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You have a fundamental right to freedom of choice, especially when it comes to your healthcare. If you’re dependent upon a single doctor or wellness advisor for all your self-care needs, you’re missing out on other amazing and very effective methods to help relieve your chronic pain or illness.
101+ things to try
In nine out of ten cases, there are 101+ things to try before pharmaceuticals and surgery. Knowing your options could mean the difference between living and dying, hope and despair, or between loathing our existence and embracing our life’s journey. Do not limit your options.
Although this entire website is dedicated entirely to your 101+ options, we wanted to devote another section to the subject and bring you inspiration and related articles and news in regards to your Freedom of Choice in America. Too many times we’ve seen folks who are suffering needlessly because they have completely given up their freedom of choice by choosing to do nothing but trust their doctor.
That’s not enough anymore! Get real.
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Change is coming more quickly
Back in 2014, Thomas Frey, Google’s top-rated futurist speaker and founder of the Colorado DaVinci Institute, gave a standing-room-only presentation on his vision of the future. Of everything he shared that evening, one thing stands out louder than all the rest: “The world will change more in the next 20 years than the last 100 years combined.”
Wow. The last 100 years included telephones, airplanes, tv, radio, skyscrapers, world wars, intercontinental flight, computers, man on the moon, MTV, every band ever recorded, the internet, smartphones, and the loss of personal relationships with our doctor.
The choices we are faced with in life have increased by 1000-fold in that same span of time.
Overwhelming consumer choices
The concept “Freedom of Choice” should be something Americans are familiar with. In a world that’s racing towards the twenty-second century, our choices with everything are overwhelming. Staggering numbers of products await customers in any American grocery store, shopping center or multi-story mall. So many choices between automobiles, the variety of restaurants, and the kinds of pets we can own! Indeed, the myriad ways to put bread on the table in this world boggle the mind.
Yet healthcare choices seem limited
When it comes to “healthcare,” our options are artificially limited by the business model of the medical industrial complex. The limitation compares to having only chocolate, vanilla or strawberry ice cream to choose from. In most cases, healthcare choice is restrained to synthetic prescription toxins and tonics, different types of invasive surgeries, anti-life chemicals, knives, cutting, blood, loss of body parts, chronic toxicity, and death.
Wellness doesn’t seem to have any place in the privatized capitalist pursuit of profiting from treating the broken and ill. Therefore, it’s in our best interest to take wellness into our own hands and to learn about the options which can help us avoid the chemicals, lasers, and knives. Be prepared to discover wellness options which generally aren’t covered by your healthcare plan if you’re serious about self-healing.
Avoid neck and back surgery if possible
Know this: there are potentially 101+ different wellness activities, self-care, and pain-reduction methods available to you, many of which have the likelihood of easing your suffering. Before you succumb to the will of your doctor to fuse your spine and permanently limit your flexibility, you owe it to yourself to become more familiar with the choices available outside your normal realm of awareness… and insurance coverage.
You need to be especially aware of the fact your doctor won’t have all the answers and does not know about all your options; he or she won’t be able to tell you about that which they have no clue.
Here’s to your health: it’s up to you. Pharmaceuticals and surgery should be a last-ditch effort when all else has failed, not our “go-to” first or second choice as so many doctors would have us believe.
There is more hope today!
Historically there has never been a better time to hope for healing and a release from trauma and suffering. There are more self-healing options and therapist-assisted treatments than ever before. What’s right for you requires both your interest and your willingness to try new things. There are as many paths to healing as there are people on the planet, so you’ll need insatiable curiosity to find yours.
But avoid the extremes…
Make no mistake: the practice of medicine has always been barbaric. At least we no longer suffer from needless bloodletting or having holes drilled in our heads. And because it didn’t require drilling through the skull, getting an ice-pick lobotomy “could be done by rendering the patient unconscious via electroconvulsive shock.” Yikes! Oh right, we’re still drilling holes in people’s heads and wonder why it doesn’t work.
Electroshock is extreme!
While electroshock is still considered a viable treatment for severe depression and schizophrenia, such extreme treatments should be considered a last-resort effort. Without taking into consideration lifestyle changes, the elimination of childhood trauma, and the restoration of meaning in our life, psychotropic drugs and electroshock may do additional damage which could have been avoided through other means.
You should consider electroshock a last-resort after you’ve tried at least 50+ other ideas which are available to you, only some of which are on this website. Severe depression can be treated in many ways without needing to run an external electric current through your brain.
Record drug profits
Take a look at the profit margins of the Top 10 Pharmaceutical Companies In The World:
- Gilead Sciences. Revenue: $24 Billion
- Bayer. Revenue: $25 Billion
- AstraZeneca. Revenue: $26 Billion
- GlaxoSmithKline. Revenue: $38 Billion
- Merck. Revenue: $42 Billion
- Sanofi. Revenue: $43 Billion
- Pfizer. Revenue: $49 Billion
- Roche. Revenue: $50 Billion
Beware of chronic toxicity
If the only “care” you are receiving is a maximum prescription for every drug on the market, then you need to learn about the dangers of drug toxicity. Seek help from your primary physician or mental health providers to ramp down prescriptions and replace them with therapy and other forms of self-care which can help you get out of the hellish situation you find yourself in.
Fortunately, there are alternatives.
Considered a Divine Plant by some, specifically as a plant medicine, “cannabis works miracles on many conditions including cancer, chronic pain, autism, autoimmune diseases, and much more.” John Malanca, Host, Season 2, Ep. 1, The Sacred Plant 7-part informational documentary.
Having the freedom to choose medicine this powerful is a fundamental reason why cannabis has been approved in one way or another in 30 or more U.S. states, despite Big Pharma and Big Tobacco financing a propaganda war against it. Legalization is inevitable, especially as a medicine.
We get what we pay for
We’re living in the 21st century with more choices for everything in life, yet the only choices doctors normally offer are drugs and surgery? Perhaps that’s a drastic over-simplification, but modern medicine seems so antiquated when you know how many options are out there for both mental and physical healing and rehabilitation. We just need to spend more time looking around for the thing which might help.
It then becomes absurdly ridiculous when we learn about so many treatment options which could help our situation but which aren’t covered by insurance premiums! Many of the most-potent therapies and treatments available aren’t included in our healthcare insurance. It is, therefore, inevitable you will have out-of-pocket expenses to obtain treatments which may help the most.
Drugs ARE alternative treatment
The quote below was delivered by one of the most influential doctors in the field of mind-body science and medicine. To understand how far this man has come, we need to realize he had a major hand in creating the first-ever DSM – the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, which became the bible of every prescription-writing psychiatrist the world over. He has had a 180-degree change of heart since the early days of psychotropics.
“Turns out in Asia, Africa and other parts of the world, people have found ways of calming that body down, with things like Qi·Gong and Yoga. To reacquaint yourself with your body helps you to calm your body down, and these things are called “alternative therapies.” To my mind, drugs are alternative therapies, and dealing with your body is real therapy.” Dr. Bessel van der Kolk – How To Detoxify The Body From Trauma
Even more effective than drugs:
Dr. Van Der Kolk now says modern therapy such as EMDR (Eye Movement and Desensitization Reprogramming) is more effective than drugs for PTSD. He also said, in very clear terms, “Turned out Yoga was a more effective treatment for PTSD than any medication any of us have ever studied.” What a stunning revelation! Yoga is more effective for PTSD than any medication.
Think about that.
Become Pain Free
Sports physiologist Pete Egoscue, in his book Pain Free, claims that most knee and hip surgeries aren’t necessary and that the practice of chiropractic spinal adjustments to reduce subluxation is usually a waste of time. Pete says bones always go where the muscles tell them to, so without addressing the underlying cause of why your bones are out of place to begin with, we can’t expect to see any long-term improvement. He offers a revolutionary method to stop chronic pain through motion and static “e-cises” called Egoscue Method.
We’ve only mentioned just a few examples of options available to you which your doctor probably doesn’t know about.
The point is, we need to educate ourselves if we’re going to take responsibility for our personal well being. Any expectation should be that you’re always moving forward and making progress towards improvement. If one thing isn’t working for you, find and try something else!
Medical freedoms?
“In increasingly marketized health care systems with diversified and knowledge-based service arrangements, patients are continuously obliged to choose insurers, physicians or hospitals and treatments—whether they like it or not.” National Institutes of Health
“A potential benefit of medical freedom would be the power to make choices that may benefit oneself or one’s loved ones that otherwise would not be available if solely decided on a collective, governmental level.”
Be careful of too many choices
Many therapists recommend that combining multiple modalities is where real progress can be made. Still, we can only do one thing at a time. While The Ultimate Healing Guide found here on TheBodyIsMind.com offers 101+ alternative therapies for chronic pain, anxiety, and PTSD, you still need to limit what you do.
If you feel confused or overwhelmed by so many choices, then do your research and narrow things down to a manageable handful of choices. Hopefully we’ve made enough research available here to help get you on your way.
Avoid decision paralysis by starting from the Ultimate Healing Guide category selection and then choose whatever topic interests you most. Need help with winding down the mind? Choose Mind-Awareness. Need more motion in your life or prefer to calm the body and mind together? Choose Body-Awareness. Not sure what direction to go? Start with The Self-Healing Path and figure out where you are on the scale and go from there.
Commit to something new
When you decide upon a new modality of therapy to address your chronic issues, you should plan on doing something new at least ten times to gain a realistic perspective of the treatment. In most cases, if something helps you feel better, it should be quite obvious on the first or second attempt. If you’re not feeling it, stick with it a few more times to have a better idea of how your body is reacting. You can’t expect to try something once and give up if you’re really looking to get better.
Develop a daily practice
Those of us who are in chronic pain and can’t do normal workouts need to find alternatives that we can work into part of a daily routine. Once you find something which helps, doing it on a daily basis in the mornings or evenings will become part of your practice to feel better. Eventually, you may incorporate five or more modalities in a rotation to help manage your self+bodymind balance and wellness.
If you’re not doing activities which contribute to your health and wellness on a regular basis, then we recommend you pay a visit to the Belief, Meaning & Purpose section of TheBodyIsMind Ultimate Healing Guide. We need to find what works and then practice doing it.
An example of a practice would be to have a morning routine which includes conscious deep breathing, light stretching, some meditation, and a visit to the recreation center hot tub, followed by some inspiration from reading material which pertains to your illness. If you start doing something like that every day, or every other day, even once per week on Sundays! You’ll inevitably start feeling better and feel better about yourself.
Where to look NEXT
Do not continue to rely solely on doctors for your wellness needs without maintaining responsibility. What does your heart tell you to do? Discover your alternatives to avoid mind-numbing drugs and risky surgeries. Take a look at The Self-Healing Path and figure out where you stand. Once you’ve got your starting point figured out, listen to your intuition as you browse the Ultimate Healing Guide.
References
All references are inline links.
Book Recommendations
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