But are symptoms actually a bad thing?

You have a symptom are experiencing. Pain of some kind, discomfort some where, a thing that is bothering you. Maybe it is just a niggling on the periphery of your awareness or maybe it is screaming out loud in front of you.

Is it actually a bad thing to have a symptom? For sure we don't enjoy it. At its core though a symptom is merely a signal, a signal that there is dysfunction in your body occurring. The key part here is how do you respond to the signal?

Do you respond with curiosity or do you respond with avoidance? Avoidance can stem from a few places. We either feel we don't have the time or the money to deal with it right now. Sometimes it can even be from a fear that if we get it checked it will mean something really terrible is happening. I had a client who was dealing with stomach pains but she was afraid to go to the doctor because she was scared she had stomach cancer. Turns out, once she started cutting out processed foods and gluten, her stomach pain went away!

What does avoidance do in the long run? On a short term, we don't have to spend the time or the money to address the symptom, but this only pushes it to a later date and doesn't actually resolve the cause. If we push things off long enough in our body, eventually all of the check engine lights are going to turn on, and likely it will require an even greater amount of time, money, and energy than you originally anticipated.

Be curious instead about your symptom. What is actually occurring? When does it occur? How long does it go for? Does there seem to be a trigger? Does anything make it better? And then even deeper than that, how have your stress levels been lately? How has your sleep been? How has your movement/exercise been? Your nutrition intake? Your relationship with yourself and/or loved ones?

Maybe what is occurring is something that you can easily address at home without the guidance of a health care practitioner. That is the beauty of health, as well as living in the information age, is that you have many different ways at your own fingertips to help your health improve.

I also highly recommend having a team of health practitioners, like a chiropractor, naturopath, PT, massage therapist, acupuncturist, homeopath, etc that you can go to when you are experiencing symptoms that you cannot resolve at home. If you need recommendations (psst I know a chiropractor already ;) ), I'm your girl!