2015 skips from curarization to curret. There is no entry for cure, much less cured. We might realize that the first language of the author is not English, when he defines Naturopathy as “A therapeutic system that employs natural forces as light, heat, air and water to cure ailments rather than drugs.” The only use of the word cured, is with Gonorrhea, where it advises “No sexual contact until cured.” But cured is not defined.

The online book: Coronavirus – A Medical Dictionary, Bibliography, and Annotated Research Guide to Internet Reference, 2023 contains the word cure exactly once, in the entry for “Palliative: 1. Affording relief, but not cure. 2. An alleviating medicine.”

Cured is not medical.

Nursing Cures?

Amy Elizabeth Pope, writing the A Medical Dictionary for Nurses, 1914, skips from curd to curette, with no entry for cure or cured although the word cure appears many times. Churchill Livingstone Nurse’s Dictionary, 2012, skips from curare to curettage, although it does define cure indirectly, through “healing the natural process of cure or repair of the tissues” – a non-medical cure. The Oxford Dictionary of Nursing, 2023, by Law, Jonathan; McFerran, Tanya A. & Tanya A. McFerran skips from curare to curettage, without an entry for cure, although the word cure appears several times in different contexts, the word cured appears only once – “the abnormal presence of blood or fluid round the heart – can be cured by cutting the pericardium.” Bethel Ann Powers & Thomas R. Knapp, writing in Dictionary of Nursing Theory and Research do not provide any definition for cure, and the only cure recommended is a cure for the Hawthorne Effect, a disease that infects clinical research studies, not any person.

In nursing, cured is not medical.

Epidemiology?

John Last’s A Dictionary of Epidemiology, 1995 does not contain the word cure once in the entire text. Porta, Miquel’s A Dictionary of Epidemiology, 2014 does not define cure, contains the word cure only three times, “no cure” and “insufficient bacteriological cure” and “apparent cure,” (not defined). The word cured only once, “considered cured” – also not defined. Cured is not medical.

Epidemiologically, cured is not medical.

Cured Mental Disorders?

In 1952, Philip Lawrence Harriman’s The New Dictionary of Psychology does not define the word cure, much less cured, skipping from cunnis to curve, normal probability. The word cure is used occasionally, but generally in cure dismissal or denial.

The 1974 book A Dictionary of Psychology by James Drever skips from curare to curiosity, without defining cure, much less cured, although he does speak of “Mental healing: used mainly of the curing of disorders by suggestion.”

The 1993 book A Dictionary for Psychotherapists: Dynamic Concepts in Psychotherapy has an entry for “CURATIVE FANTASY” but not for cure. It speaks of “cure hysterical symptoms,” “cure illness,” and “cure a disturbance,” “to be cured of neurotic difficulties,” “to cure him,” but not of curing any mental disorder or disease.

Campbell’s Psychiatric Dictionary, 2009, skips from curdling to cure, transference. Cure is not defined. The word cured is used a few times, largely in denial and statements like “Compensation neurosis has been defined as “a state of mind, born out of fear, kept alive by avarice, stimulated by lawyers, and cured by verdict” – presumably only by a verdict in the client’s favor.

The 2015 APA (American Psychological Association) Dictionary of Psychology Second Edition skips from curative to curiosity. Cure is not defined in psychology, although the word cure is used about 30 times. The word cured appears three times without a definition. Likewise, the Cambridge Dictionary of Psychology, 2009, skips from cupula to curare – no entry for cure. The word cured does not appear in the entire text.

Is Cured Defined sometimes?

Butterworths Medical Dictionary 2d ed, 1978, provides an entry for cure, but makes no distinction between treatment, remission, and cure, instead offering statements like “A particular method of treatment designed to restore health,” “The treatment of disease by starvation,” and “the sudden, unexpected remission in a chronic disease without any obvious explanation.”

Cured without understanding, is not cured, not medical.

Sometimes, CURE is defined

But the definitions are vague and unscientific.

Medical lexicon : A New Dictionary of Medical Science, 1842, by Robley Dunglison, defines cure as “A restoration to health; also, a remedy. A restorative.” Health is defined as “sanitas” – the latin word for health, and the entry for sanitas only makes the definition of cure less clear, and remedy is defined simply as a medicament with no requirement to cure. George Gould in Gould’s Medical Dictionary, 1935, defined cure as “The successful treatment of a disease,” without defining success, but then added, “also, a system of treatment,” without any requirement that the treatment actually produces a cured state. The beautiful text, Dorland’s Illustrated Medical Dictionary, 2012, by W. A. Newman Dorland defined cure as “1. the course of treatment of any disease, or of a special case. 2. the successful treatment of a disease or wound. 3. a system of treating diseases.” – managing to cover a number of bases, without providing anything useful to determine cured.

Cure, it seems, is sometimes medical, but cured is not.

The Illustrated Medical Dictionary, 2007, by British Medical Association by the British Medical Association) defines cure as “To restore to normal health after an illness. The term usually means the disappearance of a disease rather than a halt in its progress. Medication or therapy that ends an illness may also be termed a cure.” Quite a good definition of first glance, although it makes no reference to the cause of the illness, and the statement “the disappearance of a disease rather than a halt in its progress,” makes little sense.

The disappearance of disease – cured – is not medical.

The 2005 Merriam-Webster’s Medical Desk Dictionary defines cure “vb cured; curing vt : HEAL: a : to restore to health, soundness, or normality” apparently to cure the individual, without reference to illness or disease. But Webster’s New World Medical Dictionary, Third Edition, 2008, does not contain an entry for cure. Where did it go?

Cure, cures, curing, and cured, apparently, are no longer medical. (note; the word cure did re-appear in the next edition, but the definition was scrapped from non-medical dictionaries. Cured is not medical.)

Mosby’s Medical Dictionary 9th Edition, 2013, begins with a vague general definition of cure: “1. restoration to health of a person afflicted with a disease or other disorder” but then quickly degrades into vague, poorly defined nonsense with “a course of therapy, a medication, a therapeutic measure, or another remedy used in treatment of a medical problem, as faith healing, fasting, rest cure, or work cure.”

Honest Doctors Deny Cured

“Any physician who advertises a positive cure for any disease, who issues nostrum testimonials, who sells his services to a secret remedy, or who diagnoses and treats by mail patients he has never seen, is a quack.” The Great American Fraud p. . Collier and Sons, 1905

Fear of Speaking the CURED Word

According to John Ralston Saul, writing in The Doubter’s Companion: A Dictionary of Aggressive Common Sense “…doctors took to declaring that the world was cured. The surgeon-general of the United States in 1969: “The war against infectious diseases has been won.” These words were no sooner out than malaria, cholera and gonorrhea, all three theoretically beaten, began to mutate and so escaped the control of most drugs.”

Perhaps our medical systems fear speaking about cures, about cured cases, lest they disappear…

Saul also writes: “To cure is to eliminate. A good general knows that trying to eliminate the enemy simply causes the next war”

As Saul advises, we need to understand that we don’t cure diseases, no disease can be cured. We can only cure individual cases of disease. No disease can be cured.

Curing diseases is not medical.

When a case of disease is cured, it has been cured.
When a case of disease has been cured, it is cured.

It makes no difference if the cure was caused by a doctor, a medicine, a grandmother, or by the individual. Cured is not medical.

Wiener, Philip P. author of Dictionary of the History of Ideas: Studies of Selected Pivotal Ideas also warns against the cured word, advising: “he who suffers from love finds no pleasure in being cured.” and “A psychoanalyst might have cured him, (Vladimir Nabokov, the author of Lolita) and the novel would not have been written.”

And we can close with Francis Bacon’s famous warning “Cure the disease and kill the patient,” advising against focusing on the medical disease, and thus missing the reality of the patient’s overall health and illnesses.

What is the most important phrase in medicine? Many people might guess “YOU”RE CURED.” But no. Cured is not medical. How can I know this? Maybe it’s because I’m not a doctor? I know what happens when a case of disease is cured. Nothing.

Cured cases are no longer medical. Were they ever medical? They are cured.

There is no medical definition of cured. There are no medical records of cured cases. None. No doctor, medical clinic, hospital, medical system, nor medical insurance company documents, much less tracks cured cases.

Cured is not medical.

It’s worse. We have no recognized test of CURED for most diseases. Any disease.

Theory of Cure is reader-supported. To receive new posts, support my work, become a subscriber.

The common cold is INCURABLE!

“There is no cure for the common cold…”

It’s a common trope. I’ve had lost of colds. So have you. All of them cured (unless you have one right now – which will be cured soon. It’s nonsense.

Cured cases are not medical.

CURED – is not Medically Defined

Two hundred years ago, cured was not medical.

Today, we see little change.

Cured is not medical.

Nursing Cures?

In nursing, cured is not medical.

Epidemiology?

Epidemiologically, cured is not medical.

Cured Mental Disorders?

Is Cured Defined sometimes?

Cured without understanding, is not cured, not medical.

Sometimes, CURE is defined

But the definitions are vague and unscientific.

Cure, it seems, is sometimes medical, but cured is not.

The disappearance of disease – cured – is not medical.

Honest Doctors Deny Cured

Fear of Speaking the CURED Word

Perhaps our medical systems fear speaking about cures, about cured cases, lest they disappear…

Saul also writes: “To cure is to eliminate. A good general knows that trying to eliminate the enemy simply causes the next war”

As Saul advises, we need to understand that we don’t cure diseases, no disease can be cured. We cure cases of disease.

Curing diseases is not medical.

When a case of disease is cured, it has been cured.
When a case of disease has been cured, it is cured.

Theory of Cure is reader-supported. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a subscriber.

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

Theory of Cure – 2026 – draft

admin — Tue, 24 Mar 2026 12:46:38 +0000

I am in the process of a total rewrite of the paper Theory of Cure, first published in 2022. I need people to review the revised paper for editing errors and also for content.

If you can help, drop me a comment and I will send you a proof copy for comments.

The revised version begins:

“As of 2026, it has been ten years since I began my studies of cure and three years since I updated this foundational paper on the theory of cure. In those three years, I have made several revisions to the book A New Theory of Cure and I am preparing to publish a second edition, simply titled Theory of Cure. There have been two major change in the language used in the theory of cure, and many minor changes that need to be attended to. The major changes are with the phrases “attribute illness” and “causal illness,” which have been replaced with “status illness,” an illness caused by an attribute, a status, a thing, a noun, which is cured by altering the status or thing; and “lifestyle illness,” caused by a life process, a verb, which can only be cured by an ongoing process.”

The draft paper is also available for discussion on Academia.edu at Discussion: Theory_of_Cure_2026_Update-DRAFT.pdf – Academia.edu

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

An Illness is a Hole in Healthiness

admin — Thu, 19 Mar 2026 11:04:06 +0000

What is an illness? What is a disease? What is the difference? What is a cure? This is an image I am working on to illustrate an updated paper on Theory of Cure. What do you think?

An elementary illness is a hole in a single healthiness. At first, our perception of the illness can be very weak, very fuzzy. As healthiness falls, we gradually become aware of a discomfort – and might immediately move to address it before any illness occurs. But sometimes, healthiness shrinks, unhealthiness grows, and we perceive an illness. When healthiness rises, the illness disappears, cured.

The illness has two components, the cause and the consequences. The illness is cured when the cause, either the drop in healthiness or the cause of the drop in healthiness is successfully addressed.

A disease is a hole in healthiness that is deep enough, well enough defined to be perceived and diagnosed by a medical professional. Doctors intentionally avoid diagnosing minor illness, often sending patient’s home with advice like “take two aspirin and call me in the morning.” Most cases of elementary illness cannot be diagnosed until they become severe enough to cause damage, to create additional elementary illnesses.

Is this image trivial? That’s what I’m looking for – clear, easily understandable views of healthiness, illness, and disease.

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

Are you Doing your Disease, or is it Doing You?

admin — Tue, 17 Mar 2026 13:25:00 +0000

From a cure perspective: there are two fundamental types of illness cause: those that “do you,” and those that “you do.”

Cause is the key to cure, and to cures.

There are two fundamental types of causes of illness, causing two types of elementary of illness, requiring two types of cures. The two types of causes are

those that do you, and
those that you do.

Is your illness doing you, or are you doing it?

Noun Causes – Do You Harm- cause Status Illnesses

Status illnesses have noun causes, attribute causes, causes that are things. Status illness are caused by things that “do you.” Things that are stressing you, harming you, eating you, killing you. The cure is to address the cause, to remove it, disable it, or kill it, so that it is no longer “doing you harm.” Remember, sometimes a status illness is caused by the absence of a noun cause.

A nutrient deficiency might be causing damage and holding back healing. A poison might be damaging you. Any essential nutrient might be deficient or toxic. A bacteria, a tapeworm, or a tiger might be eating you. Too much hard work, or too much stress might harm you or even kill you. The illness caused by a noun cause is a status illness.

To cure is to change the cause. With the right change to the attribute, the status, the present cause, the cause is neutralized and the illness will be cured.

Hippocrates advised: “Diseases which arise from repletion are cured by depletion; and those that arise from depletion are cured by repletion; and in general, diseases are cured by their contraries.” – he was speaking of attribute caused diseases – disease that DO YOU.

Noun cures are one-time cures. After the cure, if the cause occurs again, a new case of illness might occur.

Verb Causes – You Do Harm – Cause Lifestyle Illnesses

Process illnesses have verb causes, process causes. Process illness are caused by things that “you do.” Life processes that are stressing you, harming you, killing you. The cure is to address the cause, to remove it, disable it, or kill it, so that it is no longer “doing you harm.” Like noun causes, sometimes, a deficiency or absence of a verb or process can cause illness.

Illnesses that have process causes, verb causes, lifestyle causes are illnesses causes that “you do.” They are only cured by changing what “you do.”

Unfortunately, from Hippocrates medicine to modern medicine, there is no recognition of illnesses that are cured by changing “what you do.” Legally, according to FDA rules, a cure must be a “product.” Lifestyle changes are promoted as preventatives – but ignored as cures.

Smoking too much can cause smoker’s cough. Coughing from a single inhalation is a status illness, easily cured. But an ongoing process of smoking — causes an ongoing cough, that persists even when not smoking. A lifestyle of eating too much and exercising too little can cause obesity. An illness caused by a verb cause is a process illness. With the right change to the process, the verb cause, the lifestyle cause, the illness will be cured.

Verb cures need to be ongoing. Skipping a meal, or a cigarette does not cure. Once cured, the curative action is a necessary preventative. If the process cause occurs again, a new case of lifestyle illness might occur.

Examples – Noun Causes: Causes that “do you”

Elementary dehydration is a status, a noun cause, a deficiency of water. It might be mild, moderate, or severe enough to cause an illness that is easily cured by drinking water. If the cause occurs again, a new case of illness might also occur.

A bacterial infection is an attribute, a noun cause, creating an infection that might be mild, moderate, or severe, judged a disease. It is cured by killing, removing, or disabling the bacteria. A new exposure to the bacteria might cause a new case of illness or disease.

Examples – Verb Causes: Causes that “you do”

Smoking is a process that can cause smoker’s cough. The cough will persist until the lifestyle, the process, is stopped – or at least diminished enough to facilitate a healing cure. If the causal process is renewed, a new case of illness might occur.

Gingivitis can be caused by an unhealthy diet, a diet lacking in nutrients essential to gum health. When the diet is healthed, the gingivitis will heal – cured. The healthy dietary process must be maintained to maintain the cured status, to prevent new cases of gingivitis. If the diet fails – a new case of gingivitis might occur.

In many cases, a lifestyle illness cannot be diagnosed until damage occurs. Most cases of lifestyle illness require at least two cures – a status cure to address the status illness and a process cure to address the lifestyle illness.

Injuries “do you”

Injuries are noun causes, attribute status causes that are present and causing signs, symptoms, and possible negative consequences. Injuries can be caused by external forces, or by internal forces including life processes. The injury persists until the cause – the injury is healed. Simple injuries have past causes – but those causes cannot be accessed to cure. An injury caused by a process illness might re-occur unless the process illness is also cured.

Injuries are cured by healing. We can improve the cures for our injuries with actions that health the injured area as well as our diet, body, mind, spirits, communities and environments – make us healthier, enhancing our ability to heal. However, these actions are not drugs, so they are generally ignored by medical practitioners.

“You do” Chronic Injuries

Sometimes, an injury is chronic because it does not heal. But, that’s a special case, a complicated case.

Most chronic injuries, like plantar fasciitis, shin splints or tennis elbow, are injuries are caused by a process, by a lifestyle, by what you do (or what you don’t do). The cure is to health the process. Once the causal process is changed – the injury can heal, cured. If the injurious process occurs again, a new case of the illness might occur.

Each Illness Element is cured by a Status or a Process

Which illnesses are status illnesses, cured by changing a status or attribute? How many illnesses are status illnesses? How many illnesses are lifestyle illnesses, only cured by ongoing processes, requiring ongoing curative actions?

We have no idea. At present, our medical systems ignore all cured cases. Modern medicine, often promoted as science based, ignores individual illnesses and individual cures. We can’t tell the cause of the cured, unless we study every cured case.

Domains of Cause

In life, for any life form – not just humans, there are six domains of cause. Elements or processes in these domains can cause healthiness, or when deficient, excessive, or inharmonious, might cause illness. Usually we are healthy – because life intentionally uses causes to improve healthiness. Sometimes we become ill. Sometimes even a cause of healthiness causes illness.

The six domains of life causes are diet, body, mind, spirits, communities, and environments. These domains overlap – environments overlap the most, so much so that our external environment includes our communities and our dietary environment, and our internal environments include our body, mind, and spirits.

To cure, we must identify individual causes – and the six domains provide a powerful framework to identify, isolate, and address causes of illness – to cure.

Theory of Cure is reader-supported. To receive new posts and support my work, become a free or paid subscriber.

An illness element, an elementary illness might be caused by the presence or absence of a cause, or perhaps the deficiency or excess of a cause in any of the six domains. The cause might be a noun, an attribute, or a deficiency, or it might be a failure caused by a process or the absence of a process. Let’s look at some examples:

Diet

We can suffer an illness due to a dietary status – deficient in Vitamin C, dehydrated, malnourished, or perhaps overweight, even poisoning, from a dietary excess. These are status illnesses, cured with the contrary, by consuming what is necessary, or by clearing the poison, often by the vomiting – an important detox cure.

Or, we might suffer from an ongoing deficiency of a Vitamin, an essential nutrient, more difficult to diagnose, or an ongoing general excess leading to obesity. Consuming a small amount of many poisons will not cause illness, but if a dietary life process contains a poison that accumulates – the illness will grow. These are cured by contrary processes.

Body

There is a gradation between a dietary cause and a bodily cause. When we are poisoned, the cause begins in our diet (although it might also occur on our skin) and affects the body, causes a status change in the body. How do we know if the cure-cause is in the body or the diet? If a dietary action cures the illness, the cause was in the diet. If a bodily action cures the illness, the cause was in the body. The cure proves the cause.

Our body can cause injuries or illnesses when we take risks – but once the illness is present, these are often past causes, which cannot be accessed to cure.

Body, Mind, Spirits, Communities

Bodies, minds, spirits, and communities can suffer injuries – cured by the natural forces of healing. In many cases, we can aid or promote the healing by improving our healthiness in many different ways. Sometimes, exercise intended to help the body grow stronger also heals the mind, the spirits, or our communities.

Our bodies, minds, spirits, and communities need exercise and rest. A temporary deficiency or excess of either can cause a temporary status illness. If we don’t sleep for many hours, sleep is the cure. If we work to hard, rest is the cure. When we rest too much, exercise is the cure. This can occur for physical work, mental work, spiritual work, and community work, leading to sloth or stress. Burnout, for example, might be mental, spiritual, or a result of overcommitting ourselves to our communities.

Mind

When the present cause of the illness is in the mind – the cure is a change of mind. Sometimes, a whack on the side of the head processes a cure. The mind changes, and an illness might be cured. Some mind cures are much more subtle. We go to the doctor and ask about a strange new appearance on our body, and the doctor says “Oh, that’s normal. Nothing to worry about.” There was no disease, but the illness is cured. When an alcoholic or drug addict makes up their mind, changes their mind, they can cure an illness that may have persisted for decades. This is a negative process cure. The individual STOPPED a process that was causing illness, and the stopped process must be maintained. If the process stop fails, a new case of illness might occur.

Spirits

When we lose our motivation, when our spirits fail, we might suffer illnesses of depression – might even give up and die. When our illness is cured with a change in life spirits, the cause was in the domain of spirits. This can also occur when our spirits become too powerful and we are consumed by mania. A spirit rest is necessary to cure. Spirit causes, like all causes of illness might be specific, individual occurrences, or they might be chronic, lifestyle causes. How can we tell? By the cure. When the cure is a result of a single action than changes a temporary spiritual deficiency or excess, the cause was a spirit attribute. On the other hand, when the cure requires an ongoing spirit action, the cause was an ongoing deficiency of spirit health. The cure proves the cause.

Communities

Communities are powerful causes of health and healthiness. Caring comes from communities – we naturally help each other when they are healthy and when they are ill. On the other hand, communities, and our participation in our communities can also be causes of illness. We might suffer community isolation – leading to depression, or community abuse leading to injuries of body, mind, spirits, and also our communities. How can we know if the cause is in the domain of community? By the cure. If changing our communities, or our interaction or participation in communities, and the result is a cure – that was the cause.

Like all causes – a community cause of illness can be an attribute, or a process. Being ejected from or rejected by a community might lead to mental or spirit illness – but it might also lead to physical abuse. On the other hand, an abusive family or marriage environment can be an ongoing process creating an ongoing illness. In these cases, we might be challenged to understand the cause and the cure. The abuse might be cured by a separation from the community, a one time status cure, or it might be cured by learning to stand up for ourselves, addressing the community cause on an ongoing basis.

Environments

Our environment might suffer a one-time, temporary change, creating an illness that is cured by a one-time cure action. Perhaps our office building has a faulty airflow, causing many staff to suffer headaches. When the airflow is cured – the illnesses disappear. This is a one-time cure. If the airflow fails again a year or a decade later, a new set of illnesses might occur.

Or, the environment might be very unhealthy, dirty, conducive to the growth of bacteria, causing ongoing infections. The cure is not a simple cleanup. The environment must be cleaned on an ongoing basis – a lifestyle cure. The cure must be maintained.

Status Cures

Modern medicine is largely devoid of cures. Technically, an infectious illness is cured medically when the infectious agent, the infectious cause is killed, disabled, or removed by an approved medicine or surgery.

All other cures of infectious diseases are simply ignored. They have not been medically approved – and cannot be proven medically. But we should be aware that even cures that can officially recognized are rarely documented as cured. No doctor, no clinic, no hospital, no insurance company documents cured cases. Treatments can be billed -whether they cure or not. Cured cannot be billed.

Lifestyle Cures

Even when a lifestyle cure is obvious, it is generally ignored by medical practitioners. Nobody cares if you cure your smoker’s cough by stopping smoking. Officially, there are no cures for ANY non-infectious disease. If your arthritis is cured with diet and exercise – no cure can be prove.

Cured Cases are Ignored

Modern medicine has no test of cured for arthritis. The same is true of many illnesses. When a chiropractor, an osteopathy, or a physical therapist cures a person’s back pain or frozen shoulder with a one-time adjustment, we know it is a cure. But modern medicine cannot recognize the cured status, much less the cause of the cure.

Trivial cures cannot be recognized medically, much less the cause of the cure.

More complex cured cases cannot be understood without a basic understanding of simple cures.

It’s Time to Study Cures, Curing, Cured

We can create a science of cure from these fundamental concepts. We know how to cure the common cold, influenza, COVID, and measles. We know how to heal a broken arm. So we ignore these cures.

When we study cured cases we can learn to improve them, but only when cure is the goal. As we begin to understand simple cures, we can build our understanding to cure more compound and more complex cases of illness.

How can we know the cause of an illness? Only by a cure.

Health is the best preventative, the best cure.
The cure proves the cause.

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

The Healthiness Cures

admin — Thu, 12 Feb 2026 22:07:19 +0000

Which cures more illnesses? Drugs, or Healthinesses?

When we think of a cure, we almost automatically reach for drug. We’ve been well trained by drug salesmen and their followers. At the same time, we should know that most drugs make no attempt to cure any disease, that most drugs cannot cure any disease, and that most cures do not come from drugs.

Where do most cures come from healthing. Yes, health is a verb: to improve healthiness. Most cures come from improvements in healthiness. Most intentional cures come from intentionally improving healthiness.

Most cures come from healthing, from healthy actions; some come from healthy inactions.

What is a healthiness? According to Merriam-Webster dictionary, healthiness “the quality or state of being healthy,” a noun form of healthy. Oxford is less informative.* No examples are provided, because the term is rarely used identify a specific healthiness.

Examples of healthinesses include:

a healthy state of fitness – physical healthiness
a healthy weight, not overweight, not underweight – weight healthiness
a healthy state of mind – mental healthiness
healthy consumption of foods – dietary healthiness. Note: this noun describes a process, a verb.
having sufficient Vitamin C to meet the bodily needs – Vitamin C healthiness

The action, the verb, healthing, that indicates working to maintain a healthy level of a healthiness and also to regain healthiness, to health ourselves, when a healthiness is deficient, excessive, or otherwise out of alignment.

Healthing Cures

Healthing cures are “actions that improve our healthiness to cure illnesses.” We can see these for each of the above examples:

We can health our body by improving our physical healthiness with healthy exercise and rest. When our bodily healthiness is so low that it is causing an illness, healthing our body can cure.
We can health our weight by gaining or losing weight. When our weight is so out of balance that it is causing illness, this is a healthing cure
We can health our state of mind when our current mental status is so far out of balance that it is causing illness, a mind healthing cure.
We can health an unhealthy diet by choose healthy foods and avoiding unhealthy foods. When our unhealthy diet is causing illness, healthing our diet can cure.
when we don’t have enough Vitamin C for health, and illness occurs, we can health our body by consuming sufficient Vitamin C to meet the bodily needs – a nutrient healthing cure.

Healthing, healthiness cures can be slow. When our body is deficient in muscle tone – it can take months to health, to cure the body deficiency. In other cases, it can be quick. When our body is super stressed from overexercise, a short period of rest can cure. Note: both of these cases might occur without any judgement of illness – only judged an illness when more severe.

When we are dehydrated, drinking healthy water can cure our illness. This is a status cure – we change the status of our bodily healthiness and the illness is cured. Of course drinking healthy water does not cure every case of dehydration – only those that are cured by drinking healthy water. Although this seems obvious, it is important.

Healthing ourselves, improving our healthiness, can cure illness when an illness is present, when illness is caused by an absence of healthiness. When no illness is present, improving healthiness often prevents illness, but that’s a topic for another post.

It seems so simple, because it is simple. Cures of elementary illnesses, those with a single cause, are generally not medical. In most cases, no doctor is required to cure. Living things, dogs, cats, snakes, and trees know how to health their bodies without resorting to a medical professional. Our bodies are so sensitive that, in most cases, they remind us to drink water BEFORE any illness occurs. But sometimes, for many different reasons, we might fail to drink enough water. If we catch the problem, the illness before any further damage is caused, the cure is trivial.

This same model can be applied to thousands of measures of healthiness. In diet, there are over 100 nutrients essential to healthiness. If we don’t maintain a healthy level of Vitamin A, B, C, or any other vitamin, or of iron, or copper, or zinc, or proteins, or fats, or air or water – we can become ill, sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly.

But healthiness is much more than just diet and body. We must also constantly health – maintain our healthiness – of mind, of spirits, of communities and even of our environment. All six causal domains: diet, body, mind, spirits, communities, and environments require healthiness, lest illness occur.

When our air is so unhealthy that it is making us ill, we need healthy air. In most cases, we correct unhealthy air before illness occurs and we act quickly to find healthy air and prevent the illness. This prompts us to ask:

When does an Illness Exist?

At what point does is unhealthy air just unhealthy air – like smoking, or standing by the campfire – and at what point does unhealthy air cause illness? The theory of cure uses a simple model.

An illness is present when we seek a cure.

When we accidentally breath in some heavy smoke, and cough and move away, we don’t see an illness, just a symptom cause. We don’t need a cure, because we moved away before any serious damage has occurred. The signs and symptoms of illness: coughing, sneezing, perhaps watery eyes, but if these disappear quickly because we moved away from the smoke – it’s not really an illness to be cured. It’s no longer present.

Is illness only present when damage has occurred? This is the model used by our medical systems. Most diseases cannot be diagnosed until significant damage has occurred. Many cannot be diagnosed unless there is significant danger of damage occurring. But this can miss many cases of illness, and their cures.

In the theory of cure, an illness is present when immediate actions are not enough to get relief from negative signs and symptoms. A cure is an intentional action with positive expectations.

For example, someone might suffer persistent headaches at their workplace. But there is no smoke. Analysis might reveal that there are high levels of carbon-dioxide at the workplace, perhaps only at certain times of day. These headaches don’t go away until the air is healthed. When the air is healthed, the headaches are cured. It might be that the level was never high enough to cause measurable damage, but it was high enough to cause persistent negative signs and symptoms.

False Cures

It’s too easy, and certainly too common that we confuse the words cure, cured and cures. Cure can be a noun, a substance or treatment, a solution to a problem (noun); or a verb, an action the produces a cured state, past tense: cured.

A false cure could be something that is marketed as a cure, but does not cure. A false “cured” occurs when the patient, doctor, or someone else believes the illness is cured, but it is not cured. These cases can be (falsely) declared cured with or without identification of the cure or cures.

A cure is an action that addresses the cause of an illness, producing a cured stat or status.

There are two types of false “healthiness cures” we need to be aware of.

The first is an actual cure – only our belief in the cause of the cure is false. The second is a partial cure, but one that misses the actions necessary for complete cure.

Wrong Cure-Cause

A false cure can occur simply because we are wrong about the cause and the cure. Maybe we improved our healthiness by specific actions – and the illness went away. But the cause was actually addressed by something else. These cases can be difficult to understand – but we might gain understanding when the illness occurs again and the false cure doesn’t work. Either we were wrong before, or we are wrong now. Unfortunately, healthiness cures are generally ignored by doctors and medical systems, or declared anecdotal, false. Every actual cured case is a real case, a story, an anecdote.

Note: this type of false cure is not as common as we might think. Most of the time, we can quickly figure out the cause of our illness and health the cause, producing a cure – so often, so easily that we ignore these simple cures. We are more likely to notice when a cure fails.

Wrong Level of Cause

The second false cure occurs when we misjudge the level or layers of cause. In a previous example, we cured dehydration with water, but

We might be dehydrated because, every day, we don’t drink enough water. In this case, drinking water cures the current dehydration status, but the illness appears to return a few days later. What happened? An illness is not a thing, it cannot go away and return.

The cause reoccurred. A new case of the illness status occurred.

The unhealthy drinking (or not drinking) water process was never addressed. The fundamental cause of both cases of illness was the same, but it was a cause of a process illness – not just a status illness.

A process illness requires a process cure – drinking sufficient water every day. The illness was not just a status of “not enough water” it was a process of “not drinking enough water on a regular basis” This distinction is important, because a process illness requires a different healthing cure, to drink sufficient, healthy amounts of water EVERY DAY.

Domains of Healthiness

In an earlier paragraph, I mentioned the six domains of healthiness: diet, body, mind, spirits, communities, and environments. Each of these domains has many different healthiness factors which, when out of alignment or balance, can cause illness. In each case, if the cause is an elementary status that has not yet caused any damage, the cure is trivial. Health (improve the healthiness of) the factor that is out of alignment and the illness is cured. In each case, it is also possible to suffer from a process cause – where the cure is not just a simple change of status, but a change in life processes.

Lets look at some status and process causes of illness causal domain:

Diet

Our nutritional needs are extremely varied. In addition, our healthy bodies can tolerate wide variations in consumption of healthy nutrients. In many cases, our bodies have many systems to maintain nutrients for when they are needed. As a result, a simple deficiency of a nutrient does not cause immediate illness.

Water is essential and without water, most people suffer signs and symptoms of illness and might even diet within a few days. Note: it is possible for some people in specific circumstances, to survive for much longer periods without water.

When our water status is deficient, consumption of water provides a simple cure.

However, when our water consumption patterns, lifestyle, or processes are deficient, the illness can take much longer to create observable signs and symptoms, and the status cure might appear to cure and then later fail. The process cause requires a process cure.

Vitamin A is stored in the body for long periods of time without consuming Vitamin A does not cause illness. Illness occurs when our Vitamin A stores are used up. Ancient Egyptians, and many other cultures learned the cure – eating liver restores a healthy Vitamin A status, curing “night blindness caused by Vitamin A deficiency,” a status cure.

One of the classic dietary cures, the cure for scurvy, illustrates another important reality about healthiness cures. As James Lind famously said:

“I do not mean to say that lemon juice and wine are the only remedies for the scurvy; this disease, like many others, may be cured by medicines of very different and opposite qualities to each other.” (Lind, 1771)

Every illness has many potential cures. Our medical systems often want to find a mythical “the cure” for “the disease.” This can be a powerful tool for finding and promoting profitable treatments, but it is ignorant of most actual cures.

There are also many healthy negative action that can cure. Ongoing overconsumption of alcohol can lead to chronic hangovers. The cure is a negative process, to stop the ongoing overconsumption.

Body

Dietary consumption of alcohol can provide benefits in spirit and community healthiness, with little danger as long as we stay within our limits. However, if we have consumed too much alcohol, our body becomes toxic. The first cure is to vomit – to remove the alcohol from the body. We tend to think of vomiting poison as “being sick,” but it’s actually a healthy cure. We were already sick, the process of vomiting cures the illness.

The body is very active physically and this is where we most easily recognize the need for exercise and rest. When we don’t get enough exercise, the cure is exercise. When we don’t get enough rest, the cure is rest. Lack of exercise doesn’t cause illness until after it has continued for some time. Overexercise – absence of rest, can have negative consequences much more quickly. As a result, rest is often a status cure for an immediate problem – one we might not even judge to be an illness. Exercise on the other hand, is usually a slow process cure. Both exercise and rest are also important cure components of many injuries, where rest provides for recovery and exercise for rehabilitation.

Mind

Our medical systems currently try to treat (not cure) mental illnesses with drugs for the body – and give up on curing. There are many mental healthiness cures – and like all healthiness cures, some cases require immediate, one-time, status cures while others require lifestyle cure processes. In addition, however, because mental illnesses are rarely identified by cause, there is plenty of room for cure confusion.

Elementary depression – having a single cause, for example, might have a dietary cause, a physical – bodily status cause, a mental cause, a spirit cause, a community cause or a toxic environmental cause. In each case, it is labelled a symptom, or where severe and prolonged, a disease of the mind. Each different cause requires a different type of cure.

In the theory of cure, a mind illness has a cause in the mind, in our beliefs, our memories, or our mental calculations. The cure might be to change the belief, dismiss the memory, or repair the mental calculation.

Depression might be caused by a fatalistic belief – perhaps that our spouse is unfaithful, or that we are going to die, or that some irrecoverable disaster has occurred. These causes are in the mind – and the cure is to health the mind.

A person who believes they are going to die might fall ill and die – unless they can change their beliefs, change their mind. The change needed might be simple, short term, when a natural positive attitude takes over, or it might need to be an intentional action, supported by ongoing commitment to the battle.

One of, perhaps the most common mental causes of illness is belief in ourselves and failure to believe in ourselves. When our belief in ourself is too strong, we might take excessive risks and become ill. Is this the cause of some cases of “tennis elbow,” where the cure is simply “stop doing that?”

Spirits

In the theories of healthicine and of cure, spirits are the driving forces of life. All living things have the spirits of life, the spirit to life, grow, learn reproduce, and evolve. When individual loses these spirits, it dies. When an individual dies, it loses the life spirits. Like all aspects of healthiness, healthy spirits exist on a gradation from very near to death to so powerful that they create illness. Healthy spirits are somewhere in-between. Workaholism and burnout are spirit illnesses – that can often lead to other illnesses as well. Burnout can be a one-time, status illness, cured by simple removal from the situation or rest – but might lead to suicide if not attended. Workaholism might cause less severe illnesses, but these are often more difficult to cure, because they require the maintenance of ongoing process cures.

Communities

We seldom think of our communities as a domain of illness causes – until it happens. What is the cause of spouse abuse? Elder Abuse? Child abuse? The illnesses that result are often cured with medical attention and healing – as if they are simply status injuries. But these illnesses, when they are systemic in a local community, can only be cured by changes to the community. Sometimes, a one-time cure, like a divorce or other separation is sufficient to cure. In other cases, if separation from the community is not possible, an ongoing cure may be required.

In addition, communities can be afflicted by illnesses. Is war an illness? Is peace the healthy cure? Or is “agreement to tolerate each other” an ongoing cure, one that requires ongoing maintenance by both sides? We can expand our understanding of illnesses and cures and benefit from increased understanding.

Environments

When a mining company dumps poisons into a river – many people (as well as plants and animals) might fall ill. Curing the individual cases is important, but the higher level cause must also be addressed. And a process cure might also be needed to ensure such events to not occur again and again.

There are many simpler environmental causes of illnesses – illnesses with environmental cures.

SAD – Seasonal Affective Disorder – can be caused by the absence of sunlight in winter. Many cases can be cured by simple daily exposure to a lamp that simulates sunlight. This cure can be viewed as a blend between the status cure and a process cure, because it provides daily relief that is no longer needed when spring comes and the sun improves our healthiness.

Summary

There are many healthiness cures, cures that are brought about by improving healthiness status or healthiness processes in our diet, body, mind, spirits, communities and environments.

Modern medicine ignores these cures – they are not “medical.” To study cure more effectively, more thoroughly, to learn to understand all cures for all types of illness, we need to begin with studies of the simplest, most common cures.

Health is the best medicine. Healthing is the best cure.

Note: Health is also the best preventative, but that’s another story.

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

* When Oxford’s online dictionary is queried for “healthiness” the response is: “Thank you for visiting Oxford English Dictionary To continue reading, please sign in below or purchase a subscription. After purchasing, please sign in below to access the content.”

What Does CURED mean?

admin — Thu, 06 Nov 2025 20:06:16 +0000

In theory, theory and practice are the same, in practice, they are not.” – unknown.

Theory of Cure

An illness consists of a set of present causes and the negative consequence of those causes.

An illness element consists of a single present cause and the negative consequences of that cause.

A cure is an action, or a set of actions, that addresses the causes of an illness, producing a cured state or status such that the negative consequences are no longer present.

Cured is the status of the illness after the cause(s) of an illness have been successfully addressed. The individual, the patient, is not cured. The illness is cured. It was present due to the intersection of cause and negative consequences. Now that the cause has been addressed, it is no longer present.

Cured

In the theory of cure, an element of illness is cured when its cause has been successfully addressed.

A compound illness has multiple present causes such that each cause must be addressed to produce a completely cured status. If an illness, seen as having multiple causes, is cured by addressing a single cause, it was an elementary illness.

A complex illness is present when one illness is causing another illness. Both the primary and the secondary illnesses must be cured for a complete cure. Often, curing the primary illness facilitates a healing or caring cure of the secondary.

Damage or injuries caused by the illness are independent illness elements, indicating a complex illness, which require multiple independent cure actions. Sometimes we cure the damage first and later address the cause – sometimes the reverse, sometimes we act to address both causes at once. Damage is often healed without conscious intent.

Cured takes time. Partially cured and temporary cured are not only possible, they are commonplace, as many causes of illness can only be addressed in stages.

There are three fundamental types of cures:

Healing cures are natural and occur without conscious attention, although they are often facilitated or aided by conscious actions. Healing is the first cure, present in all live entities, a part of development and growth, essential to survival and health.

Caring cures come from intentional actions by self and others, to improve healthiness, often without intentions to cure.

Intentional cures, both medical and non-medical, are a result of actions that intentionally address causes of illness.

Curative actions that are conscious and those that are unconscious can cause independent illnesses. These illnesses are often dismissed as “side effects.”

Illness, Disease, Sickness

Illness, sickness, and disease are independent terms.

Illness: In the theory of cure, illness is the condition to be cured, the condition the individual is suffering from, consisting of the cause and it’s negative consequences. Most cases of illness are minor, easily cured.

Disease: is a medical view. Diseases are defined by medical practitioners and medical systems. Disease statistics are compiled by diagnosis. A case of disease that is never diagnosed (most cases of disease are never diagnosed) does not exist in disease statistics – except when extrapolated hypothetically.

Modern medicine aims to “treat” diseases and makes no effort to track cases of disease cured statistically or scientifically. Most cases of illness are never diagnosed medically and their cured status cannot be tracked.

Sickness: is a community view. A community, or individuals in a community not only view illness and disease differently, they might identify illnesses where the patient feels no illness and no diagnosis is present. Sickness, and thus sickness cured is generally not a useful or scientific concept.

Cured: In Practice

Most cases of illness are elementary, having single causes and simple cures. Most cases of illness are cured easily, often without conscious awareness, although some cures take longer than others – especially healing of injuries.

Cured: In Modern Medical Practice

Most cases of cured are ignored. They do not require medical attention. This can be unfortunate, because it can distract us from causes and cures in minor cases, creating a failure to understand more difficult cured cases

Today, no modern medical system tracks cured cases of any illness or disease. No doctor, clinic, hospital, medical center or system, and no insurance company or industry tracks cured cases. Treatments and “success or failure” are tracked by practitioners in some cases, but are often poorly tracked or simply ignored. No medical insurance system pays for cured cases, much less paying attention to the quality and safety or risks of the cure.

What Means Cured?

In theory most cases of illness are easily cured, and most cases are cured.

In practice, most cases of illness are cured without medical attention.

In medical practice, most cases of illness can be considered incurable – because they cannot be cured by medicines or medical treatments. As a result “there is no cure for the common cold… (minor cuts and bruises, influenza, food poisoning, mumps, measles, COVID…)” – even though most cases are cured without difficulty.

Modern medicine generally avoids the word cured. As a result, the word cured has no medical nor scientific meaning in most cases of disease.

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

Why we die from Disease

admin — Mon, 27 Oct 2025 18:57:06 +0000

Why do so many die from non-deadly diseases? Most cases of disease are not fatal. Let’s look at a few, to round our understanding before we broach the question “Why do we die from disease?”

Three diseases, very different in nature -and provide a basis for studies of why diseases cause death.

Ischemic Heart Disease

Ischemic heart disease (IHD), also known as coronary artery disease, is the most common “cause of death” worldwide according to many sources. But coronary artery disease is not deadly: “Coronary artery disease (CAD) can reduce people’s life expectancy. However, this depends on various factors, including the severity of the condition, treatment efficacy, and whether the person has other underlying conditions.” – Medical News Today.

We don’t know if any cases of ischemic heart disease are cured, simply because cured is not defined for the disease. Mayo Clinic says “Explore Mayo Clinic studies testing new treatments, interventions and tests as a means to prevent, detect, treat or manage this condition.” The word cure does not appear.

COVID-19

According to the World Health Organization (the WHO) COVID-19 was the second highest cause of death worldwide in 2021. But most cases of COVID are not deadly, and many are so minor that they are not even diagnosed, much less treated. According to WorldMeters.org, less than 1% of diagnosed cases result in deaths. There are, of course, no statistics for undiagnosed cases of SARS-CoV-2 infections, although estimates are that half are not diagnosed, so there are no statistics of deaths either. Most cases of COVID-19 are cured.

Stroke

Stroke is listed as the third leading cause of death in 2021 according to the WHO. However, most cases of stroke are minor, Transient ischemic attacks (TIA), with symptoms only lasting a few minutes to an hour according to verywellhealth.com. Even with severe cases, according to Microsoft’s Copilot, “The prognosis for ischemic stroke varies significantly based on factors such as age, severity of the stroke, and timely treatment, with many patients experiencing long-term effects but some achieving full recovery.” eg. Most cases of stoke do not cause death. Most cases are cured.

Ischemic heart disease, COVID-19, and Stroke

These three diseases are very different in nature -and provide a basis for studies of why diseases cause death.

Ischemic heart disease is a chronic condition that gradually grows more severe and can eventually cause death, if death does not occur for other reasons. People “have” ischemic heart disease, which might be mild, moderate, or severe – rarely deadly.
Stroke is not an ongoing condition, it is an event that might be mild, moderate, ore severe, potentially being easily cured, or have lasting consequences, or death. But we say the patient “had a stroke,” not they “have a stroke,” and treat the damage, not the event.
SARS-CoV-2 infections are temporary conditions. In most cases, it is so easily cured in healthy patients. COVID-19 is a SARS-CoV-2 infection that is large enough, serious enough to be diagnosed as COVID.

On a case by case basis, for all three diseases – most cases are minor, fewer are of moderate severity, and very few are deadly, causing death. We count deaths, but cured cases of all three diseases are simply ignored. This image – without actual numbers – provides a useful model.

So why do these diseases cause death? First, we must understand that we all die of something eventually. What happens when someone dies? In every country, when someone dies, a doctor completes a medical death certificate and documents the cause of death for statistical purposes. The cause of death is usually a designated “disease.” Statistically, medically, bureaucratically, most of us die from “a disease.”

But, why do people die from diseases that are, in most cases, not serious? Is this true of every disease. We can find some clues in these three diseases.

Ischemic heart disease : “Coronary artery disease (CAD) can reduce people’s life expectancy. However, this depends on various factors, including the severity of the condition, treatment efficacy, and whether the person has other underlying conditions.” -Medical News Today. IHD is not an infectious disease.
Stroke: “risk factors such as obesity, smoking, excessive drinking and limited physical activity are all recommended against. Medical conditions such as type 2 diabetes, sleep apnea, high cholesterol and high blood pressure commonly increase one’s risk of stroke.” Stroke is not an infectious disease.
COVID: “Your risk of severe illness from COVID-19 increases as the number of your underlying medical conditions increases.” cdc.gov. COVID is an infectious disease.

Unhealthiness Increases Disease Severity

When our healthiness is high, we handle diseases, cure most diseases easily. When our healthiness is low, a disease that is normally trivial can be serious, even deadly. How does that happen?

This is true for both infectious diseases and non-infectious diseases.

Illness Causes Damage

The damage caused by an illness can range from minor, perhaps not even noticed in some cases, to deadly. The amount and severity of the damage depends on two factors:

Severity of Cause. A very minor bullet wound causes little damage. A more severe wound can cause rapid death. A small infection is generally easily cured. A larger infection, a more dangerous infectious agent, or set of infections can result severe injuries or death.
Duration of Cause. The longer the cause is present, the more damage is caused. Poor lifestyle choices – over a day, week, or month generally cause little damage, but when they last for years or decades, the damage can lead to IHD or stroke. Even a minor cause of illness can accumulate danger over time, resulting in injuries, illnesses, sequela, and possibly disability or death.

The faster an illness is cured – the less secondary illnesses, sequela, disability, and death will result. Treatments that do not address the cure cause generally prolong the illness allow more secondary illnesses, sequela, disability and death to occur.

Secondary Illness to Sequela

A secondary illness is an illness caused by an illness uncured. The longer an illness persists, uncured, the more likely it is to cause damage and further illnesses.

A sequela is an illness. It can be an injury, or other negative consequence of an illness, injury, trauma, disease – or medical treatment. An illness’ sequelae is the collection of negative consequences of an illness that persist – uncured. A sequela often persists after the primary illness has been cured.

When our healthiness is lower, it takes longer to cure a simple illness, and more illnesses and sequelae can result. What’s the difference between a secondary illness and a sequela? A sequela is often considered to be incurable. Most secondary illnesses, on the other hand, are curable – many are easily cured. We might get a cold, that causes pneumonia – but most cases of pneumonia are cured. The theory of cure’s tautology is “All curable illnesses can be cured.”

Secondary Secondary Illnesses

A secondary illness, uncured, can cause another illness and another illness and another illness. These secondary illnesses, by themselves might cause death – or the accumulated force of all the illnesses might result in deaths.

Few deaths have a single cause. Few deaths are caused by an elementary illness, because most elementary illnesses, most illnesses with a single cause are easily cured.

The Illness Danger Curve

When we study the illness curve, as it moves from minor illness to moderate illness, to deadly illness, in each case – we can see a progression of illnesses. The first, a minor illness might be cured – and most cases are cured. If it is not cured in sufficient time – a secondary illness often occurs, due to the signs, symptoms, and damage caused by the first illness.

This is true even for trivial illnesses.

The Common Cold

“The common cold is the most common human disease.” Wikipedia (the Reference linked by Wiki, says “is arguably the most common human disease”)
“The common cold is classified as an illness caused by viruses, but it is not considered a disease in the traditional sense, as it is usually harmless and self-limiting.” Microsoft AI

In the theory of cure, we speak about and study curable illnesses. The whether the common cold is a disease or not is left to the bureaucrats. The definition of DISEASE used in the theory of cure is trivial. A disease is any condition that a doctor might diagnose and treat. The common cold is a disease.

No one dies from the common cold.

The common cold can lead to many other illnesses and diseases. When someone dies from a common cold – the cause of death is the secondary illness, the sequela.

Let’s think about that.

when the common cold uncured leads to pneumonia and death, the cause of death is pneumonia uncured. The cause of death could be “failure to prevent” pneumonia.
when ischemic heart disease uncured leads to heart attack and death, the cause of death is is ischemic heart disease. The documented cause of death is based on “failure to prevent” ischemic heart disease.
when a stroke leads to death, death is usually rapid, directly caused by the severity of the stroke. When the stroke is deadly, cure is not possible, when the cure is trivial, we judge the stroke to be transient, not cured. When a stroke causes death, the death, the documented cause of death can be seen as “failure to prevent” the death.
when COVID-19 uncured leads to COVID-pneumonia, or ARDS (Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome, or organ failure, or a cytokine storm, the cause of death is judged to be COVID-19. The cause of death is “failure to prevent” the sequela of COVID, or failure to cure COVID in time to prevent the sequela.

Failure to prevent sequela is never cited as cause of death.

We use the same disease name for trivial cases, minor cases, moderate cases, and deadly cases. Most cases of every disease are trivial. Every disease has more trivial cases than moderate cases, more moderate cases than severe cases, more severe cases than deadly cases.

However:

Failure to cure is never cited as a cause of death.

We only die from trivial diseases when we fail to cure them.

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

Understanding Traditional Healing Cures

admin — Thu, 11 Sep 2025 15:22:19 +0000

Healing cures have two stages, the transformation and the recovery.

In the theory of cure, healing cures are defined as cures that result of the natural forces of life, which act to remove damage around a wound, and repair it. The concept of healing covers injuries to body, mind, spirits, and communities – each of which might suffer injuries.

However, many traditional – and some conventional medical practices use the word healing differently.

How might we reconcile these definitional differences?

The theory of cure defines a cure as an action that addresses the present cause of an illness. It recognizes and and distinguishes between three different types of cure actions: healing, caring, and curing. In the theory of cure:

Healing: is a transformational process occurs naturally, without conscious intention. Most healing is curative. Sometimes healing can be damaging or dangerous.

Caring: consists of community actions, by the afflicted individual, family and friends, and medical or non-medical caregivers, that address the signs, symptoms, negative consequences, and causes of illness. Most caring activities are not cures. When a caring act addresses a present cause of an illness, it is also a curing act.

Curing: consist of actions that intentionally address the present cause of an illness, producing a cured status. Curative actions cure, by definition – or they are not curative actions. Most curing actions are not medical because most cures are not medical. We have cured ourselves and others in our communities since life began – long before doctors and medical systems were invented.

Where do the healing arts like fasting, massage, Tai Chi, and others fit into this framework? Most of the healing arts have two cure elements. First, there is a transformation, second, a healing. The primary function of the art is transformation of the cause. Natural healing is expected to follow. The healing arts are not limited to curing the body. The healing arts operate and produce cures by addressing causes in all six domains: diet, body, mind, spirits, and communities.

dietary supplements, as well as tools and techniques to clear out toxic substances range from various diets from vegan to carnivore and many others, dietary supplements, to fasting in many forms, detoxification techniques, including chelation, activated charcoal cleanse, blood irradiation or cleansing therapies – which include medical techniques like dialysis.
actions to transform the body, which might accomplished by the individual, or be taught or coordinated through community: exercise, rest, stretching, laughter therapy, prayer, dance therapy, Pilades, earthing, holistic living, Alexander Technique, and martial arts like Tai Chi, Yoga, Qigong. These are rarely part of a medical process except in rehabilitation.
soft tissue and structural manipulations generally enacted by community members, often not recognized as medical professionals, massage by the individual or community members: massage therapy, chiropractic, osteopathic, Rieki, acupressure and acupuncture, kinesiology, therapeutic touch, Feldenkrais, hydrotherapy, bates eye therapy, and of course medical surgery and rehabilitation techniques.
techniques to develop or change mental or spirit processes including mind body linkages such as prayer, faith healing, autosuggestion, hypnosis and self-hypnosis, meditation, counselling, Feldenkrais as well as medical techniques like psychology and psychiatry.
community processes like groupwork – in many flavours, animal assisted therapy, attachment therapy, community prayer, dance therapy as well as psychological, psychiatric and sociologic therapy.

Of course there is considerable overlap between types of actions. In addition, most can be accomplished by the individual, by various caring others or communities and recognized medical communities in different situations or cases. There is also overlap between the changes made to mind, body, spirit, and communities in an effort to cure. Any change to the body might change the mind, spirit, and community processes, as does any change to mind, spirits, and communities.

Let’s look at a few of these techniques in framework of the theory of cure.

Bodily Surgery

Medical surgery is generally recognized as a curative process. Non-medical surgery only rarely. The surgeon causes a change, a transformation with some damage – and healing completes the cure, repairs the damage.

Surgery a damaging transformation. It’s not surgery when we cut our toenails. But, an ingrown toenail might be serious enough that it requires a damaging surgery. Healing completes the cure. Of course the surgeon in minor cases might be the patient, a friend or family member, or in serious cases a doctor or nurse. We rarely call surgery a “healing art” but a medical surgeon is in many ways an artist – every body is different, and every surgery requires a technical and an artistic process.

Many of the so-called alternative medical systems operate in similar surgical fashion.

Massage is a surgery of bodily tissues, muscles, tendons, fascia, and even specific organs. It might be done by a physical therapist, as part of a rehabilitation cure process, but there are many other massage practices, ranging from simply rubbing our injured muscle to sophisticated techniques like Thai massage, Therapeutic touch, chiropractic, osteopathic, acupressure and acupuncture, and kinesiology. Each of these techniques causes some bodily change, possibly even transformation or damage, which might also require healing processes to compete the cure. The transformation is a cure. Healing is a secondary curative transformation.

Natural and intentional stretching, and Bayes eye therapy, can cause transformations which sometimes require a healing process to complete the cure.

Nutrition and Anti-nutrition (detoxification)

Dietary changes can function in a similar fashion. When we fast, we aim to remove “negative flesh” and any damage that occurs will be repaired by healing during and after the fast is ended. Taking supplemental nutrition, when not available in the diet, is a process cure that must be maintained to maintain the cured status. On the other hand, taking large amounts of a substance or nutrient is often designed to cause a transformation which, after recovery and healing, completes a cure.

Although doctors sometimes prescribe fasting for specific medical purposes, like before a blood test, they have difficulty considering fasting to be a cure. But fasting often cures once healing completes the process. Doctors might prescribe folate supplements to pregnant mothers, again – they do not view these as cures. In theory of cure, if a deficiency exists and is successfully addressed – it’s a cure.

Detoxification techniques, including chelation, activated charcoal cleanse, blood irradiation cause transformation in the body, with the expectation that healing will recover the person’s health to a better status. Our medical systems often dismiss these techniques – even in cases where they cure.

Medically, cleansing therapies like dialysis are not viewed as “cures” because the process must be continued regularly. This is a failure to understand cure. Some cures are physical transformations – some are process transformations, required every day to maintain a healthy status, just as we must consume Vitamin C regularly after a scurvy cure to maintain the cured status.

Mind

Many “healing systems’” function by changing the mind or the spirits, sometimes even causing stress or damage – and healing completes the cure. Sometimes, the change to our mind is traumatic – and significant time is required for healing. In other cases, the mental change is minor, even a relief, and the healing is barely noticeable.

Psychological therapies aim to change the mind and the result is often a change to the body as well.

Techniques like prayer, faith healing, autosuggestion, hypnosis and self-hypnosis, meditation, counselling, Feldenkrais, and others function by making changes to minds and spirits, transforming them – facilitating healing of body, mind, and spirits.

Conclusion

Often, when we are ill, healing is blocked. A transformation of diet, body, mind, spirits, or communities is necessary to create a release and allow healing to work. We call many of these practices “healing arts.” In the theory of cure, they are caring arts. We might care for ourselves by changing our diet or our mind. And a curative healing follows. We might lift our spirits with rest, meditation, or yoga, or many other practices, giving body, mind, and spirit freedom to heal. When we care for ourselves, healing can enter and cure. Similar healing can occur when a caring person – a medical practitioner or not, cares for us.

Modern medical practitioners often dismiss these cures as “placebo effects.” However, when we look closely at placebo effects, they disappear. There is no scientific or medical test that can distinguish a real effect from a placebo effect – because placebo effects are real. The only thing that defines a specific placebo effect is the opinion of the doctor, not any scientific fact.

In the theory of cure, an illness consists of two elements, the blockage and the damage it causes and it requires two curative processes. When we release the blockage with a transformation, healing is necessary to complete the cure.

Sometimes, the cure is quick and sure. Other times, like physical rehabilitation from a serious injury, many stages of transformation and healing are necessary. We might easily give up, or decide that the effort, and the negative consequences are not worth the benefit. This too is a natural process, a natural decision.

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