So, when everything’s going well, you may think, “Oh, I can just kind of go about my business, there are no problems, I just keep going, and I don’t really need to listen to my body that much unless it really screams at me.” Well, in reality, for those who are struggling with chronic health issues, they do need to learn the language of their body.
They need to understand the subtle clues, not just the loud screaming (“Oh yeah, my toe is broken!”) but the, “Oh, there’s a little ache here,” which means you do or do not need to get help. When a problem is building in your body, there’s a little warning light going off somewhere. Nevertheless, not every noise, not every sensation from your body is actually a warning sign.
So then you’re thinking, “what do I do now? I’m supposed to listen to my body, but not everything is an alarm, and not everything is a message I need to understand.”
How do you know? Well, you don’t just walk complete understanding of your body from day one, with all the communication issues worked out. Think of it like a marriage. You get to know your spouse. You get to know how they express things. You get to know how they try to get your attention and what their love language is.
Our body is kind of like that. “But I was born with this body. Shouldn’t I know by now?” Well, not really. If you haven’t been paying attention on a regular basis…. If you don’t pay attention to your wife, you’re not going to learn her love language. If you’re not paying attention to your body, you may wake up one morning and realize, “Oh, it’s been shouting at me for the last six months,” something you recognize only because it just slapped you in the face.
So, there’s so many ways that that happens. With chronic illness, we have to help our patients interpret what their body is saying. Now, not everything your body says is perfectly clear, but you need to learn as much as you can about what your body is saying so that you know how to respond.
Ultimately, while we can sit there with you in an office visit, even though our office visits are 30 minutes to two hours long, there are times when you’re not in our office. Actually, most of the time, you’re not in our office. That most of the time means that you need to be able to learn day to day. I’m sorry, but we’re not going to be able to respond every 30 minutes throughout the day to figure out what’s going on with your symptoms.
We’re not able to be there like the little angel on your shoulder, going on as they do in the movies: “Oh, my guardian angel is listening all the time.” Instead, we’re at a distance. Yes, we’re accessible, but we’re not accessible moment by moment, not walking beside you throughout every day.
So in lieu of being there in person, we’re trying to coach you to where you don’t need us, where you’re able to get through the day and be confident that you’re able to handle most things, except when it goes, you know, really crazy.
But on the day-to-day, learning to listen to your body means that you realize when something is a message you need to pay attention to. This is the triage aspect. Knowing how to distinguish between just an odd sensation that will go away and “let’s get some help for this sooner rather than later.”
At times, that symptom will go away and never, ever will cause you a problem. It absolutely means nothing. But it’s really hard when you’re trying to listen to your body with chronic illness and you really don’t want to miss any clues.
Sometimes you can take things as important that aren’t, even at the same time that you’re missing out something else that’s an important clue. But that’s what we want to do is to help our patients to understand. And part of the difficulty and challenge in this is that there’s not just the 10 rules of body listening. There is no “If everyone follows these exact rules, everybody will know exactly what their body means.”
No, each person is going to have to learn their own body because each body speaks with different accents, even though we all operate under a similar God-given design. Each of us learns in a different day, and none of our bodies communicate in exactly the same way. So we have to help you learn how your body is functioning or not functioning correctly, so that you know how to work around the nuances.
So with that, we hope that this is helpful. Just have a recognition that 1) you need to listen to your body; 2) it’s not easy; 3) it takes time; and 4) it does pay off in the end for those who take that time. They do see improvements in their health that not only bear fruit in the present, but last into the future.
So, I look forward to helping you find those kinds of lasting benefits at Sanctuary. Check out more of this series on listening to your body as it is posted in the following weeks.
Sanctuary Functional Medicine, under the direction of Dr Eric Potter, IFMCP MD, provides functional medicine services to Nashville, Middle Tennessee and beyond. We frequently treat patients from Kentucky, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Ohio, Indiana, and more... offering the hope of healthier more abundant lives to those with chronic illness.
Dr. Eric Potter graduated from Vanderbilt Medical School and then went on to specialize in internal medicine (adult) and pediatric care, spending significant time and effort in growing his medical understanding while caring for patients from all walks of life.
