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Tricks The Medical System Plays On You: Causes vs Symptoms

Dr Stephen Wangen
|
November 5, 2024

The Medical System is the single most impressive business system ever created to make money. It’s mind-blowingly successful, to the tune of several trillion dollars every year. And it’s fantastically evil. I’m writing this on Halloween, so it’s fitting.

I know that not everyone reading or watching agrees with me. So let me give you some examples of exactly how the medical system gets you to forget what’s really important in your health and gets you to focus on something far less important so that they can sell you something.  

So much of heath care is a scam, and one part, of many, that particularly bothers me is the confusion that they create when it comes to knowing what is a symptom, and what is a cause.

Let’s test your knowledge. Is IBS a symptom, or a cause? Is fatigue a symptom, or a cause? What about joint pain? Headaches? Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis?  

How about slow gut motility?  Gastroparesis?

Every single one of these, and hundreds of other conditions, are symptoms. They are not causes. But many of you believe that at least some of these are causes. They aren’t.

You believe that they are causes because you’ve been told by people and websites and books that everyone respects, that they are causes.  “Experts” have told you that you have a condition or a syndrome or a disease that is causing all of your problems.

I encourage you to ask yourself, what caused that condition or disease or syndrome. Because it’s not just genetics, except in really rare cases. There is always a cause.

Let me give you a more specific example. I’ve seen a lot of people who have chronic constipation. And when that happens, doctors often like to take an x-ray of their abdomen. And you know what they find on the x-ray?  Stool backed up in their colon.

And then they point to the x-ray and tell the patient, “See, that’s your problem. You have too much stool backed up in your colon. You just need to clear it out. Here, take this.”

Does that sound reasonable?  Maybe, on the surface.

Or maybe you already know where I’m going with this.

Because I look at the patient when they come to me with that information, and I say “Of course you have stool backed up in your colon. That’s literally what constipation is. You’re constipated. We all already knew that there was stool backed up in your colon. I would have literally bet my entire life savings that the x-ray was going to show stool backed up in your colon. You haven’t had a bowel movement for days.”

Their doctor sold their symptoms right back to them as the cause of their problem. That is not a cause. That is a symptom. The cause is the thing that is leading to stool getting backed up in their colon. That’s what we need to figure out. And that’s one of the things that we help people do at the IBS Treatment Center.

IBS also isn’t a cause. I’ve read at least a thousand times that doctors are still looking for a cure for IBS. You know what? They are NEVER GOING TO FIND IT. Because not only is it not a cause for digestive problems. it’s not even a single symptom.

IBS is really just a broad label to cover a large group of digestive symptoms. And it’s a diagnosis that’s used when doctors are clueless about what to do with those symptoms.

That group of symptoms has hundreds of causes. And I know that for a fact, because every day we help people with IBS find the cause of their symptoms. No researcher is ever going to find the one or two causes of IBS. It’s literally impossible.

And how do I know we’ve found the cause? Because the patient’s IBS, their symptoms, go away when the cause is eliminated. And usually, a lot of other issues get better too. Because when you treat causes, you see improvement in your entire health, not just in one symptom.

And that’s how you know when you’re treating the cause. You no longer have to think about the symptoms anymore. You don’t have to treat it anymore, because the symptom is gone.  

I want to encourage you, no matter what chronic “disease” or “syndrome” or “condition” that you’re suffering from, to always question whether you are working on the symptom, or on the cause.

If you are taking a drug that you have to take or the symptom comes back, then you’re probably not addressing the cause. And that goes for pain medication too.

One last thought. Causes are finite. But new medical conditions are infinite. The medical system will continue keep coming up with new conditions for as long as there is money to be made selling the condition to you.  

I’ll leave it at that for today.

Related Content:

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What is Tenesmus and How to Treat It

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