When you were growing up, you learned about cause and effect, though likely not in those terms. You learned that if you did your chores, then you got your allowance. You learned that if you practiced riding your bike, then you got better at biking. You learned that if you studied for a test, then you could pass the test. You learned, ultimately, that you could achieve things in your life by taking the necessary steps. And that if you didn’t take those steps, then you didn’t achieve whatever it was that you were set on achieving.
Recovering from chronic illness is no different. Just as you don’t get your allowance unless you do your chores, or get better at biking unless you practice, or pass the test unless you study for it, chronic symptoms don’t resolve unless you take the necessary steps to resolve them.
Of course, human physiology is complex, and recovering from chronic illness is infinitely more difficult than any of these early experiences with cause and effect, but the underlying principle is the same: that you’re in control, and that you can achieve what you want to achieve, as long as you do the work.
Determining what the specific work is, however, gets tricky, because everyone’s journey with chronic illness is different, and there’s no one-size-fits-all approach to getting better. There’s no one magical diet or supplement or lifestyle strategy that’s effective for everyone with chronic illness. And without an obvious, well-lit, predefined path to recovery, it’s easy to end up in the wilderness, and to get to a point at which your symptoms aren’t improving and you’re not sure what to do.
If you get to this point—and if you’re at it for long enough, you almost certainly will—don’t lose hope. Almost everyone gets to this point. And almost everyone who gets to this point gets here for the same reasons.
Let’s explore these reasons, so that you can address them, if needed, and get back on track on your journey to better health.
You don’t have a data-driven recovery strategy
The first and most common reason that your symptoms aren’t improving is that you don’t have a data-driven recovery strategy, and that you or your practitioner are effectively guessing which diet, supplements, and lifestyle strategies are most likely to be effective, rather than making decisions based on data.
There are some decisions in life that have to be made in the absence of objective data, but deciding what to include in your chronic illness recovery strategy fortunately isn’t one of those decisions. It used to be, but we live in a new era now, and you can easily test for the most common causes of chronic symptoms—parasites, bacteria, fungi, viruses, metals, chemicals, food sensitivities, hormones, organic acids, and micronutrients—to get the actionable information you need to resolve your symptoms and recover your health.
You don’t have to guess why your fatigue developed. Or your joint pain. Or your IBS. You don’t have to make the already difficult experience of chronic illness recovery even more difficult by not running tests and not getting the data you need to create an effective strategy to get your life back.
You can certainly try to guess why your symptoms developed, and what you can do to resolve them, as many people do. But when you can test for the most common causes of chronic symptoms, instead, such an approach seems ludicrous. Like flying without an instrument panel. You might actually get to your destination without losing control of the plane or running out of fuel, but it’s significantly more likely that you’ll get there, without issue, if you can regularly scan your altimeter and airspeed indicator and GPS and fuel gauge to make sure everything looks good and you’re on the right trajectory.
You don’t have an accountability partner
The second reason that your symptoms aren’t improving is that you don’t have an accountability partner, and you’re going through what’s likely the most difficult experience of your life on your own. You’re facing setback after setback, and the only person in your life to help you get back up and keep going is you. You might have an extraordinary capacity to stay committed to your recovery, when the going gets tough, but the recovery process can take years, and even the most committed can eventually buckle under the weight of such an intense emotional and physical journey.
When you have someone to check in with regularly, however, such as a health coach, it’s not only easier to get back up after an inevitable setback—when the diet that you had high hopes for doesn’t work, or the supplement that you expect to improve your symptoms instead exacerbates them—but it’s also easier to stay committed to your recovery strategy at the level that your recovery requires.
If your recovery requires the complete elimination of gluten and dairy from your diet, for example, and you know that you have to report back to your health coach how you’ve been doing with your new diet, you’re more likely to stay committed to not having any gluten or dairy, because, in this case, you’re not just accountable to you. You’re accountable to your health coach, too, and not wanting to let them down can be a powerful motivator as you make unprecedented changes in your life.
You haven’t allowed enough time
The third reason that your symptoms aren’t improving is that you haven’t allowed enough time for your recovery strategy to start working, and the medical system might be to blame here.
Conventional medicine has conditioned the belief that all symptoms should be suppressed with medication, and the quicker a symptom can be suppressed, the better. If you develop joint pain, for example, then take anti-inflammatories, and don’t worry about investigating the causes of your joint pain. The anti-inflammatories will kick in soon enough, and the pain will go away, and you’ll forget that you might have some issue going on that needs to be addressed. If you have insomnia, then take sedatives, and literally knock yourself out. Headaches? Take painkillers.
Medication, in most cases, tends to suppress symptoms more quickly than diet, supplements, and lifestyle can address the causes, by artificially modulating certain biochemical processes in the body, and thus sets the expectation that symptoms can and should go away quickly. Such an expectation can manifest even when you’re not taking medication, and you might find yourself getting impatient when your joint pain hasn’t improved after the first month on a gluten- and dairy-free diet.
But true healing—not the superficial kind—takes time. It takes time to address the causes of your symptoms, just as it took time for the causes to develop. You’ll get there, eventually, but in the meantime know that not everything you do to improve your health translates to an immediate subjective improvement, but that everything you do matters, however imperceptible your progress might be, so stick with it.
How to get back on track
If your symptoms aren’t improving, despite your efforts, consider whether any of these reasons apply to you. Perhaps you don’t have a data-driven recovery strategy, and you and your practitioner are basically winging it. Or you don’t have an accountability partner, such as a health coach, to help you stay committed. Or you haven’t allowed enough time for your recovery strategy to start working, and your symptoms aren’t improving because you haven’t yet sufficiently addressed the factors that are compromising your health. Whatever the case, there are reasons why your symptoms aren’t improving—there are no effects without causes, in other words—and exploring what these reasons are is not only a helpful exercise in introspection, but also an important step to getting out of the wilderness and back on the path to better health.