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There are medical conditions that the medical world is really out of it's depths in understanding and this is one of them.
I am not a doctor of any kind although I once had a number plate (vehicle license number) that 'said' DRX 52C, or in other words: Dr X 52/C where 52 stands for weeks like where with 24/7 the 24 stands for hours, and the C stands for 100 as in one century in the same way the 7 stands for weeks except that C is using old roman numbers. Now obviously, chances are, you don't think there is the slightest smidgen of reality about that.
I do though and this is my article. So, for me, that indicated that I seem to be a kind of Dr X for an age or one century or this century. I would say, looking back over half a century, and that vehicle was one I owned around 1970, nearly four decades ago, that this is a fair assessment or description in the sense of who and what I have been in this lifetime.
The problem is that we don't have much of any kind of recognition of who and what people really are.
There was a boy in India that got into the world 'news' a while ago because at eight years old he performed several surgical operations and thus cured some patients. The 'world' has to be a total idiot not to pay serious attention to such 'phenomena' because we really ought to have sponsored him to receive expert medical, surgical, mentoring - not to take him out of his world but to place a mentor into his. That way he should have been heading back where he needed to be, somewhere where his very obvious skills could be used for the betterment of mankind.
Instead, as I understand it, he was merely the usual target for disbelief and basically negative attention. How very ignorant of the 'world' as we make, have made, it.
I am not saying I was a doctor in a past life, although I think it is more than likely that boy was a surgeon previously - how wise are his peer group not to recognize him?
But I am a kind of 'doctor' of the unknown, x.
What that means is that I am like a gap technician. You know, 'let me join the dots for you' type of gap filling.
What I have very clearly noticed over the decades is how blinkered, out of stubborn refusal to grow and learn really, our society is by which I am referring to what is often called western as in vs the east and the oriental.
The syndrome I have made the title of this article is one medical condition which is "stress" induced - not necessarily is this the cause but it very often is. I put stress in quotes because it is a one-word category for a certain set of causes which the word stress is really very inadequate.
When the medical world seems to just plod along and not make the great strides that such intelligent participants who comprise that world ought to then they need to be prodded.
The way forward for the medical world is to broaden the way it studies disease and especially the causes of disease.
IBS, if they were to database, digitally catalogue, the patient personality types more carefully would reveal a strong link to a sense of worry and duty (personally-felt-responsibility) that the patient has.
I have known a case (circa 1980) where a young man, about 22, was in hospital and underwent surgery to cut out some of his bowel because of IBS. He was young, as I said, and he was newly married with children and had a very responsible job. It was OBVIOUS to me that he should have been sent home and told not to have surgery but to realize that for all the responsibility on his shoulders he could only do so much and only bear so much and must leave the rest and not take too much burden for himself. That is the gist of the problem. His worry and anxiety transferred from his emotional state (one of worried, nervous anxiety), in the end, to his bowel.
It is terrible that I did not tell him that and nor did anyone else. I could see it clearly but I could never prove it, not then, not now. So I believe the surgery went ahead.
You might say that I should have advised him according to my own judgement, and you are right, but there are reasons why I didn't that I don't want to go into and they don't matter now anyway.
You might say that it was a long time ago and that things aren't like that now. People used to always tell me that in the 1960s and, guess what, they are still like it now.
The failure, which is such a pity, is this blinkeredness.
You know what the medical fraternity should be doing now? It should be building up a massive onlne open database of structured evidence that points to diagnosis and best treatment.
As an example IBS should be looked at to enter all the facts about the patient (that are non-identifying) which appear to be contributory. New job, responsibilities, new spouse, new children, new mortgage, new financial commitments. If you gave each one a point then you'd have so many points and and out of ten figure.
The software would do the rest after a few years and would be far better than any doctor.
Doctors balk at this kind of thing because they are afraid to share their authority but they are just being fearful instead of brave because the need for doctors will still be here, it will just mean that the results that such new software gives them are quicker and more accurate than the traditional method of diagnosis can possibly produce. This is not to say that every medical situation would require such a change - it doesn't at all but when it comes to doubts and deliberations and difficulties with a precise diagnosis, then it would be a revolutionary advance if done right.
I think it is a great pity that they don't do that between them.
I do feel ashamed for my failing in not feeling able to tell that young IBS sufferer what his real problem was and how to deal with it but it's a failing of mine from decades ago and my concern now is to share this with you and share the idea that the medical world really ought to buck up it's ideas and forge ahead more bravely and adventurously.
If I am a gap technician, as I would say I have always been in this lifetime, then that is the kind of thing that shows it, I seem to have some clear (or clearish) vision where everyone else (it seems to me) is totally blinkered.
It's not about being clever or better or suchlike although I could easily have worked it to be like that and got into positions of authority, on the contrary, I have shunned power for the most part in my life.
It's more about wanting to help and wanting to make advances in knowledge and understanding. Sadly, I think we are more or less locked into a state of profound ignorance, as a society, in The West.
But, for all that, there is the possibility that you may know someone who has IBS. Tell them this story I have related here and ask the person if they relate to it at all?
If such people take too much burden upon their own shoulders because they can't or won't share it with another then this is bound to happen, not IBS but the transfer of the emotional state to the body so that some disease is created.
With IBS, it occurs to me that there is a phrase Americans use that hints at the disease of 'choice' here : "I can't handle this s*** anymore"
Because IBS is the body's way of saying "I can't handle this s*** anymore"
Can it really be so simple and can we really identify a cause so easily like that? If we 'databased' all of this in an intelligent way then we would have the software stun us with the results.
Then, when that finally happens, it would be interesting to to see how "Evidence Based" policy idea is morphed to mould around the reality to maintain consistency and integrity. I am knocking this "evidence based" philosophy, not because it's wrong but because it shuts out the kind of evidence that really should be sought after.
I know this amounts to or comes close to what is called anecdotal evidence and this is not scientific and it is not reliable and therefore has to be discounted. However, if it were to be 'databased' properly then it would have to be incorporated by any reasonable standard because it would be so clearly evident that there is a reality behind some anecdotal evidence which is being thrown away because it doesn't fit the 'evidence based' criteria.
In other words I am all for 'evidence based' but not as it currently stands and I also think that the medical world, the fraternal aspect more so, needs to take heed more of this more human knowledge and learn to grasp it. After all, the medics are treating humans aren't they and not machines so it makes sense to listen to them and pay more really scientific attention to what they are saying inasmuch as we should be working on collecting this anecdotal information and building a huge online database.
If, when, that happens then anyone could access it and type in IBS (in full) and be able to do a questionaire on the spot and the software would respond with a risk analysis for the enquirer who could be a doctor acting for a patient or a patient acting for him / herself or some other person that justs want to discover more.
If the young man, hardly more than a boy really, who had so many sudden responsibilities on his shoulders had done that then he would have had the opportunity to make his own changes, in particular to make efforts to share the burder, to unload some of it, but more importantly to realize at an emotional level (as opposed to the reasonable, the reasoning, level) that if he tries to continue to carry the weight alone and do nothing then his body will scream out at him (via the emotions) and he will end up in a worse state than before. He or she, in the end has to make the decision - to make a change, to share a heavy burden, to escape, to change one's life. Or perhaps to make no change at all but simply this, to realize that it's okay and better to fail and drop the burden at some point.
At least with the software I suggest his route might not have been : new symtpoms, see doctor, see specialist, accept advice (surgery), enter hospital as patient, be surgically changed, continue life with permanent body changes that may or may not solve the symptoms but do nothing to change the cause.
I know this is a 'know it all' sounding piece but I risk that to share the idea. I have a lot of insight and do a lot of reflection so when or if I get a symptom I am quick to focus on it and it's cause and I most certainly do have them just as the young man I give in my example. We are all subject to this. It is not a case of only stupid people behave or succumb so readily; we are all subject to this.
What does make a difference is self awareness. But even so, it can be very puzzling to understand a new symptom and recognize it's real cause. Revolutionary software could help enormously.
By Paul E. Coughlin
SaneThinking.com
23 May 2008
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