HOW TO IMPROVE YOUR HEALTH USING WHOLE SYSTEMS THINKING

If you have a complex chronic health issue, like chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, autoimmune conditions, chronic pain, chronic lyme and other infections, mold toxicity, etc etc no doubt you’ve tried a lot of different things to improve your health.

Supplements, diets, herbs, gadgets, treatments . . . some may have helped. Others perhaps not. Some maybe help unless you stop taking them and then you’re back to square one.

What all of these things have in common are that they’re inputs into your system. We tend to focus on inputs because they’re the most obvious components of a system. They’re also what marketers teach us to focus on since that’s what they’re selling.

But if we’re going to solve complex problems, we need to use models appropriate for the task at hand. We need to think about the whole system and how the parts interact.

We also need to get better at organizing information about the outputs of a system so that we can use that information as feedback to change what we’re doing.

Once you understand how complex systems work, you start to see them everywhere. In the flow of traffic. In your local forest. In your doctor’s office or the DMV.

Having language around these ideas is immensely empowering. It gives you a lens to zoom in and zoom out to navigate a path forward accounting for reality.