Health Viewpoints
Celebrated American psychologist
Abraham Maslow famously wrote “If the only tool you have is a hammer, it is tempting to treat everything as if it were a nail.”
The idea is known as the law of the instrument and describes a cognitive bias that people have recognized for centuries. Essentially, you look to solve each problem with the tool you know best, whether that be a hammer, a bomb, or a pill.
Modern Medicine’s Cognitive Bias
Conventional modern medicine has its own cognitive bias, and that began nearly 200 years ago when the germ theory of disease became a dominant explanation for the cause of common ailments.
Germ theory was an important medical breakthrough at a time when infections were a primary cause of death. When antibiotics and sterilization helped prevent deaths from these infections, many people took it as proof of the germ-fighting approach.
Germ theory pushed out another view of disease known as terrain theory, Epoch Times contributor Emma Tekstra explains
in a recent article.
Terrain theory holds that it is the internal factors of the person that decide whether or not they will be vulnerable to that disease, things like nutritional deficiencies or a compromised immune system. This view engenders a constructive approach, in that it aims to support the immune system and general health.
And while terrain theory, especially as originally conceived, has several flaws and some people tend to take it to extremes, it also offers an essential outlook that has become all the more relevant in our era of chronic disease.
In contrast, germ theory holds that external factors, germs, cause disease, and that the best way to combat disease is to eliminate the germs. It is a destructive approach, in that it aims to eliminate negative factors.
Both approaches can be used simultaneously—and often need to be—but the destructive approach fostered by germ theory dominates clinical practice.
The problem with the constructive approach is that it is typically slow and requires the patient to put in more effort or make changes, like keeping a healthy diet to lose weight instead of using a weight loss pill, which reduces your weight by
20 percent with ease but can introduce other issues and may create a long-term dependence. But for major diseases of our day, ailments caused by a poor diet, stress, and physical inactivity, it’s clear that we need to find ways to support these efforts at change.
The Crux of the Issue
The real problem with germ theory is that it reduces disease to its immediate consequences, symptoms that can be targeted for treatment. In doing so, it bypasses the miracle of the human body and fails to find ways to harmonize and enhance this incredible vessel.
From one view, the living nature of the body is created by an unending electrochemical reaction. Our cells are performing trillions of these operations,
changing the charge of countless atoms and the structure of billions of molecules.
But it isn’t just our cells performing this work, so too are
trillions of microbes that live inside us, bacteria, viruses, and fungi that are largely beneficial (as proposed by terrain theory) and even essential to our well-being.
This is the energetic movement that keeps our bodies alive, an impossible complexity beyond our current medical science.
There is no drug, biologic, or gene therapy that uses the same range and complexity of tools as the body itself.
Fortunately, there is a growing recognition that the best medicine is that which enhances the body. This has fuelled the growth of functional medicine,
personalized medicine, and holistic approaches. And hopefully, it will inspire each of us to treasure this vessel and give it what it needs to thrive.
Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times. Epoch Health welcomes professional discussion and friendly debate. To submit an opinion piece, please follow these guidelines and submit through our form here. 
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