A NEW Theory of Cure

There is one kind of cure that is largely invisible to current medical theory and practice. How can a cure be invisible?

There are exactly two fundamental types of cures, based on cause – attribute cures and causal cures. Current conventional and alternative medical theories only recognize attribute cures.

Causal cures are invisible.

Attribute Cures

What’s the difference between an attribute cure and a causal cure?

All cures are transformations. There is sometimes debate about curing the patient, the disease, or even the symptoms. Many medical theories see the patient as transformed to cured.

An illness consists of its present cause and it’s ongoing consequences. The present cause is the cause that is presently, causing signs, symptoms, and damage. It is the cause which, when successfully addressed – transformed – the illness has been cured. Of course, the actual cure process might take time to complete and heal.

The present cause of the illness is transformed and the illness is cured. – we had a cut, now it’s gone. Healed – a form of cure. We had a cold, now it’s gone. Cured. We were depressed – now we’re upbeat. Cured. An attribute cure occurs when we transform an attribute, or noun cause of an illness to produce a cure.

Surgery modifies, transforms, – cures – a cleft lip. Our immune system kills and removes the bacteria causing an infection. An addition of supplemental Vitamin C cures the scorbutic state by addressing, removing the Vitamin C deficiency.

Causal Cures – invisible

Cure: “To remedy or eradicate, to cure a bad habit” (Funk and Wagnel, 1989)
Cure: “To get rid of or counteract (an ailment, evil, bad habit, etc.)” (Merriam-Webster, 1997)

What is a causal cure? A causal cure is a process cure. It occurs and continues to exist when we transform a process. A causal cure, a process cure, is ongoing – not a one-time action. A process transformation must be maintained – to maintain the cure. Causal cures are works in progress – like life.

A process that is causing illness might be modified by adding, changing, or removing some aspect of the process to produce a cure. When we change an attribute in the process – that’s an attribute cure. When we change the process, it’s a causal cure. A causal cure requires ongoing maintenance of the change.

Causal cures are preventative cures

When we are not ill, preventative cures prevents illness. After we are cured, they must be maintained to prevent illness. When we are ill – they cure. But, we must not confuse a causal cure with statistical preventatives, like seat belts, or bike helmets, that do not cure. When we are sick, cures are better than non-curative preventatives.

Let’s look deeper into scurvy.

The scorbutic state of scurvy is cured with supplemental Vitamin C. However, Vitamin C does not address the cause of the scorbutic state. The cause is usually a process, not a Vitamin, not an attribute.

When the patient has a temporary Vitamin C deficiency or scurvy, Vitamin C supplementation will cure. When a baby has scurvy because the foods they are eating don’t contain Vitamin C, supplemental Vitamin C cures – later, their dietary processes change, providing the permanent cure.

However, when a patient has scurvy because they are alcoholic or addicted to drugs, or too old, or too poor to buy, prepare, and eat health healthy foods, supplemental Vitamin C will not cure. Not only that – those patients probably have other nutritional illnesses as a result of poor diet. Vitamin C cannot cure these either.

An addict suffering from scurvy has two illnesses:

• the scorbutic state is a simple illness, easily cured when supplemental Vitamin C addresses the present cause.
• the ongoing dietary deficiency of Vitamin C caused by the addiction.

A cure of scurvy, in an addict, requires an attribute cure – to transform the scorbutic state – and also a causal cure – that ensures the patient’s diet improves on an ongoing basis. Our current medical theory ignores the causal cures. They’re invisible.

Any illness with an ongoing cause can only be cured with causal cure. We might transform the illness state – but it will often reoccur. Many chronic diseases are what we call lifestyle diseases, caused by faulty life processes. The only cure is to transform the faulty process, an ongoing cure, a causal cure.

In our current medical systems, all cures are considered one-time. The concept of an ongoing cure action, of a preventative cure, a causal cure, simply does not exist. An addict’s scurvy might be cured by curing their addiction – but that cure is not recognized as a cure of scurvy. All causal cures are invisible in current medical theory.

Once we understand the concept of a causal cure, it’s easier to see them.

All cures are transformations. Some are transformations of things. Some are transformations of life processes.

An attribute cure occurs when an attribute, or its absence, causing an illness state is transformed such that it no longer causes illness.

A causal cure occurs when a life process, or its absence, is transformed – added, changed, or removed – on an ongoing basis, such that it no longer causes the illness.

I cured my smoker’s cough by using a dishrag to STOP myself from smoking. Sometimes, stopping a process cures. But the stopped process must be maintained. Of course, if I smoke one cigarette, I won’t get smoker’s cough. But if I begin a daily smoking process again, I will.

An addict’s malnutrition illnesses might be cured by curing their addiction, or by providing healthy meals every day – which, by the way, might also cure their addiction.

A severe case of depression, caused by a constant negative frame of mind, might be cured by daily meditation. Over time, that meditation, that causal cure, might shrink and become a natural part of the patient’s life – invisible to doctors

Are Missing Cures Permanent?

We tend to dismiss cures that are not permanent, a simplistic view. A cure might be partial or complete, temporary or permanent – it can even be repeating or chronic.

A cure exists when we have successfully addressed the cause. If the cause occurs again – a new, although similar case of a illness might occur. It’s a new case, because the original cause was addressed, the original illness was cured.

Illnesses and cures only move forward in time, not backwards.

In a case of an attribute cure, if the same or similar causal attribute occurs again, a new illness will occur. It’s a new illness because the original illness was cured. Colds and flu don’t go into remission. They are cured. Later, we might get a new cold or a new case of the flu.

Likewise, with each causal illness cure, if the process is changed again, either back to the problem state or forward to a new problem state, a new case of illness can occur. It’s a new illness because the original cause was addressed. The original illness was cured. Of course, proving a causal illness cured is more difficult than proving an attribute illness cured, but once we understand the concept of causal illness and causal cure – we can do it.

To understand causal cures, preventative cures, we first need to recognize the concept – and then to study it in detail. There is a transition, a gradation between attribute cures and causal cures, based on our perception of the specific illness and the cure applied. Today, however, all causal cures are ignored, dismissed, invisible.

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

Have you ever been cured of an illness or disease and the cure was ignored, the cure went missing? It happens a lot. Where might we find an illness cured? Where does an illness go, after it’s cured?

We sometimes use the word cured for patients who have been cured (usually plural), “the cured were released from the sanitarium.” But, the illness is cured, not the patient.

Where are our statistics for cured? There are none. No one tracks cured cases of any disease.

Note: cure-rate is not cured-rate. Cure-rate is statistically “presumed to be cured,” not proven to be cured. In most types and most cases of illness – cure rate is never calculated. Cured statistics would be a count of every person who cured, without reference to the treatment.

Note: this post is a discussion of missing cured based on the book A New Theory of Cure (there being no “old theory of cure.”)

We’re missing a lot of cured. It’s not that we can’t cure illness. It’s just that those cured go missing. Where are they missing from? From our medical systems, from our medical view.

Cold, Flu and other Common Cures

We’ve each had many colds, all cured (unless we have one now, or two).

But, in current (non cure-ent) medical theory, “There is no cure for the common cold” this ill-logic also applies to influenza, measles, and many other diseases – even the dreaded C Flu (whose forbidden name is on medical bureaucracies see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil – do no evil list.)

These cures are so trivial that we easily ignore the cured. Modern medicine is a science of drugs, of treatments and preventatives, with few curatives. Cured are commonplace, but few come from medicines. Most cures come from health. Most cured are missing from medical theory, so most cured are ignored.

The cure for the cold, or the flu, is not a medicine. Colds, flu, and measles are not self resolving, as suggested in some medical texts. Our natural healthiness cures these diseases. When our healthiness is lower, their cures take longer and the disease can be dangerous. When we are healthier, we cure them quickly, sometimes – barely even noticing. “I thought I was getting a cold last night, but this morning, it seems to be gone.“

The illness is cured. The patient is cured. But, the cured go missing. These common cures are just a bit of the cured iceberg.

Most cured cases of most illnesses and diseases, go missing.

Healing Cured

It’s not time that heals (cures) all wounds. Some wounds are cured so quickly and easily we hardly notice them. Only a few become chronic, persisting throughout an entire lifetime.

When we sustain a serious wound, we might be stitched up by a doctor or nurse – a surgical cure – healing does the rest. Surgery is a medical procedure, recognized as a cure, although few surgeries are counted as cured. A doctor who removes a skin cancer lesion might tell the patient they are cured. The cured might even be tracked as part of a cure-rate study. But no doctor declares a stitched up accident victim cured, even when the cure is complete, even if it’s better than ever before. Most wounds, and their cures, are trivial. Because they are trivial, we easily ignore the cured. We count deaths, but not cures. Most injuries cured are missing from our medical view. Nobody bothers to count them.

Home Cures

A child falls and cuts their knee. Mom kisses it better, or perhaps removes slivers and small stones from the wound, administers an antibiotic, maybe a bandage – and healing does the rest. The injury is cured. Not all surgical cures are medical. We experience minor cures often, miracle cures rarely, far more trivial cures than challenging ones, because we experience far more trivial injuries than serious ones. Paper cuts, slivers, thorns, bruises from sports or the simple bumps of life. Almost all cured with ease. But, these cured are missing from our current medical view.

Wounds are not the only home cures that go missing. All self-cures are missing from the medical view of cure. Many are dismissed as “just a placebo effect,” (demonstrating that we don’t understand placebo effects either.) I cured my smoker’s cough with a dishrag. But that cured doesn’t count. There was no medical diagnosis and no medical treatment, so the cured is missing – nobody cares to count it. I Cured my Plantar Fasciitis and Nobody Gives a Damn – but in medical theory most plantar fasciitis self-resolves (not self-cures) within six months. My cured, like all cures of plantar fasciitis went missing, even though I had a diagnosis – even though I experienced a cure. No authoritative medical text recommends a cure for plantar fasciitis. All cured cases are simply ignored.

We have an illness, and we cure it ourselves, but all the cured cases go missing. There was no “double blind placebo controlled clinical study.”

This is a blindness to cured. In truth;

“every case of cured is a single case,
a story,
an anecdote,
not a clinical study”

Nutritional Cures

We might be surprised to learn that there is, officially, no cure for scurvy. Almost everybody knows that scurvy is cured with Vitamin C. Except our medical texts. All four general major medical reference texts, Merck, Lange’s, Ferris, and Harrison’s recommend Vitamin C as a treatment for scurvy. The word cure is missing. The same is true for any illness caused by nutritional deficiencies and excesses – even from poisonings.

When we are bitten by a snake we take the antidote, a treatment. No medical text recommends a cure for any poisoning. Poisoning by carbon dioxide, Vitamin A, arsenic, or lead – officially, there are no cures, only treatments. When a poisoning has been cured, the cured go missing.

Alternative Cured

Have you noticed? All illnesses cured by any alternative medicine or alternative medical practitioners also go missing.

Many people claim to have been cured by a chiropractor, an osteopath, a massage therapist, a naturopath, even a shaman or spirit healer. But those illnesses cured are simply ignored, they are just stories, anecdotes, not clinical studies, so they go missing from medical statistics and studies – missing from modern medicine.

A close friend once confided in me, how she went to the doctor because her shoulder locked up. The problem didn’t seem to be healing, didn’t seem likely to go away. The doctor listened and talked, but did not touch or examine the patient. Instead he advised “find a good chiropractor” – and even made a recommendation. The chiropractor adjusted the shoulder (not the back) and recommended some exercises. Within a week, the illness was gone. Cured. Years later, it has never come back, but the cured is missing. There is no evidence of a cure in the medical record.

There are many stories like this. Most cured are missing. It’s not possible to prove that any chiropractor, osteopath, naturopath, or massage therapist cured an illness or a patient. Even when a medically certified rehabilitation therapist cures a patient’s illness – the cured word is avoided. Cured go missing. It might be that most illnesses cured by these practitioners are trivial. Most cures are trivial. Trivial or challenging makes no difference, all alternative medical cured go missing.

Mental Illness Cured

When a mental illness – any mental illness – is cured, the cured go missing. The DSM/5, the bible of mental disorders – does not recognize a single cure due to a strange flaw hidden in the current definition of mental illnesses.

When a mental illness, like depression, is cured by successfully addressing the cause, the cured state proves the illness was caused by the cause. An illness with a real cause, like malnutrition, or stress, isn’t a mental illness, it’s a malnutrition illness or a stress illness. The depression diagnosis was wrong, so the cured case goes missing.

Spirit Cured

Do we believe in spirit cures? Or are they figments of our imagination?

To understand spirit cures, we need to study spirit illnesses. Unfortunately, our medical systems hardly acknowledge spirits, much less spirit illnesses, and therefore, cannot see spirit cured.

What is a spirit illness? Spirits are intentions. Our hopes and dreams, and our fears are our spirits. Ephemeral. Changing. Sometimes positive, sometimes negative.

When a cat feels is going to die, it often goes away. Its life-spirit, the cat’s life intentions change. And the cat decides and goes away to die. We live and die by our spirits. We can also cure with them, just not every case.

Most cases of spirit damage, like most injuries – are trivial. When minor hopes and dreams, spirits, are frustrated or injured, we are encouraged to “pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and start all over again“.

But sometimes, when our spirits are dashed, when we are forced to adjust, we develop an illness – often labelled a stress illness. We might develop depression, or an addiction. How can we tell if it’s a spirit illness?

The cured proves the cause. When we cure by improving our spirits – we had a spirit illness. But today, we can’t see spirit illnesses, so we can’t see spirit cured either. All cases of spirit illness cured are missing from conventional medicine.

Cancer Cures Missing?

Many years ago I met a woman, a nurse, who had been diagnosed with breast cancer. She had been tested and found cancer free – every year, and then suddenly – breast cancer. Her doctor and her surgeon, who she knew well on a work basis, recommended surgery. She balked and started to research. It wasn’t long before she found some leads and cured her cancer. But the cured illness went missing. Neither her doctor, nor her surgeon would talk to her about it. I blogged about her as The Case of The Incredible Disappearing Cancer Patients. She didn’t disappear, only her cured status. I have since met other cancer cured patients, who consistently report “my doctor ignores the cure.” Sixty-three percent of cancer doctors openly admit they would never use the word cured. How might we find the cured?

Wart Cures

One of the most common cure mysteries are warts. No medical text recommends a cure for warts. Andrew Weil, writing in Health And Healing, says “Miraculous cures of cutaneous warts are as commonplace as they are curious. Ask about them in any group of people, and you will easily collect typical stories.” adding, “It is revealing of the limitations of materialistic science that no serious research exists on wart cures in response to treatments based on belief.”

Partially Cured

Is it possible to partially cure an illness? In our current medical systems, partially cured does not exist. However, it’s not difficult to understand how partial cures might occur. There are two basic ways:

A present illness has a present cause, or a set of present causes, which when addressed produce a cure.

1. When a cause is partially addressed, the result is a partial cure – which might lead to fewer, lesser signs and symptoms and perhaps to fewer and less severe long term consequences. For example, someone with smoker’s cough might not “stop smoking”, but instead limit themselves to two cigarettes a month, a week, or a day. Over time, the lungs and throat will heal considerably and the smokers cough might go away completely or almost completely.
2. When an illness has several causes, and some of the causes are addressed, the result is partially cured. A patient who has vitamin deficiencies, even scurvy, because of poverty AND drug addiction can be partially cured when the poverty is addressed. The extent of the partial cure might range from minor – when a weaker cause is addressed, to almost perfect.

However, current medical theory does not study cures scientifically and as a result, partial cures do not exist. The failure to see, understand, and study partial cures of illness – results in our inability to understand many cures.

Temporarily Cured vs Permanently Cured

Do temporary cures exist? The question is not difficult to answer.

An illness has a present cause. When the present cause of illness is temporarily addressed – the cure is temporary. When the cause occurs again – maybe days later, maybe years later, a similar illness will occur again. Of course that’s a simplified view – but it is a starting point to define temporary cures.

If we know that we have only addressed the cause temporarily – we have only a temporary cure. For example, a person who develops SAD (Seasonally Affective Disorder) might be severely depressed during winter. Their illness might be cured by a winter vacation in Mexico, which lifts their spirits and allows them too finish the winter without illness. Or, the illness might be cured by use of a SAD light, which provides light similar to sunlight, until spring comes. But this temporary cure might only be effective until the next winter. However, if the person moves to Ecuador, or Tanzania, where the sunlight does not change so dramatically from summer to winter – they might be permanent cured.

When we believe we have addressed the cause permanently – we believe we have a permanent cure.

If we are not sure, then we are not sure what type of cure we have. Our ability to distinguish between temporary and permanent cures does not depend on the disease, or on the case, or on the cure action, but on our beliefs about the temporary or permanent nature of the cure consequences. At the same time, we must be aware that when the common cold is cured, the cure is permanent – in the sense that a new case of the cold has a new cause.

Many illnesses are complex or compound, having multiple causes or multiple layers of cause. With these cases, it is more challenging to judge temporarily cured vs permanently cured. However, many illnesses are trivial. We can begin to build understanding by study of the simple cases.

Perfect Cures

Do perfect cures exist? No. Even when the result of a cure is better than ever before, it’s not a perfect cure. No living thing, plant, animal, or human is perfect. Life is not perfect. Life moves forward, not backwards – cures do not reverse the disease, they move it forward. Cures are not perfect.

Finding the Cured

To cure, to recognize cures and cured, we must study the concept of cured.

When an illness is cured, there was a cure, regardless of the treatments used or attempted. But as long as we ignore most cured – we will fail to see most cures.

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

No medical text defines a scientific, medical, nor philosophical theory of cure. A NEW Theory of Cure, available in print and Kindle format, covers the three fundamental or elementary types of illness and their associated cure actions.

A NEW Theory of Cure was written over a period of 5 years, leading to a gradual awareness that cures are everywhere. Why don’t we already know this?

We’ve had dozens of colds. All cured. I’ve had measles twice. Both cured. I’ve had influenza, appendicitis, and mumps. Cured. But cured is not defined. As I grew older, I had a hernia. Cured.

Cures are everywhere – if we know how to look for them. Is it any wonder we can’t find a cure for cancer? No. We can’t even recognize a common cold cured. Millions of people are “RECOVERED” from COVID-19. But, not one is cured? 

The book A NEW Theory of Cure has a long history, is a result of a long series of research, blog posts, and books:

In early 2015, while working on an update to the book Introduction to the Healthicine (the Arts and Sciences of Health and Healthiness), I realized that I could not find a useful definition of cure or cured. I began a search through many medical texts, including the Merck Manual of Diagnosis and Therapy, Harrison’s Internal Medicine, and Lange’s Current Medical Diagnosis and Treatment. Not one contains a medical definition of cure. I began collecting definitions of cure from standard dictionaries, but there was little consistency.

In June 2016, I was in the basement of a local used bookstore when I noticed a copy of Webster’s New World Medical Dictionary 2008. I turned to the letter C. There was no entry for cure, no medical definition for CURE. Astonished, the next day, I visited a local Chapter’s bookstore, where I checked five different medical dictionaries. Two had definitions of cure – which matched definitions from their non-medical editions. Three did not contain a definition of cure. One of them defined incurable, using the word cure, but did not define cure.

I began an in-depth search for a medical definition of cure. In my local university, I studied the Merck Manual, 8th edition from 1950. On the internet, I found the first edition of Merck Manual of Materia Medica, published in 1899. While travelling in Australia, I sought out and collected definitions of cure from the Oxford Nursing Dictionary (not present), Barron’s Dictionary of Medical Terms, Black’s Medical Dictionary. I could not find a useful medical definition of cure, much less a standard, generally accepted scientific definition. I continued my search through more medical references, including the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders and Ferri’s Clinical Advisor. Neither defines cure. I went back in time to search the writings of Hippocrates, and forward to WEBMD.COM – both via the internet. It gradually became clear that no scientific definition of cure exists.

So I began to write one. At first, I worked to summarize and understand what I did have – not much.

In June 2018, after extensive work while travelling in Peru, I published A Calculus of Curing: Cure, Cures, Curing, and Cured. It took about 8 months of writing, researching and editing. At almost 300 pages, it was simply too big. I needed a smaller version. In July 2018, I published the paper A Definition and Exploration of Cure, freely available on Academia.edu. In January 2019, I published The Elements of Cure, a smaller book, based on the same concepts, with some additional analysis and research. I managed to get it down to half the size – just over 150 pages. Due to what I had learned in the interim, I had to go back and update A Calculus of Curing. Up to this point, I was avoiding the use of references – there were few references to cure in most publications.

In November 2019, I published the paper A Theory of Cure, a much more concise and comprehensive theory of cure, with many research references, available for free on Academia.edu. I continued to blog and explore the concepts of cure, discovering the necessary concept of present cause. To cure is to address the present cause of an illness. Past causes cannot be accessed to cure. This understanding forced me to go back and update each previously published book and paper.

Then… COVID struck. I spent 8 or 9 months researching COVID-19, from a cure perspective – something no-one else was working on. Cured is still not medically defined for COVID-19. I set out to better understand the concepts of cure, by relating them to a complex disease. This work led to a better overall understanding. The paper A Theory of Cure and the book The Elements of Cure needed to be updated again. Unfortunately, Amazon blocked publication of the COVID book, rationalizing that I was not “an authority on COVID.” They didn’t notice that there are no authorities on cure. This blockage frustrated me, and gave me some time to think. I did publish the book: COVID-19: Defining Cured, on Google Play books. I also re-re-published the book The Elements of Cure on Google Play books and on Amazon, under the title A Science of Cure, in early 2021, with some changes to match the new title, in hope that the new title would gather more attention.

This pause prompted me to go back and analyze the paper A Theory of Cure. I realized it needed a re-working. A lot of what I learned since it’s initial publication was missing or poorly explained. I decided that the re-write was too big to be a paper, and began work on the book A Theory of Cure which was revised several times and finally published as A NEW Theory of Cure in July 2019. However, I could not find any old theories of cure.

A NEW Theory of Cure is published as a book, on Amazon, in print and Kindle formats. It is an up to date, concise summary of the first book, A Calculus of Curing published in 2018. A New Theory of Cure is just under 50 pages, it clearly defines the concepts of cure, from a general perspective, not limited to medicine. The same concepts can be applied to studying cures of flat tires, trees, and our economy. In summary, study the illness as a set of curable elements cure each element one at a time by addressing its present cause. In theory, it’s almost trivial. However, it is a powerful starting point for studies of cure.

To learn more truths about cure, we need to practice curing.

to your health, tracy
Author: A New Theory of Cure, July 2021
A Science of Cure, November 2020
COVID-19: Defining Cured, October 2020
The Elements of Cure, January 2019
A Calculus of Curing, June 2018
Paper: A Theory of Cure, November 2019
Paper: A Definition and Exploration of Cure, June 2018