Have you heard of iatrogenics? It’s a term that means harm from a physician, medical process, or procedure (including prescribing drugs). If you are only mildly sick, it can be best to let nature heal you. The point being that if you rush off to the doctor for every minor aliment, you significantly increase your risk that your trip to the doctor itself could be far more serious (for your long-term health) than what you are actually suffering from. Your best defence is to only be treated when very sick, so that the asymmetry of the risk/reward is skewed far more positively in your direction. If you are likely to die without treatment, the harm that could be done by a medical practitioner is inconsequential compared to the alternative. The true warrior knows that many new treatments, drugs, cures, therapies, and procedures have yet to be proven effective. Yes, they may be believed to be effective, but proven? No. The true warrior understands that it takes significant time to prove that something works. The following is the first mantra of the true warrior: I do more of what works and try to stop doing all those things that don’t work. As a true warrior, I am an empiricist, continually looking for validation of that which is working!

For example, it is known that applying ice to swelling helps to reduce it, but why was it swelling in the first place? You hurt something and the body’s response is to swell up and commence the healing process. After many millennia, nature or God has selected this process as the most effective. It has stood the test of time in generating favourable outcomes for all of us who possess joints and soft tissue. We discover that if you apply ice, the swelling will go down. Then we say to ourselves and others, “Hey look! The swelling has gone down, that must be a good thing!” We have connected two things and pronounced a cure, which is totally absurd. What we have actually done is thwarted our natural healing mechanism, attempting to play God! Ask any doctor if they have any proof showing that reducing swelling, through the application of ice, accelerates or improves the healing process. Now we agree that it may feel good, and it may look better, but that may not be the best treatment. The only way to prove that it’s the best treatment is to take several lifetimes and rigorously apply the man-made process, comparing it against the natural process, and properly documenting the outcomes. The point, according to this true warrior, is that you can place great stock in what has been working for millennia … and you must be very sceptical of every new process, idea, and magic elixir.

You are warriors, and by consistently adding to your portfolio those things that are working and discarding those things that are not, you will build a successful and profitable enterprise. So it has been written.