Principle

After the MRI experiment I rushed to TKO for the Health Exhibition. I was assigned to be one of the senior medical student, whose responsibility was to give health advice to citizens who finished their health check.

You might think that, this sort of consultations were simple and easy since you just need to explain to them the results of the simplified health check-up. It was in reality not the case. They came to the check-up with their own concern, which was far beyond the general medicine.

(The following was just a imaginary story. It was not the truth.)

A elderly woman came to me for her weight gain problem. She showed me a small of box containing pregabalin, which was an anti-convulsant. She told me that she used to have chronic bowel symptoms and many medications from many GPs had failed her. It was until someone told her the diagnosis would be psychological that she suffered from numerous bowel openings everyday.

"I could not accept that I need to see a psychiatrist for my GI problem. I just had diarrhea and I am not mad!" She told me with tears. Yes. In our world, being a psychiatric patient was a grave stigma.

"No, you are not mad. How to you find the medications given to you? Does it help your bowel problems?" I asked.

"Yes it is good but it also increases my weight continuously. Moreover, it was so expensive that I am thinking of ceasing the follow up and medications."

"In this case, let me give some of my words to you. First, you need to understand that the contributing factors of having a illness are not only physical but also psychological. People often attribute illnessess to be only physically-related and neglect our emotions. So far, we are having more and more evidences showing that emotions play a role in many medical disorders.

The other thing was that Western medicine sometimes could only offer symptomatic treatments and uncomfortable side effects are not avoidable. Even worse, the drugs produced by the drug films were often very experience in the first stage, which barred many people take it.

However, I reassure you the better day will come. The better day will come. One day we will make better drugs with less side effects. One day the drug film will lose their patent and the drugs will be sold much cheaper. One day, you don't need to take any medications and enjoy a beautiful life."

She smiled and thanked me.

喜樂的心、乃是良藥，憂傷的靈、使骨枯乾. The Bible has already told us how inseparable our body and our mind is.