The root cause

How many times are symptoms treated as the underlying disease? Take for example high blood pressure. Is it a disease or a symptom of something else? What happens when you take medication for blood pressure? Does it make it go away? No, it doesn't, it masks the symptoms that could lead you to the cause or causes of your high blood pressure. If you go down that route, you'll have to take the medication for life and it'll have side, or as I like to call them, direct effects. I would never suggest to anyone to stop taking medication, but I think long term, medication just doesn't work and often, if not always, it causes more problems than it solves.

That's what symptoms are good for. They are a bread crumb trail that lead us to the true cause, if we're listening. But what often happens is that we, along with conventional medicine, get bogged down in the symptoms. The obsession with symptoms eventually becomes a maze, out of which there is no exit. And there is nothing as frustrating or more expensive as not getting better, or indeed getting worse.

Symptoms are a sign for us to change direction; to exercise, eat well, reduce our stress, heal our relationships ... They are symbolic and metaphoric of what is going on in our lives. If we heed their messages, they won't have to shout so much. But if we ignore them or try and medicate them into oblivion, they will get worse. Listen to your symptoms, take them seriously but zoom out and see the bigger picture they're painting for you.