Many of the people who are injured by doctors never needed medical treatment in the first place. The human body contains a comprehensive variety of self-healing mechanisms which mean that in nine out of ten illnesses your body will mend itself.

It is important that you learn to understand your body; learn to appreciate your own self-healing skills; learn to acknowledge your body’s miraculous range of techniques for dealing with threats and diseases; and learn to know when your body can look after itself — and when you need professional help.

The big trouble with most health care professionals — and this includes acupuncturists, osteopaths, aromatherapists and all other ‘alternative’ practitioners, as well as orthodox doctors — is that they tend to treat their patients as battle grounds, the illness as an enemy and their own armoury of drugs or techniques as weapons with which to fight the illness.

Whether he sticks needles into you, gives you herbal tea to drink or prescribes a drug for you to swallow the therapist has to do something to you, or give you something to take, in order to justify his fee.

The evidence to show that this interventionist philosophy is wrong is incontrovertible. When you fall ill you do not necessarily need to have anything done to you. Your body is equipped with such an enormous range of subtle and sophisticated feedback mechanisms that it can look after itself very well.

Your body can heal itself, protect itself and guard itself against a thousand different types of threat.

Your body contains internal mechanisms designed to deal automatically with minor damage, improve your eyesight, keep out the cold, deal with anxiety and even help fight against diseases as threatening as cancer.

Your internal appetite control centre can ensure that you eat only the foods that your body needs — and it can help make sure that you never become overweight. 

Your body’s internal pain-relieving hormones are as powerful as morphine — but you have to know how to take advantage of those pain-relieving hormones.

The human brain even contains a natural drug designed to help anxiety.

Your body is marvellous. It contains a vast variety of extraordinarily effective self-healing mechanisms. Most of them you probably don’t even know about. And if you don’t know about them then you probably don’t know how to take advantage of them.

Your body cannot always cope, of course. There will be times when even your sophisticated self-healing mechanisms will be overwhelmed and will need support.

But to dismiss these mechanisms on the grounds that they don’t provide a complete answer to all health problems is like arguing that it isn’t worthwhile learning to swim because occasionally you may need the help of a lifeguard.

I firmly believe that if you learn to use the power of your own body you will benefit in a number of ways. First, of course, you will reduce the risk of being injured by a healthcare professional. Every year thousands of people suffer because of unnecessary treatments used by orthodox and alternative practitioners.

Second, you will benefit because when an interventionist treats an illness he usually tries to oppose your body’s own internal responses, as well as whatever outside agent may have triggered those responses in the first place. This isn’t necessarily a good idea. All symptoms are merely signs that a fight is taking place inside your body. Unless the interventionist treatment is carefully designed to support and aid your body, the treatment applied may well end up damaging and even weakening your body’s internal mechanisms — eventually making you more vulnerable and more reliant on interventionists and their treatments.

It is vitally important that you learn to use your body’s powers and learn to recognise precisely when you need professional support. You should retain overall control of your body and bring in the healers as advisers and technicians.

Once you’ve mastered the idea of using your body’s own healing powers you will find yourself enjoying a freedom that you might otherwise never know.

I have described the many wonderful ways in which your body can look after itself in my book called Bodypower. The book explains how you can use your body’s self-healing powers to help you deal with 9 out of 10 illnesses without a doctor. It has been described as the owner’s manual for the human body.