Video: How Medical Treatments Really Work

Dr. Weil explains that most medical treatments work indirectly, by unblocking and facilitating the body’s intrinsic ability to heal itself.

 

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Video Transcript: How Medical Treatments Really Work

Well I use the example that if a patient is critically ill with a bacterial pneumonia and you put them in a hospital and give them intravenous antibiotics, 36 hours later they’re out of danger. It’s very easy to interpret that as the antibiotic caused the cure. My interpretation, which I think is more useful, is that antibiotics in that situation reduce populations of germs to a level where the immune system can take over and finish a job that it couldn’t do because it was overwhelmed. And I think that’s a model for how all of our treatments work. When they work, they don’t work directly, they work indirectly by impinging on the bodies intrinsic mechanisms of healing, on blocking them, facilitating them.