Lessons From Living Things

This season we have seen substantial loss of ancient trees in our area. Although we lost our beloved 150 year old copper beech, we still have standing next to our Holden clinic, literally kissing the wall of the building, a huge sugar maple which may be around 300 years old. There is a crack that has formed down the trunk between two sections of the tree, but the tree has actually grown a curved section of trunk from one side of the trunk across the crack to the other side of the trunk. It has literally created a bond to hold itself together and heal the breach.

This is a characteristic that is common to all living things. Adaptation for survival and repair for longevity. This is the result of an innate living intelligence at work and this is common to all living things. If we simply step out of the way, remove impediments and support this innate intelligence with all the factors that it needs to succeed, healing will very often take place. This is the very essence of natural medicine and a perspective on living things that is very different from conventional medicine which perceives symptoms as the result of the body failing to do something essential to survival. Instead, symptoms are actually the signs that the body is attempting to address and compensate for something that has overwhelmed the body's normal function. So if we simply allow some time for this system of intelligence to work, we can almost always find healing.

Now in the case of our sugar maple, it has created its own structural support. Certainly if we broke a bone we would want out bone to heal perfectly, to regain exactly the same amount of strength and movement that we had before the break. This is where conventional medicine really shines - in emergency medicine. When we experience an emergency, conventional medicine and pharmaceuticals have some incredible skills to share. But if we rely on these skills to actually take the place of our innate intelligence, then our ability to heal will be compromised from that point forward.

I always encourage my patients to evaluate everything as a whole and not to be distracted by inflammatory markers in their blood, elevated liver enzymes, Candida strains in the blood or a neural lesion noticeable in their first MRI scan. Often each of these things is temporary or may have been a compensation the body's healing system created many years before. Just because there is something that is out of the normal range does not mean it is something that requires intervention nor that it is the reason for your symptoms. By allowing the innate intelligence of the body to slowly work with the challenge not only does the body learn but it also allows our systems to function exactly as they were meant to in targeting the underlying problem.

My grandfather used to put pitch on any wound that a tree sustained, just as my grandmother would put a salve on any wound we would have. But what we realized was that the tree actually could heal more effectively and completely without the pitch. The same was true for us because if we could evade the salve, the scab would form more quickly and the skin would seal itself more effectively.

Medicinals and therapeutic methods that support and modulate the body's innate intelligence will do far more over time to prevent chronic illness and to promote longevity. This is an approach to the body that is far more interactive and effective than simply providing Vitamin D for low Vitamin D levels. It is creating an understanding of why our Vitamin D level is low and supporting that complete process. Think of that the next time you touch a 300 year old sugar maple.

Dr. Karen Clickner, ND, is a Nationally Registered Naturopathic Physician with over 30 years of experience. She is the owner of Conscious Body Natural Medicine with offices in Holden, Brookline and Westboro, MA. Phone: 617-505-3585, www.colnsciousbodynatmed.com