Listen to Your Body

About 3000 years ago, Hippocrates came up with a theory. He suggested that by listening to your body and acting accordingly to what it was trying to tell you, you could avoid having to see a physician in order to obtain optimal health. What he meant by this was by interpreting the reasons behind why you were experiencing certain symptoms such as consistent headaches, obesity, back pain, irregular bowel movements, or bouts of fatigue for example, you could remedy the cause of the problem and therefore remove the symptoms.

Beyond the 'this for that' approach

Nowadays, basic medical advice is directed toward treating the symptoms and not necessarily the cause of the issue. For example, when you have a headache, most people would be recommended to take an aspirin or paracetemol. But this 'blanket approach' would suggest that the headache is a result of an aspirin deficiency and its unlikely that the real cause would be identified. Remember, everybody is different and it makes sense to 'treat the person that has the disease not the disease that has the person' ! Hippocrates approach encouraged you to ask 'why have I got a headache?' or 'why am I overweight?' instead of just taking a pill which would mask the symptoms but not address the root cause of the problem that created the headache or excess fat in the first place. By taking away the symptoms you can alleviate the pain in the short term but chances are you'll get more headaches in the future or you'll soon become overweight again because the cause of the problem, the imbalance is still there. Don't get me wrong, without the development of medical intervention we would not be where we are today but I urge you to ask the question, if we listened to our bodies more and treated the cause of the health problems we see today as opposed to just removing the current symptoms then wouldn't we have less headaches, obesity, diabetes and perhaps even less cancer moving forward ?

The 4 Inner Doctors

Hippocrates suggested that there are 3 inner physicians that reside in our bodies and that if we listen to our inner physicians we can avoid the 'this for that' short term solution and remove the root cause of the problem, long term. Hippocrates' inner physicians were FOOD ("let food be thy medicine"), REST and HAPPINESS. Paul Chek has updated Hippocrates' 3 Physician concept, added a new one and renamed the concept as "The Last 4 Doctors You'll Ever Need". He has now added Dr. Movement to Dr. Diet, Dr. Quiet and Dr. Happiness because back when Hippocrates developed his 3 Physician approach, there didn't seem much of a need for more exercise seeing as just washing your clothes back then was probably more of a workout than most of us do in the gym nowadays.

Over the next few months, I'll be visiting each of the 4 Doctors and explaining how you can listen to your body and interpret the symptoms you experience. This will allow you to become your own Health Detective and determine why you're experiencing those symptoms and how to resolve the issue in the long term by getting to the root cause...