{"id":3774,"date":"2011-01-11T06:17:05","date_gmt":"2011-01-11T12:17:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wholehealthchicago.com\/?p=3774"},"modified":"2021-09-09T22:20:52","modified_gmt":"2021-09-10T03:20:52","slug":"biography-as-biology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wholehealthchicago.com\/blog\/2011\/01\/11\/biography-as-biology","title":{"rendered":"Biography as Biology"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I\u2019d first come across this phrase during a lecture by psychologist and medical intuitive Carolyn Myss, PhD, at a meeting of the American Holistic Medical Association and later reading some of her books, especially Why People Don\u2019t Heal<\/strong><\/em><\/a>. In it she explores the common problem of people with chronic symptoms and negative test results, delving into how these symptoms develop and what might be done to help them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The heart of the matter, I soon came to realize, was, and continues to be, an essential flaw in the education of virtually all doctors–namely, an almost willful ignorance of the patient\u2019s full life story. This failure to recognize how a person\u2019s biography might influence her biology can place a real barrier between an ill patient and her doctor\u2019s efforts to help.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It starts with what goes wrong in medical school<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Medical students and physicians of all ages know the following initials by heart: CC, HPI, PMH, FH, SH, ROS. These are abbreviations for the questions asked in order to obtain the medical history of any new patient whose symptoms need to be diagnosed and treated appropriately.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 CC<\/strong> Chief Complaint is one sentence in the patient\u2019s own words. For example, \u201cI\u2019m tired all the time.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 HPI<\/strong> History of Present Illness are the patient\u2019s answers to the doctor\u2019s questions about when the symptoms first appeared, how they\u2019ve progressed, and what other symptoms have been noticed along the way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 PMH<\/strong> Past Medical History represents any other significant illnesses, surgical procedures, allergies, and the like.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 FH<\/strong> Family History stands for any significant family illnesses that might carry genetic risks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 SH<\/strong> Social History is a series of lifestyle questions: occupation, tobacco, alcohol, other drugs, sexual partners, diet, etc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 ROS<\/strong> Review of Systems is a lengthy questionnaire (often filled out by the patient before seeing the doctor) covering all other areas of the body.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This universal format has been written in stone for decades. It\u2019s one reason why your medical records can be transferred around the country and be completely comprehensible to any physician you visit. I might add that it would be easier to parallel park the QE2 than to get medical schools, medical associations, and several hundred thousand physicians to agree on changing it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But, to the peril of the patient, this format completely ignores what happened in the patient\u2019s life during the months, or even years, before the appearance of her first symptom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And this, Dr. Myss felt, was a key reason people didn\u2019t heal. Not only did doctors fail to tease out this potentially valuable information, but patients themselves, seeking some medical explanation for their symptoms, would overlook what was staring them in the face. As a result, they\u2019d be subjected to endless tests, often all negative, and would leave their doctor\u2019s office having heard (yet again), \u201cWe can\u2019t find anything wrong with you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here\u2019s an example of what Dr. Myss is talking about<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Some years ago I had a patient in her fifties\u2014let\u2019s call her Pam–who told me she\u2019d been utterly exhausted for five straight years. She\u2019d seen numerous physicians around the country, both conventional and alternative, been given a wide variety of medical advice (including a shopping bag filled with supplements), and also brought in for my review a ream of generally unhelpful test results. In the end, nothing had helped. Pam remained exhausted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But her biography? It could have been the subject of a drama on survival skills.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She\u2019d been raised with her siblings by a mentally ill mother and a mostly absent, emotionally distant father. Her mother, long dead, had physically, emotionally, and sexually abused all of them from early childhood. All her adult siblings were now drug addicts or alcoholics. Pam herself had started out as an alcoholic runaway and had lived with a series of abusive men. However, blessed with an iron will, by her thirties (despite struggling with depression and self-esteem issues) Pam had created her own business and over the years became financially independent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She\u2019d also believed she\u2019d entered a good marriage during her thirties, but her husband had transformed into yet another abusive man and they divorced a few years later. After the divorce, Pam became deeply depressed, and to deal with her plummeting self esteem underwent cosmetic surgery, which failed. (By the way, having cosmetic surgery after a difficult divorce is very common.) Shortly afterward, she\u2019d lost her business, and shortly after that she\u2019d become so fatigued she was unable to function.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ultimately, her psychiatrist, rather than her internists, would make the correct diagnosis, likely because the psychiatrist had delved into Pam\u2019s biography and understood its connection to her biological response. Her diagnosis was post traumatic stress disorder, her exhaustion a result of the repeated flogging of her stress-responding glands, the adrenals and thyroid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sadly, psychiatrists and internists virtually never communicate. Although her psychiatrist had been extremely helpful in getting her life back on track, Pam\u2019s other physicians, by ignoring her biography, completely missed the connection between the life she\u2019d lived and her exhaustion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All they could tell her was that all her tests were normal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019d first come across this phrase during a lecture by psychologist and medical intuitive Carolyn Myss, PhD, at a meeting of the American Holistic Medical Association and later reading some of her books, especially Why People Don\u2019t Heal. 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