There are a lot of alternative therapies out there. Which ones make sense for you as an individual? The first step in sorting out your answer to this question is to take a big picture look at the situation.

That’s where my book (and e-book version) and bonus workbook can come in for you. The book is called “Getting Whole, Getting Well: Healing Holistically from Chronic Illness.” People with chronic disorders and chronic diseases will find the book valuable. Health care practitioners may find it a useful educational tool for their patients and clients.

I wrote the book and workbook to fill a gap in information for people with chronic disorders and diseases. Many authors in alternative medicine emphasize good public health recommendations on diet, exercise, and lifestyle change, but those are often not enough to really help people with established health problems. Many other authors in alternative medicine give good summaries of the various modalities and treatment options available, but they don’t offer a usable system for deciding how to pick and choose between options.

Too many people with chronic conditions just try whatever a friend or family member recommends - sometimes it helps, sometimes not. This e-book and newsletter information is intended to help people get a better overview of how the options might fit together when they make their own decisions about trying any particular treatment option.

In the book, you’ll find the big picture story of how to sort through your options. With inspirational quotes, colorful illustrative photos on which to meditate, summaries of key points at the end of each chapter, you’ll find yourself getting hope that there is big picture and you can use it to help yourself.

The e-book is available at: http://www.gettingwhole.com.

The paperback version of the book is coming out soon, available both in bookstores and online.

At our website http://www.gettingwhole.com, the offer includes the “Getting Whole, Getting Well” bonus workbook and downloadable meditation audio MP3 to help you get started in sorting through your individual options.

Until next time, keep healing!

http://www.gettingwhole.com

You can download the e-book version immediately and start making your own
plans for getting whole and getting well.

Iris R. Bell, MD PhD
Alternative medicine information from a doctor who is also a patient.

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Mind-body medicine is part of any holistic treatment program. A 2001 study found that children who received training in stress management and guided imagery had shorter colds and flu infections, as well as improved psychological state measured one year later, compared with controls who were on the wait list. Conclusion - stress management may help shift the tendency to catch colds and might work synergistically with other treatments such as vitamin C to shorten the duration of a given cold.

Source in http://www.pubmed.com

Hewson-Bower and Drummond, J Psychosomatic Research 2001

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For water-soluble nutrients especially, you may want to consider dividing your daily total dose of B complex and C vitamins, for example, over 2-3 doses rather than taking the dose all at once. The potential advantages include keeping up levels of these nutrients better throughout the day instead of washing the excess from a single large dose out and losing its benefits. Dividing doses may also make some of the uncomfortable side effects of vitamin supplements more bearable, such as the diarrhea from too much ascorbic acid form of vitamin C or the stomach queasiness many people experience from B complex vitamins on an empty stomach.

As always, check with your own doctor to decide what’s right for you.

To your health,

Iris R. Bell, MD PhD

Alternative medicine information from a doctor who is also a patient.

http://www.holisticmedicinetips.com

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Studies have linked low levels of vitamin D not only to poor bone health, but also to risk for flu and even poorer outcomes in certain cancers. To learn more details, see our member forum discussion on this topic.

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“If you want things to stay as they are, things will have
to change.” - Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa

So, how do you put together a different way of seeing your life?

I’ve talked about how you are a whole, intact system or network unto yourself - and that you are both part of larger networks (social groups, etc.) and made up of smaller, interdependent networks (circulatory system, immune system, digestive system, etc.).

Our treatment options involve different levels of health care options - some, such as conventional drugs, target very specific body parts. By their nature, these targeted treatments can help in the short-term, especially in a specific part of the body that may be malfunctioning.

However, it is many of the options available in CAM, complementary and alternative medicine, that are broader in their effects. Rather than targeting a body part, these treatment options tend to have effects throughout you as a whole person, a whole network or system.

In fact, the essential nature of certain approaches is very much whole-person oriented. These include traditional Chinese medicine, with acupuncture, classical homeopathy, and Ayurveda. These whole systems of CAM intend to treat the whole person at once to restore balance throughout
the system.

It is possible for a practitioner to use techniques from these systems in a drug-like way to force a local body part to work better for a while. But that use defeats the value and purpose of whole person-oriented healing.

It is better to find a practitioner who offers these treatments as a whole systems foundation for whatever else you do in getting treatment for your chronic disorder or disease.

The thing is, we as living systems are dynamic or dynamical - we change all the time. Our lives are in ever so subtle (or not so subtle) patterns of change moment to moment, day to day, month to month, year to year.

When we develop a chronic disorder or disease, we have fallen into a kind of rut, or stuck place, in our dynamics. We are changing, but within a narrow pattern. When life throws us a curve, we can’t bounce back to health as quickly as someone who doesn’t have our health problem.

The advantage of using whole systems of CAM - Chinese medicine, classical homeopathy, or Ayurveda - is that they seem to be able to get back into the controller box for our dynamics and
unlock us from our ruts.

When that happens, we begin to shift, to change, to have the freedom to establish healthier patterns of being as a whole system.

What does that look like for people who undergo these kinds of changes? Research has shown that people may go to a practitioner of one of these whole systems of CAM for a specific problem - after all, what we all mostly know is the conventional Western medical way of wanting a specific drug-
like treatment for whatever ails us.

But what starts happening, when it works properly for people, is that the whole systems of CAM set a much larger pattern of changes into motion gradually and gently over time. What people say then is that their energy and sense of well-being are much better in general. Symptoms that they never even mentioned have improved or gone away. Their outlook on life, even their sense of purpose is renewed and changed in a better, positive way.

And, oh yes, their original specific problem or symptom happens also to be improved along the way too.

One of the keys to setting up a good treatment plan for your self is to learn more about whole systems of CAM and choose a system and a practitioner that fit with your preferences, interests, health problems, and resources.

To learn more about these, take a look at the http://www.nccam.nih.gov website. The consumer section of the website has many useful bits of information to help you begin your search for help.

To your health,

Iris R. Bell, MD PhD
Alternative medicine information from a doctor who is also a patient.
book http://gettingwhole.com

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Check out our multimedia program “Mapping Your Own Treatment Plan for Arthritis Using Levels of Care.” Discover a simple system to plan your own treatment for arthritis and chronic pain problems. This new breakthrough multimedia program (online or downloadable) takes your understanding of holistic healing to a new level. Create your own plan for how to heal from arthritis in a step-by-step way. Watch, listen, and learn a system for sorting through the confusion of seemingly too many treatment options out there.  You can use the program together with my book and e-workbook on “Getting Whole, Getting Well,” which are available as free bonuses with the purchase of the multimedia program. You can watch a short sample from the two-hour video at http://www.arthritiscaremap.com.

To your health,

Iris Bell, MD PhD
Alternative medicine information from a doctor who is also a patient.

http://holisticmedicinetips.com

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3 books on health and illness worth giving, or reading
Los Angeles Times, CA - 2 hours ago
The book is best suited for people who want to better understand their bodies but don’t want to be overwhelmed with details and controversies in medicine. …

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