Symptoms Are Not the Enemy
Guest Contributor: Dr. Alex Orton, ND at havenholistichealth.com
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There's only one disease. This is the cure.
You have been at war with your body for your whole life.
Well, not “you” exactly. You were brought up in a system that has been at war with your body your whole life.
Raised in a culture dominated by conventional medicine, we have all learned to think of disease like conventional doctors do: as an enemy that we need to fight.
And this antagonistic mindset has bled into all corners of the health space.
Just as conventional medicine fights diseases with drugs, functional medicine & biohacking fight dysfunctions with protocols.
Different enemy. Same mindset. Endless war.
You may have periods of good health, but for one reason or another, problems have a tendency to return.
An infection. Travel. An emotional setback. An injury. Pregnancy. A move. A job change. A bad protocol. A stressful chapter.
Any one of these events could aggravate your current problems, or steal away your health and send you back into the throws of illness.
In this hopeless situation, good health is only temporary, always slipping through your fingers.
All you can really do is either accept defeat and live with your health problems, or continue to fight the good fight until old age and death inevitably consume you anyways…
Well I have good news for you:
Healing does not have to feel like you are constantly at war with yourself.
There is a completely different way to conceptualize health and disease, one that helps you make sense of your experience and work with your body to resolve it.
Then good health can become your default state.
After reading this article I hope you see that, with the right framework, sustaining optimal health is actually attainable.
Symptoms = the mortal enemy of conventional medicine
For all it’s fancy toys, most conventional medical treatment is essentially just one thing:
Symptom suppression.
That’s because in conventional & functional medicine, symptoms are more than just the outcome of disease & dysfunction. They are the disease itself.
> Cancer IS the tumor. If you cut the tumor out, the cancer is gone and the patient is cured.
> The infection IS the fever. Stop the fever, stop the infection.
> Men’s health IS his testosterone level. High testosterone = good health guaranteed.
So then... how do you cure disease?
You make the symptoms go away.
From the moment you were born, every health issue you’ve ever had has been treated this way (unless you were blessed with an anti-establishment hippie mom).
Eczema. Allergies. Fevers. Infections. Behavioral issues. Emotional problems. Acne. Hormone imbalances. Nausea. Acid reflux. Inflammation.
All of it, suppressed with drugs, creams, protocols, and procedures.
But here’s the problem:
Symptoms don’t just “go away” when you suppress them. They are driven deeper into the body.
And now, as of 2026, 72% of all Americans have at least one chronic disease.
This strategy of symptom suppression has been a catastrophic failure in helping people maintain good health.
Why? Because it misinterprets what symptoms are in the first place.
Your body is an intelligent, dynamic, self-regulating, living organism. And symptoms are it’s language.
Once you can translate this language, you will understand where your health problems are coming from and how to address them, now and into the future.
What your symptoms are really telling you
“[Disease] is the natural and inevitable result of violations of nature’s laws. It is instructive and corrective in purpose, and will remain with us only as long as we need it’s salutary lessons.” — Henry Lindlahr, ND (1913)
Symptoms are not “dysfunctional”. They aren’t a mistake. They are the body’s natural, intelligent response to deeper imbalances.
Symptoms are both instructive (they tell us what the imbalances are) and corrective (they compensate for those imbalances to help us heal).
Let me explain:
Our bodies were designed to thrive on this planet. So as long as we live in harmony with nature, our default state is good health.
If we violate nature’s laws and live out of balance, the body’s normal function is disturbed.
The disturbance leads to an acute reaction: a fever, inflammation, pain, swelling, etc.
This reaction is a spontaneous, corrective process where the body’s metabolic energy is mobilized to compensate for the abnormal conditions created by the disturbance.
As long as the disturbance is corrected, the body will produce a discharge (ex. stool, urine, sweat, mucus, etc.) to throw off the byproducts of both the initial disturbance & the acute reaction (ex. metabolic waste, endotoxin, microorganisms, environmental toxins, inflammatory cytokines, etc.).
Once these byproducts are discharged, the body returns to normal health.
This is how the body self-regulates and heals itself.
Acute illness is a sign of good health
"Every acute disease is the result of a cleansing and healing effort of Nature." — Henry Lindlahr, ND (1913)
Here’s a common, real life example of this process to illustrate the point:
You go on a weeklong trip to Europe. Your sleep schedule is thrown off with the change in time zones. While there, you eat different food off your typical diet. You drink more alcohol. You stay up later than usual.
After a grueling flight back home, you return to your normal life. But within a day or two, you come down with a flu. You think, “I must have caught something over there.”
Sure, you were in a new place and exposed to different bacteria. But what really happened is your Foundation of Health was disturbed, weakening your defenses. The illness is the acute reaction designed to protect your vulnerable system.
> Your body produces a fever to speed up your metabolism and kill opportunistic infections.
> You lose your appetite so all metabolic energy is diverted to mounting a robust immune response instead of digesting food.
> You feel fatigue to give your body the rest required to repair itself.
> Your body discharges the accumulated waste through increased mucus production, loose stools, and sweating.
And after a few days, you return to normal health once again.
This cycle can and should happen continuously throughout your life to maintain perpetually good health:
Normal Health → Disturbance → Acute Reaction → Discharge → Normal Health
That’s why acute illnesses are a good thing. They are the outcome of a vital system doing maintenance and cleanup.
It’s impossible to control for every negative outcome in life. Instead, your job is to live within the laws of nature (what we call the Foundation of Health) as best you can. (More on that in a bit.)
When imbalances do inevitably arise:
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Stop and listen to what your body’s symptoms are telling you.
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Correct the imbalances that produced the symptoms (ie re-establish the Foundation of Health).
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Support the body’s natural discharge response (ie keep the elimination channels open and don’t suppress symptoms).
It’s actually quite simple.
But how does this apply to chronic issues? Let’s get into that next.
An important note:
The acute reaction is not always obvious or even noticeable. It doesn’t have to manifest into a full blown acute illness to be effective. In reality, the body is going thorough this healing process continuously. Subtle adaptations and discharges could manifest as a little digestive discomfort, a loose stool, a pimple, minor nasal congestion, etc. An acute illness is simply a more powerful, concentrated, healing response.
How to manufacture a chronic disease epidemic
"The truth is that the so-called disease was a toxemic crisis, and when the toxin was eliminated below the toleration point, the sickness passed — automatically health returned. But the disease was not cured; for the cause (enervating habits) is continued, toxin still accumulates, and in due course of time another crisis appears. Unless the cause of toxemia is discovered and removed, crises will recur until functional derangements will give way to organic disease. The entire profession is engaged in doctoring crises of toxemia — curing (?) and curing (?) until overtaken with chronic disease of whatever organ was the seat of the toxin crises." — John Tilden, MD (1926)
In conventional medical thinking, both the acute reaction and discharge are categorized as “symptoms”.
No one investigates the reason for these symptoms. ”Bad genes” are usually the assumed cause.
And since these symptoms represent the disease itself, the treatment focuses exclusively on making the symptoms go away:
Fever? Tylenol.
Inflammation? Anti-inflammatories.
Rash? Steroids.
Infection? Antibiotics.
As long as the symptoms disappear, however transiently, the disease is considered cured.
This strategy compounds the problem in two ways:
1. You suppress the acute reaction AND discharge, both of which are designed to correct the problem.
2. You fail to address the disturbance that led to the problem in the first place.
This drives the problem deeper, devitalizing and toxifying the body.
Without addressing the initial disturbance, the real problem will remain, and the body will continue producing acute reactions and discharges over time to try and resolve it.
If continued, this process will eventual result in a chronic reaction (ex. chronic gut issues, hormone imbalances, migraines, autoimmune conditions, thyroid issues, etc.), and ultimately degeneration (ex. tumors, ulcers, scars, paralysis, atrophy, etc.).
…and that is how you manufacture a chronic disease epidemic.
“Too sick to get sick”
“The more skilled the allopathic school becomes in the suppression and prevention of acute diseases by drugs, knife, x-rays, serums, vaccination virus, etc., the greater will be the increase of chronic dyspepsia, nervous prostration, insanity, cancer, tuberculosis and many other so-called incurable diseases. Thus, the standard medical practice is self-supporting; the treatment of acute conditions assuring a lifelong supply of chronic conditions for the doctor to treat.” — Henry Lindlahr, ND (1913)
From Day 1, almost every acute reaction and every discharge our body produces is suppressed, while the real root cause (ie imbalances in the Foundation of Health) is never corrected.
What begins as superficial acute issues, like minor digestive disturbances or simple skin rashes, grow into deeper, more serious problems.
How and where the chronic reaction manifests depends on your particular constitution, history, strength of your organ systems, and the specific imbalances at play. Over time, ongoing imbalances lead to multiple chronic reactions happening simultaneously.
At a certain level of degeneration, you become “too sick to get sick”. The body is too devitalized and toxic to mount an effective acute reaction, leading to a further downward spiral.
That’s why, for example, it’s completely foolish to think of cancer as “just the tumor”. Cancer is a degenerative process of the entire organism that takes years to develop.
Conventional medicine, functional medicine & biohacking view this ongoing degeneration process as a series of separate issues, promoting endless solutions to address each of them.
But it’s much more accurate to see health and disease as one continuum, from degeneration to regeneration.
That’s why, from a holistic perspective, there is only one disease.
And there is one cure.
The cure for all disease
"Give me the power to produce fever and I'll cure all disease." — Parmenides, 500 BC.
The body has an incredible capacity to regenerate, even from serious chronic illness. That’s because no matter how complex a problem is, the principles for healing remain the same.
The Disease = Imbalances in the Foundation of Health
The Cure = Correct the Imbalances + Support the Body’s Self-Healing Process
One disease. One cure.
Maybe this feels way too simplistic. But remember that, in this model, you aren’t the one engineering your health with protocols.
Your body takes care of all the granular details. You’re just putting your body in the right environment and giving it the resources to do that effectively.
Here’s how:
No matter what problem you are dealing with, first thing’s first: you must correct the underlying imbalances that created it.
These are imbalances in the Foundation of Health: food, nutrients, water, air, toxins, sunlight, sleep, movement, stress, etc.
It’s never just one thing. It’s not just mold. It’s not just trauma. Though certain disturbances may have had a larger impact than others.
It’s often a kaleidoscope of imbalances that have compounded over time.
So you need to address your health foundation first in order to stop perpetuating the problem. We call this the Foundations First Framework™️.
Then, you need to support the body’s regeneration process. That general means three things:
1. Increasing the metabolic rate & mitochondrial energy production
The body has to have enough energy to mount an effective acute reaction and discharge metabolic wastes and toxins. Increasing your metabolic energy will give your body the fuel required to do so.
2. Supporting weakened organ systems
All of your organ systems need to work together in a coordinated effort to mobilize the healing response. Different chronic issues can devitalize specific organ systems, which will significantly slow this process down. Organ specific support is needed to restore these bottlenecks.
3. Opening the channels of elimination
Your body will excrete the discharge produced by the healing process through the channels of elimination, including your digestive tract, liver, kidneys, skin, and lymphatic system. Supporting these particular systems will ensure that the excretion is effective.
Over time, old chronic issues will transform into acute reactions (aka healing reactions), and the body will naturally discharge the disease and return to health.
This doesn’t happen all at once. The body typically has to go through numerous cycles of acute reactions and discharges to detoxify accumulated waste and regenerate weakened systems, like peeling back layers of an onion.
But with consistency and patience, as long as the foundation is restored, the channels of elimination are supported, and ongoing symptoms are no longer suppressed, the body can return to normal health.
To optimal health and beyond…
With this framework, good health is actually attainable.
You stop playing a perpetual game of whack-a-mole, fighting every symptom and abnormal biomarker with a new protocol.
If you believe that the universe is not a collection of random atoms smashing together, that there is a God-given elegance to nature and life, than you must believe that there is a reason your body responds the way that it does.
Start asking why. Go deeper.
Why is your thyroid low?
Why is your sleep off?
Why are you bloated?
It’s not random. Find out why and work with your body to solve the problem.
Part of that process requires trust. You trust that God made nature and your body in an orderly way that you can grow to understand.
Then healing becomes an iterative game where you can expand beyond just your physical health into entirely new territories of your self: your mind, your spirit, your imagination, your purpose.
Instead of endlessly managing problems, you endlessly maximize your potential.
Ultimately, it’s your choice what game you want to play.
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This guest blog post was written by Dr. Alex Orton, a naturopathic doctor with over 10 years of experience in holistic health.
Dr. Orton believes that true health isn’t created by chasing symptoms or rigid protocols, but by building a sustainable daily foundation where healing can happen naturally. He also places a strong emphasis on food quality both professionally and personally, and incorporates Nourish Food Club products into his own diet as part of a sustainable, real-food approach to health.
Dr. Orton is the co-founder of Haven Holistic Health, a personalized, doctor-led holistic health consulting practice for people who are tired of guessing, starting over, and managing symptoms without real progress. Through one-on-one guidance, advanced biomarker and food intolerance testing, and clear, realistic plans, Dr. Orton helps individuals create lasting health without extreme or unsustainable approaches.
Learn more and contact Dr. Alex Orton at havenholistichealth.com
Or, schedule a free virtual consult with Dr. Orton below to talk about your health goals.
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