‘Patience is the Real Magic Pill’

The other day I received a text from a family member of one of my residents:

“I think patience with my husband’s improvement is the magic pill I need to take.”

Patience may be one of the most neglected aspects of true healthcare.

We all want a quick fix. It’s human nature. When something bothers you, or is painful, you not only want it fixed. You want it fixed RIGHT NOW.

Enter the pharmaceutical industry. They make those ‘magic pills’ that doctors prescribe for so many conditions. Pills are easy. You just have to pop it in your mouth, swallow it and voila.

Everything will be better.

Or maybe not. When you look into what health issues modern medicine claims it cured, the list is pretty small. Here is one example of a ‘cured health condition’ list. If you look at the list, it consists of primarily infectious diseases.

No chronic conditions.

The article primarily focuses on these diseases to showcase the benefits of vaccinations. Whether that’s true is a subject for another day. Let’s assume vaccines did cure all those diseases.

That’s great. However, those are diseases you contract from someone or something else. Contagions. For chronic health problems that develop within you, modern medicine doesn’t seem to have a ‘cure’.

Cancer. Heart disease. Alzheimer’s. Strokes. Modern medicine has ‘treatments’ for these problems. They don’t have cures. Many people die from these conditions each year. Practically all the leading causes of death in worldwide are non-communicable diseases. The data in that linked article are for 2019. Not influenced by Covid.

Yet more and more we see people reversing many of these chronic conditions through lifestyle changes rather than medication. Just go to YouTube and type in ‘reversing [insert chronic condition]’. You’ll truly be inspired by what individuals have done.

The common theme of each of those reversals is that for the most part it doesn’t happen quickly. And not without hard work.

Lifestyle changes are not easy. If they were everyone would live much longer and with much fewer health issues.

Sometimes when someone implements a change, the health condition clears up right away. I’ve seen it happen. It’s glorious.

Very often that is not the case. It takes years for conditions like Dementia or heart disease to manifest themselves. Even though the body is remarkable at healing, it needs time to do so. And for most of these conditions, a magic pill from your pharmaceutical company is not going to be the answer.

Like so much else in life, the answer is hard work. It’s difficult to achieve great things without hard work. And patience.

Don’t become discouraged. It’s easy to do. Even if you’re healthy now, you should put in the hard work to stay that way. Crank up the level of hard work even more if you’re sick. Don’t let the lack of immediate results get you down.

Even if your particular condition doesn’t improve, the hard work of changing your lifestyle will make you better as a person. It will make you appreciate your life and the world around you. As you do your own research, it will open your eyes to those who are worse off than you.

No pill that you pop in your mouth can do any of that.