3 Tips to Understanding Root Cause of Disease with Dr. Zach Bush

Triple board certified, Dr. Zach Bush has been practicing academic medicine for over 17 years. Specializing in internal medicine, endocrinology, and hospice care, he brings his educational skills to Better Together to discuss the intelligence we need as a society in dealing with illness. Here are his tips in understanding the root cause of disease and how we can tackle it for a better life journey!

3 Tips to Understanding the Root Cause of Disease

1. Understand the chronic disease machine 

Dr. Bush stresses that as you engage with the medical industrial complex, it’s important to consider the extensive umbrella of the chronic disease management system — the most expensive human creation, with nearly $4 trillion spent annually in the US alone. We pour resources into the ironically named “healthcare” system as our kids become so sick at such young ages, evident by the so-called gold standard of magnet healthcare centers. He compares the science of medicine to religious spirituality, saying these magnificently built prestigious health centers are designed to the likes of cathedrals. They’re meant to make us feel good that they know what they’re doing, meanwhile the everyday hospitals you see make us feel like a cog in the machine. By looking at these, Dr. Bush says “It’s a big warning to us how we have hoarded what we used to put into spiritual reverence, and we’re putting it into our medical industrial complex.” He advises to keep your eyes wide open and look at the medical system with a different lens. Don’t surrender your health, your power, and your own miracle of life to the chronic disease medical machine, instead utilize it as a resource for your life journey. 

2. Feel all the uncomfortable emotions

It’s a very uncomfortable feeling to be completely present with the human condition and your own thoughts. Regardless, your discomfort is something you have to address in order to find a clear path forward. Experiencing the emotions of joy and love doesn’t cancel out pain, so understand that life is about holding on to every feeling you have, leading towards your unique self identity of the infinite energy that is your soul. When you dismiss all the negative feelings you have, that’s when disease seeps in, manifesting in the patterns of our emotional past. Unaddressed trauma in particular can later express itself as cancer, autoimmune diseases, etc. if we never feel present with them in the moment — make them feel seen or heard. That’s most important to feeling alive and well, rather than spending so much effort and money in covering it up in whole areas of functional medicine or biohacking, a major distraction. It’s important to remember that feeling pain and discomfort does not indicate a failure, “It means the joy is actually illuminating the areas of discomfort in your life so that you can bring yourself into further alignment and more coherence into who you actually are.” From his work with dealing with patients in hospice care, Dr. Bush has found a sense of beautiful release when they discover they are nearing the end of their lifetime — only then can they tap into a timeless space, feeling more alive than ever, with every experience suddenly becoming magnified for the beauty of who they are and why they’re here. A threatening disease can be the wake up call they need to start living freely, cutting away all expectations in life and allowing them to simply be in the moment. As Dr. Bush says, “This ease of the disease becomes an avenue of this bliss state of being present, being loved, being a source of life.”

3. Have a toolbox of actual helpful resources at your disposal

In looking for the right healthcare team for you, find a group of people that is on their own journey of simplification tools. In his own experience of starting a nutrition center for reversing chronic disease called Revolution House Center, Dr. Bush decided to flip the model of providing an external stimulus to the individual and turn it onto the individual themselves, asking himself questions like: What if the individual was the toolbox? What if the inherent qualities of biology within this individual was their medicine? What would it look like to create an environment around that person that then allowed it to be their own medicine, to be their own health journey? In that, he created the global eight-week program Journey of Intrinsic Health, in which people can participate in one-on-one coaching sessions or a group experience of six to eight people. He urges people to join the landscape of lifestyle tools to help begin your sense of self awareness, which begins to change your concepts of hydration, nutrition, fasting, breath work, exercising, and so many things we are taught constantly. Dr. Bush says, “Instead of it being an externalized tool to change your biology, it becomes an internal expression of your capacity for the miracle of life that’s within you.” It has been a major source of new opportunities and connection with others for people, turning into an infinite journey of intrinsic health that starts to make you feel more alive. 

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Hear more of Zach’s insights by checking out the full podcast episode!

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