Vitamin D is helpful – esp. in winter time
December 20, 2007
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.
Change is the Way of Life and Living
December 17, 2007
“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
Program on using alternative medicine for arthritis
December 15, 2007
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
Popular books on health for holiday gift-giving
December 15, 2007
3 books on health and illness worth giving, or reading
Los Angeles Times, CA -
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. …
Join the Members-only Forum
November 29, 2007
Are you confused – wandering in the wilderness of information overload when it comes to your treatment options for chronic illness? You know that you want to try things other than conventional drugs, but you don’t know where to start? Start right here.
For many people, especially those influenced by the pharmaceutical industry, the solution for a chronic health problem is the next newest drug. The thinking behind pharmaceuticals is that we must pin down a specific mechanism in a specific body part or subsystem that is immediately responsible for our symptoms. The drug blocks that mechanism from expressing itself locally in the body part, and the symptom disappears. Right? Wrong.
Suppressing a symptom in one place just pushes the disturbance elsewhere in the body. The trouble with seeing your body as a car with separate and replaceable parts is that we as living beings are not mechanical collections of parts. Rather, we are indivisible, adaptive, changing living networks. Each part plays its own special role in the body, and blocking its activity – even if it is seemingly dysfunctional – puts the rest of the body at risk. Maybe not right away, but sooner or later.
Real holistic medicine recognizes that each person is a unique indivisible individual of interconnected, interdependent parts that need each other. Real holistic medical care works with each person’s unique, indivisible self to create and coordinate healthy balance and relationships within the body as a whole.
Join with other healers and people with chronic illness on our journey of learning how to heal holistically. Click on Join our Members-only Forum for cutting edge updates and monthly group tele-seminars with Iris Bell, MD PhD, holistic medicine researcher and educator.
The Whole is More than the Sum of Its Parts
September 3, 2007
“The whole is more than the sum of its parts.”
- Aristotle
Let’s talk about quick fixes versus real fixes in health care options. Quick fixes may work quickly – and stop working quickly.
For chronic disorders and diseases, we need lasting help.
It is no accident that more people search the internet for keywords related to “alternative” medicine rather than “complementary” or “integrative” medicine. Clearly, most of us with chronic disorders
and diseases are likely to start off on one or more conventional drugs that we have to take. But we want more options, i.e., alternatives.
Once the shock of the diagnosis wear off, what we need are true options – alternatives. We have no stake in complementing, that is, implicitly valuing conventional drugs over alternative treatment options by adding other options and assuming that drugs must always be the centerpiece of our treatment. Even when drugs are essential (and many times they are to stay alive), we as patients just want something that works well…for our particular problem. To go beyond surviving – to feeling good.
Interestingly, a prominent academic geneticist from Duke University and reportedly worldwide vice-president of genetics at a leading pharmaceutical company was quoted as saying: “The vast majority of drugs – more than 90 per cent – only work in 30 or 50 per cent of the people… I wouldn’t say that most drugs don’t work. I would say that most drugs work in 30 to 50 per cent of people. Drugs out there on the market work, but they don’t work in everybody.”
What are conventional medical researchers doing about this alarming situation? They are heading farther into looking at our individual genetic patterns to determine which drugs are most likely to help which people.
Right now, the reality is that medical doctors have to use trial-and-error decision-making to choose the next drug option. So, it is coming full circle – in its own arena, even conventional medicine is recognizing the need to individualize treatment for different people with the “same” diagnosis. And they are working towards developing methods to do so for their primary therapeutic tool, drugs.
One of the strengths of many alternative medicine approaches is that they individualize. They have systems for evaluating the person as a whole to determine the optimal interventions in an
individualized way. They don’t rely on genetic tests, which will focus only on our ability to handle and respond to a specific drug for a specific problem in a specific body part.
Rather, the alternatives speak to us at the level of the individual person. They not only consider our preferences and our circumstances (financial, social, etc.), but they also have diagnostic systems that lead the therapist to a more tailored plan of action.
Iris R Bell, MD PhD
Alternative Medicine Information from a Doctor who is also a Patient.
Dr Bell on the radio – hear the podcast
May 30, 2006
The radio interview show on “Spiritually Connected Living” went very well. We covered a number of key areas on the topic of what it takes for people with chronic disease to develop their own personalized programs for healing from the inside out.
To download the free mp3 recorded file of the one-hour show, go to the following webpage, pick item #4, right-click on your mouse, then choose “save link as,” and browse your own hard drive desktop or folders until you find the place you’d like to store it. From there, you can play it on your own computer at your convenience using any mp3 player (including the free one from http://www.itunes.com) or copy it to your iPod or other portable mp3 player or CD and enjoy the show whenever you have a chance to listen.
http://spirituallyconnectedliving.com/download-the-shows-here/
To your health,
Iris Bell, MD PhD
Alternative medicine information from a doctor who is also a patient.
http://www.holisticmedicinetips.com
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