I am in the process of a total rewrite of the paper Theory of Cure, first published in 2022. I need people to review the revised paper for editing errors and also for content.
If you can help, drop me a comment and I will send you a proof copy for comments.
The revised version begins:
“As of 2026, it has been ten years since I began my studies of cure and three years since I updated this foundational paper on the theory of cure. In those three years, I have made several revisions to the book A New Theory of Cure and I am preparing to publish a second edition, simply titled Theory of Cure. There have been two major change in the language used in the theory of cure, and many minor changes that need to be attended to. The major changes are with the phrases “attribute illness” and “causal illness,” which have been replaced with “status illness,” an illness caused by an attribute, a status, a thing, a noun, which is cured by altering the status or thing; and “lifestyle illness,” caused by a life process, a verb, which can only be cured by an ongoing process.”
What is an illness? What is a disease? What is the difference? What is a cure? This is an image I am working on to illustrate an updated paper on Theory of Cure. What do you think?
An elementary illness is a hole in a single healthiness. At first, our perception of the illness can be very weak, very fuzzy. As healthiness falls, we gradually become aware of a discomfort – and might immediately move to address it before any illness occurs. But sometimes, healthiness shrinks, unhealthiness grows, and we perceive an illness. When healthiness rises, the illness disappears, cured.
The illness has two components, the cause and the consequences. The illness is cured when the cause, either the drop in healthiness or the cause of the drop in healthiness is successfully addressed.
A disease is a hole in healthiness that is deep enough, well enough defined to be perceived and diagnosed by a medical professional. Doctors intentionally avoid diagnosing minor illness, often sending patient’s home with advice like “take two aspirin and call me in the morning.” Most cases of elementary illness cannot be diagnosed until they become severe enough to cause damage, to create additional elementary illnesses.
Is this image trivial? That’s what I’m looking for – clear, easily understandable views of healthiness, illness, and disease.
From a cure perspective: there are two fundamental types of illness cause: those that “do you,” and those that “you do.”
Cause is the key to cure, and to cures.
There are two fundamental types of causes of illness, causing two types of elementary of illness, requiring two types of cures. The two types of causes are
those that do you, and
those that you do.
Is your illness doing you, or are you doing it?
Noun Causes – Do You Harm- cause Status Illnesses
Status illnesses have noun causes, attribute causes, causes that are things. Status illness are caused by things that “do you.” Things that are stressing you, harming you, eating you, killing you. The cure is to address the cause, to remove it, disable it, or kill it, so that it is no longer “doing you harm.” Remember, sometimes a status illness is caused by the absence of a noun cause.
A nutrient deficiency might be causing damage and holding back healing. A poison might be damaging you. Any essential nutrient might be deficient or toxic. A bacteria, a tapeworm, or a tiger might be eating you. Too much hard work, or too much stress might harm you or even kill you. The illness caused by a noun cause is a status illness.
To cure is to change the cause. With the right change to the attribute, the status, the present cause, the cause is neutralized and the illness will be cured.
Hippocrates advised: “Diseases which arise from repletion are cured by depletion; and those that arise from depletion are cured by repletion; and in general, diseases are cured by their contraries.” – he was speaking of attribute caused diseases – disease that DO YOU.
Noun cures are one-time cures. After the cure, if the cause occurs again, a new case of illness might occur.
Verb Causes – You Do Harm – Cause Lifestyle Illnesses
Process illnesses have verb causes, process causes. Process illness are caused by things that “you do.” Life processes that are stressing you, harming you, killing you. The cure is to address the cause, to remove it, disable it, or kill it, so that it is no longer “doing you harm.” Like noun causes, sometimes, a deficiency or absence of a verb or process can cause illness.
Illnesses that have process causes, verb causes, lifestyle causes are illnesses causes that “you do.” They are only cured by changing what “you do.”
Unfortunately, from Hippocrates medicine to modern medicine, there is no recognition of illnesses that are cured by changing “what you do.” Legally, according to FDA rules, a cure must be a “product.” Lifestyle changes are promoted as preventatives – but ignored as cures.
Smoking too much can cause smoker’s cough. Coughing from a single inhalation is a status illness, easily cured. But an ongoing process of smoking — causes an ongoing cough, that persists even when not smoking. A lifestyle of eating too much and exercising too little can cause obesity. An illness caused by a verb cause is a process illness. With the right change to the process, the verb cause, the lifestyle cause, the illness will be cured.
Verb cures need to be ongoing. Skipping a meal, or a cigarette does not cure. Once cured, the curative action is a necessary preventative. If the process cause occurs again, a new case of lifestyle illness might occur.
Examples – Noun Causes: Causes that “do you”
Elementary dehydration is a status, a noun cause, a deficiency of water. It might be mild, moderate, or severe enough to cause an illness that is easily cured by drinking water. If the cause occurs again, a new case of illness might also occur.
A bacterial infection is an attribute, a noun cause, creating an infection that might be mild, moderate, or severe, judged a disease. It is cured by killing, removing, or disabling the bacteria. A new exposure to the bacteria might cause a new case of illness or disease.
Examples – Verb Causes: Causes that “you do”
Smoking is a process that can cause smoker’s cough. The cough will persist until the lifestyle, the process, is stopped – or at least diminished enough to facilitate a healing cure. If the causal process is renewed, a new case of illness might occur.
Gingivitis can be caused by an unhealthy diet, a diet lacking in nutrients essential to gum health. When the diet is healthed, the gingivitis will heal – cured. The healthy dietary process must be maintained to maintain the cured status, to prevent new cases of gingivitis. If the diet fails – a new case of gingivitis might occur.
In many cases, a lifestyle illness cannot be diagnosed until damage occurs. Most cases of lifestyle illness require at least two cures – a status cure to address the status illness and a process cure to address the lifestyle illness.
Injuries “do you”
Injuries are noun causes, attribute status causes that are present and causing signs, symptoms, and possible negative consequences. Injuries can be caused by external forces, or by internal forces including life processes. The injury persists until the cause – the injury is healed. Simple injuries have past causes – but those causes cannot be accessed to cure. An injury caused by a process illness might re-occur unless the process illness is also cured.
Injuries are cured by healing. We can improve the cures for our injuries with actions that health the injured area as well as our diet, body, mind, spirits, communities and environments – make us healthier, enhancing our ability to heal. However, these actions are not drugs, so they are generally ignored by medical practitioners.
“You do” Chronic Injuries
Sometimes, an injury is chronic because it does not heal. But, that’s a special case, a complicated case.
Most chronic injuries, like plantar fasciitis, shin splints or tennis elbow, are injuries are caused by a process, by a lifestyle, by what you do (or what you don’t do). The cure is to health the process. Once the causal process is changed – the injury can heal, cured. If the injurious process occurs again, a new case of the illness might occur.
Each Illness Element is cured by a Status or a Process
Which illnesses are status illnesses, cured by changing a status or attribute? How many illnesses are status illnesses? How many illnesses are lifestyle illnesses, only cured by ongoing processes, requiring ongoing curative actions?
We have no idea. At present, our medical systems ignore all cured cases. Modern medicine, often promoted as science based, ignores individual illnesses and individual cures. We can’t tell the cause of the cured, unless we study every cured case.
Domains of Cause
In life, for any life form – not just humans, there are six domains of cause. Elements or processes in these domains can cause healthiness, or when deficient, excessive, or inharmonious, might cause illness. Usually we are healthy – because life intentionally uses causes to improve healthiness. Sometimes we become ill. Sometimes even a cause of healthiness causes illness.
The six domains of life causes are diet, body, mind, spirits, communities, and environments. These domains overlap – environments overlap the most, so much so that our external environment includes our communities and our dietary environment, and our internal environments include our body, mind, and spirits.
To cure, we must identify individual causes – and the six domains provide a powerful framework to identify, isolate, and address causes of illness – to cure.
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An illness element, an elementary illness might be caused by the presence or absence of a cause, or perhaps the deficiency or excess of a cause in any of the six domains. The cause might be a noun, an attribute, or a deficiency, or it might be a failure caused by a process or the absence of a process. Let’s look at some examples:
Diet
We can suffer an illness due to a dietary status – deficient in Vitamin C, dehydrated, malnourished, or perhaps overweight, even poisoning, from a dietary excess. These are status illnesses, cured with the contrary, by consuming what is necessary, or by clearing the poison, often by the vomiting – an important detox cure.
Or, we might suffer from an ongoing deficiency of a Vitamin, an essential nutrient, more difficult to diagnose, or an ongoing general excess leading to obesity. Consuming a small amount of many poisons will not cause illness, but if a dietary life process contains a poison that accumulates – the illness will grow. These are cured by contrary processes.
Body
There is a gradation between a dietary cause and a bodily cause. When we are poisoned, the cause begins in our diet (although it might also occur on our skin) and affects the body, causes a status change in the body. How do we know if the cure-cause is in the body or the diet? If a dietary action cures the illness, the cause was in the diet. If a bodily action cures the illness, the cause was in the body. The cure proves the cause.
Our body can cause injuries or illnesses when we take risks – but once the illness is present, these are often past causes, which cannot be accessed to cure.
Body, Mind, Spirits, Communities
Bodies, minds, spirits, and communities can suffer injuries – cured by the natural forces of healing. In many cases, we can aid or promote the healing by improving our healthiness in many different ways. Sometimes, exercise intended to help the body grow stronger also heals the mind, the spirits, or our communities.
Our bodies, minds, spirits, and communities need exercise and rest. A temporary deficiency or excess of either can cause a temporary status illness. If we don’t sleep for many hours, sleep is the cure. If we work to hard, rest is the cure. When we rest too much, exercise is the cure. This can occur for physical work, mental work, spiritual work, and community work, leading to sloth or stress. Burnout, for example, might be mental, spiritual, or a result of overcommitting ourselves to our communities.
Mind
When the present cause of the illness is in the mind – the cure is a change of mind. Sometimes, a whack on the side of the head processes a cure. The mind changes, and an illness might be cured. Some mind cures are much more subtle. We go to the doctor and ask about a strange new appearance on our body, and the doctor says “Oh, that’s normal. Nothing to worry about.” There was no disease, but the illness is cured. When an alcoholic or drug addict makes up their mind, changes their mind, they can cure an illness that may have persisted for decades. This is a negative process cure. The individual STOPPED a process that was causing illness, and the stopped process must be maintained. If the process stop fails, a new case of illness might occur.
Spirits
When we lose our motivation, when our spirits fail, we might suffer illnesses of depression – might even give up and die. When our illness is cured with a change in life spirits, the cause was in the domain of spirits. This can also occur when our spirits become too powerful and we are consumed by mania. A spirit rest is necessary to cure. Spirit causes, like all causes of illness might be specific, individual occurrences, or they might be chronic, lifestyle causes. How can we tell? By the cure. When the cure is a result of a single action than changes a temporary spiritual deficiency or excess, the cause was a spirit attribute. On the other hand, when the cure requires an ongoing spirit action, the cause was an ongoing deficiency of spirit health. The cure proves the cause.
Communities
Communities are powerful causes of health and healthiness. Caring comes from communities – we naturally help each other when they are healthy and when they are ill. On the other hand, communities, and our participation in our communities can also be causes of illness. We might suffer community isolation – leading to depression, or community abuse leading to injuries of body, mind, spirits, and also our communities. How can we know if the cause is in the domain of community? By the cure. If changing our communities, or our interaction or participation in communities, and the result is a cure – that was the cause.
Like all causes – a community cause of illness can be an attribute, or a process. Being ejected from or rejected by a community might lead to mental or spirit illness – but it might also lead to physical abuse. On the other hand, an abusive family or marriage environment can be an ongoing process creating an ongoing illness. In these cases, we might be challenged to understand the cause and the cure. The abuse might be cured by a separation from the community, a one time status cure, or it might be cured by learning to stand up for ourselves, addressing the community cause on an ongoing basis.
Environments
Our environment might suffer a one-time, temporary change, creating an illness that is cured by a one-time cure action. Perhaps our office building has a faulty airflow, causing many staff to suffer headaches. When the airflow is cured – the illnesses disappear. This is a one-time cure. If the airflow fails again a year or a decade later, a new set of illnesses might occur.
Or, the environment might be very unhealthy, dirty, conducive to the growth of bacteria, causing ongoing infections. The cure is not a simple cleanup. The environment must be cleaned on an ongoing basis – a lifestyle cure. The cure must be maintained.
Status Cures
Modern medicine is largely devoid of cures. Technically, an infectious illness is cured medically when the infectious agent, the infectious cause is killed, disabled, or removed by an approved medicine or surgery.
All other cures of infectious diseases are simply ignored. They have not been medically approved – and cannot be proven medically. But we should be aware that even cures that can officially recognized are rarely documented as cured. No doctor, no clinic, no hospital, no insurance company documents cured cases. Treatments can be billed -whether they cure or not. Cured cannot be billed.
Lifestyle Cures
Even when a lifestyle cure is obvious, it is generally ignored by medical practitioners. Nobody cares if you cure your smoker’s cough by stopping smoking. Officially, there are no cures for ANY non-infectious disease. If your arthritis is cured with diet and exercise – no cure can be prove.
Cured Cases are Ignored
Modern medicine has no test of cured for arthritis. The same is true of many illnesses. When a chiropractor, an osteopathy, or a physical therapist cures a person’s back pain or frozen shoulder with a one-time adjustment, we know it is a cure. But modern medicine cannot recognize the cured status, much less the cause of the cure.
Trivial cures cannot be recognized medically, much less the cause of the cure.
More complex cured cases cannot be understood without a basic understanding of simple cures.
It’s Time to Study Cures, Curing, Cured
We can create a science of cure from these fundamental concepts. We know how to cure the common cold, influenza, COVID, and measles. We know how to heal a broken arm. So we ignore these cures.
When we study cured cases we can learn to improve them, but only when cure is the goal. As we begin to understand simple cures, we can build our understanding to cure more compound and more complex cases of illness.
How can we know the cause of an illness? Only by a cure.
Health is the best preventative, the best cure. The cure proves the cause.
Which cures more illnesses? Drugs, or Healthinesses?
When we think of a cure, we almost automatically reach for drug. We’ve been well trained by drug salesmen and their followers. At the same time, we should know that most drugs make no attempt to cure any disease, that most drugs cannot cure any disease, and that most cures do not come from drugs.
Where do most cures come from healthing. Yes, health is a verb: to improve healthiness. Most cures come from improvements in healthiness. Most intentional cures come from intentionally improving healthiness.
Most cures come from healthing, from healthy actions; some come from healthy inactions.
What is a healthiness? According to Merriam-Webster dictionary, healthiness “the quality or state of being healthy,” a noun form of healthy. Oxford is less informative.* No examples are provided, because the term is rarely used identify a specific healthiness.
Examples of healthinesses include:
a healthy state of fitness – physical healthiness
a healthy weight, not overweight, not underweight – weight healthiness
a healthy state of mind – mental healthiness
healthy consumption of foods – dietary healthiness. Note: this noun describes a process, a verb.
having sufficient Vitamin C to meet the bodily needs – Vitamin C healthiness
The action, the verb, healthing, that indicates working to maintain a healthy level of a healthiness and also to regain healthiness, to health ourselves, when a healthiness is deficient, excessive, or otherwise out of alignment.
Healthing Cures
Healthing cures are “actions that improve our healthiness to cure illnesses.” We can see these for each of the above examples:
We can health our body by improving our physical healthiness with healthy exercise and rest. When our bodily healthiness is so low that it is causing an illness, healthing our body can cure.
We can health our weight by gaining or losing weight. When our weight is so out of balance that it is causing illness, this is a healthing cure
We can health our state of mind when our current mental status is so far out of balance that it is causing illness, a mind healthing cure.
We can health an unhealthy diet by choose healthy foods and avoiding unhealthy foods. When our unhealthy diet is causing illness, healthing our diet can cure.
when we don’t have enough Vitamin C for health, and illness occurs, we can health our body by consuming sufficient Vitamin C to meet the bodily needs – a nutrient healthing cure.
Healthing, healthiness cures can be slow. When our body is deficient in muscle tone – it can take months to health, to cure the body deficiency. In other cases, it can be quick. When our body is super stressed from overexercise, a short period of rest can cure. Note: both of these cases might occur without any judgement of illness – only judged an illness when more severe.
When we are dehydrated, drinking healthy water can cure our illness. This is a status cure – we change the status of our bodily healthiness and the illness is cured. Of course drinking healthy water does not cure every case of dehydration – only those that are cured by drinking healthy water. Although this seems obvious, it is important.
Healthing ourselves, improving our healthiness, can cure illness when an illness is present, when illness is caused by an absence of healthiness. When no illness is present, improving healthiness often prevents illness, but that’s a topic for another post.
It seems so simple, because it is simple. Cures of elementary illnesses, those with a single cause, are generally not medical. In most cases, no doctor is required to cure. Living things, dogs, cats, snakes, and trees know how to health their bodies without resorting to a medical professional. Our bodies are so sensitive that, in most cases, they remind us to drink water BEFORE any illness occurs. But sometimes, for many different reasons, we might fail to drink enough water. If we catch the problem, the illness before any further damage is caused, the cure is trivial.
This same model can be applied to thousands of measures of healthiness. In diet, there are over 100 nutrients essential to healthiness. If we don’t maintain a healthy level of Vitamin A, B, C, or any other vitamin, or of iron, or copper, or zinc, or proteins, or fats, or air or water – we can become ill, sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly.
But healthiness is much more than just diet and body. We must also constantly health – maintain our healthiness – of mind, of spirits, of communities and even of our environment. All six causal domains: diet, body, mind, spirits, communities, and environments require healthiness, lest illness occur.
When our air is so unhealthy that it is making us ill, we need healthy air. In most cases, we correct unhealthy air before illness occurs and we act quickly to find healthy air and prevent the illness. This prompts us to ask:
When does an Illness Exist?
At what point does is unhealthy air just unhealthy air – like smoking, or standing by the campfire – and at what point does unhealthy air cause illness? The theory of cure uses a simple model.
An illness is present when we seek a cure.
When we accidentally breath in some heavy smoke, and cough and move away, we don’t see an illness, just a symptom cause. We don’t need a cure, because we moved away before any serious damage has occurred. The signs and symptoms of illness: coughing, sneezing, perhaps watery eyes, but if these disappear quickly because we moved away from the smoke – it’s not really an illness to be cured. It’s no longer present.
Is illness only present when damage has occurred? This is the model used by our medical systems. Most diseases cannot be diagnosed until significant damage has occurred. Many cannot be diagnosed unless there is significant danger of damage occurring. But this can miss many cases of illness, and their cures.
In the theory of cure, an illness is present when immediate actions are not enough to get relief from negative signs and symptoms. A cure is an intentional action with positive expectations.
For example, someone might suffer persistent headaches at their workplace. But there is no smoke. Analysis might reveal that there are high levels of carbon-dioxide at the workplace, perhaps only at certain times of day. These headaches don’t go away until the air is healthed. When the air is healthed, the headaches are cured. It might be that the level was never high enough to cause measurable damage, but it was high enough to cause persistent negative signs and symptoms.
False Cures
It’s too easy, and certainly too common that we confuse the words cure, cured and cures. Cure can be a noun, a substance or treatment, a solution to a problem (noun); or a verb, an action the produces a cured state, past tense: cured.
A false cure could be something that is marketed as a cure, but does not cure. A false “cured” occurs when the patient, doctor, or someone else believes the illness is cured, but it is not cured. These cases can be (falsely) declared cured with or without identification of the cure or cures.
A cure is an action that addresses the cause of an illness, producing a cured stat or status.
There are two types of false “healthinesscures” we need to be aware of.
The first is an actual cure – only our belief in the cause of the cure is false. The second is a partial cure, but one that misses the actions necessary for complete cure.
Wrong Cure-Cause
A false cure can occur simply because we are wrong about the cause and the cure. Maybe we improved our healthiness by specific actions – and the illness went away. But the cause was actually addressed by something else. These cases can be difficult to understand – but we might gain understanding when the illness occurs again and the false cure doesn’t work. Either we were wrong before, or we are wrong now. Unfortunately, healthiness cures are generally ignored by doctors and medical systems, or declared anecdotal, false. Every actual cured case is a real case, a story, an anecdote.
Note: this type of false cure is not as common as we might think. Most of the time, we can quickly figure out the cause of our illness and health the cause, producing a cure – so often, so easily that we ignore these simple cures. We are more likely to notice when a cure fails.
Wrong Level of Cause
The second false cure occurs when we misjudge the level or layers of cause. In a previous example, we cured dehydration with water, but
We might be dehydrated because, every day, we don’t drink enough water. In this case, drinking water cures the current dehydration status, but the illness appears to return a few days later. What happened? An illness is not a thing, it cannot go away and return.
The cause reoccurred. A new case of the illness status occurred.
The unhealthy drinking (or not drinking) water process was never addressed. The fundamental cause of both cases of illness was the same, but it was a cause of a process illness – not just a status illness.
A process illness requires a process cure – drinking sufficient water every day. The illness was not just a status of “not enough water” it was a process of “not drinking enough water on a regular basis” This distinction is important, because a process illness requires a different healthing cure, to drink sufficient, healthy amounts of water EVERY DAY.
Domains of Healthiness
In an earlier paragraph, I mentioned the six domains of healthiness: diet, body, mind, spirits, communities, and environments. Each of these domains has many different healthiness factors which, when out of alignment or balance, can cause illness. In each case, if the cause is an elementary status that has not yet caused any damage, the cure is trivial. Health (improve the healthiness of) the factor that is out of alignment and the illness is cured. In each case, it is also possible to suffer from a process cause – where the cure is not just a simple change of status, but a change in life processes.
Lets look at some status and process causes of illness causal domain:
Diet
Our nutritional needs are extremely varied. In addition, our healthy bodies can tolerate wide variations in consumption of healthy nutrients. In many cases, our bodies have many systems to maintain nutrients for when they are needed. As a result, a simple deficiency of a nutrient does not cause immediate illness.
Water is essential and without water, most people suffer signs and symptoms of illness and might even diet within a few days. Note: it is possible for some people in specific circumstances, to survive for much longer periods without water.
When our water status is deficient, consumption of water provides a simple cure.
However, when our water consumption patterns, lifestyle, or processes are deficient, the illness can take much longer to create observable signs and symptoms, and the status cure might appear to cure and then later fail. The process cause requires a process cure.
Vitamin A is stored in the body for long periods of time without consuming Vitamin A does not cause illness. Illness occurs when our Vitamin A stores are used up. Ancient Egyptians, and many other cultures learned the cure – eating liver restores a healthy Vitamin A status, curing “night blindness caused by Vitamin A deficiency,” a status cure.
One of the classic dietary cures, the cure for scurvy, illustrates another important reality about healthiness cures. As James Lind famously said:
“I do not mean to say that lemon juice and wine are the only remedies for the scurvy; this disease, like many others, may be cured by medicines of very different and opposite qualities to each other.” (Lind, 1771)
Every illness has many potential cures. Our medical systems often want to find a mythical “the cure” for “the disease.” This can be a powerful tool for finding and promoting profitable treatments, but it is ignorant of most actual cures.
There are also many healthy negative action that can cure. Ongoing overconsumption of alcohol can lead to chronic hangovers. The cure is a negative process, to stop the ongoing overconsumption.
Body
Dietary consumption of alcohol can provide benefits in spirit and community healthiness, with little danger as long as we stay within our limits. However, if we have consumed too much alcohol, our body becomes toxic. The first cure is to vomit – to remove the alcohol from the body. We tend to think of vomiting poison as “being sick,” but it’s actually a healthy cure. We were already sick, the process of vomiting cures the illness.
The body is very active physically and this is where we most easily recognize the need for exercise and rest. When we don’t get enough exercise, the cure is exercise. When we don’t get enough rest, the cure is rest. Lack of exercise doesn’t cause illness until after it has continued for some time. Overexercise – absence of rest, can have negative consequences much more quickly. As a result, rest is often a status cure for an immediate problem – one we might not even judge to be an illness. Exercise on the other hand, is usually a slow process cure. Both exercise and rest are also important cure components of many injuries, where rest provides for recovery and exercise for rehabilitation.
Mind
Our medical systems currently try to treat (not cure) mental illnesses with drugs for the body – and give up on curing. There are many mental healthiness cures – and like all healthiness cures, some cases require immediate, one-time, status cures while others require lifestyle cure processes. In addition, however, because mental illnesses are rarely identified by cause, there is plenty of room for cure confusion.
Elementary depression – having a single cause, for example, might have a dietary cause, a physical – bodily status cause, a mental cause, a spirit cause, a community cause or a toxic environmental cause. In each case, it is labelled a symptom, or where severe and prolonged, a disease of the mind. Each different cause requires a different type of cure.
In the theory of cure, a mind illness has a cause in the mind, in our beliefs, our memories, or our mental calculations. The cure might be to change the belief, dismiss the memory, or repair the mental calculation.
Depression might be caused by a fatalistic belief – perhaps that our spouse is unfaithful, or that we are going to die, or that some irrecoverable disaster has occurred. These causes are in the mind – and the cure is to health the mind.
A person who believes they are going to die might fall ill and die – unless they can change their beliefs, change their mind. The change needed might be simple, short term, when a natural positive attitude takes over, or it might need to be an intentional action, supported by ongoing commitment to the battle.
One of, perhaps the most common mental causes of illness is belief in ourselves and failure to believe in ourselves. When our belief in ourself is too strong, we might take excessive risks and become ill. Is this the cause of some cases of “tennis elbow,” where the cure is simply “stop doing that?”
Spirits
In the theories of healthicine and of cure, spirits are the driving forces of life. All living things have the spirits of life, the spirit to life, grow, learn reproduce, and evolve. When individual loses these spirits, it dies. When an individual dies, it loses the life spirits. Like all aspects of healthiness, healthy spirits exist on a gradation from very near to death to so powerful that they create illness. Healthy spirits are somewhere in-between. Workaholism and burnout are spirit illnesses – that can often lead to other illnesses as well. Burnout can be a one-time, status illness, cured by simple removal from the situation or rest – but might lead to suicide if not attended. Workaholism might cause less severe illnesses, but these are often more difficult to cure, because they require the maintenance of ongoing process cures.
Communities
We seldom think of our communities as a domain of illness causes – until it happens. What is the cause of spouse abuse? Elder Abuse? Child abuse? The illnesses that result are often cured with medical attention and healing – as if they are simply status injuries. But these illnesses, when they are systemic in a local community, can only be cured by changes to the community. Sometimes, a one-time cure, like a divorce or other separation is sufficient to cure. In other cases, if separation from the community is not possible, an ongoing cure may be required.
In addition, communities can be afflicted by illnesses. Is war an illness? Is peace the healthy cure? Or is “agreement to tolerate each other” an ongoing cure, one that requires ongoing maintenance by both sides? We can expand our understanding of illnesses and cures and benefit from increased understanding.
Environments
When a mining company dumps poisons into a river – many people (as well as plants and animals) might fall ill. Curing the individual cases is important, but the higher level cause must also be addressed. And a process cure might also be needed to ensure such events to not occur again and again.
There are many simpler environmental causes of illnesses – illnesses with environmental cures.
SAD – Seasonal Affective Disorder – can be caused by the absence of sunlight in winter. Many cases can be cured by simple daily exposure to a lamp that simulates sunlight. This cure can be viewed as a blend between the status cure and a process cure, because it provides daily relief that is no longer needed when spring comes and the sun improves our healthiness.
Summary
There are many healthiness cures, cures that are brought about by improving healthiness status or healthiness processes in our diet, body, mind, spirits, communities and environments.
Modern medicine ignores these cures – they are not “medical.” To study cure more effectively, more thoroughly, to learn to understand all cures for all types of illness, we need to begin with studies of the simplest, most common cures.
Health is the best medicine. Healthing is the best cure.
Note: Health is also the best preventative, but that’s another story.
* When Oxford’s online dictionary is queried for “healthiness” the response is: “Thank you for visiting Oxford English Dictionary To continue reading, please sign in below or purchase a subscription. After purchasing, please sign in below to access the content.”
An illness consists of a set of present causes and the negative consequence of those causes.
An illness element consists of a single present cause and the negative consequences of that cause.
A cure is an action, or a set of actions, that addresses the causes of an illness, producing a cured state or status such that the negative consequences are no longer present.
Cured is the status of the illness after the cause(s) of an illness have been successfully addressed. The individual, the patient, is not cured. The illness is cured. It was present due to the intersection of cause and negative consequences. Now that the cause has been addressed, it is no longer present.
Why do so many die from non-deadly diseases? Most cases of disease are not fatal. Let’s look at a few, to round our understanding before we broach the question “Why do we die from disease?”
Three diseases, very different in nature -and provide a basis for studies of why diseases cause death.
Healing cures have two stages, the transformation and the recovery.
In the theory of cure, healing cures are defined as cures that result of the natural forces of life, which act to remove damage around a wound, and repair it. The concept of healing covers injuries to body, mind, spirits, and communities – each of which might suffer injuries.
However, many traditional – and some conventional medical practices use the word healing differently.
How might we reconcile these definitional differences?
Effective Permission-Giving and Representational Systems by William H. Thweatt
William H Thweatt reports a case of narcolepsy (sleeping sickness) cured by Transactional Analysis. There is no external link to the specific case in the paper nor in any of the references listed. The case is presented as a story, an anecdote. This might lead us to dismiss the claim.
There are very few papers published about “CURE.” Most medical research studies do not contain a definition of cured, and as a result cannot even recognize that a cure has occurred, much less determine the cause of the cure. I have looked in vain for ten years, trying to find research papers on “theory of cure.” None.
So, I was more than delighted when I learned that Transactional Analysis Journal (TAJ) had published two special editions, first in 1980, and then again in 2021, on the subject of cure. The 2021 edition was available on line at my local university, but I had to request the 1980 edition from the archives – and then scan and convert each article to text for easier searching and reference. In my online search I found two other papers in TAJ, and one in a different journal, Future Virology, on theory of cure. The full list of articles can be seen here. Over the next few months, possibly years – I will present my analysis of the cure concepts discussed in this journal.
The 1980 edition of TAJ began with a quote from TAJ’s founder, “From a transcription of Eric Berne in Vienna, 1968:
What does ELON MUSK’s GROK AI say about Theory of Cure today?
Who is the current authority on “theory of cure?”
There is no single, universally recognized authority on the “theory of cure,” as the concept remains underdeveloped in mainstream medical science. *1
However, Tracy D. Kolenchuk emerges as a prominent figure in this area based on extensive work outlined in various publications. Kolenchuk, an independent researcher, has authored several works, including A New Theory of Cure (2021), A Science of Cure (2020), The Elements of Cure (2019), and A Calculus of Curing (2018), alongside papers like A Theory of Cure (2019) and A Definition and Exploration of Cure (2018).
These works propose a framework for understanding cure by addressing the present cause of an illness, emphasizing that most medical texts lack a clear definition of “cure.”
Kolenchuk argues that an illness is cured when its present cause is successfully addressed, distinguishing between elementary, compound, and complex illnesses. *2 This perspective challenges conventional medical practices, which often focus on treatment rather than curing, and notes the absence of a medical definition for “cured” for most diseases. theoryofcure.com researchgate.net theoryofcure.com
While Kolenchuk’s work is influential in alternative health discussions, it has faced resistance from mainstream platforms, such as Amazon’s rejection of a COVID-19 cure book for not being authored by an “authority on COVID.” Kolenchuk counters that there are no recognized authorities on cure itself, highlighting a gap in medical theory. Other perspectives, such as those from naturopathic medicine (A Hierarchy of Healing and Hering’s Law of Cure), focus on holistic or homeopathic principles but do not designate a single authority. pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov drreebs.com medicosage.com
Given the lack of a centralized figure in conventional medicine and Kolenchuk’s comprehensive contributions, they *3 are likely the closest to an authority on a generalized “theory of cure,” though their work remains outside mainstream acceptance. For further exploration, Kolenchuk’s publications on platforms like Academia.edu or theoryofcure.com provide detailed insights. *4
Notes:
*1 – I have reformatted GROKs responses for easier reading and commenting.
*2 – GROK: “an illness is cured when its present cause is successfully addressed, distinguishing between elementary, compound, and complex illnesses.” This is the foundation of the theory of cure.
*3 – GROK: “they” Interesting that GROK “non-genders” me, although I am clearly a male. Note: sometimes AIs have gendered me as female.
*4 – GROK made no mention of two key concepts in the theory of cure.
the concept of illness (the actual condition to be cured) vs (what the patient wants to have cured – also labelled ‘illness’) vs disease (what the doctor diagnoses) and sickness (what some community of the patient perceives to be the illness.
the theory of cure has, in the past two years, been expanded to encompass, explore, and compare three fundamental types of cures:
