Time as Treatment: The Slow Medicine We Forget

8-30-2025

By Dr. Howard Friedman MD | Veteran | U.S. Army Medical Corps | Internal Medicine | HHOM LLC

An old clock marks the hours as an elder rests in stillness—reminding us that healing unfolds not in haste, but in the quiet medicine of time

Time drips steady, not for sale,

A patient river, a hidden grail.

The clock may rush, the body resists,

Healing whispers in moments missed.

Slow is the dose the spirit needs,

Rest is the root from which health proceeds.

--- Dr. Howard Friedman, M.D.

Introduction – The Illusion of Hurry

We live in a culture obsessed with speed. Faster cars, faster internet, faster medicine. Everything is designed to shave off seconds, as though time itself were the enemy. But time isn’t our adversary—it is the very ground upon which healing stands.

Biologically, the body refuses to be rushed. A cut knits when it is ready. A bone fuses according to its own rhythm. The immune system takes its days and weeks to rise, fight, and recover. Yet modern life treats time as wasted unless filled, measured, and maximized. We forget that slowness is not inefficiency. It is treatment.

Medicine once respected this truth. Convalescence was prescribed; patience was honored. Now, the art of waiting has been stripped away, replaced by instant scans, fast pills, and the illusion that speed equals care. But no matter how quickly we move, the body whispers a different prescription: healing demands time.

Biological Time

The body does not recognize the stopwatch. It follows a rhythm older than culture, older than clocks. Skin closes in its own season, bones mend grain by grain, and the immune system marches on a schedule no doctor can speed. Healing is never instant, because biology refuses to be rushed.

Modern life has trouble accepting this. Productivity demands we treat every pause as wasted, every hour unfilled as a loss. But the body is not a machine on a factory line. It is a living orchestra, one that requires rest between movements. To ignore this is to mistake speed for progress and efficiency for care.

Medicine once honored this tempo. Convalescence was treatment, not indulgence. Patients were given not just prescriptions but time—time to rest, to rebuild, to let nature work. In forgetting that slowness is biological law, we risk creating a medicine that looks busy but heals little.

Healing is never instant, because biology refuses to be rushed.

Psychological Time

If biological time is written in wounds and cells, psychological time is felt in the mind’s pacing. Stress compresses time. Under the surge of cortisol and epinephrine, the hours shrink, the body shifts into vigilance, and healing stalls. Inflammation becomes the language of hurry, and the return to baseline is never instant.

The antidote is slowness—stillness—the very waiting rooms of the healing institute.

Slowness is not idleness. It is the space where hormones quiet, where the nervous system learns safety again. PTSD, anxiety, and burnout cannot be hurried away; they yield only to the patient tempo of rest. In stillness, the clock stretches. What felt urgent softens, what felt unbearable becomes tolerable, and the body finally begins its work of repair.

Slowness also opens the ear. Hearing may be about sound, but listening belongs to time—time given to empathy, compassion, and vulnerability. These are not luxuries of psychology; they are anti-inflammatory forces, guiding both the mind and body back toward balance. When we step outside the measured ticks of the clock and into the slow dance of awareness, we rediscover that healing is less about speed, and more about rhythm.

Stillness is not idleness—it is the waiting room of healing.

Time in Medicine

Medicine once carried time as part of the prescription. Convalescence was not a suggestion but a mandate; patients were told to rest weeks after an illness, to recover months after surgery, to allow grief or exhaustion to take their course. The doctor’s art was not just in diagnosis, but in granting permission to heal slowly.

That tradition has largely been stripped away. Today the expectation is speed: rapid discharge, quick turnaround, “back to work” before the body is ready. Pills promise fast relief, scans deliver instant answers, and yet outcomes are not always better. By forcing the body into a timeline of convenience, we often confuse motion for progress. Healing, however, resists convenience.

The most effective treatments still honor time. Rehabilitation after a stroke requires countless repetitions, not shortcuts. Sleep disorders mend through nights and weeks of gentle retraining, not overnight fixes. Even grief—so often medicalized—unfolds in its own season, and the attempt to hasten it only deepens the wound.

Time in medicine is not wasted time. It is the medicine itself. Every true recovery is a partnership between intervention and patience, technology and biology, care and time. Forgetting that is not only a cultural failing—it is a clinical one.

Time in medicine is not wasted time. It is the medicine itself.

Veterans and the War on Time

For veterans, time carries its own weight. Military life is built on urgency—hurry up and wait becomes second nature. In the field, hesitation can mean death. Training conditions the body and mind to act fast, to compress time into reaction. This survival tempo does not dissolve when the uniform comes off.

In civilian life, that urgency often collides with healing. The veteran told to “be patient” with recovery hears only weakness. The veteran struggling with PTSD or chronic pain feels betrayed by a system that demands waiting but offers no guidance for what to do inside that waiting. Hurry is ingrained, but healing requires patience—and this contradiction deepens the wound.

What is rarely said is that slowness itself is medicine for veterans. The recalibration of body and mind takes not days but years. Trust, rest, stillness—these are not luxuries but lifelines. To honor veterans is not only to treat their conditions, but to give them the gift they were trained to deny: time.

The battlefield teaches urgency, but recovery demands patience.

Conclusion – Time as the Forgotten Prescription

Healing lives outside the clock. Nature moves in slowness and stillness, while our noisy culture demands instant results. To quiet inflammation, we must step out of the mind’s obsession with measurement and let time do its work. I am not your doctor, but I hope you have one who will prescribe time as medicine—a treatment our grandparents once trusted, and one we can remember again. Thank you for reading.

 Time is medicine. Stillness is its dose.

A clock may tick, but healing waits,

It whispers soft at slower gates.

The body mends in quiet hours,

Not forced by speed, nor human powers.

Return to stillness, let time renew,

The medicine once known, still true.

--- Dr. Howard Friedman, M.D.

—Dr. Howard Friedman MD

Board-Certified | Internal Medicine | Veteran | U.S. Army Medical Corps

Founder of Howard’s House of Medicine (HHOM LLC)

https://www.hhomllc.com

Frequently Asked Questions:

Q: Why does modern medicine often neglect the role of time in healing?

A: Because our culture values speed and efficiency above all else. Quick discharges, instant scans, and fast-acting pills give the appearance of progress, but they don’t change the fact that the body and mind recover only at their own pace. Healing is biological and psychological, not mechanical—it resists shortcuts.

Q: How can veterans, trained for urgency, benefit from the idea of “slow medicine”?

A: Military life hardwires urgency—decisions are immediate, delays can be dangerous. After service, that conditioning collides with healing, which demands patience. Veterans often see waiting as weakness, yet slowness is itself treatment. Rest, trust, and stillness are not indulgences but necessary medicine for the wounds of war.

Q: What practical steps can someone take to apply “time as medicine” in their own life?

Start by giving yourself permission to slow down. Protect rest as you would any prescription. Allow recovery after illness or stress without rushing back into routine. Build stillness into your days—through quiet, reflection, or simply pausing. Time is not wasted when it is used to heal; it is the treatment itself.