It seems to be a commonly held belief that our genetic makeup has an almost unshakable hold over the destiny of our health, and that any other interventions or changes we make in life are merely superficial or simply mask the problem.
However, in my experience of recovering from a chronic illness, labeled as “incurable” by conventional medicine, I have come to realise that we are much more in control of our own destiny than the mainstream would have us believe.
My illness was Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, which falls under the umbrella of an “autoimmune disorder” which are then consequently explained by allopathic medicine as genetically determined and currently unrecoverable from.
I have since discovered however that this, so confidently proclaimed statement from the medical community doesn’t appear to be wholly true, certainly not in my case at least and also in many hundreds of people I have met and discovered who have recovered from many other “incurable” conditions.
The hype about genes and their possible deterministic role in illness has been around for a long time, but apart from a few rare conditions that people are born with, has not proven to be such a fruitful vein of research in terms of explaining why illnesses occur and thus finding ways to treat them.
The reason for this I feel, is that for the vast majority of illnesses, the genetic component is not deterministic, but simply sets the threshold for how far you can push your body in terms of stress (physical, chemical, mental, emotional) before that particular part of your body is going to start to malfunction in some way.
If genes did determine illness, then twins (who are genetically identical) would develop the same illnesses at the same time in life and die at the same time, but this isn’t what we see; twins can develop the same illness at different times in life and develop different illnesses altogether, many of which are labelled as “genetic” by conventional medicine.
This all became clear to me as I was recovering from my own illness. The more changes I began to make in my life, in terms of reducing physical, chemical, nutritional, and emotional stress correlated with the improvement of my symptoms and return of my energy. Then if I had a slip, and allowed a little too much stress back into my life, the symptoms would once again worsen. The pattern seemed to be obvious.
The important point here is, that genetics are, I’m sure playing a role, but I have had the same genes all of my life. So why did the illness not arise until I was 15 years old? Well, from what I learned in my recovery, it took me 15 years to push my body to the point that the genetic weakness that I had had all of my life was exposed to trigger the symptoms of the illness referred to as Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.
I found this discovery quite empowering, as it clearly demonstrated to me that I am not at the mercy of the genetic hand I was dealt at birth, but have the power within myself to reverse any illness or ailment that may develop, by making different choices in life.
In other words, it wasn’t the genes that made me ill, but the accumulation of all of the stress resulting choices I had made in my life up until that point.
I feel that this is the reason why we are seeing increasing numbers of people recovering from all manner of chronic conditions on Youtube and in Internet testimonies. People are making changes to their lives, and if they make enough changes and are able to sustain them, then they are reducing the “stress load” on their body back below what it was before their illness arose, so the body is simply able to to heal itself, because there are no blocks to it doing so.
The body knows exactly how to heal itself, it’s just we who have to “get out of the way” and allow it the time and resources to do so.
This gives not only hope, but the very real opportunity for millions of people with chronic conditions to realize that they too have the power to change their own destiny, if they can find the courage and open-mindedness not to blindly believe what they hear from western medicine.
Best Wishes
Jack