See

The Messages Within You Dr. Harvey Bigelsen*

See The Messages Within You

by Dr. Harvey Bigelsen*

Copyright 2013, Dr. Harvey Bigelsen

 See The Messages Within You Dr. Harvey Bigelsen* 2
The Tipping Point

Jonny opened his eyes and the room tipped sideways. He
closed them, and tried opening them once more, lifting his
head a bit. This time, the room spun like a mad carousel
and the nausea came on so swiftly he had no time to hit
the nurse call button before he vomited. When the
nurse arrived she assured him it was from the anesthesia
still wearing off and hed be fine.

He wasnt fine, though. For three years it seemed every
time Jonny lifted or moved his head, the dizziness and
nausea returned like a wave crashing ashore. It was so
bad he could barely get to the bathroom without vomiting.
He dropped 65 pounds and spent all but three or four
hours a week in bed.

An Iraq combat veteran, Jonny returned home with a
shoulder that had been dislocated for eight months. In
that time, the dislocation damaged the nerves running
from his neck to his arm. Hed had several surgeries to
repair the nerve damage. The surgery that left him
perilously dizzy was supposed to decompress, or release,
the nerve from being squeezed constantly.

What went wrong? In the three years after the last
surgery, Jonny endured many tests and exams. No one
could come up with a better answer than surgery
complication. There were no treatments that could
either alleviate the dizziness or repair the damage in
truth no doctor could find anything explicitly damaged by
the surgery.

 See The Messages Within You Dr. Harvey Bigelsen* 3

Jonny grew depressed and suicidal. Recuperating from the
war was hard; at times it seemed impossible. He was only
35 years old.

Desperate for some kind of improvement, Jonny and his
wife came to see me. They were not ready to build a life
around this disability.

A dislocation is itself a pretty major injury that messes with
the alignment of the body. Not just the one joint that
popped out of place, but the whole body. Its not just the
skeleton whose bones all sit in precise locations. There are
ligaments and tendons and muscles that all connect to
those bones, so that our bodies can move. The bones
themselves do not move; its all those soft tissues
connected to them. So when a bone dislocates out of its
normal position, that puts a strain on the attached tissues.
There is both direct stress as the tissues try to pull the
bone back into place, and there is isometric stress as the out
of place bone resists being moved back. If youve ever done
isometric exercises as part of your workout regimen, you
understand how what appears to be no force is actually
making a lot of work for the muscles involved.

Some of the strain on tissues around a dislocation gets
translated into pain. The body creates inflammation to
isolate the area and to heal the bruised or injured soft
tissues. Around a joint such as a shoulder, there is not a
lot of room for the tissues to expand, so the inflammation
itself can cause some pain. To fully heal the area, the
dislocated bone needs to be moved back to where it
belongs. But in Jonnys case, he went for eight months


See The Messages Within You Dr. Harvey Bigelsen*

4
with his shoulder bone out of place. He had eight months
of inflammation, and because the bone didnt get
repositioned, he had eight months of continued small
injuries to the tissues around his shoulder. Furthermore,
the out---of---place bone caused additional injuries from
stretching and pinning nerves and other tissues in the area.


These direct injuries were just the most visible ones,
however. The body works as a whole unit, so the
dislocated shoulder disrupted Jonnys overall body
alignment. While the injury started at his shoulder, it
affected the arm, the entire shoulder girdle from
shoulder to shoulder and therefore by relation his
opposite arm, neck and spine. All these pieces are
connected; not just by the skeletal structure, but by the
soft tissues that connect to them, and weave themselves
around and over to the next bone. The spine connects at
the top to the skull and brain, and at the bottom to the
pelvis and legs. The large muscle of the back wraps from
the spine around to the ribs, and down the buttocks into
the legs and feet.


See The M essages Within You Dr. Harvey Bigelsen* 5

If Jonnys dislocated shoulder had been restored to its
proper position right away, its affect would have been far
less. With the dislocation pulling everything in the wrong
direction, his body tried to pull everything back where it
belonged. This effort fatigued his muscles, and it also
pulled those other muscles into difficult positions for eight
months. In a very real sense, Jonnys body was tilted, with
one area pulling one direction, and everything else
fighting that pulling and trying to stay put in another
direction. Jonny didnt realize how out of alignment he
was because he was focusing his conscious energy on not
being dizzy and fighting pain.

By the time of his first surgery, Jonny was a wreck. And
although that first surgery repaired the dislocation, Jonnys
body had a new habit. Eight months of compensating for
the dislocation created a habitual posture that wouldnt
just reset itself. The body had come to rely on that posture
to keep Jonny reasonably upright and functioning.
Unfortunately surgery cannot coax the body back to its
normal posture or alignment; surgery is using a brute force
hammer rather than a gentle nudge. Surgery also is a one-
--time action, and changing a habit requires practice,
repeated action. Jonnys second, third and fourth surgeries
all attempted to repair injuries that were less about actual
broken body parts and more about habitual misalignment
in response to the original injury. The result was that the
additional surgeries caused additional damage that needed
to be repaired.

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Jonny had scars in his neck from the four surgeries to
repair the nerves in his neck and arm. The scars were
pulling his arm, shoulder and neck together, in essence
creating an injury similar to the one the surgeries were
meant to fix. His body was using extra energy to try to
keep his head and neck upright, while the scars were
pulling him down, literally. Through all this his shoulder
and neck were inflamed because his body was still trying
to heal the dislocated shoulder. But the surgery scars
made it impossible for the healing process to finish
normally. Jonny was stuck in the classic scenario of using
up all available energy to heal and to deal with the pain
and dizziness, leaving nothing left for simple things like
eating and sitting upright.

By the time Jonny came to see me, he felt doomed. And
yet, despite this unending loop of injury, effect and
attempts to heal, Jonny was not doomed. He wasnt even
that far down the road. Time, you see, really does matter.
The longer you live with something, the more deeply
entrenched its effects, and the more likely those effects
will create more effects. Relatively speaking, Jonny had
suffered for a short period of time. Not an insignificant
time, mind you, but not for decades. This matters because
the longer the body deals with the effects of an injury, he
longer it takes to recover fully. In virtually all cases,
improvement is possible. It just takes longer when the body
has lived with the original injury and its effects for a long
time.

 See The Messages Within You Dr. Harvey Bigelsen* 7


To get an idea of the impact of Jonnys injury, imagine how
hard it would be to remain upright, walk or sit properly with a
100---pound weight attached to your back between your
shoulder blade and neck.

The key to Jonnys recovery, I felt, lay in two areas. First, the
obvious one was to treat the scars. By that I mean soften
them up a bit so that the tissues can begin to move and
separate. To do this, we inject the scar tissue with isopathic
remedies. This was obvious to me because of what I know
about scar tissue and its effect on the body. Scars pull on the
rest of the body in the same way that an injury like Jonnys
dislocation pulls on the body. And scars are a kind of tissue
that has no real ability to stretch naturally. They are tight
bands that compress nearby tissue as much as they pull on
tissues farther away.

The second key for Jonny was to gently move the softened
tissues, and therefore the body, back into proper alignment
with osteopathic manipulation. Treating the scar tissue by
softening it up makes it easier to stretch the scars and
separate them from surrounding tissue a bit so that blood,
lymph and nutrients can flow around the scars more easily.
The combination of softening with remedies and then

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physically manipulating the tissues helps the body to relearn
alignment and positioning in that particular area, which has a
ripple effect throughout the body as other, more remote areas
no longer have to work so hard to hold their own positions.

These two fairly small actions together created a big
opportunity that helped Jonnys body in two important ways.
First, the stagnated healing process now had an outlet for
completion, because the treatments reactivated circulation
around Jonnys shoulder. Second, the osteopathic
manipulation helped his body remember its original alignment.
This helped to start relaxing the constantly tense muscles in his
shoulder and neck. If all the blood vessels and nerves in the
area previously had been suffering like blades of grass crushed
in a tight fist, now the fist relaxed and uncurled. And like the
release of those blades of grass, Jonny experienced a
relaxation and release of the blood vessels and nerves around
his shoulder. Now that blood flowed properly, the muscles,
ligaments and tendons received oxygen and other nutrients for
healing. Now that the nerves were no longer compressed,
Jonnys pain and dizziness disappeared.

* * * * * *

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Jonnys story is remarkable to Jonny, but not to me. His
recovery sounds like a miracle, but it is not. The only
difference between my approach and Jonnys previous doctors
approach is that I worked from an understanding of how the
injury affected Jonnys entire body. Structure is taught to
every student of osteopathy. It is not taught to medical
students in general. Furthermore, the important relationship
between structure and flow of the body is only taught to
osteopathic students interested in learning about cranial
manipulation. The knowledge is not offered in general medical
school, to future doctors and nurses. After graduating, if a
practitioner studies cranial sacral therapy as it is taught to
massage therapists, they will learn the
importance of the structure and flow of the body.

All injuries change the structure and flow of the body. If those
two things are not addressed, the injury itself cannot heal
properly and its long---term effects will eventually cause
chronic conditions to arise. The body never stops trying to
heal an injury.

Jonny has his life back today despite his injury and its scars.
Injuries cause permanent changes to our bodies; Jonny will
never be completely as he was before the dislocation.

Whats important to me is not that Jonny look like he was
never injured, or that he moves as if he were never injured.
Whats important to me is that Jonny has taken control of
how the injury affects him. It would have been easier for him
to give up and stop moving, to resign himself to spending the




 See The Messages Within You Dr. Harvey Bigelsen* 10


rest of his life incapacitated. Those scars are permanent and
without period adjustments, Jonny would find himself less
and less able to move, more and more incapacitated. Scar
tissue by definition does not move; an outside force must
manipulate it. In a sense, an injury like Jonnys is a beginning,
because it forever changes the way in which we need to take
care of ourselves.

The scars are always pulling on Jonnys body and they are
always tending to seize up and hold tight. If he does not
occasionally take care of his shoulder, he will experience the
effects of clenched muscles and eventually will become dizzy
again. If he lets the situation continue without seeing his
osteopath, he will eventually face one or more chronic
diseases. Yet while Jonny will need to be vigilant about
working with the effects of his injury for the rest of his life,
this is a different situation altogether than living with a
chronic disease. With regular structural work, Jonnys
situation is manageable.




















 See The Messages Within You Dr. Harvey Bigelsen* 11


With chronic disease, the expectation is gradual decline at worst
and little hope for improvement at best. Addressing the effects
of injuries over a lifetime actually prevents the likelihood of
chronic disease arising. Major injuries like Jonnys do
permanently change the body, but they do not put you on an
inevitable downward path. Periodic structural work is important
in order to maintain the best possible health. Virtually all of the
chronic diseases that we face are the result of past injuries that
are not being addressed properly.

The lasting, permanent effects of injuries must be addressed
periodically to avoid worse problems. The good news is that its
possible to not only overcome some of the injuries immediate
effects, but more important; its possible to change the likely
long---term course of those effects. No matter how dismal or
permanent your current situation may look to you, even if you
have been in declining health for years, if you take steps to
address the original insult, you will see improvements in your
health.

The basic lesson of Doctors Are More Harmful Than Germs is that
when the effects of injuries are left untreated, problems will arise
that lead to all kinds of chronic diseases, up to and including
cancer. The basic lesson of this book is whats most important is
that you treat the effects of the original injury. W hen doesnt
matter so much, although obviously its better to treat the effects
close to the time of the injury. Even if you were to die two weeks
after starting to treat that original injury, in those two weeks you
would see noticeable change for the

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better. If you start today to treat an injury from 50 years ago, you
will improve your health. What matters most is that you address
the original injury.

I think its fair to say that most of us would like to enjoy improved
health, especially if that means improved mobility or improved
ability to function unassisted. Because mainstream medicine
really is not equipped to do this work, I want to explain in some
detail the other paths that are available. There are as many
alternate paths as there are unique human beings, but there are
some commonalities. It is worth seeking out the right path for
you. Even if you have spent significant time and energy on the
road of chronic disease, unless you are already dead
there is hope. Being on that road does not condemn you to an
early, painful death. You can, in a sense, turn the car around and
take a different turning at a number of crossroads.

The first part of changing your current health trajectory is that
you must know yourself. You must understand what makes you
unique in this world. Chronic disease does not own you or
identify you. People are complex creatures. No two are 100
percent alike. In my work, I look at a persons blood to
understand who they are, whats important to their body, and
how they have been affected by various insults over the years.

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The Story Of You

Now come here, I want to show you. Take a look in the
microscope. Go ahead, look right there. What do you see? Pretty
trippy, eh? Thats your story; youre unique. No one else has
blood that looks like that. We can look at it again tomorrow, and
youll see its different.

I ended the last book talking about how I see my role as a medical
Sherlock Holmes. Here Im inviting you to take a closer look, to
delve further into the two keys: observation and action. My goal
is to discover your story, and for that, observation is paramount.
Modern medicine has a tendency to rush screaming into action,
before any real observation has taken place. It is one thing to act
on a three---inch deep knife wound. It is quite another to presume
that a high blood pressure reading means a person must be
treated for heart disease.

How do you discover the story of you? First lets put together a
framework. Whats going on right now? What caused you to seek
out help? What concerns you? These questions give us a general
idea of how you have been affected by the source problem. We
dont yet know the source, although we may have a good idea.
This first bit of information describes a result that is a kind of a
snapshot; it shows us where you are today. For my work, its
important to keep this in mind, that the current condition is valid
for this moment in time. Tomorrow, or after we treat you, you will
have changed a bit. I am more successful following the changes
than I am staying stuck looking after that initial complaint or
diagnosis.

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The body is constantly changing. Remember noticing a
temperature change? Clouds moved in when its 85 degrees and
sunny, and you are reaching for a sweater. Your body is
adapting. If the clouds stay, you might start to feel too hot in the
sweater when your body stabilizes and you get used to the new
temperature. That sort of adaptation goes on constantly, in
response to every minute change in our environment.

Another part of the framework we are discovering about you is
the events that brought you to where you are now. List out our
past injuries, major illnesses, surgeries, accidents, even
something around your birth like being born prematurely or
being pulled out by forceps. These can all play a role in your
current situation. Whether they do play a role, and how much of
a role, depends on your unique makeup. One of these
experiences may be your key event. However, your key event
may be something else, so we add this information to your
framework and we keep gathering information.

Now we need to place you in time. When did you notice your
health start to go downhill? After your tonsils were taken out?
The summer you went to the lake house with your best friend?
Time helps us to focus in on an event or a situation. Time is not
going to give us the definitive answer, though. Time helps to
explain but it is only a clue. We are trying to construct a path of
breadcrumbs that together create a picture of your health
situation.

Sometimes the framework is very simple. For a lot of people, a
single major event like a surgery or accident,

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clearly starts a whole cascade of health problems. Unless we
discover the framework, however, we are just going to guess
wildly in all directions. And my goal is to find that key point to
focus in on. Thats where the greatest improvement will come
from.

The last thing we do, in constructing the initial framework for
you, is to look at your blood under the microscope right after we
pricked your finger. We use the blood pictures because its an
immediate, direct information source about your health. As
soon as you take blood out of the body, it changes. Anything
removed from the body changes when you remove it, but
because we are looking at live blood, blood that is not stained or
distorted in any way, we get a unique picture of your health.
Blood that is liquid, warm and therefore alive reflects back the
true state of your health.

If you look at stained blood, you can see parts such as the
number of platelets. But you cannot understand the quality of
the platelets. Numbers only get you so far. But in the living
blood, you can see whether the platelets are large or small. You
can see if they are clustered, you can see if they are hugely
enlarged from normal. These things all tell different aspects of
the story of a persons health. The differences are really very
important; they can make or break the treatment regimen. The
quality of the platelets matters as much, or more than their
quantity.

Additionally, when you look at living blood you can infer a
persons life force. Living blood moves; slowly or quickly, the

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movement tells me if you are exhausted or energetic. I can see
when the body is having trouble cleaning out normal cellular
debris. I can also see the effects of chronic illness and stress.
Both these, along with others, change the proportions of the
different blood components such as white cells and fibrin.

Often when I look at a persons blood after theyve told me the
basic framework, I see confirmation of everything thats been
said. Sometimes I see new information like a scar from a
forgotten injury. Most important to me is what their blood says
about their current state of being. If a person is overly tired, and
worn down, I need to proceed more slowly than if they are
reasonably energetic. Tired, worn down people have used up
most of their energy reserves. Every treatment is a change, and
adapting to change requires energy. A person who is already
nearly out of gas, so to speak, will do better with small changes
that gradually help them to recharge their energy.

The number one rule is that you need to be treated as an
individual, not as a disease protocol. Protocols, whether for
diseases or personality types, are ridiculous. Youre a hot liver
person and you fell off your bike? That tells me something
important. But it does not mean you should have the exact same
treatment as the hot liver person I saw earlier who also fell off
their bike. The way you manifest those concepts, the injury that
brought you here, and the result that showed up and is affecting
your life, thats a whole package. Those pieces come together
differently for every person. When I look at your blood, my goal is
to decipher and work with your unique story. Thats the only

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way to get through to whats really going on for you. How you got
here and whats bugging your body right now, thats all yours, no
one else can claim it. I work with your unique story to come up
with a plan that is all about you. It might look a lot like plans for
people with similar stories, but in the details its all just for you
and no one else.

For example, I see two people who have head injuries. Both fell:
The woman fell off a bunk bed and hit her head on a wood
stove, breaking her jaw. The man tripped and fell, hitting his
head on a fireplace hearth. The woman has no apparent long---
term effects while the man is having short---term memory
problems and some other physical effects. The woman has
reacted to her accident by changing the alignment of her body,
starting with her jaw. The man absorbed the major force of the
blow from his accident in his head. It would be silly to treat them
exactly the same way, with some kind of a head injury protocol.

The plain truth is that no one else in this world has your exact set
of experiences. No one else has precisely the same gene
combination not even your parents.

No one else uses their emotions in quite the same way as you.
When you put together the entire package that is you, the result
is undeniably unique.

There can never be a double---blind study of you. Its impossible.

All of those drugs out there designed to treat complaint X or
nagging problem Y, they are there in part because what
works for one person does not work for someone else.

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Diagnosis is not the key

Establishing a persons framework of health is so different from a
diagnosis. I cant tell you how many times someone has come
into my office with a clear diagnosis from a medical doctor, and
we have shown that diagnosis is nothing more than a symptom
the result of a deeper problem. The person often comes to
see me because they dont want to take drugs or do a
recommended surgery, or they want a second or third opinion
before undergoing a diagnostic procedure.

There it is: modern medicine rushing to act before all the
information is there. To be sure, there is a very limited set of
tools that a regular doctor has at their disposal. Those tools
tend to be geared toward removing, blocking, diverting and
destroying. You can argue that many tests and procedures---
disguised---as---tests have as their goal identifying, but that is
actually a side effect of the test. To do the test, something is
done to you, your body is acted upon, and most often, invaded.
That is the entire subject of Doctors Are More Harmful Than
Germs, however, so I point you there now if you want the
fullness of my thoughts on that matter.

Here I want to talk about the idea that a diagnosis is The Law, in
the sense that it proves what is wrong with you and gives you
something to treat. One of the reasons Jonny and his wife came
to see me is that they were looking for a definitive diagnosis;
they needed something to latch onto. Thats human nature, to
want an answer. But the answer is not necessarily the label of a
diagnosis. By definition, a diagnosis is a name for a collection of
identified symptoms, nothing more. And by nothing more,

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what I mean is that a diagnosis does not, and cannot, identify a
single entity that can be seen, attacked and defeated. Diabetes,
for example, is a collection of actions and reactions in the body
that have been grouped into the heading of diabetes. Those
actions and reactions are symptoms that could have any name,
such as apples. When you are given a diagnosis, that means, to
modern medicine, that there are drugs, treatments and
presumed outcomes that all fit into that particular box. Every
diagnosis has a protocol: Every single person assigned to the
diagnosis gets exactly the same treatment, from beginning to
end. There is zero thought to a persons unique makeup. Even
when a drug fails to cause the desired effect, the doctor simply
pulls the next one off the shelf that is what they give to
everyone for whom the first drug fails. The standard of treatment
says that anyone who does not get the protocol is receiving poor
care.

Our entire modern health care system revolves around the
sanctity of the diagnosis. Almost universally, health care
providers despise the diagnosis coding system. Yet everything
they do, and everything that we as patients rely upon, is
connected to the diagnosis coding system. That system ensures
that every diagnosis of whooping cough is treated with exactly
the same drugs and procedures. That system forms the basis
for deciding which procedures are allowed for heartburn and
which are not. It is that coding system that gives the CDC data
about how far the flu has spread in any given year, and which
drugs are effective or not effective in treating it. The diagnosis
coding system provides various experts with data for measuring
the prevalence of heart attacks in middle---aged black women

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and the numbers of kids diagnosed with ADHD. The diagnosis
coding system is an important component of insurance
underwriting, providing both overall population statistics and
information about individuals. Coding determines whether a
procedure or treatment is covered or whether you will be stuck
paying for it.

No treatment can be paid unless there is diagnosis, and that
diagnosis must be an approved match for the treatment. Some
rules about how diagnoses and treatments can match are made
up by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and
other rules are made up by the insurers themselves. Diagnosis
code data is parsed with populations, locations, economics and
other factors within beneficiary rosters.

Finding the right diagnosis is key, because for a provider to be
paid, the diagnosis must back up all treatments and procedures
given. Even if the problem is not yet known, the tests ordered
must have a presumed diagnosis attached. If the eventual
diagnosis does not support one or more tests, the provider must
document a rationale or payment is denied. This is done
in part to prevent unnecessary testing but it is also done to
ensure that all providers treat people with similar symptoms in
exactly the same way.

The effect of all this on health care is that the emphasis is on the
diagnosis, not people. The people, the patients, have become
irrelevant; they are trumped by the importance of the diagnosis.
We define ourselves by our diagnoses. I think that what is most
egregious about this trend who we are and how our bodies
adapt is irrelevant.

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The only thing that matters is the label assigned to us. A
diagnosis tells us nothing about a person, nothing about how
they ended up at this place. But, a diagnosis does tell us which
procedures to do and which drugs to take. Will these solve our
health problem? Maybe, but probably not. In fact they usually
mask one set of problems and create others.

A diagnosis is meant to be that one true thing. But it is not
any health professional can tell you that. This notion that a
diagnosis has to be static leads to some pretty interesting
situations. If you exhibit symptoms that do not fall neatly into
your original diagnosis box, you can be diagnosed with
something additional in its charming fashion modern
medicine calls this comorbidity. Alternatively, you might be
told that because your symptoms do not fit the diagnosis you
can ignore them.

But symptoms are the way the body communicates with us.
They are like a little kid saying, mom, mom, mom. If we
ignore what the symptom is trying to tell us, we may lose
important and useful information. Similarly, if we ignore the kid
trying to get our attention, they may wet their pants. We all
have situations where we cannot be fitted into a neat diagnosis
box. A diagnosis only gives you a shorthand description.

Symptoms are not the end or even the beginning. They simply
are the way your body is reacting to a particular event or
situation at this point in time. They are attempts by the body to
tell us what is going on. A collection of symptoms, while called a
diagnosis, in reality is itself a symptom pointing to the real
problem.

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It can be challenging to identify the real problem, because each
of us is unique. The way our bodies respond to something can
seem totally unrelated to our logical, linear brain. This is
especially true because weve been taught for years to look at
each ailment as a singular, unattached event. For example, one
man hit by a car while riding his bike may later develop heart
disease. The heart disease is treated without any thought of the
accident. Another man who experiences the same accident has
a concussion that immediately affects his health.

The concussion is presumed to be caused by the accident but
the head is treated on its own, in isolation from the rest of the
body. Knowing the diagnosis name for a group of symptoms
doesnt really tell you anything. Its a label designed to make
communication easier.

However, by observing those symptoms you learn how the body
is reacting to and dealing with something. You need to observe
closely pay attention to truly know what the body is
explaining. Thats one reason I like to think of myself as a
medical Sherlock Holmes. With experience, you get better at
figuring out how a particular body has chosen to communicate,
but you still have to test your theory to find out if it is accurate.
For me, observing the blood before, during and after a
treatment is my preferred tool. Its such a clear, real---time
reflection of what the body cares about.

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Staying focused on a diagnosis has other drawbacks. In
particular, the name that is a diagnosis usually carries a stigma
fraught with fear and uncertainty. Being told you have X
condition usually means you are now condemned to a lifetime
of drugs and probable invasive procedures, along with a
gradually poorer and poorer quality of life. And really, who
wants that? Nobody I know.

It can be worse to be given a diagnosis that supposedly can be
cured with an invasive procedure or surgery. Your expectation is
that getting the procedure will make everything bad go away
forever. The reality is that another problem will crop up later
on, and maybe it will be worse because you had the procedure.
You may make the connection to the procedure or you may not.
The two will be linked regardless. The procedure adds alayer of
complexity on top of the original problem, which is still around.
The original problem is still around because all the procedure did
was attack a symptom and attempt to change the action of the
symptom. For example, you have high blood pressure and severe
chest pain, so you are given a stent to
keep your artery open. A stent is a tiny, flexible mesh of plastic
or metal that is inserted into the blood vessel. Your chest pain
may go away, or it may not. You will still have high blood
pressure. The stent and the action of inserting it damage your
blood vessel, which forces your body to produce inflammation to
try to heal the damage. The stent is a constant irritant inside of
your blood vessel. Attacking your pain and blood pressure by
inserting a stent does nothing for the underlying condition that
caused your pain.

 See The Messages Within You Dr. Harvey Bigelsen* 24


Follow The Connections To Find The Cause

Diagnosis by modern medicine is so misguided in so many ways.
It creates an idea and then seeks to treat the idea as if it were a
real object. You see a doctor because you have symptoms that
are causing you discomfort and concern. The doctor runs tests
to try to match your symptoms to a treatable object, the
diagnosis. The tests often look for numbers like blood pressure,
cholesterol, glucose, or more esoteric ones like A1C, protein
alpha or D---dimer. Any test result that comes out positive is
taken as proof for a diagnosis. Then treatment focuses on
changing the test result, usually with a drug. The idea is that by
changing the test result you can be cured of the diagnosis. But
the weird thing is that you have to keep getting retested, and
the numbers keep changing. When you stop taking the drug,
your test results go right back where you started.

Why do you suppose that is?

Because your problem isnt the test result. Nor is it the diagnosis,
the treatable idea that matches the test result. By treating the
test result there is no actual effect to you, except whatever
reaction you have to the drug. This is also true when you have a
procedure designed to change a test result. Nothing has actually
been altered that relates to the problem itself, only the result.
For instance, if you have a deep splinter that eventually gets
infected, medicine treats the infection, not the splinter. But the
infection is a result of the splinter; it would not have appeared
all by itself if the splinter werent there. Removing the splinter
will cause the body to clear the infection.

 See The Messages Within You Dr. Harvey Bigelsen* 25




Thats really easy to see, right? So ideally, rather than treat a
diagnosis like diabetes, what you want to do is understand why
the diabetes showed up, and deal with the original insult.

A diagnosis is always the end result of something else. Its a
signpost, pointing toward the problem. You cant have heart
disease; the symptoms that are called heart disease have
developed as a result of something else that the body is working
on. Disease does not magically appear from nowhere. Disease
is not an attack by an evil lurking entity. The body doesnt
decide to create disease. The body has no consciousness.
Disease has no consciousness. When symptoms appear that we
call disease, the body is trying to accomplish something.

For instance, we have been taught to believe that measuring
cholesterol guarantees the presence or absence of heart
disease. But the only guarantee is that you will know how much
cholesterol is in your blood at the time the blood is drawn. Any
test you have is useful only as a single point in time once that
point passes the test result is no longer valid. The body changes
all the time. Thus increased amounts of cholesterol mean only
that the body is doing something that is resulting in more
cholesterol than is typical. Our job is to figure out why the body
is taking that action. That increase in cholesterol may drop on
its own, or, it may continue to increase and be associated with
other symptoms. But, and this is crucial, by taking a pill to
reduce cholesterol levels you are interfering with what the

 See The Messages Within You Dr. Harvey Bigelsen* 26


body is trying to do, and it will seek out other pathways to
achieve its goal.

The body has no consciousness. It simply acts. If the body could
have goals, they would be to keep the entire organism alive.
That organism is us in our entirety. Our existence, our life, is
critical to the sustenance of an entire ecosystem. The goal of
life is life, not destruction. If you try to stop what the body is
trying to do, it will find a way around the barrier. If all you do is
take drugs or supplements or have procedures designed to do
away with one symptom or another, whether named as a
diagnosis or not, you will never do more than place barriers in
the way of what the body is trying to accomplish. Seeking out
the reason for what you are experiencing is the only way to
change it permanently.

Treating symptoms and their results in isolation is especially
harmful when it comes to chronic disease. By definition, chronic
disease unfolds over a long period of time. It doesnt
mysteriously appear overnight. Chronic disease cannot be
attributed to bad test numbers, because again, those
numbers are doing little more than chronicling actions that the
body is taking. A test might be interesting and it might provide
some useful information, but it is not going to help determine
the root cause of that chronic disease.

Knowing the root of a problem is the key to solving it. Every
current health concern is the result of a connected series of
events. You really have to pay attention to those events. If it
werent for them, you wouldnt have your current concern.

 See The Messages Within You Dr. Harvey Bigelsen* 27


Treat a symptom, and you will resolve a symptom during the
time you treat. You will have no effect on the underlying issue
that caused the symptom to show up, except by accident. And
that effect may not be the pleasant outcome you imagine. In
virtually all cases, you will force the body to seek other means
of resolution, which means you will experience other
symptoms.

Symptoms are not a punishment. They are the bodys attempts
to tell our brain what is going on.

 See The Messages Within You Dr. Harvey Bigelsen* 28


Pay Your Body Some Respect

When you take a drug or have a procedure, your body changes
instantly. Because of this immediate effect, you think that you
are improved. A drug is a chemical that forcibly alters some
process in your body. If you stop taking the drug, the process
returns to its previous state if it hasnt been damaged too
much. You can see this really clearly with all the drugs given to
alter test numbers like cholesterol and blood pressure. When
you stop taking the drugs, your numbers go haywire again. The
goal when taking these drugs is not to improve your overall
health but to achieve the right numbers on a test. Think about it.
People talk about the importance of keeping their numbers low.
They dont talk about how their quality of life has improved.
Procedures are worse than drugs because they
permanently alter and almost always destroy something in your
body. And neither of these does anything more than address
symptoms. By treating your symptoms and diagnoses, in effect
modern medicine turns a blind eye to what is really happening:

What is the body trying to resolve with the action that creates
these symptoms, in you, right now.

Everything that happens in the body is connected. Its an
interdependent system. Those connections are far more
important than any diagnosis. Only by identifying and
addressing such a basic question the root of the problem
can you improve conditions and provide nutrients that the
body can use to heal.

 See The Messages Within You Dr. Harvey Bigelsen* 29


No doctor or health professional can heal you. Your body does
all the healing. The best a doctor or health professional can do
is to make a good observation interpret your symptoms and
provide a combination of therapies and nutrients that your
body can use to heal. A health professional can assist the body.
But nothing more than that. Most of the time, thats all that is
needed. Think about it. The body is capable of finding a cut,
stopping the bleeding and closing it up all without any medical
intervention whatsoever. Isnt that truly remarkable?

Theres something else really important to understand about
diagnosis and modern medicine. By treating a diagnosis, a
doctor splits the problem off of you, so that you become
secondary to both the diagnosis and the treatment. This is one
reason that people who are well on their way to dying are so
often over---treated, receiving supposed lifesaving surgeries and
then dying soon afterward. The body does the healing, not the
doctor. The body created the symptoms, so when you do
something that acts upon the symptoms, you are affecting the
body and its healing processes. The body has no conscience; it
has no idea why you or the doctor is trying to stop the
symptom.

The body will keep trying to accomplish its goal, regardless of
the treatment. The only way for a treatment to be effective is
for it to wipe out, extinguish or demolish the bodys ability to
create the action. You are never isolated from anything the body
is doing. Something happening in the body is happening
to you. A treatment designed to only touch a symptom, like

 See The Messages Within You Dr. Harvey Bigelsen* 30


killing cancer cells, will always affect your entire body. Isolation
is a myth.

Over the years Ive noticed that there is a truism about how the
body reacts to procedures, in particular. If you have never been
seriously ill, if you have had none, very few or maybe one minor
procedure, then a single major surgery can cause you major
problems. Its like the body is so amazingly outraged that you
would dare to attack it, it reacts very strongly. Whereas if you
have had many procedures, or many illnesses, the body is tired
and worn out, and it has no energy left to react to another
insult. In some ways a person whose body is reacting strongly
can appear to be far more seriously affected than the person
whose body is totally worn out. The strongly reacting body is
vigorously trying to heal the affront, and that takes a lot of
energy. The worn out body is no longer capable of raising a
finger in protest, i.e. healing; it is instead actively declining.

This is why a very sick person has to be treated delicately. You
will only cause harm by aggressively subjecting them to
interventions and drugs. People who are very sick just do not
have the energy within them to work with aggressive
treatments. If you want treatment to help, you have to be
patient and give them time to regain a reserve, no matter how
minute. And, age really matters. An eighty---year---old man has lived
a very full life and has that many more experiences to take into
account. He may be very healthy and fit, but that does not mean
he can be treated as if he were twenty.

 See The Messages Within You Dr. Harvey Bigelsen* 31


Have a little respect for what the body has been through. It may
not seem like much to someone else, but they are not you, how
could they possibly know what is important to you? Its not a
weakness to show respect for years of using your body. Being
dead is not so macho.

 See The Messages Within You Dr. Harvey Bigelsen* 32


Tuning Out The Sirens

I decided to write this book because a lot of people who read the
last one (Doctors Are More Harmful Than Germs) want to know
how to actually find the root and work with it rather than treat
symptoms. The theory sounds great, but the reality for most
people is that they are trying to keep cholesterol numbers down.
Insurance companies reward for that. Doctors praise for it. You
feel like you are successfully dealing with your health problem.
And in our day and age, we have been trained to believe that
invasive procedures like biopsies are the only way to know what
is truly going on. Seeing believes.

There are two conundrums here. Number one, how to get past
the siren call of the tried---and---true mainstream approach to
chronic health conditions. And number two, what to actually do
if youre not going the route of mainstream medicine: tests,
chronic drug use, and procedures.

The view of the blood that I showed you in the microscope you
will never see in your doctors office. Mainstream medicine
never looks at the blood like that. They dont teach that its
possible to look at it that way. Whats crazier to me is that most
doctors arent even curious about it. Do you know, I once had a
chief of hematology refuse, point blank, to put his eye to my
microscope? Can you believe that? A medical doctor whose
specialty is the blood, and he has no interest in seeing blood
while its alive. Where is the scientific curiosity?

You might be more curious than that doctor was, but those two
conundrums invariably will dog you. Medicines history in the
U.S. has linked them inextricably. The first, how to avoid the

 See The Messages Within You Dr. Harvey Bigelsen* 33


siren call of mainstream medicine, is philosophical, but its huge.
Everyone has a lifetime of conditioning and propaganda, to the
extent we are not consciously aware of it. Very tricky. There
always seems to be a point where, from stress or habit or fear, or
all three, people turn to mainstream medicine as the most likely
source of answers. It doesnt matter that the answers arent
there, we want to know.

To that conundrum I can only suggest practice. Practice looking
from a different vantage point. Practice observing rather than
rushing to act. Unless you are having a life and death
emergency, practice watching how a health concern unfolds.
Instead of rushing to the doctor with sore muscles after a
workout, pay attention to those muscles. What movement
makes them hurt? Does movement like walking make the
muscles feel better? When you choose to act, do so
deliberately, knowing that your eyes are open wide, and keep
observing. Notice how your body is reacting. If movement
helps your sore muscles, can you do some gentle stretches to
ease the soreness?

Make adjustments, even if that means stopping something that
you previously agreed to. If stretching in one direction doesnt
help, try the opposite direction. Whatever you do, dont become
so passive that you are just a faceless body being acted upon.
Dont just lie in bed wishing for a doctors appointment
so they can fix your problem for you. Be very deliberate in what
you allow, when you allow it, and how you follow through.
Practice trusting that what you observe is the truth. If gentle
stretching and movement helps your soreness, try doing that
for a few days and notice whether the soreness resolves on its
own.

 See The Messages Within You Dr. Harvey Bigelsen* 34


Suppose youve observed and now youre ready to act, but
youve decided that you dont want to go the route of tests and
drugs and procedures. Start where youre most comfortable.
Taking different route to resolving your health concern doesnt
require you to turn your back on mainstream medicine. Im
asking you to pay attention to the very real limitations. All of
the answers are never in one place. There is nothing wrong with
talking to your doctor if you have a good rapport with them and
you trust them. You might discover that your doctor is very
interested in how you might address a health concern without
tests, drugs or procedures. Lifestyle changes, for instance, can
do a lot of good, and your doctor may be just the cheerleader
or moral support that you need to go after old habits. Maybe its
your doctor who recommends seeing a massage therapist before
racing off to get an MRI. More and more doctors today are
learning how to affect health in other ways, and deep down
most are interested in causing you as little harm as possible.
Theyve been hampered for years by a culture and industry that
not only denies everything but drugs and procedures, but that
also mocks and derides other approaches from day one of
medical school.

Regardless of how you begin, start looking for a good structural
practitioner as soon as possible. This is a person who really
understands how alignment of the body and all its components
affects health. People with this expertise may be osteopaths,
acupuncturists, and chiropractors or massage therapists. But
dont accept just anyone with these titles. Look for osteopaths
trained in cranial manipulation. Chiropractors who specialize in
network spinal analysis understand the role of the soft tissues,
as well as bones, in structure. Similarly, seek out massage

 See The Messages Within You Dr. Harvey Bigelsen* 35


therapists trained in therapeutic techniques such as cranial
sacral therapy, visceral manipulation, neuromuscular therapy
and myofascial release. Although acupuncturists focus on
changing energy flow, their goal is the same as those who work
with the physical body directly. The best practitioners can have
long waiting lists for initial appointments; so dont wait until you
are in a crisis to find someone. Structural alignment is so critical
to good health, this is one particular area where you really need
to work with someone regularly, especially if you have a chronic
condition of any kind. These are the people who can help your
body return to optimal functioning after an injury or surgery.
They can also help to prepare your body if you are facing surgery
so that the damage and repercussions are minimized.

One of the most famous of all structural therapists, the father of
osteopathy Andrew T. Still, said that order and health are
inseparablewhen order in all parts is found, disease cannot
prevail He was referring to the structural alignment of the body
as well as the relationships between all organs, systems, nerves,
blood vessels, fluids, bones and so on. Other
practitioners have expanded upon this in referring to flow, or
movement, that is inherent throughout the body. Everything
moves. And when something does not move, that sets the stage
for health problems. Flow stops wherever there is a scar, and
where the body has twisted or contorted itself in trying to work
through a health problem. The goal is simply to open up the
point where there is a blockage, rather than to inflict an action
at that point. For example, air does not flow through a closed
window. You can open the window by unlocking

 See The Messages Within You Dr. Harvey Bigelsen* 36


it and using the existing window hardware to gently open
it. Or, you can take a hammer and smash the glass. Both
methods achieve the result of opening the window, but
breaking the glass causes permanent damage. This is the
difference between working with a structural practitioner
and working with mainstream medicine. Most so---called
alternative medicine schools teach the least possible
intervention for this very reason.

Lastly, a naturopath can help you find and resolve the root
cause of your health concerns. Rather than focusing on
symptoms, naturopaths are trained to find the underlying
concern that the symptoms express. They support and
work with structural practitioners while supplying the
bodys healing efforts with needed nutrients.

A talented cranial osteopath will be able to set you up for a
positive change for virtually any health problem, simply by
tuning in to your body. Acupuncturists work with the flow of
energy through the body, particularly looking for places
where the energy flow has stopped, the stagnations. I
honestly cannot recall anyone among my clients who has
not seen benefits from structural work. You owe it to
yourself to find someone.

There are numerous online directories where you can find
structural practitioners near you. These are listed in the
resources section of this book. It is more important to find
someone who is really good rather than someone with a
long list of techniques to their



 See The Messages Within You Dr. Harvey Bigelsen* 37


name. Your doctor may surprise you with a really good
recommendation.

While you are searching out other health practitioners,
keep in mind that most practice by treating diagnoses
and symptoms. These other practitioners Ive
mentioned usually have a long intake interview for your
first visit. Use that time to ask your own questions and
get to know the practitioners approach. Do they focus
on what tests youve had, the results and your
deviation from normal results? Theyre focused on
symptoms. Does the practitioner want to know the
events and timing when you began to feel your health
declining? They are looking for a root cause. Does the
practitioner ask you about popular health issues like
vitamin D deficiency and wheat sensitivity rather than
your specifics? Theyre going to offer you a protocol and
probably treat something different than your problem.
Does the practitioner get excited about discovering
cause and effect (links between earlier
events and later problems) in your story? Theyre going
to focus on your particular situation and needs.

Practice observing a health practitioner just as you is
practicing observing your own health. While you might
have to talk to a few people to find the right fit for
your situation and needs, a little extra time spent
searching will ultimately land you the best possible
long--- term partnership.

See The Messages Within You Dr. Harvey Bigelsen* 38




Editors note: For more information, visit:
Bigelsenacademy.com

*Harvey Bigelsen holds a degree as a Doctor of
Medicine, he is not currently licensed to practice
medicine in any jurisdiction, and he does not hold
himself out as a licensed physician or other healing arts
practitioner.

The End

(Until We Meet Again)