How Important Is It To Have A Label?

Do we need to give illnesses a name?

There is a belief held by some that cancer doesn't exist.  I have had this view expressed to me several times in the last few months and especially when we were preparing for the cancer convention. One group of people thought they couldn't spread the information about that event, as they firmly believed that cancer doesn't exist.

Now the reasons behind some of this thinking are a little conspiratorial for me, but the concept of it not existing is a good one, but that concept then is not just limited to cancer.

What we do know for sure is that people get sick, some get so sick their physical body can no longer cope and they die.

We can see & log the symptoms displayed during the illness and clients/patients report how they feel and the effects they experience.

We can even test to see if the body is producing too much of something or not enough of something according to the parameters set for what we are told, is 'correct functioning' which of course would be someone who is symptom free and feeling well and balanced for that individual.
Thyroxine for example, too much or too little and a certain set of symptoms may manifest to varying degrees.

We know that our bodies need certain levels of vitamins and minerals, so we can test for those too, again the levels needed are those that give that individual correct functioning and the feeling of wellness, health and vitality

With the technology we have available at present, we can establish damage or inflammation in the body.

These factors are then grouped together and are named.

So we have characteristics combined with certain measurables and the recognising of this by some Dr perhaps leads and has led, to this to be defined by a name, perhaps after the Dr himself or a characteristic of the disease.

We are of course people of verbal/written communication and want to share our knowledge thankfully, so a definition is needed. It helps keep us all in the same ball park.

I say ballpark because along with a defined criteria for the now named condition, there are of course variables on the edge of that and we would perhaps liken the effect of those on how severe the illness presents, but as long as the patient ticks most of the already defined boxes, they can have a diagnosis of their condition and they are then labelled as having what ever the illness has been called.

Well its a starting point for anyone treating that person to begin from. It leads you down a certain route of medication or other treatments that have been shown to help the symptoms that others similar to themselves have displayed.

Pharmaceutical companies produce drugs specific for certain symptoms and again a prescribing practitioner will rightly look to one batch of drugs opposed to another.

Naturopathic practitioners will do the same, certain herbs, oils, remedies, etc have, over the course of time, shown to be effective in addressing certain symptoms will perhaps be those first considered.

All of the above is what happens every time you consult a health professional when you are not well. In some way I am merely stating the obvious, but I do so to make this point.

We name illness to help us treat it or its symptoms.

To our bodies, it is just a series of things that have gone wrong. This, that and the other are no longer working properly and have resulted in a set of symptoms.

It doesn't care what we call it. So yes, cancer or any other name is just that - a name!

What our bodies are more interested in is fixing the root cause and that might be the bit we can't define or include in that 'tick box' list that leads to the named diagnosis.
I am tempted here to write 'route cause'

We get sick for a variety of reasons. Take stress as one of them. Stress causes inflammation in the body, inflammation can lead to a variety of health problems, it could manifest in all sorts of ways depending on the individual at the time.

So I can see why people take a view that diseases on one level don't exist, in the named form we give them, but we must all accept that the factors that start ill health do and it is these elements that are more important in addressing than just symptom treating.
These are often as individual as the person that suffers the resulting symptoms, so if you put that aspect into the equation of illness definition, you would have at least 7 billion definitions every time.

Not possible to work in a clinical definition/understanding way, but an extremely important part in the 'getting well' aspect of addressing the root/route cause.

So we think we have seen this set of symptoms before but have we seen this cause before or this accumulation of causes and do we know what that cause is?

Address the cause and you have a far better chance of gaining health, no matter what anyone wants to call your dis-ease.


When we name a disease, all sorts of predictions of its path quickly follow and set in our minds, often generating a fear, cancer being one of those, MS, another perhaps. That fear is never helpful to healing. We need only desire.....the desire to get well and the desire to change that root/route.

So don't let a 'name' engender fear, after all your body has no concept of a diagnosis, just things that need you to do your best to address its ill-ease.