Arthur John Rosen • Therapeutic Reflexologist & Craniosacral Therapist – I’m not a medical doctor — please read my full disclosure before acting on anything here.
I provide natural therapies that support the body’s natural healing abilities, and share what I’ve experienced and witnessed along the way
Greetings
You were not meant to manage your condition. You were meant to live your life. There is a difference — and it is worth living toward.
“We Don’t Know What Causes It. There Is No Cure.” Then What?
Have you ever been given a verdict like this one — maybe not about Crohn’s, maybe about something else entirely? but a verdict that landed the same way. I want to tell you what happened after I heard mine, because I don’t think the sentence itself was the important part.
In 2004, I was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease. I’d been ignoring gut symptoms for years — too busy, the way most of us are too busy, until the body finally insists on being heard. When I did seek help, a leading gastroenterologist gave me the honest answer medicine gives when it has reached the edge of what it can offer, in exactly ten words: “We don’t know what causes it, There is no cure”.
The Doctor Wasn’t Wrong
I want to be clear about this, because it matters. That doctor wasn’t wrong, and he wasn’t unkind. He was telling me the truth as medicine understood it at the time. He was a good doctor doing his job honestly.
But here’s how words like that impact a person, regardless of how honestly it’s delivered. You stop expecting to feel well. You make a hundred small adjustments to a smaller life. And you become, without ever consciously choosing it, someone who copes rather than someone who lives.
I’ve come to think of that place as the land of hopelessness. Not because anyone was cruel to send me there — because a verdict like that, however honestly meant, quietly closes a door most people don’t think to check again.
The Question I Was Slow to Ask
I was prescribed medication. I took it. But somewhere in that period, I started asking a different question — not what is this condition, but what is actually causing it? It wasn’t a dramatic pivot. It was a stubborn, quiet refusal to accept that the door was really closed.
That question is the “then what?” of this post’s title. It’s the whole predicament, really. Not a treatment, not a supplement, not a single insight that fixed everything overnight. Just a question I kept asking long after I’d been given permission to stop.
What I Found on the Other Side of It
A year or two later, after changing what I ate, addressing stress I’d been carrying for a long time, and receiving reflexology that helped my body release what it had been holding, my gastroenterologist reviewed me again. He found no sign of the disease. Not in remission. Reversed!
I want to be precise about what that means, because I never want to promise anyone something I can’t stand behind. There is still no cure for Crohn’s disease. What I found wasn’t a cure. It was a direction — the discovery that when you reverse the cause instead of only managing the symptom, the symptom sometimes has no reason left to persist.
I’ve written about the fuller journey in my nook “How to Be Free of IBD”, because a blog post can only hold so much of it, and I think the details matter more than the summary.
If you’ve been given a verdict like mine — honest, well-meant, and treated ever since as more permanent than it may actually be — the question that changed everything for me is still sitting there, available to you too: “What is actually causing this?”
About Arthur John
Arthur John Rosen is a Registered Therapeutic Reflexologist and Craniosacral Therapist practising at Lifetime Health in Bedford Park, Johannesburg. A former Chartered Accountant, he retrained twice in his sixties after his own health journey changed the course of his career and his life.
Small Shifts, Big Results
For the next three days, pick one symptom or discomfort you’ve been quietly managing without ever asking why. Each day, spend two minutes simply sitting with the question — what might actually be causing this? Don’t search for the answer online. Just sit with the question.
The Book
I wrote How to Be Free of IBD because I lived this, not because I thought a book could help in the abstract. It’s the fuller version of the question this post only had room to introduce.
Read it here: How to Be Free of IBD.
arthur@lifetimehealth.co.za 082 456 0155 · www.lifetimehealth.co.za
I am honoured that you took the time to read this. Whatever you’re working toward, I’m rooting for you—but more importantly, make sure you’re rooting for yourself!
I share my journey and what I have watched become possible. I am not a medical doctor and nothing I write or say is medical advice.
The experiences shared here are offered to illustrate what is possible — not as a guaranteed blueprint or medical prescription for your specific condition. Nothing here is a substitute for medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Please consult your healthcare team before making any major changes to your treatment.
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