🎓 Hippocrates Meets AI 🌐
EPISODE #4: "Nature Is the Healer of Diseases"
⏪️In the previous episode, we explored why "I don't know" can be a form of wisdom.
📌Today I want to reflect on something that troubles me even more: "Wait."
💭Waiting can be deeply draining.
🤷♂️Because when someone sits across from me, frightened or searching for answers, I want to do something. Give them a medication, a plan, something tangible to hold on to.
🫣Waiting makes me feel helpless. As if I'm not doing my job.
❌Yet still.
🧔♂️Harry, 32 years old, came in for a routine check-up. Elevated transaminases and GGT (gamma-glutamyl transferase). Abdominal ultrasound: moderate-grade hepatic steatosis (fatty liver).
-He was quite frightened. "Am I going to develop cirrhosis? Are there medications or supplements I can take? What should I do?"
-"There's no medication for this, but your body can correct it on its own — if you give it the chance," I told him.
-He pressed further: "What about an herbal supplement, at least?"
-I explained: Supplements are not the main issue here. Reduce your alcohol intake significantly, incorporate aerobic physical activity into your life, let's work on improving your diet, and try to reduce your body weight.
‼️And most importantly, give it time. The liver has a remarkable regenerative capacity, but it doesn't happen in a week.
⏩️Twelve months later. Abdominal ultrasound: significant reduction in hepatic steatosis. Blood tests: within normal limits.
🙂"Doctor, do you know which was the hardest part? Not the gym. Not the diet. It was the waiting. Not knowing if it would be effective. Trusting that something was happening — even when I couldn't see it."
👱♀️Mary, 44 years old, came in with blood test results. Prediabetes — one step before a formal diagnosis.
"My mother has diabetes mellitus," she tells me. "What do I do?"
ℹ️Another physician had suggested metformin. An AI program she had consulted recommended the same: "Initiate pharmacological therapy."
😅😜I catch myself thinking, with a touch of self-deprecating irony: "What would Hippocrates say if I prescribed metformin for Mary today?"
-I walked her through the evidence. Metformin and other glucose lowering agents are valid options, but the greatest benefit would come from lifestyle modifications.
-"I want to try without medication," she said.
⏩️One year later: her results improved. Not only did she not progress to diabetic levels, many other metabolic parameters improved as well.
😊"I thought it was inevitable," she tells me. "That I'd end up just like my mother."
👨⚕️"Your body had other plans."
✅"Φύσις νούσων ἰητρός" — attributed to Hippocrates, Epidemics.
"Nature (the body) is the healer of diseases."
🔥Hippocrates saw this 2,500 years ago — without MRI scanners, without specialized laboratory tests, without algorithms. Simply by observing. The body knows how to heal itself. If you give it time and the right conditions.
🤔And today, with all our technology, we have forgotten this.
💻I ask an AI program: "What does this maxim mean for modern medicine?"
📲Answer: "Homeostasis, the immune system, cellular regeneration pathways, evidence-based lifestyle interventions, Mediterranean dietary protocols, the watch and wait approach…"
⁉️"And how exactly do you wait?"
🧠👤This is where the human factor becomes indispensable. Understanding what waiting feels like. Being able to live through the process. Being able to inspire change. Underlining the walk when there's no motivation for it, the "no" to a second beer, the early-morning gym session before work.
😎That is precisely what Hippocrates was talking about.
⚖️We live in the era of instant results. A pill for everything. The best possible solution, as quickly as possible.
But the body doesn't work that way. It needs time. It needs trust.
💎And the most difficult treatment I can prescribe is not a prescription at all. It is this:
"Improve your lifestyle. Not abruptly, not under pressure, not in a way that feels like amputation. Gradually, steadily, with small consistent steps only forward and never back. And give it time. Your body knows what it's doing."
😉Thousands of years after Hippocrates, this remains the hardest thing of all.
🔜Next episode: Learning is hard… unlearning is harder!