There appear to be lots of treatments for COVID-19, although none are officially recognized by our medical authorities. This says more about the failure of medical authority than failures of treatments. There are two kinds of treatments (and similarly, two kinds of preventatives) for every disease - holistic and reductionist. What's the difference? This illustration, based on the concepts of the book: COVID-19 from Causes to Cures, provides a clear explanation.
Holistic treatments add to healthiness. But that's not all they do. Because holistic treatments add to our healthiness, they sum to improve more aspects of healthiness, resulting in summative, harmonic, and synergistic improvements.
Reductionist treatments aim to fight specific aspects of disease, using a divide and conquer model. Reductionist treatments aim for surgical precision, but surgery is dangerous. Most medicines require a prescription, which requires a specific diagnosis before the doctor can issue the prescription. Why? Because they are dangerous. Reducing healthiness increases danger. Medicines that reduce healthiness are summative in their reduction of healthiness. They sum to create more danger.
Holistic treatments are those that can be combined to increase healthiness and fight disease. With reductionist treatments, however, we need to be very careful about combining treatments, less we increase the risk significantly. That's the theory, let's look at some examples, using COVID-19 as our model.
COVID-19 is an infectious viral disease that sometimes creates significant damage, danger, and possibly death. Most cases of COVID-19, on the other hand, are easily addressed by our natural and present healthienss.
Holistic Treatments
COVID-19 Holistic Treatments are treatments that improve healthiness, giving our bodies, minds, spirits and communities more ability to fight the disease. Maybe you've noticed that most people who die from COVID are seniors. What do aging seniors have in common? We know that some specific nutritional deficiencies are common in aging seniors. Vitamin D is usually deficient, because their diets are low in D and seniors often suffer a deficiency of sunshine. Vitamin D is essential to fight viruses, and also for healing damage caused by the virus. Vitamin C is often deficient, because aging seniors can easily forget to eat, or choose to avoid foods with healthy amounts of Vitamin C. Vitamin C is essential to healing damage caused by COVID-19. Seniors can also be deficient in Zinc, omega fats, and other nutrients that are essential to a healthy response to COVID-19.
Adding these nutrients to a senior's diet is holistic. It improves their healthiness, and each action adds to overall healthiness, improving their ability to fight COVID-19.
Seniors, at home or in care homes, are often deficient in their consumption of water and other liquids. Fighting viral infections requires more water. Healing requires water. When we are dehydrated, we can become sluggish and less able to fight disease. Consumption of sufficient water is not a medicine, but it is a valuable holistic treatment for many disease, including COVID-19.
In addition, seniors often suffer mental deficiencies due to many aging factors, they might suffer from poor community support - family members have their own jobs to work and lives to live. Finally, seniors can easily become bored or suffer other decreases in their life spirits. Actions to improve mental acuity, community interactions, and raise spirits, like playing and enjoying live music, are not considered to be medical treatments even as they improve healthiness and healing.
Holistic treatments are rarely considered medical treatments - unless the patient is sick. Drinking water and taking Vitamin C supplements are not medicines, unless the patient is dehydrated or suffering from a Vitamin C deficiency. But they are almost always holistic actions. Vitamin M, music, is not a medicine, but it is a healthicine.
Reductionist Treatments
Drugs, for the most part, are reductionist. Sometimes, they can produce a long term health benefit. When we get a tooth pulled, a painkiller helps us through the suffering until our health takes over and we heal. Statin drugs are reductionist. They reduce specific healthy aspects of the individual - the presence of cholesterol, under the assumption that disease is present. Analgesics (painkillers) are reductionist, reducing our ability to feel pain, without actually making us healthier.
Holistic can become Reductionist
Sometimes, a holistic action reduces healthiness. Drinking water is healthy. For most people, drinking a bit more water is healthier. But drinking a lot of water is dangerous and drinking too much water is deadly.
The image above shows a gradient between holistic and reductionist actions. Holistic actions are general. Reductionist actions are specific. Most holistic actions can be reductionist in specific situations.
However, few - if any - reductionist actions can become holistic. Marketers for reductionist medicines would like to increase sales - and often suggest that "everyone should take (medicine X)." They are marketing medicines, not healthiness.
Medical Approvals
To be approved as a medical treatment, a drug must be reductionist. To be approved by the US/FDA, for example, the manufacturer must demonstrate that the drug can be used to "prevent, diagnose, treat, or cure a disease." There are no approval mechanisms for any medicines that improve healthiness - because healthiness is not a disease.
COVID-19 Treatments
Like any disease, we might prevent, treat, and cure COVID-19 with holistic actions or with reductionist treatments.
Holistic actions cannot be approved to treat COVID-19, because holistic treatments cannot be approved to treat any disease.
There are no drugs approved to treat COVID-19 (except in emergency situations) even though we have been successfully treating most cases since its emergence. Approval is not about the product, it's about the process. So far, no company has made it through the bureaucratic (often called scientific) processes to have a drug approved for COVID-19.
Holistic treatments do not need to be approved.
So, according to the World Health Organization, "To date, there are no specific vaccines or medicines for COVID-19." Why not? Because there are no proven reductionist treatments.
There are many holistic treatments for COVID-19. Maintaining Vitamin D and Zinc levels are powerful improvements in our natural anti-viral healthiness - before and during a COVID-19 infection. They are preventatives and curatives. Drinking water, maintaining hydration is important during a case of COVID-19, because fighting viral infections increases our need for water.
How many other holistic actions can be used to fight COVID-19? We don't know. They are officially - not recognized and therefore not approved by our medical authorities, not even those that are commonly used.
to your health, tracy
Author: The Elements of Cure
Author: COVID-19 from Causes to Cures