Someone asked me to post on why some people get through this treatment really fluidly, while others take long periods. This is a complicated answer so I will try to answer it as concisely as possible.
There are basically very different reasons for this-they are numerous. Although, in my opinion, there is one kind of disease process going on with IC, it is not the same condition and there for non identically treatmable in each person. Why is this?
Well, human beings are very individual. Each human is born with their own set of genetics and whatever else makes up a human being that we do not even fully understand (although some may pretend to know). Each person travels along their infancy and young life dependent upon the practices of their parent(s) and develops based on those practices. These practices impact their being in every way-energetic and physiological.
1+1=2. Yes, it is a formula. Who you are plus what you do with who you are equals what happens! And differnet humans doing the exact same things, if that is even possible, may have a different outcome-becuase THEY are different! If you add in the unlimited number of variables involved with that the outcomes are fairly exponential! If you add in the human element of compliance (or non), sturglles with understanding process, outside emotional or environmental influences, we can quickly see how things become even more complicated.
I am going to try and give some insight and illuminate more tangibly. I could write an entire book on this one subject, so I am unsure as to how to impart the maximum amount of information in a consice blog, but, here it goes in no particular order:
1-Compliance? Patient dieting in odd patterns, eating the way I tell them to, cheating?
2-Patient smoking pot, drinking alcohol?
3-What was the hisotry of the person having IC in their past in terms of the muber of meds they took through out their lives? DId they take a lot of antibiotics? I have some patients who took them for literally-years on end! This would put them at a huge deficeit.
4-Was the person being treated a vegetarian or vegan over the years. This diet, although, I can relate and understand, will place their bodies, in my opinion, in a place of extreme vulnerability for this kind of chronic illness for reasons too many to explain here.
5-Is the person getting the process, as in, really staying on top of appointments and letting me ask the questions and allowing me to do my work so that I can guide that person through that "windy road" I always speak of from illness to health? This process is so important and many people don't understand why I want to speak to people often enough to follow their process. People want to save money, and I am very congnizant of that and therefor really try my best to see people mimnimally, whereas many other practitioners have their patients constantly in an out of the office. I do not do that. However, many people try to keep spreading their appointments out, and there is no way I can keep track of such a difficult process via emails. I also cannot then lose time so that I do not have time to ask my questions when we finally do speak. This is a big problem that I am guilty of allowing to happen too often.
6-Am I not getting something. Yes, sometimes I do not get something, I am sure. I am not a machine, and information is not input into my brain and spewed out accordingly. So, this is why this process is so dependent on all of the variables being very tight so that I can control for them.
7-Are there hidden ingredients in your skin or hair care that are exacerbating your inflammation?
8-Are you going into nail salons and breathing in toxins and subjecting yourself to more toxins from the polish and all of the other ingredients they are palcing on your body and nails?
9-Are you subjecting yourself at home or in the workplace to toxins such as chlorox or lysol etc… on any regular basis?
10-Could there be mold in your home?
11-Are you in an unhappy or even abusive relationship?
12-Did you come from an abusive childhood?
13-Have you taken a lot of supplements and vitamins that have added to your layers of inflammation? ARe you taking them now?
14-Are you on any medicines that may be influencing your process?
15-Are you getting PT or other forms of alternative care that could be influencing your energetics that you are considering to be benign, but, are not.
16-Are you a frequent traveler-airplanes may influence your internal balance.
17-Where does the person being treated live? Is it an area of the country or the world correlated with a high percentage of chronically ill people?
18-Are you telling me everything? Are there things that you may be doing even though I have said not to-such as anti-wrinkling cremes, facials, unprotected intercourse?
19-Have you had many other complicating health issues that must be treated making this more difficult, such as–do you have a pacemaker with severe heart issues, and because of this, do you have to take other medications to control this life threatening situation?
20-Have you had any history of benzodiazapine use? This will set you back quite a bit and make treatment very difficult.
21-Have you had a history of steroid use for things like asthma, or regular use of antihistamines. This is also problematic.
22-I could go on. But, in the end, we are doing our best to untangle the complicated web of chronic illness that we call IC.
The layers of what has occured and what is occuring become quite involved and intertwined. When trying to work with a human being who has nbeen chronically unwell for a long period of time, we are literally trying to unravel something that has become very entangled. This takes a lot of time and tenacity and it is with a live process that we are working. There is an entire eco system that lives inside of you! This is not something that can be done overnight. It can be easy and take less time, but, it always involved alot of time and goes down slowly in degress. Everything that contributes to creating stumbling blocks in this process will contribute to how difficult this process is.
Together, we try to listen, treat, and guide. This takes a lot of work, focus, tenacity and discipline on everyone's part. Some cases are easier, some cases are more difficult. As I said, I could go on and on for pages and pages quite literally, but simply cannot on the blog.
Dr.M
p.s.-please forgive gramatical and spelling errors, I was typing very fast in the interest of getting this done today, as it was a request (2) from several days ago and a couple of months ago.