There is nothing wrong with you, the doctors have told you. Test results say you are in perfect health, but you feel far from fine. You have tried conventional medicine, alternative medicine, and even lifestyle changes, and still the pain remains. It disrupts your thoughts, your life, and your stamina, with no end in sight.



When all remedies fail, what more can you do to cure what ails you? Dr. Richard DiCenso, international speaker, complementary care expert with over 30 years of experience, leading authority in Biological Fluid Analysis, attributes illusive chronic symptoms to Vicious Cycle Disorder, or VCD. "Vicious cycle disorder is simply a group of symptoms that is recurrent, non-responsive that rarely, if ever, improve and have a tendency over a period of time to actually get worse," DiCenso says.

Patterns of behavior that determine the way a person thinks or acts in turn result in real physical symptoms that affect an individual's health. Your health is made up of two components, genetic and environmental. What you are born with and the environment you were raised and live in equally affect your health. Because of this, to treat a chronic symptom, you must also reform the way you think. "There's no monthly healthcare fee for exposing yourself to new information and new beliefs," advises DiCenso.

During the day, the human brain experiences an average of about 50,000 to 60,000 thoughts. "The problem with most individuals is that we have the same 60,000 thoughts every day," observes DiCenso, "We induce our own form of insanity by allowing those same thoughts to dominate our behaviors."

Dr. Dicenso feels that in a media driven society, where pharmaceutical companies devote large amounts of resources to promoting their drug products, people are prone to believe that they are developing the symptoms portrayed in advertisements. Inevitably, they end up at a doctor's office with these symptoms, and a condition is diagnosed.

Eventually, after adapting to the lifestyle of that diagnosis, you end up with the condition itself. Dr. DiCenso advises that we are looking in the wrong place for the diagnoses to our symptoms, treating illnesses that may not be present. "It is going to be given a name when in fact it is not that name," warns DiCenso, "It's an end-result of a process based on a series of choices or habits that you have engaged in over a period of time."

To treat VCD, engage your doctor openly, and give him or her as much detail as possible, controlling the conversation. Often times, patient forms are generic, resulting in a treatment that may not engage the problem directly, doing nothing to treat the real underlying problem of VCD. To best approach and solve a situation, its true context must be found.

The answer, according to Dr. DiCenso, is solution-oriented medicine, treatments that address the problem directly, leading to a solution. To most adequately reach this solution, you need to go to the places that are best situated to handle your symptom. "If you go to an orthopedic surgeon with a shoulder pain, the impression is going to be different than if you went to a massage therapist or to an acupuncturist or a chiropractor," DiCenso points out.

Embracing an attitude of optimism also serves to treat VCD. Because symptoms stem from patterns of behavior, use proactive thinking aides to change how you respond. In short, positive focus obtains positive results.

Dr. DiCenso feels that, for patients with clearly observable injury or illness, the importance of conventional medicine cannot be diminished. "I'm not saying drugs and surgery are not necessary," DiCenso shares, "They are very appropriate when they are applied to the circumstances that they are indicated for. If you are in an automobile accident and you require reconstructive surgery you do not want to see me."

Ultimately, the decision to change is up to you. When conventional ways of medical thought have not solved your problems, or you are told that you are fine, but feel far from okay, you might be in the grip of Vicious Cycle Disorder.

Only through proactive thinking and the right kind of treatment can you break the cycle and expand your vision of healthiness. "I want everybody to know that no matter what situation they are in, no matter how hopeless it seems, no matter how long it has been going on and no matter how desperate they feel right now that there is a way out of their circumstances," says DiCenso.