On Tylenol, Suppression, & the Fitra
In the last couple days I have come across articles and posts reacting to Trump’s recent remarks on Tylenol and its alleged links to autism. I thought I would share my preliminary thoughts on the matter.
1. Material causation is a smokescreen
Anytime someone claims, ‘X causes cancer’, or ‘Y causes autism’, I- as a naturopathic doctor- die a little inside. Not because there may not very well be a correlation between X and cancer or Y and autism- there may very well be. Rather, it is about the audacity of such a claim.
Working for nearly a decade now in the field of holistic medicine one learns that well-being is more about pattern recognition and alignment than any one, singular causal mechanistic process. Much more. To heal a whole, one must understand and address the whole as the whole is. What this means is that to heal a whole human being- mind, body, soul and beyond- one must have a paradigm or cognitive frame that accommodates the totality of that human being… understanding the history, the underlying patterns and needs, the constitutional keynotes of their personality and temperament, the traumas and heartbreaks that spiced up their timeline and conditioned them in particular ways, their physical symptoms, subjective preferences, and more… and from there be able to support and treat that whole human being wholly, as they are. There must be a correspondence on the side of the practitioner in state and perspective to that of the human being sitting across from them. This is, in part, the beginning of how we heal.
The opposite of this is the myopic reductionist materialism of ‘X chemical substrate does this, that or the other physiologically in the body’. Reductionism is the smokescreen of our modern sensibilities, and it is what in part what ails the social body of humanity in this late post-modern stage.
2. Healing, palliation & suppression
I often teach my patients and students that there is a big difference between healing, palliation, and suppression. A chasm, in fact, exists between the former and the latter two, specifically. And it is important to know the difference.
Palliation is the temporary use of synthetic or natural substances for the purposes of quelling pain or discomfort. This strategy is often used in acute situations where people just want the 10 out of 10 debilitating headache to go away as fast as possible regardless of the means. So what do people reach for? They reach for Tylenol/paracetmol, of course, or a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory (NSAID) like Advil/ibuprofen. They may, however, also reach for high dose turmeric/curcumin after reading about its ‘natural’ anti-inflammatory effects on a naturopath’s Instagram page. And that is all fine. But let me be the one to tell you; even that latter intervention of turmeric administration is not healing… it is palliative. Its purpose is to take the edge off. And the proof of that is simply that the symptoms often return-perhaps with a vengeance- as soon as the anti-inflammatory effects of the high dose curcumin capsules, like that of the synthetic anti-inflammatory, wear off.
Is there a place for this palliation? Yes, absolutely. It can absolutely be a mercy from God and a gift. But is it the same as healing? No. Can there be possible harm due to palliation even from natural substances? Absolutely. A holistic practitioner understands this and administers consciously and thoughtfully.
Now, what about suppression? Suppression takes this to a whole different level.
Let’s take the same case. Let’s say after a week of taking the Tylenol and the person’s headache is simply not giving up. They go to a specialist (like a neurologist and/or psychologist) and get some stronger drugs like triptans (drugs that constrict blood vessels in the brain to reduce blood flow), anti-depressants (you know what these are), or monoclonal antibodies (a newer class of drugs called biologics that target specific aspects of the immune system).
These drugs are not only meant to take the edge off but are targeting the deep physiology to find a way to suppress the symptoms by suppressing organ function— driving it down deeper into the interior of the organism… out of sight/touch, out of mind is the mindset here.
And from a materialist/reductive perspective, this is a successful intervention. The symptom is gone- hooray! However, from a holistic perspective, we know for certain that this is not a real success. This is, in most cases, certainly not something to celebrate. This is kicking a can down the road… a brushing under the rug… a deeper and more lasting “covering over” of the symptom than the mere use of Tylenol for a few days.
How can we arrive at health by turning off essential organs and physiological functions? I find it maddening that the standard of care for heartburn is still PPIs (proton-pump inhibitors) that effectively turn off the essential organ of the stomach to deal with the symptom of seemingly excessive acid. So, are we just not going to digest our food anymore? What happened to gut health and the various ‘axes’ stemming from the gut to the brain, immune, hormone, and metabolic systems? How is this possibly a standard of ‘care’?
Renowned homeopath and Jungian philosopher Edward Whitmont said, “Symptoms are the language of the vital force; they are not enemies to be silenced but messages to be heard.” He also taught that symptoms are compensations, creative attempts of the organism to restore balance and that to suppress them (allopathically or psychologically) is to cut off the dialogue of the soul.
This approach of suppressive intervention of the body’s innate processes and healing mechanisms, I believe, is what is causing a significant amount of our chronic disease epidemic. And I’m aware I just did a ‘X causes disease’ thing. But note that I did not reduce reality to one particular substance. Because this is not about mere substance. This is about systems and the philosophies, isms, and cognitive paradigms that govern them.
Finally, there is much to say about healing, the final category we have yet to discuss. I want this monograph to stay relatively short and we have other pieces written explaining the healing approach of H.I.K.M.A., the vitalistic holistic paradigm of medicine, that you can find further enrichment, God-willing.
One thing I will say, is that healing is not about ‘treatment’. There is no magic pill or herb or oil. We cannot attain perfect health in this world as long as we are embodied, in time, and stuck in the same room as our egos.
The reality of healing is related to one of its cognates; health comes from wholth in Old English. We become well when we become whole. And one of the greatest ways of understanding becoming whole again is through the study of the reality of what in the Islamic tradition we call “Fitra”.
Fitra is a difficult word to translate. Some attempts at doing so include: our primordial being, principal balance, original balance, first knowing, or simply- our original whole nature.
By studying- deeply!- Man, as well as the unadulterated natural world as a Fitraic reality, and our most genuine and original nature as Man as being one in harmony with the inner world, the outer world, and their Creator, we can begin to understand what really lies ahead as our task as modern Man/Woman to reclaim our long-lost connection to truth, beauty, virtue, and wholth.
And from there, come to a deeper understanding of just how utterly facile the reductive cognitive frame of health truly is.
3. You don’t get to suppress for free
For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction; this is Newton’s Third Law. Ralph Waldo Emerson called it the Law of Compensation. Whatever name we give it, there is a reality to it- especially in the world of physical substances and forces. And with Tylenol, this definitely applies. We know that Tylenol is hepato-toxic. This is why there are guidelines on how much and often we can dose it and general restriction on giving it to infants who don’t have fully matured livers to process the drug out of the body. We know that one of Tylenol’s metabolites, NAPQI, is toxic and works to deplete the body of its greatest endogenous antioxidant: glutathione.
We also know that suppressing fevers, which is part of the innate inflammatory process, has disastrous effects on the body's immune system, which is not just a ’system’ that can be bypassed but is a system that works and projects its state on the totality of the rest the body.
Simply: we do not get to suppress/palliate for free. There is a cost to using these drugs, from Tylenol and NSAIDS to all other synthetic petro-pharmaceuticals. Do they have a place? Yes, of course. I don’t want all pharmaceuticals banned. But do we also have a crisis of their abuse and over-prescription to the detriment of our selves, families, and the greater macrocosmic environment? 1000%.
Hippocrates’ first rule of medicine is to ‘Do no harm’. It can be considered unethical to prescribe long-term use of substances that lead to a deterioration of the organism in the long run for a short-term gain or advantage.
This can lead to ignorance.
This can lead to the wonton abuse of people.
And this can culminate into an inversion of medicine from a sacred healing art into a cult of profiteering from people’s pain.
I pray that we look deeper than the superficial smokescreens of reductive materialist claims and clickbait truisms and begin to study- with humility- nature as it is, the human being in our majestic wholeness as we are, and the healing wisdom that God in His infinite Wisdom & Mercy has bestowed and placed amongst us all for the benefit of humanity and the Fitraic world at large.
And finally: we pray for peace. We don’t want this discussion to lead to further polarization and inflammation of the social body. There is enough of that. May we be true healers that are rooted in balance and a harmonizing presence of peace for the whole world.
اللهم صل على سيدنا محمد طب القلوب ودوائها وعافية الأبدان وشفائها ونور الأبصار وضيائها وقوت الأرواح وغذائها وآله وصحبه وبارك وسلم
Dr. Mazen
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Dr. Mazen Atassi
Founding Director, Naturopathic Doctor, Homeopath, Somatic Trauma Counselor & Hikma Educator
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