Different people, different styles … I answer all of the questions!
I’ve never heard of Root Cause Medicine before! What is it?
Root Cause Medicine (abbreviated as “RCM”), the way this term is used throughout this website, is a set of 12 guiding principles aimed at regaining and maintaining health; I call them the 12 RCM Principles.
It took me 12 years of study to identify them as the most effective principles throughout the traditional as well as modern practice of medicine.
As the name suggests, Root Cause Medicine is focused on dealing with root causes, namely on removing root causes of illness and introducing root causes of health. This approach differs from dealing merely with various signs and symptoms of a disease, which represent only the surface level of the underlying problem.
The necessary counterpart of the 12 RCM Principles are the 12 RCM Attitudes, which describe how patients should approach their health. Active participation of each patient in facilitating the self-healing processes is one of the key principles of Root Cause Medicine.
Is Root Cause Medicine a competitor to other types of medicine, such as Western Medicine, Functional Medicine, Naturopathic Medicine, or Traditional Chinese Medicine?
No. Root Cause Medicine is a set of guiding principles, not a new type of medicine. The goal of RCM is not to compete, but to offer the 12 RCM Principles for implementation within any system of medicine.
Any healthcare professional can choose to follow those principles, or some of them, while still practicing their own form of medicine.
Naturally, since the 12 RCM Principles are distilled from existing systems of medicine, whether traditional or modern, many of the RCM Principles are already incorporated in those systems.
I’d say the most resonating with the 12 RCM Principles is currently Functional Medicine, while Western Medicine diverges from them the most.
At the core, there are only two types of medicine – Root Cause Medicine (that deals with root causes of illness and health) and Symptomatic Medicine (that focuses only on signs and symptoms of a disease).
I believe that every patient should be viewed as a temporarily ill human, not as an ongoing source of revenue. Any approach that doesn’t deal with the root causes, or pretends they’re unknown or incurable, is a symptomatic approach, which turns the patients into a revenue source. I don’t agree with such approaches.
Is this website for doctors or for patients?
Both doctors and patients should be on the same page, so this website is for both. But there are many more patients than doctors, so I write all my articles on this website mainly with a patient in mind.
Either way, you don’t need a medical background to understand the 12 RCM Principles. They will provide you with a “big picture” framework for regaining and maintaining health.
The accompanying 12 RCM Attitudes are primarily designed for patients, but some of them (such as having an open mind, thinking critically, or perceiving things on a spectrum) can – and should – also be applied by doctors and their practice of medicine.
Another reason this website is for both patients and doctors is that Root Cause Medicine is based on their mutual cooperation.
The doctor provides expert advice, but it’s the patient who is responsible for everything else, including the implementation of the lifestyle changes needed to address the root causes of illness and health.
Are you a doctor, Daniel? Perhaps you just read a few self-help books and now you think you’re some sort of a medical prodigy?
I certainly don’t think I’m a medical prodigy, but I do have an M.D. (Doctor of Medicine) degree from Charles University, Czech Republic, where it takes 6 years of study to get this degree.
I also have a J.D. (Doctor of Law) degree and spent some 20 years as an Attorney-at-Law, focusing mainly on Medical Law. In this capacity, I have seen the practice of medicine from all conceivable angles and perspectives.
In addition, I recently spent 6 years (2016 – 2022) focusing on my “personal” medical studies, looking through various systems of medicine, their treatment procedures, methods, and protocols, in an attempt to identify the most effective principles underlying those systems.
The result is the 12 RCM Principles, which I coupled with the 12 RCM Attitudes necessary on the patients’ side.
During the 12 years of my medical studies, both formal and informal, I
- read and re-read some 200 medical books and textbooks
- completed more than a 100 medical and related courses
- researched more than a 1,000 medical articles (popular and scientific), and
- listened to approximately 1,500 hours of interviews and presentations by top medical experts and practitioners.
And of course, I continue learning and researching medical topics almost every day.
Hi Daniel, I like your 12 RCM Principles and 12 RCM Attitudes, but is that it? I wish you could expand on them a bit more!
There is more! The 12 RCM Principles and Attitudes serve as a framework that you can start using right now, and apply it to whatever health issue you have (with the help and guidance of your doctor).
This framework provides you with the “big picture” of your journey back to health, as well as with the right set of attitudes that will make you the main driver on that journey.
But that’s just the beginning. Each week, I publish one article expanding on the 12 RCM Principles or the 12 RCM Attitudes, on various root causes of illness and health, on different diseases, and on other RCM-related topics.
As a result of my 12-year research, I have several thousand notes, points, subtopics, and topics that I want to cover in my articles, so there’s a lot to write about!
So if you’re interested, please sign up for my newsletter below, and each Tuesday you’ll be notified of something new. And if you know someone who could be interested, too, please let them know!
