What If There Isn’t One Root Cause?
Why chronic health problems often make more sense when we stop chasing individual symptoms and start looking at the layers underneath them
“Find the root cause” has become a familiar phrase in natural health.
And I understand why it resonates. When something keeps going wrong, we naturally want to know why. We don’t just want the headache to disappear for a few hours. We want to understand why we keep getting headaches in the first place. But after many years in clinical practice, I know our health doesn’t always works as neatly as the phrase “root cause” suggests. Sometimes there is a clear starting point, but particularly with chronic or recurring health problems, there is rarely one single cause waiting to be discovered. There are often layers.
The problem with only solving today’s problem
I recently came across an idea from author Ben Meer that stayed with me. He calls it the “Tomorrow Tax” — the future cost we create when we repeatedly choose an immediate solution without addressing the problem underneath it. He wasn’t writing about healthcare, but I immediately thought about how often we do this with our health problems. We have a headache, so we take something for the headache. We’re exhausted, so we have another coffee. We’re constipated, so we take something to get the bowels moving. We can’t sleep, so we find something that helps us sleep. Our digestion is uncomfortable, so we remove another offending food and while there is nothing inherently wrong with relieving a symptom, the problem comes when that is where the conversation ends. And if the same problem keeps returning, perhaps we need to ask the question: Why does my body keep doing this?
The ‘root cause’ looks more like a network
My Chinese Medicine education has me thinking of chronic health less like finding one faulty part and more like looking at the roots of a tree. Above the ground are the things we notice, the branches/leaves: fatigue, headaches, poor sleep, digestive symptoms, menstrual changes, pain, anxiety, recurrent illness or simply the feeling that we’re not functioning as well as we could. Underneath is a much more complicated network. Sleep affects energy. Stress can affect digestion. Digestion influences how well we absorb nutrients and remove waste. Pain can change sleep and movement. Long periods of illness can affect activity and resilience. Medications, procedures, restricted diets, life stages, previous illnesses and years of stress and simply pushing through can add further layers of complexity. In addition to all of that, each person arrives with their own constitution and history. Which is why two people can walk into my clinic with apparently similar symptoms and require different approaches.
One of the things I value about Chinese medicine
Chinese medicine encourages us to look beyond an isolated symptom and ask how it fits into the wider picture. When I first meet someone, I want to know about the problem that brought them in — but what i really want to know is “what else is happening”. How are you sleeping? How is your digestion? What is your energy like throughout the day? Do you tend to feel hot or cold? What is happening with your bowels? For women, what is happening with your menstrual cycle or through menopause? What was happening in your life or health around the time this began? What makes things better? What makes them worse? And importantly: What patterns keep repeating? The answers help build a picture of the person rather than simply a list of symptoms.
Sometimes we need to work in layers
This is also why I don't necessarily start by trying to address everything at once. When someone has been unwell for a long time, I often think in stages. Sometimes the body is dealing with inflammation or irritation that needs attention first. Sometimes digestion needs support before we ask the body to do more. Sometimes the nervous system has been under sustained load. Sometimes circulation and movement become part of the picture. And sometimes the person simply needs rebuilding after a long period of illness, stress or depletion. The order won't be identical for everyone, because the person in front of me isn't identical to anyone else. For me, this is a much more useful way of thinking about the “root cause.” Rather than digging endlessly for the one thing that caused everything, we can begin identifying the layers that may be contributing to the way someone feels now — and work through them thoughtfully.
There is another part of healthcare that matters to me
I don't want the people I work with to understand less about their bodies because they have handed responsibility for their health to a practitioner. I want them to understand more. Over time, I want someone to begin recognising: These are my early warning signs. This is what tends to happen when I've been under too much pressure. This is what happens to my digestion when I'm run down. These are the things that genuinely seem to support me. This is when I need help rather than continuing to push through. Alongside that, I want to help them gradually develop an understanding of their own body, so that knowledge belongs to them.
Perhaps this is how we reduce the “Tomorrow Tax”
Looking beneath symptoms doesn't mean ignoring them. And it doesn't mean assuming every illness has a hidden cause that simply needs to be uncovered. It means being curious about the bigger picture. What keeps contributing to this pattern? What can we support now? What might need attention next? And what can this person learn about their own body along the way? Health isn't always a straight line from symptom to cause to cure. It’s is more like tending a tree in a garden, we pay attention to what is happening in the branches, certainly, but we also look beneath the surface — at the soil, the network of roots supporting the tree and the rest of the garden that tree is in. Because caring for our health isn't only about solving today's problem. It's also about what we are building for tomorrow.