Self-diagnosis is all about discovering how to read the body’s everyday signs and signals that reflect your state of health. Analysing your own body isn’t a substitute for orthodox or complementary medical diagnosis in the case of illness. Rather, self-diagnosis is a way of monitoring your health and possibly preventing disease by detecting early signs of imbalance. In this chapter, I describe some common forms of self-diagnosis that have their roots in complementary therapies and traditional medicine. You’ll find out how to read your tongue, face, and various other body parts. Their signs can give you important health clues.

You can use some of these diagnostic techniques to have a bit of fun and develop quite a handy party trick or even a new chat-up line – ‘Would you like to stick out your tongue at me and let me read it for you?’ (Well, maybe not!) Seriously, though, you can use these self-diagnostic techniques to increase your awareness and get to know your body much better.

Self-diagnosis has its roots in traditional medicine, going back to a time when physicians and healers weren’t readily available and people had to take greater care of their own health. Reading your own body also goes back to a time when people lived lives that were more in tune with the natural cycles, rather than dominated by the artificial, urban environments in which many of us now live, more cut off from nature, fresh air, natural daylight, and the changing seasons.

In those ancient times, people were able to read their environment by knowing what weather to expect from observing the behaviour of birds and insects or observing the form and movements of clouds. They also seem to have been able to read the body any try to remedy any upsets.