HOW TO KNOW WHEN TO PROGRESS TO STAGE 2 WHEN YOU DON’T HAVE MANY STAGE 1 SYMPTOMS

You understand that when renovating an old house, you need to fix the roof and repair broken windows, before getting new furniture and putting in new carpets. Makes sense.

In the same light, when recovering from chronic illness, we need to make sure that our immune defenses are just letting any old thing into our body before we move on to other systems, such as digestion, hormones, or blood flow.

But what if you don’t have many immune symptoms to begin with? How can you tell when you’re ready to move on to the next stage?

Well, in the case of the house, we’d know that the roof was repaired when it rained a lot and there was no leak!

Likewise, we can look for a number of things to assess how well the immune system is doing.

• Do you have wandering pains?
• Do you sweat daily?
• Do you sweat copiously, inappropriately or at night?
• Do you have a stiff neck and shoulders?
• Do you have to bare down to poop?
• Are you sick all the time?
• Are you run down but never ever seem to get sick?

While not 100% perfect, these are some general ways we can tell if the immune system is doing well.

Baring down to poop can also indicate a problem with this system.

Nothing much coming up? Good! Then it’s likely that you don’t need to spend very much time in Stage 1.

What if you didn’t have any of these symptoms going on but doing Stage 1 helped you feel better? Then you probably did have some Stage 1 stuff contributing to your pattern and now you’ve removed some load from your system.

If fixing the roof helps reduce problems inside the house, then the roof probably needed a repair, even if it wasn’t obvious. The devil’s in the details.

In this way, the repair actually becomes part of the diagnosis. We call this “diagnosis by treatment.”

We can also get information about how the immune system is doing by looking at our blood chemistry. And sometimes, the story from the blood chemistry is a bit different than when we look at our terrain, our signs and symptoms.

Let’s go back to the roof. We don’t see any signs of a leaking roof. But, what’s this? A puddle in the attic! Must be the roof.

But it could be from a leaking pipe inside the house. Or it could be from an old water bottle that you didn’t realize was up there.

A puddle in the attic is often, but not always, caused by a leaking roof.

Wonky white blood cells aren’t always caused by an infection or a problem stemming from the immune system. It could be a problem coming from the digestive system. Or from environmental toxins from a past exposure. Or from a past concussion . . .

This is why it’s important to triangulate our observations. Just like if we were assessing a house. Or an ecosystem.

And to assess and treat in order.

If you don’t have much going on in Stage 1, then you’ll probably be able to move through more quickly than someone who has a lot going on there. Just like if your roof is in good shape, you won’t have to spend as much time and money fixing it.