The Miracle of Convalescence

I have always been a great advocate of the need for convalescence. I’m sure many of you may not even remember this idea because in our current lives it’s a very old-fashioned and ignored concept. Any time illness occurs, our immune system does not resolve things immediately. The original “battle” may be over quickly, but then comes the miraculous part, the healing. The period of time it takes for healing and recovery to fully occur is convalescence. Historically people would take at least twice as long as the acute time of the illness for convalescence. There were even stately homes that were turned into places for convalescing, especially after wars.

But as pharmaceuticals arrived on the scene, the length of time that someone would feel ill would be much shorter, leading them to believe that they were fully recovered, when in fact, the drugs had simply reduced the body responses to the illness. They had done nothing to actually shorten the convalescence needed for complete healing to take place. They simply made you feel as though you could return to your daily routine.

Take a cut as an example. We put on some antiseptic and a band-aid and go right on with our day. But there is still healing taking place below the bandage and the skin won’t be completely restored for some time. In fact, the length of time it takes is a sign to you of how long any healing will take in your body so it’s a great way to evaluate the health of your immune system.

But unlike our example of a simple cut, deeper injury and systemic illness such as a viral infection require large scale resources of the immune system to fully resolve. This includes time for convalescence. You may feel like you can function, you may even feel “good as new” but you are actually still healing. To rush back to your daily routine will delay healing because you are now using your body resources for your typical day and not specifically for the healing process. Each time you do this you are interrupting healing and preventing the immune system from completing its work. This also makes it more difficult to mount a strong immune response for the next illness or injury.

People ask me why they seem to get sick as soon as they slow down or take a vacation. The answer is because you’ve just given your immune system permission to complete what was interrupted weeks or even months before. You have freed up resources by relaxing and resting, that your immune system swoops in and happily starts to use. This interruption is also why people seem to get ill multiple times during a flu season. It’s a sign that you haven’t had enough convalescence time. So instead of assuming that someone has a weakened immune system because they get sick often, you have to consider the possibility that they just need proper convalescence.

Now that we’ve looked at how important convalescence is, let’s talk more about the miraculous part. I have a wonderful friend who recently had a devastating complex fracture and dislocation injury. She is someone who is very self-aware and as we talked it was clear that the injury was incredibly traumatic, but it also was enlightening in very unexpected ways. First the injury occurred quite suddenly in a public place and for the first time in her life she was immediately immobilized. This is quite a scary thing for anyone because we are all used to falling and then getting up or having a dizzy spell that clears after a couple of minutes. But she could do absolutely nothing. People immediately came running to her and it was clear this was a very serious injury. But because she could do nothing, it provided the opportunity for her to notice how people began to care for her, to reassure her, to call an ambulance, to surround and protect her, touching her gently and expressing incredible sympathy. Never before had she experienced such a forced complete surrender to strangers and such a complete inability to control anything or make any decision. It was the most beautiful thing and so very unexpected. She said it felt like she was part of a close-knit community of people brought together by the tragedy of a stranger.

The second aspect of this was the length of time that she was unable to stand at all, drive, or perform almost any daily task. We can all imagine how frustrating that would be but in fact it was a gift, an opportunity for rest, reading and thought, three things most of us never seem to have time for in our busy lives. It can be a gift of time that allows us to re-evaluate our priorities and our work, even coming up with imaginative ways to accomplish tasks and also to realize what tasks we don’t really need to do. But it is especially enlightening to discover that you can make it through some unimaginable traumas and come out on the other side a better version of yourself.

So convalescence isn’t just a time of essential healing and restoration of our immune resources, it gives us permission to pause our lives and if you will allow it, time to experience the ways in which your body heals and where it may struggle to heal. In this way it can be a vacation, an education and a realization. Or it can be an exasperating, frustrating period of time that keeps us from doing what we need to do. This is what often drives people to ignore convalescence. But one thing to consider is that the lack of complete healing can create a chaotic tendency in the immune system that may actually be the most common reason for the rise in autoimmune disorders.

As W.H. Auden said, “Healing is not a science, but the intuitive art of wooing nature.”

Dr. Karen Clickner is a Nationally Registered Naturopathic Physician. She provides natural evaluations and treatment at Conscious Body Natural Medicine clinics in central Massachusetts. She has been specializing in autoimmune disorders for more than 35 years. You can get more information at www.consciousbodynatmed.com