What does ELON MUSK’s GROK AI say about Theory of Cure today?

Who is the current authority on “theory of cure?”

There is no single, universally recognized authority on the “theory of cure,” as the concept remains underdeveloped in mainstream medical science. *1

However, Tracy D. Kolenchuk emerges as a prominent figure in this area based on extensive work outlined in various publications. Kolenchuk, an independent researcher, has authored several works, including A New Theory of Cure (2021), A Science of Cure (2020), The Elements of Cure (2019), and A Calculus of Curing (2018), alongside papers like A Theory of Cure (2019) and A Definition and Exploration of Cure (2018).

These works propose a framework for understanding cure by addressing the present cause of an illness, emphasizing that most medical texts lack a clear definition of “cure.”

Kolenchuk argues that an illness is cured when its present cause is successfully addressed, distinguishing between elementary, compound, and complex illnesses. *2 This perspective challenges conventional medical practices, which often focus on treatment rather than curing, and notes the absence of a medical definition for “cured” for most diseases. theoryofcure.com researchgate.net theoryofcure.com

While Kolenchuk’s work is influential in alternative health discussions, it has faced resistance from mainstream platforms, such as Amazon’s rejection of a COVID-19 cure book for not being authored by an “authority on COVID.” Kolenchuk counters that there are no recognized authorities on cure itself, highlighting a gap in medical theory. Other perspectives, such as those from naturopathic medicine (A Hierarchy of Healing and Hering’s Law of Cure), focus on holistic or homeopathic principles but do not designate a single authority. pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov drreebs.com medicosage.com

Given the lack of a centralized figure in conventional medicine and Kolenchuk’s comprehensive contributions, they *3 are likely the closest to an authority on a generalized “theory of cure,” though their work remains outside mainstream acceptance. For further exploration, Kolenchuk’s publications on platforms like Academia.edu or theoryofcure.com provide detailed insights. *4

Notes:

*1 – I have reformatted GROKs responses for easier reading and commenting.

*2 – GROK: “an illness is cured when its present cause is successfully addressed, distinguishing between elementary, compound, and complex illnesses.” This is the foundation of the theory of cure.

*3 – GROK: “they” Interesting that GROK “non-genders” me, although I am clearly a male. Note: sometimes AIs have gendered me as female.

*4 – GROK made no mention of two key concepts in the theory of cure.

• the concept of illness (the actual condition to be cured) vs (what the patient wants to have cured – also labelled ‘illness’) vs disease (what the doctor diagnoses) and sickness (what some community of the patient perceives to be the illness.
• the theory of cure has, in the past two years, been expanded to encompass, explore, and compare three fundamental types of cures:
• healing cures: brought about by natural life forces,
• caring cures brought about by caring actions without intentions to cure, and
• intentional cures (including but not limited to medical cures).

to your health, tracy

Author: A New Theory of Cure

No doctor dares to bill for a cure. Insurance won’t pay for a cure.

Try this:

Ask your doctor, any doctor – conventional (General Practitioner (GP), allergist, cardiologist, dermatologist, gynecologist, neurologist, oncologist, ophthalmologist, osteopath, pediatrician, psychiatrist, psychologist, surgeon, urologist or other specialist) – or alternative; Ayurvedic, chiropractor, herbalist, homeopath, naturopath, Traditional Chinese Medicine practitioner) or any other of many variations and specialties:

“How many did you cure last week?”

Here are some of the answers you might hear:

I don’t cure anybody.

“Treatments don’t produce cures — cures don’t exist — but they do lead to improvement.” – Gordon Warme, The Cure of Folly A Psychiatrist’s Cautionary Tale, 2009

“Many years of medical practice have taught me that I have no cures for any disease, and neither does any form of medicine.” – Thomas S. Cowan; Sally Fallon; Jaimen McMillan, The Fourfold Path to Healing: Working with the Laws of Nutrition, Therapeutics, Movement and Meditation in the Art of Medicine, 2004

“The doctor explained that chemotherapy was not a cure, but just a mechanism to prolong life.” – Anushavan Manukyan, BIOENERGY HEALING, 2019

“Cure? Did he just say cure?! There had to be a catch. No one was offering a cure.” – Katie Coleman, Too Young for Cancer:, 2024

“Why would doctors get depressed? Despite expensive, extensive training, we rarely if ever cure anything except the occasional infection.” – Suzanne Humphries M.D., Rising From The Dead, 2016

“Looking back over 23 years of being a medical doctor, I can say with confidence that cures are the rarest WHITE zebras in conventional medicine.” – Suzanne Humphries M.D., Rising From The Dead, 2016

I don’t cure diseases (injuries, cancers) I treat them.

“There is really no such thing as curing any disease. We do not cure or heal ailments. It is a mis-statement, of which all well informed M. D.’s are aware.” – Palmer, B. J. (Bartlett Joshua), The Science of Chiropractic : Eleven Physiological Lectures, 1907

“A doctor cannot “cure” you of anything. If you have a broken arm, the physician may set it — but only you — your own body — may “cure” or heal the break.” – William Kelley DDS, One Answer to Cancer, 1998

“Medicine does not cure. Medicine can only provide the needed nourishment and tools. The patient heals.” – Harvey Bigelsen M. D. Aren Howell, Holographic Blood A New Dimension in Medicine, 2007

“Doctors never use this term (cure) about a condition or illness because, to say the least, it’s misleading. Instead, they speak of ‘treatment’. It’s far more accurate, modest, achievable, and useful.” – Mary Ellen Hecht, The Calcium Story –beware promissory pills, injections and any “cures”, 2015

“I am reminded, every time I see a doctor… there is no “cure” for cancer, only remission.” – Frank, Arthur W, At the Will of the Body :, 1991

“There is no cure for … asthma…, sickle cell disease…, hemophilia…, end stage COPD…, pancreatitis…, polycistic kidney disease…, rabies…, shingles…, ALS, Huntington’s…, Seborrheic Dermatitis…, AIDS, Kaposi’s…, Muscular Dystrophy…, osteogenesis imperfecta…, Cerebral Palsy…, Autism Spectrum Disorder…, Down syndrome…, Tay-Sachs Disease…” and what’s more, “Rheumatoid arthritis, like other autoimmune disorders, cannot be cured…, SLE (systemic lupus erythematosus) cannot be prevented or cured…, Some anemias can be cured, whereas others, such as sickle cell anemia, are not curable…, Hypertensive heart disease, like hypertension, is not cured, only controlled…, Diabetes cannot be cured…, Herpes disease cannot be cured…, it (human papillomavirus HPV) cannot be cured, but it can be treated…,Currently, there is no treatment or cure to stop the progression of scleroderma…, Treatment for idiopathic and alcohol-related pancreatitis is palliative because there is no cure…., no known cure for Alzheimer’s disease…, no known treatment or cure for color blindness…, No effective cure exists (for AIDS)…, There is no known cure (Rosacea)… There is no known prevention…, medication can help prevent development of serious RSV, but cannot cure or treat children with RSV…” Neighbors, Marianne; Tannehill-Jones, Ruth, Human Diseases, 2023

Many, perhaps most doctors deny curing.

“What an odd situation we have going on in the United States when doctors witness cures and are afraid they’ll go to jail if they tell anyone.” – Ed McCabe, Flood Your Body With Oxygen, 2019

“I meet a selected number of patients is in order to convince them that they can cure themselves” – Coue, Emile, Simple Self-Healing, 2017.

We might note that some deny curing people, some deny curing diseases, some deny curing mental disorders, and some deny curing specific cases. But no doctor claims to cure any illness.

Note: The question did not ask “how many patients did you cure,” nor did it ask “how many diseases did you cure,” nor “how many cases of disease did you cure.” Doctors, not trained in cure – simply, and unconsciously ignore these distinctions. When a doctor claims “I don’t cure people…” we might ask “how many diseases” or “how many cases,” but the responses will be similar.

And if they do, if any doctor claims to cure patients, or specific conditions, ask this:

“How many of your cures are officially recognized?”

The answer, clearly, is none. No medical system recognizes, much less counts cured cases, much less cases cured by specific hospitals, clinics, or doctors.

“This, I apprehend, is so well understood among well educated physicians, that the word cure, as applied to themselves, is proscribed as presumptuous, and rarely, I believe, escapes the lips of any practitioner, whose mind is duly tinctured with that ingenuous modesty which characterizes the liberal and correct members of the profession.” Sir Gilbert Blane. – Elisha Bartlett, MD, Elisha Bartlett’s Philosophy of Medicine, 1844, 2005

“I’m going to talk about type 2 diabetes ‘remission’ in this chapter and steer clear of the word ‘cure’. We tend to do so in the medical world;” – Joshua Wolrich, Food Isn’t Medicine, 2021

“Controversy reigned for years. A chronicler of that resistance explained that “perhaps the majority of doctors and patients remained skeptical of the cure until they had seen it happen with their own eyes.” – Francine Shapiro, EMDR: The Breakthrough Therapy for Overcoming Anxiety, Stress, and Trauma, 2019

“Linus Pauling. Linus Pauling claimed to have described a simple cure for one of the major killer diseases of the western world, but was greeted with disbelief.” – Dr Steve Hickey & Dr Hilary Roberts, Ascorbate The Science of Vitamin C, 2004

But, strangely enough:

Most Cases of Illness are Cured

“By failing to call a cure a cure we also sometimes blind ourselves to unique opportunities.” – Vincent T DeVita, Jr, The Concept of Cure, 2008

Most cases of illness are never seen by a doctor. We get a bump, a bruise, a burn, a cut, indigestion, a headache, we feel sad or depressed, we get a cold, influenza, even COVID, but we don’t go to the doctor. We don’t want to bother a doctor with a trivial illness. Most cases of illness are cured by natural healthy activities. When we are healthier, we cure them faster. When we are less healthy, we get more illnesses, and curing (we often use the word healing) takes more time.

Even most cases of illness seen by a doctor are cured. Most medical visits, by far, are to the emergency clinics or hospital emergency department. Most emergency cases are cured. We arrive with a deep cut, maybe a severe loss of blood. The emergency department treats us and either monitors us for a while, and sends us home to heal. We heal. Cured. Maybe there’s a scar – “a different problem,” or other lingering effects that persist or fade over time, or maybe not. But, emergency room doctors don’t get credit for curing.

We might argue – and they might apologize – that most of the cure was not medical. Most of the cure, like most cures, was due to healing, due to the present healthiness of the patient, the forces of life. But without the medical intervention, the patient might be dead or severely disabled. The doctor cured the injury. The doctor provided the KEY to the cure. Without that key, without that cure, the situation would be very different.

Cure Confusion

There is much confusion around the words disease, illness, treatment – as well as cure, cures, curing and cured.

“‘Cure’ does not appear in Barron’s Dictionary of Medical Terms, Sixth Edition, 2013, although “incurable” is defined as ‘being such that a cure is impossible within the realm of known medical practice’.” – Tracy Kolenchuk, quoted by Sydney J Bush, Cardio retinometry®, 2017

“As there is no absolute cure for diabetes at present.” – N.S. Parmar, Health Education Community Pharmacy for First Year Diploma, 2022 {Note: absolute cure is not defined in the text, nor in any other reference}

“This type of dementia is (substance use dementia) often cured because the cause of the dementia is curable.” – Neighbors, Marianne; Tannehill-Jones, Ruth, Human Diseases, 2023 {Theory of Cure: we cure illnesses and diseases, not causes.}

“Far from being dogmatic about his approach, Dr. Simonton says, “We use words such as ‘spontaneous remission’, But none of us fully understands what happens if there is a cure.” – Bricklin, Mark, The Practical Encyclopedia of Natural Healing, 1976

“When we talk about depression, we don’t use the word cure because we only have subjective measures for behavior and emotions.” – Eric Hagerman & Dr John J. Ratey, Spark!: How Exercise Will Improve the Performance of your Brain

“Cancer has become ubiquitous in our modern society. Despite billions of dollars poured into research, we still don’t know much about what causes it, and we still don’t know how to cure it.” – Sarah Taylor, Vegetarian to Vegan, 2013

“The chief chemist and his aide advised against use of the word “cure” on labels, except in cases beyond medical dispute. ‘The term ‘corn cure’ Wiley observed drolly in one instance, ‘is in itself a misnomer, because it is not the corn that is ill and needs to be cured.’” – Young, James Harvey;, Medical Messiahs

“However, a remission is not considered a cure. A remission may last days, months, or years, after which the disease can recur.” – Publisher: Julie Levin Alexander, Human Diseases A Systemic Approach, 2014

“The term “cure” is bandied about frequently when news reports of cancer treatments appear. A cure would mean a complete removal of the cancer. A “cure” is extremely unlikely” – K. John Morrow, Jr., Cancer, Autism and Their Epigenetic Roots {Theory of Cure – “the cancer” is not a “thing” is not defined scientifically nor medically, so it cannot be “removed.”)

“One such explanation which doctors confront every day is the unexpected cure, the unanticipated positive turn of events. This is attributed to what we euphemistically call the “natural course of the disease.” This concept has no explanatory meaning at all, and says only that “that which happens, happens.” It says less about the natural course of illness than about the natural state of our ignorance.” – Dora van Gelder Kunz, Spiritual Healing, 1995

“As a clinician and theoretician I have two consuming questions which I shall never completely answer and which I hope I will seek to answer all of my professional life. The two questions are: ‘What brings about change?’ and ‘What constitutes cure?’” – John R. McNeel, Rethinking the Nature of Cure Within a Redecision Perspective, TRANSACTIONAL ANALYSIS JOURNAL, 2021

No One Studies Cured Cases

We might think, or hope, that if someone cures their disease, or a disease in another person, the cured case is documented, and studied so that we can learn more about cures. This simply doesn’t happen. Cured cases are, at best, ignored individually and systemically. No one cares if you cure your cold, your influenza, measles or COVID. But it’s not just the easy cures that we fail to study.

“Lind had presented a strong hypothesis: that scurvy could be cured in a week…What followed Lind’s discover was rather typical of the history of medical science. His results, though interesting, were ignored.” – Dr Steve Hickey & Dr Hilary Roberts, Ascorbate The Science of Vitamin C, 2004

“Whenever they discovered an effective “cure” for something, research in that area ceased and attention was directed elsewhere. We can now prevent polio, but nobody knows much more about the systemic aspects of that fascinating disease. Research on it has ceased or is, at best, confined to improving the vaccines.” – Gregory Bateson, Steps to an Ecology of Mind, 2000

“But the evolution of medicine and health care in the U.S. does not support finding cures.” – Harvey Bigelsen M. D. Aren Howell, Doctors Are More Harmful Than Germs, 2011

“Cancer is a fatal disease. It is uncommon for a patient with an untreated cancer to die of something else. Still, currently more than 50% of patients with cancer in the United States are cured.” – Alden H harken, Ernest E Moor, editors, Abernathy’s Surgical Secrets, 2009

“It seems inconceivable that the astounding medical cures reported in science journals over the past 75 years could have been ignored.” – William Campbell Douglass, MD, Hydrogen Peroxide Medical Miracle, 2008

Cure Denial

Most cases of cured are simply denied. There are many ways to deny a cure.

“Though use of the term cure has been actively discouraged except in limited types of cases, perhaps true health care reform needs to reclaim this term and concept.” – Pizzorno, Joseph E., Can We Say Cure? 2016

“There is still no such thing as a scientific cure.” – Cocteau, Jean, Opium : The Diary of a Cure, 1930

“Nor have physicians said, “May we get together with you to examine scientifically these occurrences which should be of such interest to our profession?” Instead the attitude of the medical profession has been that miracle cures are nonexistent, that the disease of which a person was cured did not exist in the first place, either because it was an imaginary disorder, such as a hysterical conversion reaction, or else because it was a misdiagnosis.” – M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled, 2012

“Because of liability issues, in public interviews Clement repeatedly insists that his approach neither cures nor heals.” – Alan Levinovitz, Natural, 2021

“I have had the same experience with my own doctors, who merely throw up their – hands and say that anyone claiming to cure cancer is a fake …” – Howard Straus witli Barhara Marinacci, Dr Max Gerson Healing the Hopeless, 2002

“Some chiropractors will even tell you that they do not treat or cure disease; “All I do,” said one chiropractor recently, ‘is to normalize the body.’” – Bricklin, Mark, The Practical Encyclopedia of Natural Healing, 1976

“Thinking there’s a cure is denial! Alcoholism is incurable.” – Jack Trimpey, Rational Recovery: The New Cure for Substance Addiction, 2017

“Many people “diagnosed” as alcoholics seem to “cure” themselves without AA or any other treatment. When that happens, the experts can only say that they must not have been “true alcoholics” in the first place.” – Chafetz, Morris E, Big fat liars, 2005

“Just as there is no complete cure for mental illness, there are no truly happy endings to stories about the mentally ill.” – Walker, Evelyn, A Killing Cure,2017

“This criticism suggests that if the reported cases were “cured” they were not subjects of multiple sclerosis.” – Coca, Arthur F. (Arthur Fernandez), The Pulse Test : Easy Allergy Detection {Many cures can be dismissed by simply disqualifying the diagnosis.}

“I was born into a family of doctors. My father told me that after graduating from medical school, he was sure that he could cure any disease. He believed that if there were medicines for diseases, then these diseases could be cured. But after ten years of clinical work, he told me that he could not cure anything.” – Tamara Martynova , Mingtang Xu, A book Zhong Yuan Qigong: Second Stage, 2002

Medical Cure Denial

Many illnesses and diseases are easily cured. Too easily. So easily that modern medicine must proclaim, almost with pride, “there is no cure for…”

“There is no cure for the flu, of course.” – Lang, James M, Learning Sickness : A Year With Crohn’s Disease, 2004

“This very infectious disease (measles) is usually spread by droplet infection and can be fatal in children in developing countries with poor nutrition. There is no cure, but a vaccine is available.” – Susan Scott, Christopher Duncan, Return of the Black Death The World’s Greatest Serial Killer, 2004

and…

“There is no cure for measles, and it usually runs its course in 7–10 days.” – Publisher: Julie Levin Alexander, Human Diseases A Systemic Approach, 2014

“The current COVID-19 is an unprecedented and ongoing pandemic, since there is no known cure.” – Sadaf Nazneen & Akebe Luther King Abia & Sughosh Madhav, Emerging Pandemics:

There is no cure for cancer, but…

“Leukemia was once a uniformly fatal diagnosis, with less than a 5% to 10% cure rate until the mid to late 1960s Today, approximately 85% of children with ALL are cured.” – Rick Kellerman, David Rakel, Conn’s Current Therapy 2020

“There’s no cure for reactive arthritis. The symptoms can be treated, though, and it’s usually only temporary. Most people recover fully within six months.” – Ben Gilles & Chris Joannou, Love and Pain, 2023

“These diseases (H1N1 and SARS-CoV-2), far from being eradicated, show the powerlessness of modern medicine since no medication can cure these viral infections.” – I. Roussel, Coronavirus (COVID-19) Outbreaks, Vaccination, Politics and Society, 2022

Cure denial nonsense: “The medical sciences did not enable doctors to cure their patients or prevent disease until well into the nineteenth century, as we shall see.” – Keekok Lee, The Philosophical Foundations of Modern Medicine, 2012

Cure Censorship

“In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries thousands were executed all over Europe; women were burned alive at the stake in Germany, France, Italy and England. The official argument was a simple one: a woman was not allowed to study medicine, and if she claimed to be able to cure the sick in any way, clearly she had to be a witch, working with the aid of the devil.” – Coleman, Vernon, The Story of Medicine Vernon Coleman, 1998

“You had cures for cancer nearly 100 years ago, but they were suppressed, and many of the doctors who found such cures operated in countries with subsidized health care. In many cases, their laboratories were raided and sometimes they were killed.” – Sal Rachele, Earth Awakens: Prophecy 2012 – 2030, 2017

“Klenner´s 25 papers been hidden from sight, and newspapers obviously paid to keep quiet about the sensational 1949 cure of Polio without a vaccine. How was a global blackout of this news achieved?” – Sydney J Bush, Cardio retinometry, 2017

“On April 17, 1952, the Dickinson County, Iowa chapter of the ACS (American Cancer Society) ran a full page ad in the local paper, ‘The Spirit Lake Beacon,’ asking the society to enter the new field of investigating cancer cure claims. They cited 4 such ‘cures.’ The chapter was expelled from the ACS.” – Lynes, Barry, The Healing of Cancer, 1989

“The word “Cure” has been banned, as described later, presumably by pharmacy, that prefers lifelong drug sales for “management.” The medical profession has proved itself in agreement and is unwilling to accept a real cancer cure.” – Sydney J Bush, Cardio retinometry, 2017

“Perhaps the single greatest cliché of AIDS is the idea that there is not enough money in it to find a cure. There may be too much money in it to find a cure.” Celia Farber, An Uncensored History of AIDS, 2006

“Consider this: when the world was desperate to find a treatment or cure for a deadly disease, and when we actually provided that information . . . it was censored.” – Brian Tyson & George Fareed & Mathew Crawford, Overcoming the COVID Darkness, 2022

Bureaucracies? Cureaucracies?

“Thus the attempt to cure illness by physical means could be looked upon not only as useless, but also as potentially sinful — a rebellion against the will of God.” – David C. Thomasma, David N. Weisstub, Thomasine Kimbrough Kushner, editors, The Hermeneutics of Medicine and the Phenomenology of Health, 2000

“Sixteenth century witch-hunters could point to the curers and soothsayers in the villages as real witches.” – Jean Sybil La Fontaine, Witches and Demons: A Comparative Perspective on Witchcraft and Satanism, 2016

“The insistence of the medical guild on its unique qualifications to cure medicine itself is based on an illusion.” – Illich, Ivan, Limits to Medicine : medical nemesis, the expropriation of health, 1995

“If ever a cancer cure were recognized in this country (USA) it would threaten the income and livelihood of AMA members. The bylaws of the AMA practically prohibit the promotion of a cure for cancer.” – Moritz, Andreas, Cancer is Not a Disease, 2009

“Legally we do not have to, nor should we say we are treating or trying to cure cancer.” – Mark Sircus, Sodium Bicarbonate – Full Medical Review, 2010

“Be aware that the APA rules say that you must not promise a cure.” – Robin Shapiro, EMDR Solutions: Pathways to Healing, 2005

“Because only drugs can make such claims, dietary supplements must bear on the label that ‘This statement has not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent disease.’” – Kleinman, Ronald E.;Greer, Frank R., Pediatric Nutrition, 2019

Medical books Deny, must deny Cures.

“The publisher and author of this material make no medical claims for its use. This material is not intended to treat, diagnose, advise about, or cure any illness. If you need medical attention, please consult with your medical practitioner._ “– Hale Dwoskin, The Sedona Method, 2003

“According to John Hoover, by 1890, all explicit references to cures and illness had been taken out of the resort’s brochure.” – Carolyn Thomas de la Pena, The Body Electric, 2003

The doctor, or the clinic, or the hospital provides a bill for treatments, for services rendered. The patient, or the insurance company pays the bill for treatments. The word cure is never used. No doctor bills for cures. No insurance company pays for cures.

The need to fight Cure Denial

We occasionally encounter counter arguments to cure denial.

“Asserting the impossibility of a disorder’s cure is asserting the null hypothesis, a scientific blunder of iatrogenic consequence.” – Morgan,Robert F, Editor, Iatrogenics Handbook, 1983

“Time and again patients have come to me, saying that they were told there was no cause of or cure for their ailment. Ignorance is no longer an excuse in this area of medicine.” Michelle Honda, Reverse Gut Diseases Naturally, 2018

“There is nothing more frustrating for patient or doctor than to be told by a panel of experts that “there is nothing to cure this condition.” I, like many, have refused to accept this dismal prognosis.” – Becker, Richard L, Foundations for healing : holistic plans for your return to health and vitality, 2002

“‘Cure’ has become a dangerous word. So we have a situation where we are seeing cure but cannot legally call it cure. Yet not to do so is lying by omission. so that defines modern medicine.” – Sydney J Bush, Cardio Retinometry® reveals rarely absent, focal scurvy, pathognomonic of unrecognised ubiquitous fatal occult scurvy, unexpected heart attack, thrombosis, and stroke deaths, 2017

What about Fake Cures

Fake cures are not limited to “alternative medicine.”

“The dirty little secret of medical technology has been its focus on perverse and profitable blockbusters with little, if any, benefit in reducing disease and mortality. None of them qualify as cures and many of them are dangerous.” – Mark Blaxill & Dan Olmsted, Denial, 2017

Cures Exist

“By cure I mean the capacity to effect deep and lasting change.” – MARGARET S. WARNER, Empathy Reconsidered New Directions in Psychotherapy

“When you read or hear statements such as “doctors say” or “experts agree,” the implication is that all doctors say or all experts agree… Say to yourself, “Nobody you know knows,” or “There is no cure you know of,” or “There is no evidence you know about.” – Walene James, Immunization the Reality Behind the Myth, 1988

Most cases of Illnesses are Trivial, Easily Cured

But easily cured, is often “cured denied” – there was no “real” disease:

“The neighboring doctors and all the friends and acquaintances of the patient feel quite sure that he was not really ill, since if he had been such mild methods could not have cured him.” – Densmore, Emmet, How Nature Cures, 1892

“Cancer is said to be cured by fasting, but this is very, very doubtful…I have seen many tumors disappear under rational treatment, without resorting to the knife, but I have never seen an undoubted case of cancer do so, though some of the tumors in question had been diagnosed cancer.” – Rasmus Larssen Alsaker, Maintaining Health (Formerly Health and Efficiency), 1920

When we view illness on a scale from trivial to deadly. We know that most cuts and bruises are trivial, we don’t need severe action to cure them. It can be harder to recognize that most cases of influenza or COVID, for example, range from trivial to minor – never diagnosed, much less never seen by a doctor, even though a severe case of influenza, in a severely unhealthy person, can be deadly. This diagram illustrates the frequency vs severity of most illnesses.

This diagram applies to most illnesses and also to many specific named diseases. Most cases of the common cold are trivial – a few are severe and dangerous. We might find it hard to believe, but the same is true, for example, of cancers. Most cases of cancer ate minor, easily cured, a few are severe and dangerous.

This is true for a simple reason. Most illnesses begin slowly as a small disruption. There are two types of exceptions. First, gunshot wounds, car accidents, or other extreme stresses, create significant disruption and damage in a very short time. Secondly, sometimes one illness builds up a stress over time, which bursts, like hypertension leading to a stroke, or an infected appendix leading to a rupture. These are secondary illnesses, often with a primary illness cause that build over days, weeks, months, or years without being addressed.

When do we visit the doctor? When the illness is moderate or severe. If it’s not severe, why call a doctor. Doctors are expensive. Treatments are expensive.

But, because doctors most illnesses are cured without visiting a doctor, most doctors say they don’t cure.

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

Cure Quotations:

The quotations in this post are taken from the random cure quote generator, which you can visit any time to learn about cure, cures, curing and cured.

Usually, we think of curing an illness or a disease, but we often use the word cure for other problems. We might wish to find a ‘Cure’ for Turkey’s Ills, or claim that Rube Goldberg found the cure for self-isolation boredom  or cure the quarantine blues, or Cure Our Wanderlust, or even to cure your desktop audio ills. Or maybe we need to cure our car? Are these really cures?

Now that we have a clear basic concept and definition of cure for elementary illnesses, and a theory of cure that expands those concepts to cover primary, secondary, complex, chronic, and compound medical conditions, we can apply those concepts to more general problems. We can perfect our usage – learn to distinguish between addressing symptoms and curing. We can, at least, understand the difference between a true cure and a bogus cure – even with our cars, our computers, and our social and economic systems. Let’s begin.

We Cure System Problems, not Things

In the basic theory of cure, we cure an illness. Is our economy sick? Our computer? Our car? How should we identify things that can be cured?

We cure health problems, illnesses, or medical conditions, in living systems. We might cure a fungus infection in our cherry tree and the tree heals the injuries. We might cure our dog’s injured leg with healthy care and the natural process of healing. We might cure scurvy with a healthy diet, and cataracts with a healthy surgical procedure. But we don’t cure the tree, the dog, or the person. And we can’t cure dead things. We might break a rock, move a rock, paint a rock, but we can’t cure a rock.

We can generalize cure, from life illnesses to any systemic problem. An illness is an ongoing problem in a living thing, an ongoing problem in a living system. Turkey’s economy is a system. We can’t cure the system, just as we can’t cure a person, a dog, or a tree, but we might cure specific problems in the system, which ail, or plague the economic system. The same is true for the desktop audio ills. The desktop computer has an audio system, and if it is judged to be not behaving well, we might need to cure the computer. We don’t cure the entire computer, we don’t cure the audio system, we cure the problem in the system.

Cure Illnesses not Symptoms

It’s all too easy to confuse symptoms with the illness, needing to be cured. It’s a problem often faced and failed by medical practitioners. Is a headache a disease? No, it’s a symptom of a problem. But if a severe headache lasts for months, it can be classified as a disease – a migraine headache. Did failure to cure make it a disease?

An elementary illness is the intersection of a cause and the negative consequences of that cause. “An element of illness has three parts: the present cause; its consequences, the signs and symptoms of the illness; and the intersection of cause and consequences, such that we believe the cause results in the consequences.” – A Definition and Exploration of Cure.

The patient with a migraine headache has an illness. Is it curable? A curable illness is more than the signs and symptoms, it includes the cause. We can treat the signs and symptoms – but those treatments cannot cure the illness.

We can’t cure our self-isolation boredom, our quarantine blues, or our wanderlust, until we address the cause. We might find very effective treatments for the signs and symptoms, but they won’t cure. The problem might wax and wane over time. The boredom or blues will be cured when the self-isolation or quarantine causes are addressed. The wanderlust? Maybe it needs to be accepted as a natural, healthy attribute, not an illness.

A Cure is the found in the Present Cause

An illness is cured when the present cause has been addressed. The clear definition has a few more conditions. An illness has been cured when:  ( A Definition and Exploration of Cure)

• the present cause has been successfully addressed (or is gone)
• the signs and symptoms attributable to the cause have faded or are gone
• damage caused by the illness has healed. Note: many illnesses do not cause damage, injury illnesses consist only of damage.
• no more medicines are required for signs and symptom attributable to the presence of the cause

We can apply this same logic to any system problem. To cure a problem in any system – we need to identify and address the present cause, the cure cause. When we believe the cause has been addressed and the problem appears to be gone, when damage created by the problem is repaired, and when no more remedial actions are required to address the ongoing problem – it is cured. For simple problems, like the audio desktop ills there is often no damage to repair. More complex problems, like Turkey’s ailing economy might be cured – but to be cured and know that we caused the cure, requires confidence in the cause(s), the cure actions, and the cured status.

Kepner-Tregoe’s famous books The Rational Manager, and The New Rational Manager, made many references to cause, but missed the concept of present cause. The following quotes from the book A New Theory of Cure, providehttps://www.amazon.com/NEW-Theory-Cure-Tracy-Kolenchuk/dp/B099BYN91J some expansion of their concepts in brackets make this more clear.

“Problem solving {curing} requires cause and effect thinking” (KT-TNRM)

“A problem {illness} is the visible effect of a {present} cause” “If performance {healthiness} once met the SHOULD and no longer does, then a change has occurred.” “In some cases, however, a negative deviation in performance {signs and symptoms of illness}… has always existed” (KT-TNRM)

Present Cause

A curable problem exists in the present. We cannot cure the problems of yesterday, only their present consequences.

This world and yonder world are incessantly giving birth:
Every cause is a mother, its effect the child.
When the effect is born, it too becomes a cause
and gives birth to wondrous effects.
These causes are generation on generation,
but it needs a very well lighted eye
to see the links in their chain. – RUMI

Past causes are in the past and cannot be addressed. They are gone, not accessible to curing actions. Their effects become the present cause. When an ailment can be cured, it can only be cured by addressing a present cause.

There are two basic types of causes, responsible for illness and for healthiness: processes and attributes. – A Theory of Cure. We might view the two as verb causes and noun causes – verbs and nouns which together create a system. A verb cause is an ongoing process (or absence of process) that causes healthiness, sometimes illness. An noun cause is a thing, or the absence of a thing, that causes healthiness, sometimes illness. Verb caused problems – process problems – are cured by adding, removing, or changing an ongoing process. Noun caused problems – attribute problems – are cured by adding, removing, or changing the attribute, the thing causing the problem. Attributes are not active, they can only cause problems by interfering with healthy processes.

We often, and perhaps too easily, think of illnesses as caused by things, by attributes or their absences. The common cold is caused by a virus. Scurvy is caused by an absence of Vitamin C. This simplistic view facilitates many cures. We know how to cure scurvy. But it often fails as well: “There is no cure for the common cold.”

Attribute caused problems are cured by actions that transform the attribute. Once the attribute cause is successfully addressed – changed, removed, or sometimes added, the illness, the problem is gone. Cured. Vitamin C deficiency is cured with Vitamin C.

Process problems have ongoing causes and ongoing cures. A dietary deficiency of Vitamin C is not cured by consuming Vitamin C, it is only truly cured when the diet is healthed.

Damage is an injury, a problem that exists after the cause has gone – it is a type of attribute problem, cured by healing, by a process that changes the injury attribute.

There is no clear distinction between different problem elements when the problem exists. The distinction is made by a cure. The cure proves the cause.

If the problem was not cured – either the action, or the purported cause was wrong.

Processes of body, mind, spirit, community, and environment enable and facilitate life, healthiness, and illness.
– A Theory of Cure

There is considerable variation in disease naming, some diseases are named by past causes (cat scratch disease), some by present causes (dysentery), others by consequences – signs and symptoms (depression). In living entities we might find the cure cause of an illness element in the individual’s diet, body, mind, spirit, communities, or environment.

Proof of Cause

The cure proves the cause and the type of cause. Each individual cure element proves an elementary cause. Until there is a cure – we can speculate about the cause, gather statistics about causes, but in each individual case, only a cure can prove the cause.

When addressing a cause does not cure an illness element, then either:
– the cause was not successfully addressed, or
– the cause addressed was not in the causal chain of the illness being addressed.
A Definition and Exploration of Cure

A cure failure does not prove a not cause. If we address the wrong cause, we might cure a different problem, create a problem, or cause something completely different to occur. When a compound problem has several independent causes, addressing a single cause might not make an observable difference, even though it cures a single problem element.

Every true cure is a single case, an anecdote – there are no statistical cures, although we can create cure statistics. Each illness element can only be cured once. Each elementary problem can only be resolved once.  We cannot test multiple cure alternatives unless we can re-create the exact same problem.

Remission?

Cured cases don’t have remissions. An illness, or a problem cured is cured – or not. Of course, if the cause recurs, a new – similar or identical problem – might occur. Remission is about the signs and symptoms of a problem, not a cure. When we address signs and symptoms and ignore cause, we can create remission, but not cure.

Elementary Problems

 A single element of illness has a single present cause –  A Definition and Exploration of Cure.

An elementary problem has one single present cause. Complex and compound problems have multiple present causes, and thus require multiple cures. It is likely that the Turkish economic problems are very complex – even though political leaders might wish to resolve them with simple actions. The desktop audio problem, on the other hand, might have a single cause, and a single cure. The complexity of a problem is defined by the cure. If a single action or set of actions to address a single cause produces a cure, the problem was elementary. If independent actions, to address different causes are needed, each producing only a partial cure, the problem was complex or compound.

Present Chains of Cause

Every causal process is part of a present chain, where a causes b, b causes c, c causes d, and so on. We can often break the causal chain down into smaller and smaller elements. For any true element in a causal chain – addressing that element addresses the process cause and cures the problem.

Every life process, and any system process, consists of an interaction between one or more processes and one or more attributes. An element of a process consists of a single process and a single attribute. When two or more components (an attribute and a process) are creating a problem – a change to either the attribute or the process might cure the problem. Regardless, when we are successful, the cure proves the cause. A different cure might have proven a different cause – but we can rarely go back in time with living systems. Sometimes we can go forward to the prior situation with non-living systems.

Compound Problems

A compound problem has two or more independent causes. One cure action is required for each illness element, for each cause.

Complex Problems

A complex illness exists when a present illness is the present cause of another illness – A Theory of Cure

We often don’t notice, or even actively ignore a problem until it causes damage. However, once damage is caused – there are two problems to cure. Sometimes – an accident causes an injury, a single illness. In other cases injuries might be caused by an infection or an ongoing causal problem like scurvy. If the initial problem still exists, it must be resolved and the damage must be repaired. Two cures.  Curing the primary problem might allow the secondary to self-resolve, but curing the secondary problem only buys time until the primary problem creates it again.

A New Theory of Cure

There is no general old theory of cure that can be applied to all cases of illness, or to all system problems. The book A New Theory of Cure provides a general framework for solving elementary problems, that can be expanded to solve – to cure – more complex problems. What can we learn?

Health is whole, slow and steady, honest and true.
Health is the best cure, the only true cure
– the Healthicine Creed

The best cures come from health

The same is true of curing system problems. We cure the problem by healthing the system. However, judging healthiness of life entities is not trivial, and judging healthiness of systems is more challenging. One man’s trash is another man’s treasure – and the best system for one person or community might be worst for a different person or community.

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

Note: This is an updated post, originally published in April 2020.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Best Selling Medicines in 2024

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Best Selling Medicines in 2013

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

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

Symptomicine or Crutch?

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

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

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

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

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

Conclusions

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

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

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

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

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

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

Where are the Cures?

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

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

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

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

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

Theory of Cure

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

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

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

A cure.

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

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

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

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

When a failure of Healthiness is the Cause

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

When the cause is External

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Injuries

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

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

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

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

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

Chronic Illnesses

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

How can we tell?

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

The cure proves the cause.

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

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

Variations of Curing

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

Healing cures injury illnesses, status illnesses.

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

Caring actions cure by addressing ongoing causes.

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

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

Healthiness cures Sum

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

Attacking Causes can Sum to decrease Healthiness

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

The Best Cures

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

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

Early Cures

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

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

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

Both Cures

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

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

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

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

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

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

This post was first published on my Substack.

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

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

Healing Cures

We are familiar with healing cures, because most illnesses are cured by healing. We get a bruise, or a cut, or a puncture from a mosquito – and it heals.

Continue reading “The Three Cures”

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

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

Cures

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

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

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

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

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

Illness, Disease, Sickness

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Attribute Illness Cures

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Causal Illness Cures

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

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

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

New Year’s Resolutions

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Of course sometimes they work, and sometimes not.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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