 |
|
|
|
Overview
In this section on "medicine" I review the main therapies that I use, how I apply them as well as my perspective and understanding of there use. I encourage you to read them through and to see if you think that what I have to offer matches what you feel would be of benefit.
Remember that many of us have become used to thinking of "medicine" as only a pharmaceutical drug. Webster's dictionary reminds us that medicine is also "the science and art dealing with the maintenance of health and the prevention, alleviation, or cure of disease". This takes on many forms from pharmaceuticals to surgery, but also includes nutrition, physical therapy and the manipulation of joints, the use of dietary supplements, and we should not forget about exercise. The fact that counseling and psychiatry are "medicine" is obvious. Acupuncture and energetic therapies are more widely accepted in the West, but have been "medicine" for many years in other cultures. When we talk about healing we are talking about how medicine, all medicine in it's vast combinations, can help us toward our goals of greater freedom.
Surgery and Pharmaceuticals
I write few prescriptions
Please consult me before removing your organs
Always keep an open-mind
Although I have written prescriptions, I must say that I have a lot more experience weaning patients then prescribing. Conversely, I have not done a surgery or even sutured up a laceration in over ten years. So if you have a cut that is longer than a centimeter I can not comfortably say that I will be able to close it sufficiently with herbs. Please go to the nearest urgent care center and they will skillfully suture your wound so your body can heal.
Surgery is often lifesaving, and particularly in cancer, gives the immune system the chance to surmount what may be an otherwise insurmountable foe. Although removal of the tonsils and appendix has been greatly reduced, my hope is that continued discretion is used to stop elective gallbladder removal with the additional suggestion of my consultation when considering removal of any organs. The unfortunate removal of organs and glands has continually proven unbalanced by evolving medical knowledge. Just the same, surgical skills continue to dazzle with new techniques, quicker recovery times and many more people are helped.
An attitude of prejudice against surgery and pharmaceuticals, although feeling justified to some, does not out weigh the great benefit that they have afforded to many without ill affect. Certainly healing must be accepted from all medicine and though we may heal most completely from the inside-out, we need to welcome support from an outside sources whether seemingly 'natural' or not.
Nutrition, Dietary Supplements, and IV Therapy
Good food restores our foundation for healing
IV therapy = absorbing larger amounts of specific nutrition
Supplements can help, but do not substitute for a good diet
Many foods are specific to helping different conditions and together we will find what diet that will be work best for you. The fact that eating more fruits and vegetables prevents different diseases is commonly reported in the medical research and has been championed by naturopathic physicians for over a hundred years. Whole food nutrition may be quite a change from your diet or it may be old hat. The fact is that the benefits come quickly and then go deeply to restore our foundation for healing. More specifically they allow the body to drastically shift its resources toward helping the immune system work under a reduced burden, promote appropriate up/down regulation of genetic expression of our DNA, and reduces fatigue - that our cells enjoy as much as we do in being able to get more accomplished.
And now with the modern ability to provide dietary supplementation of the macro and micro components of food we can more precisely help the body to heal and cure disease. Whether using specific proteins, fats, minerals, or vitamins your body will be able to restore what would take months of drastic diet change. Therefore dietary supplements can help fill in the gap that has been left by lifestyle slips and genetic shuffling. The goal is to use dietary supplements to quickly move you to a new plateau while your fitness and diet catch up so that you can continue to terrace up to the level where your body can heal itself. Once the greater health concerns are removed dietary supplementation will be reduced to an essential set as the body is able to maintain a high level of health with good lifestyle choices.
As your health challenges are addressed there may be the need for intravenous therapy to either stop a cold/flu, subdue other viral infections like hepatitis and mono, to treat heart disease or multiple chemical sensitivity and especially in cancer. IV therapy is just the next step-up from dietary supplements in allowing for specific nutrition to be carried to the tissues in a much larger nutritional dose then the body can absorb in comparison to oral ingestion. Given enough time the body can heal itself most completely with diet, but is helped immensely in its effort by specific dietary supplements and even IV therapy.
Herbal Medicine
Multiple phytochemicals in plants are good medicine
Herbs are not safe for everyone
Quick relieving vs. Deep acting
Using plants as medicine will certainly come into play at some point in your healing. About 400 plants are commonly used for there therapeutic actions out of thousands used as medicine. Each culture has herbs that they have found helpful and botanical medicine today continues to verify traditional uses and explore new applications through research. Still 20% of our pharmaceuticals are made directly from plant sources and this number was 80% only 50 years ago. Herbal medicine can cause side effects and can interact with other medicines. We learn more about this all the time. Unfortunately, the media sensationalizes herbal reactions to generate noteworthy headlines by generating adversarial controversy and rarely report on the persistent problem - pharmaceutical reactions send 700,000 people to the ER every year.
Herbs are certainly not benign, but the facts speak to there safely that has often been attributed to each plant's numerous and diverse chemical components (phytochemicals). These act in concert to guide the body in a healing direction. They do not often "tell the body what to do" - the reason for the numerous side effects of pharmaceuticals. Instead the body reacts to the diverse phytochemicals in a plant not with side effects, but with intentionality - the body responds, it does not need to react. As the body responds to herbal medicine the body creates a healing environment. The phytochemicals do not "fix you," they persuade the body to create surroundings where only health can prosper (we heal from the inside-out). Although pharmaceuticals are often good medicine there strength is to "take over for the body" where herbal medicine can actually foster a more healthy body.
The multiple phytochemicals of each plant 1) act to coax our DNA at many enzymatic production sites, 2) balance receptor activity, and 3) promote movement of minerals, hormones, and metabolites in and out of cells. Herbal medicine can act quickly (coating the ulcerous stomach relieving pain, tightening boggy sinus tissue or stopping bleeding), but the deeper actions of botanical medicine build with time as the phytochemicals entice the effect of the body - tonifying organs, supporting tissue rejuvenation and opening energetic pathways. The result is a unified body that removes the symptoms and heals the cause of disease. I can not emphasize enough the benefit of herbal medicine to promote change; it is often an indispensable part of a comprehensive treatment plan.
Counseling and Energy Medicine
Releasing worry and resentment
Restoring motion in muscles and joints
Energy medicine is the new frontier of medicine
I do a great deal of listening and communicating with patients, but I have rarely taken on patients just for counseling. Counseling, in my practice, is interconnected with doing good medicine. All concerns are welcome and I will try my best to guide you to what has worked best for myself and others whether this is just practical advice or more specific direction. The most specific personalized benefit is the mind, body, spirit connection that occurs while doing energy medicine with my hands. The fact is that I commonly feel the person's pain in my body as strain patterns are released. There are often strong emotions associated with the process and sometimes we talk about what comes up, sometimes one of us just acknowledges the change, or we might just keep on doing what we were doing - either talking or being silent. We learn to "go with the flow". I have been working to master these interactive skills for the last 12 years and the overall response is that patients find they heal and feel more like themselves.
The process often looks like this. After some diagnostic exam I will initially put my hands on your feet to access, release and balance the "grounding" lower body. Then I work where the body needs help with my hands either on or off the body. Generally, I am looking for areas where the energy is excessive or depleted and my hands act like "jumper cables" in some respects so that the body can more easily shift energy from one spot to another. My experience is not that people generally need more energy, but that it needs to be redistributed or simply released or removed (cleaned). I believe that these strain patterns 1) generate drag on the system, 2) sustain pain in muscles and joints, 3) maintain generalized fatigue, and most importantly 4) impedes the body's ability to heal.
Acupuncture, Neural-fascial Release and Qi Gong
Is your body "duct-tapped?"
Sometimes we are like a car battery with clogged wiring
Healing-hands give me feedback
(Please read the section "Counseling and Energy Medicine" before reading this section to better understand what you can expect from your visit.)
Cranial osteopathy, neurofascial release, qi gong, and acupuncture are all forms of energy medicine that I often combine in treating strain patterns in the muscle, fascia, ligaments, and bone, but also in restoring balance to the body, the chakras and other energetic systems. Where acupuncture needles act like relay stations to reroute energy in the meridians of the body, working with my hands affords the benefit of gaining feedback from the patient's "energy body" to more precisely restore and integrate the body as a whole.
The "energy body" and the "physical body" simply support and sustain each other. One does not exist without the other. A helpful metaphor is the car battery that can not maintain an electrical charge (the "energetic body") without the physical minerals to supply the electrons (the "physical body"), but when properly aligned there is current (direction), voltage (motion), and amps (strength) for all we want and need to accomplish.
I often use the analogy that I am just the fork. We have all experienced needing something that has dropped between the wall and the couch. How many of us have reached, tried to stretch just that extra inch and been unable to contact the needed item? Well the time comes when we either have to move the couch or get a fork to extend our reach. I act like the fork to reach the place that the body can not quite reach or without sufficient power to resolve a problem - I offer that help.
The body will heal itself when it still has enough balanced energy. Unfortunately, after many years of neglect, or just a strong force, the body is "duct-tapped" into needing something that will help free up the system. As mentioned earlier sound nutrition and exercise will often allow freedom to return, but we frequently need additional help.
Healing is about assisting the body to heal from one plateau to another. Not to just remove symptoms, but to allow you to heal deeply to the point that you have the freedom that you desire.
Yoga, Structural Work and Manipulation
Structural integration works wonders
Your choice of fascia - silk or wool?
Yoga: more about strength than flexibility
Depending on the joint and muscular concerns that you have I will often prescribe yoga and structural integration (SI). They both address the physical body at the level of the fascia. SI acts to separate the fascial spot-welds or binding-spots between muscles that are the result of past injuries and postural compensations. When we hurt a joint, for example, the body unites different muscle compartments to help stabilize the joint so that it can heal. In a perfect world we would release all these fascial bonds after injury and insult. Fortunately, SI removes these physical blockages that in turn allow energy to move more easily through these areas. The net result is more freedom of movement and body systems performing more effectively. Everyone can use SI work and I regularly open up these old connections, but I often refer-out the cases that will get the most out of this modality. I have always found it beneficial.
I often add one or two yoga postures (asanas) to the treatment plan to address joint health. Yoga, like SI, allows for the removal of fascial strain patterns. Yoga does however take longer and require more dedication, but maintains the following benefits over SI: 1) you have more control over your own healing 2) it offers a way to maintain fascial health, 3) is a cardiovascular workout developing strength and stamina, 4) develops a connection with the "energy body" so that you can better experience and understand this part of yourself, 5) promotes the unity of flexible strength that promotes injury avoidance, 6) teaches breathing techniques to reduce stress, 7) promotes meditation to quite the mind/relieve stress and 7) get to meet a lot of interesting people.
I do use other physical medicine methods, but more infrequently. I rarely use HVLA (high velocity low amplitude) releases anymore. These are great because they are fast, quick, generate an audible sound, and are at times indispensable when someone is really locked. The issue is that we are introducing a force in order to take out a force which I find creates collateral strain patterns so I generally avoid these. On the other hand, I have additional training in Counterstrain and Muscle Energy techniques that I more commonly use. In the former I find the place of comfort and wait for tissue change, sounds easy enough, and the latter involves coordinating the opposite muscles from the disturbed group to balance them all.
I enjoy combining these medicines to find what your body needs because what is the best treatment one day may change as we heal and grow. By integrating these more physically-based medicines with energy medicine therapies we are able to help the body, the mind, and the spirit to find greater health and freedom.
Homeopathy
The "bottled" energy medicine
Homeopathy and naturopathy are not the same
The proof is in the science
(Without having read the earlier material in this section on "Medicine" this discussion will be difficult to appreciate if you are new to homeopathy.)
Homeopathy is another energy medicine put is based on ingesting the energy as a pill. Topical and injected homeopathics are also used, but primarily the medicine is applied to small pellets of sugar that are dissolved under the tongue.
Homeopathy is used to help both acute problems as well as to treat your long standing concerns. First codified in the late 1700s homeopathy has continued as a medicine to this day, and is in fact, the most difficult of all medicine to use. One must be a great observer as well as have an encyclopedic mind. This is because homeopathy works by matching your symptom picture to that of a specific homeopathic remedy. Remember that in homeopathy we are looking for the best match - the idea is that "like cures like".
The information about homeopathic medicines has been gathered from available data on poisonings as well as through experiments called provings. Actually it is the similar symptoms reported form mercury poisoning in the 18th century that revealed the idea of using very dilute medicines in "homeopathic provings" and latter as a method of making homeopathic medicine.
In a "homeopathic proving," we experimentally find how to apply a homeopathic medicine. An example would include one hundred people taking homeopathic coffee at a 30C potency daily for thirty days writing down all of the aches, pains, symptoms, sensations that they noticed. At the end of the month all of this information is recorded and tabulated. The results of the data repeatedly generate a bell-shaped distribution curve of symptomatology representing the striking similarity between each participant's subjective experience. Shared symptoms are most commonly associated with coffee's effect on the nervous system (improved mental focus, trembling hands) while others experienced varied symptoms (some with diarrhea, others constipated, etc.). The most intriguing fact is that a 30C potency of homeopathic medicine is a dilution that no longer contains one molecule of coffee. This is the strong science of homeopathic medicine, but also its baffling nature that quantum physics may soon explain. Obviously however, there is information that is transmitted through the dilution process so that the participants experienced this statistically significant data despite the lack of coffee substance.
Nonetheless, when I am prescribing a homeopathic medicine I look to match the totality of your symptoms as they exist today or throughout your life to the symptom picture of a medicine gained in a "proving". I often consult with homeopathic colleagues on cases, even refer-out for constitutional homeopathic treatment, and look forward to integrating homeopathy into a comprehensive treatment plan that will work for you and your lifestyle.
Injection Therapies
Restore function and relieve pain
Sometimes the body needs more help
Often the jump-start for slowed progress
The primary injection therapy that I do is for pain management in musculoskeletal problems. I often use homeopathic preparations (a combination of multiple homeopathic remedies) injected into different acupuncture points. This acts on both the physical and energy bodies relieving pain and allowing for the body to unwind the tension that has been created. It is common for the injections to promote releases that my hands can then release further and sometimes visa versa.
Sometimes only one treatment is necessary and given the situation sometimes I have had used this in a progressive therapy that simply works best for some patients. In others I have found benefit in using injection therapy as a sort of "jump-start" when other therapies are not working as well anymore, or moreover, alternating this therapy with others has been successful in what I call "see-sawing" the body forward. Again the importance is finding what will work best for you and working together so that you can find the health that you seek.
|
|
|
|
