ENRICHING HEALTH: Pathways to Complementary Therapies

The origins of this book stretch back to 1987 when I had a strong inner prompting to drop my university-sponsored, subsidized medical insurance. This spontaneous intrusion arose seemingly out of nowhere while sitting in my office. After examining the wisdom of this inner prompting for one week, I canceled my medical insurance and I’ve never looked back. I didn’t begin writing this book, however, until 2001.

Why did I cancel my medical insurance? Unhealthy illusions were nurtured in my mind by the concept of medical insurance. Part of this awakening arose from having served on two hospital committees for 12 years that helped me understand first-hand the limits of a disease care system funded by 3rd party payers. Doctors are unable to insure my health. I hold the key to promoting and maintaining my own health. Health is not a commodity that can be purchased like an auto or a new suit even though insurance helps pay for the costly consequences of our lifestyle choices.

Doctors specialize in disease care and can often help restore health but they generally do not promote health. I play the central role in maintaining my own health. Medicine is a science of disease and pathology, not a science of health. Physicians use an arsenal of tools to counter disease after it strikes; they focus on biochemistry. Most physicians rely upon drugs as magic bullets and surgery to destroy disease and thereby restore health. Our disease care system helps people after they become ill. We need a health enriching system that promotes health and prevents disease.

Can the ill effects from an unhealthy diet be corrected with surgery and pills? Can the ill effects on the heart and biochemical changes caused by stress be corrected with mind mellowing drugs? Can the ill effects on the stomach and the digestive system from overeating be corrected with expensive antacids?

Those who believe there is a pill for every ill occupy one end of a continuum of beliefs about health. At the other extreme are those who believe that health is a natural, normal experience promoted and best maintained by the individual with proper diet, exercise and the mental management of stress. The science of health is about achieving health by strengthening the immune system, cultivating healthy habits and working with others to protect the environment from pollution and toxic exposure. Health promotion relies heavily upon behavioral sciences while disease care relies on biochemical sciences, largely ignoring lifestyle choices and personal responsibility.

A growing number of Americans prefer a health enrichment model as they use more Complementary and Alternative Medical (CAM) therapies. Globalization has brought us different ethno-medical systems that emphasize health promotion more than treatment of disease.

For example, in the Yellow Emperor’s Classic of Internal Medicine (700BC), the chief medical advisor Chi Po states:

Health is what the wise person pursues when in good health, not after it is lost . . . Who waits until they become thirsty to dig a well?

Enriching Health: Pathways to Complementary Therapies examines the rise of CAM therapies and their integration into the medical care system in the new millennium. Integrative medicine combines the strengths of conventional medicine (treating serious acute infectious disease, trauma and emergency medicine) with the strengths of CAM (promoting health by empowering individuals, a holistic approach, and treating chronic disease with lifestyle changes and more natural therapies). Consumer demand and physician leadership are driving CAM and its integration into medical care. This will result in a softer, gentler and more natural approach with more health promotion by consumers in partnership with their providers.

Energy Therapies

The future of medicine is with energy therapies. Energy medicine is part of an emerging revolution in health care that will take us to the leading edge of discovery by blending ancient healing wisdom with modern-day insights asserts Richard Gerber, MD.[1]

Conventional medicine rests on the principles of biochemistry while energy medicine relies on the principles of physics that regulates downstream biochemistry. Energy medicine rests on the supposition that illness results from disturbances in the body's energies and energy fields and that interventions into those energy fields can help restore balance and health. Since all matter vibrates to a precise frequency, specific frequencies of energy are used to strengthen different tissues and organs and to destroy harmful bacteria, viruses and fungi. [2] Energy therapies promote healthy tissues, mend bones, heal wounds, manage pain, increase hemoglobin levels, shrink tumors and heal emotional issues.

Toxic emotional and mental energies can somatize into the body and express/manifest as “physical “problems as depicted in the figure below. To bring about changes in the body, mind and spirit, a number of different energies are used- sound, ionic and electromagnetic.[3]

Energy therapies range from low tech (acupuncture, Reiki, Healing Touch and imagery) to high tech (AuraMeter, the NutriEnergetic System or NES, and the Quantum Xxeroid Consciousness Inventory or QXCI). Leonard Wisneski, MD discusses energy therapies in his book The Scientific Basis of Integrative Medicine[4] and James Oschman summarizes the extensive research on the energy model. [5]

The body stores energy in the electrolytes of its vital fluids similar to a battery. (Electrolytes are non-metallic conductors, carrying ions.) These electrolytes store charges as electric potential. Individuals in good health carry an electric charge of eight micro-amperes on average while tired people register one or two micro-amperes. [6]

Healers such as Reiki and Healing Touch practitioners channel an average of 8.3 volts during a healing session (range of 4 to 221 volts) compared to a control group of non-healers who channeled an average of one volt. [7] Healers were able to emit strong pulsating magnetic fields from their hands that were 1,000 times stronger than the magnetic fields of non healers.[8]

A network of channels carries energy and signals to every cell of the body. This living tissue matrix is the continuous molecular fabric of the organism, consisting of fascia and other connective tissues that link all body cells together. Every cell and internal organ generates an electrical current. Each organ has its own frequency. For example, the heart produces 1.5 watts of power, creating a bioelectrical field that is 50 times stronger than that of the brain, entraining all other organs of the body. The heart is an electromagnetic means for regulating the body. (See http://www.heartmath.com/) All living bodies depend on the use and transfer of electrical charges. The body is like a liquid crystal, capable of vibrating at a number of different frequencies. The watery matrix of the human body receives on average 60 pulsations of electromagnetic energy from our hearts per minute.[9]

Magnetic pulses can heal a wide range of tissues. A very low frequency of two hertz enhances nerve regeneration while seven hertz enhances bone growth, ten hertz stimulates ligament healing and 15 hertz stimulates capillary formation and limits skin necrosis.[10] Many companies now produce and market consumer devices for enhancing health that range from light and sound machines, subtle energy builders and air ionizers.[11]

Energy medicine also uses some very high tech tools such as the QXCI, the NES and the AuraMeter System. The QXCI is a computerized software system that measures the patient’s reactions to over 250,000 frequencies. These frequencies correlate to the frequencies of: vitamins, minerals, organs, pathogens and toxins. In less than 4 minutes, it identifies a list from most to least serious problems to address. It can detect the earliest signs of disease, toxicity, infection, and negative emotions. (see http://www.qxciscio.com/).

The NES is a computerized software program for analyzing the human body-field to identify any deviations between the client's field and the optimal field. In a similar way to the QXCI, the NES examines whether there are any allergies, environmental, emotional, physical or nutritional problems to be corrected. Deviations represent damage, blocks, or distortions in the client's field. The system then makes recommendations for restoring the human body-field and the best order in which to redress them. (see http://www.pnf.org/)

The AuraMeter System, developed by Valerie Hunt at UCLA, is also a computerized software system to detect signature energy patterns of diseases such as cancer, diabetes and heart disease before they manifest in the tissue/organ at the biochemical level.[12] This allows early intervention and forms of energetic therapies rather than drugs or surgery. See more on this at http://www.bioenergyfields.org/.
_____________________________________________________________________
[1] See page 4 of Richard Gerber, Practical Guide to Vibrational Medicine, NY:Quill, 2001.
[2] ibid, page 233.
[3] See page 4 of Gerber, Practical Guide to Vibrational Medicine.
[4] See Leonard Wisneski and Lucy Anderson, The Scientific Basis of Integrative Medicine, NY: CRS Press, 2005.
[5] See James Oschman Energy Medicine, NY: Churchill Livingstone, 2000; and Energy Medicine in Therapeutics and Human Performance, NY: Butterworth Heinemann, 2003.
[6] See Daniel Reid, The Tao of Health, NY: Simon & Schuster, 1989, page 40
[7] See Elmer Green et al. “Anomalous Electrostatis Phenomena” in Subtle Energies, vol. 2 (3): 69-94 and Elmer Green et al “Gender Differences in a Magnetic field” in Subtle Energies, vol. 3 (2):65-100
[8] See page 107 in James Oschman, Energy Medicine in Therapeutics, NY: Butterworth Heinemann, 2003.
[9] See James Oshman, Energy Medicine and Therapeutics, NY: Butterworth Heinemann, 2003.
[10] See Energy Medicine in Therapeutics and Human Performance, NY: Butterworth Heinemann, 2003.
[11] See the website www.ToolsforWellness.com.
[12] See Valerie Hunt, Infinite Mind : Science of Human Vibrations of Consciousness, Malibu Publishing,2000.

Back Cover of Enriching Health: Pathways to Complementary Therapies

People are increasingly looking for alternatives to conventional medicine. This book reveals a shift from doctoring disease to enriching health. The use of alternatives expresses a shift from a disease centric to a health centric model in America. Both the disaffections with conventional medicine (cost, toxic side effects and mistakes) and the attractions to alternatives (holistic, more natural and empowering) help explain this cultural shift.

Obstacles on the pathway to health enrichment include overeating (portion distortion) and under exercising, causing toxic back-up in the body. Other obstacles include stress-producing workplaces, credit card debt and dependence on an Rx for a quick-fix (a pill for every ill’).

Offering readable material with graphics and practical insights, Enriching Health: Pathways to Complementary Therapies

• Examines why alternative therapies are gaining credence among MDs and consumers.
• Explains how the best of conventional and alternative therapies are being integrated.
• Explores how alternative therapies came of age in the decade of the1990s.
• Provides information on medical insurance plans offering alternative therapies.
• Predicts energy medicine will grow faster than other therapies.
  

A medical doctor wrote:

"With an uplifting and inspiring tone, Dr. Betz tells us how CAM therapies are gradually being accepted. It is exciting to learn how much progress has already been made made toward embracing CAM modalities... I commend Dr. Betz for bringing us the timely information presented in Enriching Health: Pathways to Complementary Therapies".

Janel L. Meric MD, President of Harmony Health and Wellness

Michael Betz, Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of Tennessee, taught the Sociology of Health for over 25 years and served on two hospital committees including End of Life Care for 12 years.

Health is not a commodity that can be purchased. In 1987, he dumped his university subsidized medical insurance because he felt it fostered an unhealthy dependency on outside experts who focused mostly on disease while failing to promote health. You can and should purchase disease-care services if you fail to promote health.

Quick-Fixes Undermine Health

"Perfection of means and confusion of goals seems to be our main problem. " ALBERT EINSTEIN

America is like a chronic disease factory producing diseases of affluence. We over eat and under exercise. Our diets contain overly processed foods with chemicals added along with more fat than 30 years ago. The diseases of affluence or over consumption include cancer, coronary heart disease and diabetes. Every 24 hours, 3,000 Americans experience a heart attack. Forty percent of us will die from heart problems. Cardiologists Robert Elliot, M.D., describes our current situation as:

A medical system waiting at the bottom of a cliff for people to fall off. When we suggest building a fence at the top of the cliff to prevent people from falling, the answer from the bottom is, ‘We can’t afford it. We’re spending all our money down here.

In his book Affluenza, DeGraaf declares America to be a “pathogenic society”. Many institutions undermine health by marketing quick-fix solutions and over consumption. The symptoms of this “cultural disease” include stress, anxiety, and waste. We make ourselves sick with over work and credit card debt in our compulsive drive for more.

We take an increasing number of drugs to alleviate stress, depression and high blood pressure claims Peter Whybrow, MD, in his book American Mania. Affluence undermines our physical, mental and social health as suggested in this Figure.


"We sleep less, work longer and spend less time with our families in the manic rush to earn more money to buy more goods."




The same tools and technologies that enabled America to achieve affluence are also eroding the social fabric. Social relationships are being fractured by our pursuit of self-interest as we pollute our bodies, our minds and our environment. The external environment mirrors the internal ecology of our bodies. Dis-ease abounds!

To adequately understand how Americans became so fat, so stressed and so dependent on prescription drugs, I cast a wide net to catch all the culprits. Americans must not only change their lifestyle choices, but also some institutional practices, if we are to reverse the spreading epidemic of chronic disease.

Numerous institutional factors undermine well-being and constrain healthy lifestyle choices. Too many Americans believe the marketing ploys that tell us happiness lies outside us in the form of a commodity and sold in a package. These beliefs and practices create a pathogenic lifestyle that leads to dissease and a lower quality of life.

Health and well-being depend upon nutrition. Food affects mood, level of energy, and future prospects of health and disease-resistance. Over two-thirds of all deaths are caused by diet/activity-related diseases. The diet/activity nexus is summarized with a simple equation: caloric input should match caloric expenditure via exercise. Exercise brings many benefits including helping circulate fluids through the lymph system to avoid toxic buildup into a cellular cesspool that produces illness.

Given our exercise levels, we consume far too many calories. We eat the wrong foods, which leave us vulnerable to chronic illnesses. The primary culprit is the American food industry?especially fast foods?that promotes the consumption of high-calorie, high-fat convenience foods that are highly processed. Highly processed foods along with smoking contributes to heart disease, diabetes and a long list of other chronic diseases.

The appeal of fast food is its ease and speed of preparation and its chemically engineered taste, smell and color to seduce our senses. Fast food restaurants moved into cities and neighborhoods across the US, targeting lower socio-economic areas two and one half times more often than the highest socio-economic neighborhoods.

The American fast food industry brought four changes

With the advent of fast food, what we eat and where we eat has undergone four major changes. We consume more meals outside the home; we eat more processed foods; we consume more calories per day, and more chemicals are put into our foods for color, taste and shelf-life. This transformation in diet is as deleterious as it is dramatic. Where once many were malnourished, today over 60 percent are overweight and eat unhealthy foods.

If “you are what you eat,” those who rely on fast food become “fast and easy”—fast to undermine health and easy prey to acute and chronic disease.

Self-Help Group Therapy

Some 80 percent of Americans want to change their habits so as to improve their health. At any given time, 35 percent of Americans are attempting to lose weight but only 5 percent have any long-term success. Some 47 million Americans smoke cigarettes with over half wanting to quit. Approximately 14 million adults abuse alcohol and 13 million individuals experiment with addictive drugs. Many desire to quit their harmful habits. But all too often, dieters fail, smokers continue smoking, and substance abusers can’t break the grip of addiction. Most individuals mobilize their inner resources for change within supportive relationships.

The self-help group, a specific type of social support system, plays an important role in health enrichment for many. These groups, growing in popularity and success, require for membership that each individual suffer from the same illness, addiction or other crisis. Self-help groups dramatically illustrate the key role of social support in creating and sustaining lifestyle change. When resolve is bolstered in supportive group settings, individuals can mobilize their inner resources for behavioral change.

Why Self-Help Groups are Effective
Three principles explain the transformative power of self-help group participation: 1) the peer principle, 2) the experience enrichment principle and 3) the helper-therapy principle.

The peer principle asserts that because they have experienced a problem, they can help in ways that an outside expert or family member cannot. Peers bring more empathic understanding from their own personal experience. This common experience (the like-me factor) forges an empathic bond of understanding between group members. Patients with cancer seek peers to talk about things not possible with their family or doctor. And family caretakers of mental patients often prefer other caretakers as confidantes. Those with firsthand experience bring more self-disclosure and greater empathy; both increase potential effectiveness as a helper. The most effective helpers are “wounded helpers.”

Many people feel embarrassed with a crisis or chronic illness. Opening up to others enduring the same kind of pain, suffering, stigma or loss becomes easier because their wound puts them in the same boat. Individuals from diverse backgrounds can forge a tight circle of support. Where else in America can a person from a park-bench interact as an equal with a person from Park Avenue?

The experience enrichment principle asserts that each member’s experience is a valuable asset that can enhance the adaptive skills of all when shared with others. Organizations devote some time in meetings for members to tell their stories. When experiences are shared, skills are enhanced, options become multiplied, hopes born and motivation strengthened. Self-help groups serve as “cultural incubators” for increasing the pool of adaptive resources and survival skills. Self-help groups give substance to the expression “two heads are better than one,” as veteran survivors mentor newer members.

They provide an adaptive training program that empowers members with chronic conditions, addictions, or loss. Self-help groups become living laboratories that are less stigmatizing and more supportive than expert systems.

The helper-therapy principle asserts that the act of helping another heals the helper more than the person being helped. As giving and receiving are exchanged, helping another unfreezes one’s fear and self-absorption, replacing it with the positive emotion called the “helper’s high.” The “helper’s high” is a pleasurable physical and emotional sensation of energy, warmth, and euphoria that results from helping others. An empathic bond dissolves the boundary between individuals. It is what you give in a relationship which benefits you more than what you receive. Local self-help group clearinghouses can often help you find or form a group.For other online support groups and resources, consult the http://www.mentalhelp.net/selfhelp

GERD and Its Treatment

Most physicians treat the symptoms of heartburn and acid reflux by placing patients on acid-inhibiting medicine. In many cases, physicians are acquiescing to the requests of their patients who read about medications or watch drug advertisements on television. The Boston Globe Magazine described the marketing of Prilosec, one prescription heartburn drug, as follows:

Prilosec…became the world's best-selling prescription drug-- and the number one medication prescribed for seniors-- taking in $6 billion a year. Prilosec is so good . . . that doctors jokingly call it 'purple crack.' It's an expensive habit, about $4 for each daily pill, or $1,500 a year.

The success of Prilosec and other prescription antacids may seem like a great advance until one ponders the cost and the lifetime dependency on this symptom-suppressing therapy.

The treatment helps insure its continued use. Neutralizing stomach acid, if pursued over time, is a serious mistake with long-term consequences. Taking antacid reinforces the need for more antacid, since it only deals with the symptom. The short term 'fix' insures that the problem persists.

Is it possible to escape from this vicious cycle? Allan Spreen, M.D. devised a simple, cheap and effective treatment for chronic heartburn that liberates one from dependence on such a medication. He writes:

Using readily available acidophilus and digestive enzymes stop over 2/3 of all cases. The more difficult cases that may include overt ulcers require a more aggressive approach, but omitting really serious GI illness, the results are nearly always very positive . . .. A powder form of acidophilus supplements protects the esophagus without killing acid while killing the pain almost immediately. You must keep it handy and take it often until you solve the problem, which involves tightening the sphincter. This GE muscle can be tightened by using the English herb, Potter's Acidosis or by improving the environment of the stomach, which then tightens the junction on its own. [from e-Alert "Sweet Relief" (11/11/04), HSI Panelist Allan Spreen, M.D at http://www.hsibaltimore.com A wealth of other articles can be found here. They also publish a free HSI e-Alert newsletter].

The solution, along with acidophilus protection, is to add both acid and digestive enzymes at the same time. Proper digestion allows for a higher concentration of acid while tightening the GE junction and protecting the esophagus. Spreen suggests using digestive enzymes at mid-meal when food is in the stomach.Side effects of Prilosec include abdominal pain, headache, diarrhea, dizziness, rash, and constipation. For Pepcid, the effects are the same as Prilosec plus seizures, palpitations and depression. Suppressing acid in the stomach causes a four-fold increase in the risk of pneumonia by weakening the sphincter muscle, allowing acid to irritate the membranes leading into the lungs and possible infection.

Shifts in American Beliefs and Values

The social movements of the 1960s spawned a significant shift in values according to sociologist Paul Ray. Based on surveys of over 100,000 U.S. adults conducted over a 13-year period, Paul Ray identifies three distinctive value clusters that characterize different Americans: Traditionalists, Modernists, and Cultural Creatives which will hereafter be called Post Modernists. These three categories constitute differing percentages of the population in 2000 as shown below as they embrace different values and different visions for America.

Traditionalists emphasize a stable life organized around the idealized standards of small town America that prevailed in the early 20th century. Traditionalists are critical of modern standards and all large institutions in society, including corporations and government. Religious authority, family life and political independence constitute their core values. The Moral Majority and most home school families and groups are representative of traditionalists. Individuals holding traditional values constitute some 22 percent of the population in the year 2001.

Modernists presently dominate our institutions in business, government, science, entertainment and the arts in the US. They number slightly more than half our population. Modernists value occupational achievement, economic growth, and making money. They subscribe to secular authority and rational/legal standards. In essence, modernism is a philosophy of worldly achievement:If you follow the yellow brick road to success, you will end up with the good life—the diploma, the job, the house and cars, the promotion or the stock options or both, the children, their education and their accomplishments. But this road is really not so much a life path as a career path. The guideposts to success are really signs to the marketplace.

Post Modernists reject the Modernist emphasis on materialism and challenge the assumption that knowledge is certain, objective and good. Post Modernists are less concerned about financial success and more concerned with authenticity in life, at work, and even in business and politics. They value personal growth, spirituality and a more natural environment as shown in the Table below. Post Modernists form the core supporters and users of CAM therapies, although people in the other two categories also use CAM but in lower percentages. While often as well educated as Modernists, they support environmental reforms to improve global ecology and the well being of people on the planet. They support issues concerning equality of the sexes, cultural diversity, and tolerance. The number of Post Modernists in the population rose dramatically by 2001 to more than 50 million people in the US or 26 percent of our adult population.

Different Values in America

Post Modern values arose out of the social movements of the 1960s and 1970s among the younger and more educated people who moved into the information-based occupations within the new economy. These people work with words and abstract concepts and value creative work. The people of these movements, especially the environmental and counter culture movements, were rebelling against the emphasis on materialism and artificial environments created by Modernists. Post Modernist values are the most supportive and champion health promotion in a more holistic orientation to life, greater self responsibility and more “natural therapies.”

These are the values that spawned the holistic health movement of the 1970s and 1980s according to June Lowenberg. Shared themes across three or more of movements of the 1960s and 1970s included: holism, distrust of established authority, naturalism and the quest for personal empowerment. These values propelled many individuals to join a variety of self-care movements that grew in the 1970s and 1980s including organic and whole foods, personal fitness, and the use of yoga, tai chi, meditation and massage. Holistic health spawned both “home grown” therapies and imported therapies from India, China and Tibet.

Crisis and Change in Medicine

Modern conventional medicine has been in crisis for some 30 years with the inability to stem the growing avalanche of chronic diseases. According to an editorial in a prestigious medical journal in 1968 and later quoted by President Richard Nixon, "The Germ Theory of Disease and its use of drugs is ineffective in treating chronic diseases".

Conventional medicine’s failure to adapt to changing disease patterns reflects a frozen mind-set. Unable to change its mission or tactics after winning the war against diseases of poverty (infectious communicable diseases caused by nutritional deficiencies, germs and parasites), conventional medicine uses the same tactics with chronic lifestyle diseases that include heart, cancer, diabetes and kidney disease.

Chronic diseases are caused by a lifestyle of affluence as we over eat, under exercise and pollute our environment. We overly consume calories and eat processed foods without burning off the extra caloric intake, managing stress and protecting our environment from pollution.

Chronic diseases are caused by affluence as we over eat, under exercise and pollute the environment. Medical educators and most physicians continue to work with the 19th century model that was used to fight infectious disease; each disease was believed to have one cause (a pathogen) that could be destroyed with one drug—the magic bullet. Medicine remains locked into the old strategy that won the last war against acute diseases rather than dealing with the present challenge posed by chronic diseases that have multiple causes. Chronic diseases are largely preventable. Medical education fails to prepare physicians to treat patients outside the old model of acute disease warfare. Medical researchers continue to search for magic bullets for curing chronic illness with drugs. Drugs only suppress symptoms. The solutions reside in behavioral and institutional change more than with high-tech tools of drugs or surgery.

Our medical care system focuses on treating people after they become ill instead of promoting health. The Center for Practical Health Reform charges that our medical care system focuses on treating people after they become ill instead of promoting health. Waste and inefficiency abound from doctoring preventable chronic diseases after they arise with expensive drugs that primarily mask symptoms. Our medical care system swallows one out of every seven dollars in our economy and is consuming a larger share every year. Medical insurance policies are helpless to control escalating costs. Consumers are temporarily insulated from the costly consequences of their lifestyle choices as they clamor for unlimited services. None of the major parties shoulder responsibility for the waste and inefficiency they each create according to the Center for Practical Health Reform.

Simply using the medical care system now causes more deaths than heart disease according to a new study by several physicians. (See Death by Medicine by Gary Null et al., October 2003, at http://www.garynull.com/documents/iatrogenic/deathbymedicine/DeathByMedicine.pdf

In its aggressive efforts to fight disease, modern medicine kills patients by prescribing drugs with lethal adverse reactions, performing unnecessary surgery, spreading infections and making a wide-range of medical mistakes.

Some pioneering physicians are championing ‘integrative clinics’ offering both CAM and modern therapies. More consumers are seeking to enrich their health. Not only are most chronic diseases preventable, the skills involved in building health differ greatly from those used in fighting disease. Medical schools still largely prepare physicians to wage war against disease by teaching detection and management of disease with drugs and surgery rather than promoting healthy lifestyles and behavioral change. The curriculum focuses on the biochemistry of disease, rather than promoting health. America needs more health promoters, empowering patients in the collaborative work of enriching health and preventing disease. Waiting to treat chronic disease after the damage occurs is costly, often ineffective and sometimes fatal.

This book is about a cultural shift in America from doctoring disease to enriching health. The popularity of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) expresses this shift from a disease centric to a health centric model.

Why People Turn to Alternative Therapies

For over a decade, Maria (not her real name) doctored three chronic conditions with specialists until a dramatic adverse reaction from taking a new drug shocked her into the realization that prescription drugs were not improving her health. This became a turning point, causing Maria to explore more effective pathways than conventional medicine to enrich her health.

Maria, an energetic entrepreneur in good health, had owned and managed a gym where with 16 employees she taught gymnastics to thousands of students for a number of years. She had successfully balanced her business, marriage and parenting three children. In 1986 during pregnancy with her fourth child, her business was audited over a three-month period that caused great stress. Her health remained good through her pregnancy but three months after giving birth, Maria experienced an erosion of her health. The first symptom of allergies came during ragweed season. She could not breathe. She used Selvane and other over-the-counter medications. Maria declared:

This initial attack started a three-year process of trying to discover on my own what was causing the allergic reactions. After finding no relief, I went to an allergist and had the scratch test to identify the culprits. I was allergic to everything so I started allergy shots weekly at first and then monthly. The allergist assured me that I could become immunized to these things within three years but I took allergy shots for seven years.

Soon after the onset of allergic reactions, Maria started suffering from migraine headaches once or twice every month without connection to the menstrual cycle. At first, the headaches were not severe, but subsequently they ranged from bad to devastating. She explained:

Sometimes during a migraine, I would throw-up and lose my eyesight. I consulted a specialist who prescribed many different kinds of drugs. Nothing helped very much so he kept experimenting with all the latest drug updates.

The third chronic problem to erode her quality of life was a skin rash. Maria had never had skin problems before. She consulted a skin specialist who initially prescribed Acutane but Maria refused any more after one month because it had so many nasty side effects (drying her skin, mouth, eyes and joints). Tetracycline was prescribed along with many other types of antibiotics over a prolonged time period but they did nothing to clear her skin problems.

In 1998, her migraine specialist prescribed a new drug that caused an asthma attack, severely restricting Maria’s capacity to breathe. This adverse drug reaction triggered an avalanche of events that propelled Maria toward exploring alternative therapies. Maria was already getting allergy shots, taking an allergy medicine and Tetracycline for her skin rash. Not being able to breathe got her attention and prompted a return trip to her allergist. The allergist was upset with her for taking another medication that reacted with his treatment regimen. None of the three specialists ever communicated with one another or asked if she might be taking other medications. While Maria was reasonably knowledgeable, she had relied upon her medical experts for all the literature she had read about these maladies and how to treat them.

The allergist retested Maria’s response to a second scratch test after seven years of treatment. She was as allergic to those same things as she had been before! This event exposed the limits of doctoring symptoms and propelled her to explore a wider set of choices and to become an active steward of her own health. Maria recalled:

I left the doctor’s office dazed and disappointed with my misplaced trust in these treatments. As I was returning to the gym, I passed a chiropractic office adjoining my business. I pondered whether my many problems might be due to damaging my neck/spinal column from gymnastic stunts. I walked in, had an x-ray and filled out the most thorough 4-page intake I had ever seen! After examining the intake material and X-ray, he said, “You do not need my chiropractic skills because your spine is fine but you have Dysbiosis, a digestive tract disorder that is causing your symptoms. Your prolonged use of antibiotics has caused an imbalance of bacteria in your digestive tract, causing allergies, skin rash and other problems. This can be fixed but you must get off all your prescriptions and change your diet.” I was asked to adopt a new diet with no wheat, no soda pop, and limited dairy and to take several herbs. Within four months, all my allergies and migraine headaches were gone. This caused me to totally commit to natural health. However, three more years would pass before my skin would clear up with a more alkaline diet I adopted a year later.

Maria’s family moved to an adjoining state where she decided to manage a health food store where she could learn more about natural health. Maria recalled:

I met a man who was totally into diet. He helped me learn that my body was very acidic and that foods should be selected and balanced in terms of alkalinity/acidity. I wanted to learn more about the chemistry of foods to improve my skin and enrich my health. He requested that I commit to the discipline and only eat within strict guidelines. I agreed to the regimen. He taught me to select foods by these criteria and to start out the day with a glass of water with squeezed lemon juice, pure honey and organic natural vinegar (with the mother in it). I learned how to lower my acidic levels with different types of foods. This new set of guidelines cleared up my skin, helped me grow great fingernails and significantly enriched my level of health

Food continues to be Maria’s primary strategy for maintaining health now that her health has returned fully. As she expressed it:

Good health does not primarily depend on a pharmaceutical pill or even natural supplements but on food itself.

She regards food as the most important key to health. Maria lives out the ancient wisdom as taught by the Greek physician, Hipprocrates who asserted, “Let food be your medicine.”Maria’s exploration of pathways for enriching health with complementary and alternative therapies is not unusual. An adverse drug reaction was her turning point but for others, the turning point may be to avoid the intrusive and toxic therapies of conventional medicine or the failure of the conventional medical therapies to treat chronic illness effectively. For others, it is the positive appeal of promoting health, becoming more engaged in one’s own health and/or the gentler methods of alternative therapies.