Posts Tagged ‘health’

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Allergies

October 22, 2013

allergensI used to always say that I don’t have any allergies. After all, there’s nothing that I eat or touch that gives me hives, makes my throat close up, makes me itch all over, or even give me a major bout of runny nose and watery eyes. Since I’ve become a NAET practitioner (Nambudripad Allergy Elimination Technique), I’ve gotten a much broader view of allergies and how they affect us. Admittedly, our definition of allergies within NAET is much broader than most people would think about allergies. If you think in terms of energy, you can look at an allergy as an incompatibility between the energy of a substance (or virtually anything) and the energy of your body and/or mind. Using that definition, it’s easy to see how there could be an incompatibility on some level with a number of various items.

Allergies can manifest themselves in many different ways, depending on what parts of the body are being affected and where weaknesses exist in the body. When you look in the NAET literature at the list of ailments that have been successfully treated with NAET, it almost looks like NAET is a cure-all. There is no such thing as a technique that cures absolutely everything. The body is far too complex to have such a simple solution. But because of the many ways that allergies can manifest themselves, there are a host of health problems that can be directly or indirectly related to one or more allergies.

Energy work isn’t like standard medicine. Diagnoses aren’t as relevant in this type of approach. I’m not saying that health issues should not be diagnosed, but simply that it isn’t how energy medicine works. Energy work looks for imbalances. It looks for anything that interferes with normal functioning of the body. It assumes that the body, mind and spirit is a powerful combination that has the power to prevent and overcome most health problems. We just need to clear anything that’s getting in the way of its full, harmonious and unrestricted function. There are all kinds of techniques out there that strive to do that. For instance, chiropractic seeks to remove interference in the nervous system by realigning vertebrae. Acupuncture clears blockages in the flow of energy along meridians. The Emotion Code clears trapped emotions that are like little balls of energy. NAET corrects incompatibilities between the energy of a substance and the energy of your body. It’s all about the energy.

I can now see that virtually everyone is allergic to something on some level. These allergies may manifest themselves as serious health problems, simple tiredness or irritability, or anything in between. As with other energy medicine techniques that I use, the results I see range from minimal to miraculous. In some instances, the allergies represent a small factor in a person’s overall health issues. In that situation, they will see some improvement, but it won’t completely “cure” them. In other cases, it may be that the allergies were the one thing separating the person from nearly perfect health. That’s when we see the “miracles”.

Don’t assume that you have no allergies and that allergies don’t play any part in your health issues. Consider the possibility that allergies may be sapping your energy and causing you to have a less healthy, fulfilling life. For more information and to view a video about NAET, you can refer to my website.

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Faith, Gratitude & Health

July 31, 2013

gratitudeI wrote previously about the power of hope in the healing process. Faith also has a great deal to do with it. There’s no question about how the degree of faith you have in both the treatment and the one administering the treatment has upon your likelihood of improving. When I was in chiropractic college, I did a research paper on the “placebo effect”. This is NOT about fooling people with sugar pills, but rather about how one’s belief and attitude toward their treatment plays into the success of the treatment. I believe that in most instances, no matter what kind of treatment one is receiving, from drugs to surgery to energy work, that placebo effect will have a bearing on the outcome.

Before medications can be marketed to the public, they must go through a number of studies in order to be approved by the FDA. Surgeries don’t usually get the same kind of research. I heard of one study where they examined a particular knee surgery. The patients were divided into three groups. The first group got the surgery they were evaluating. The second group did not get the surgery. However, their skin was opened up and then stitched back up without making any internal changes. The third group was the control group that got no treatment. Which group do you think reported the most improvement? It was actually the second group. They were the ones that didn’t get the actual surgery but thought they had.

In my own life, I’ve looked for ways to cultivate my faith — faith in God, faith in my self and my abilities, etc. Lately, I’ve found that one of the most effective means of increasing faith is to have a heartfelt expression of gratitude. When you feel gratitude down deep, it’s hard to simultaneously feel doubt or worry. It can often be more helpful to think about the things you’re grateful for than to focus on what you need or want. Remember that you are most likely to attract more of whatever you focus on. If you focus too much on your aches and pains, you will get more of the same. That doesn’t mean ignore them, but you focus more on resolving your health issues than on how miserable you feel. Find any good aspect of your health (you can usually find many if you try if you’re not in acute pain) and focus on that. Feel gratitude for it.

The next step is where faith really comes into play. Be grateful for the improved health you’re going to have. If a trusted friend said that they have sent you a gift, would you withhold your gratitude until you actually received it? That wouldn’t make sense, and it certainly wouldn’t show any faith in your friend. If you expect something good in your life, be grateful as if it were already your’s, including improved health. There are no guarantees, but your chances of getting what you want will be greatly enhanced.

Be grateful for both your current and future blessings. Having an attitude of gratitude will increase your joy, which is the purpose of your existence, and you’ll attract a lot more good into your life. For more information on how we help people achieve better health, please visit my website.

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The Trouble with Time

June 21, 2013

impatient manThey say that good things come to those who wait. I’m not sure I believe that since sitting around waiting usually doesn’t accomplish much. However, most good things do take time. In our hurry-up, get-it-now, no-waiting, fast paced world, it’s easy for us to get in a mindset of instant gratification. We expect to see results immediately, and if we don’t, we assume that the results aren’t what we were looking for.

When I was attending chiropractic college, I worked part-time as a smoking and weight therapist. Among other things, we taught people about why smoking is so addictive. Outside of the chemical addiction to nicotine, there is a strong psychological addiction due to the way in which smoking affects the body and makes you feel. Smoking can be both relaxing and stimulating simultaneously, both of which occur quickly, while you are still in contact with the cigarette. Other effects, such as anxiousness and fatigue, which are just as attributable to the tobacco as the previous effects, take a little longer, after the cigarette has been extinguished. Therefore, the mind gets programmed over and over that “when I am in the process of smoking, I feel good… when I am not smoking, I feel bad”. Get that into your mind a thousand times over and no wonder it’s a hard habit to break.

There are a lot of things in life that are somewhat like a tobacco addiction. Although we are blessed with the ability to reason and to look beyond the immediate situation, we are too often not much different from single-celled creatures – drawn toward pleasure, repelled by pain. Without conscious thought and determined purpose, we drift toward whatever feels good at the moment. However, since we are able to reason, when we take the time and effort to use our God-given intelligence, we can see beyond the moment and examine the consequences of our decisions. Therefore, we can exercise, knowing that it will give us strength and energy, although at the moment we feel more weak and tired. We can say no to that cinnamon roll that’s calling our name because we know that we’ll be healthier in the long run if we don’t give into that temptation.

Imagine a gardener plucking seeds back out of the ground or abandoning the garden simply because there was no harvest within a week of planting. Time itself accomplishes nothing. However, time is an important factor in virtually every process. We understand that. However, in life, it’s not always very straight-forward. Every time we try something new or change the way we do things, when we don’t see immediate results, we’re left to wonder whether we’re on the wrong path or if we just need to give it more time. The gardener knows approximately how long it takes for sprouts to appear. He doesn’t worry about it unless it goes significantly past a certain amount of time. However, in most new situations in life, we have no idea how long is too long. Healthcare is a lot like that. People get used to taking drugs where they often feel an almost immediate difference. So when they start taking nutritional supplements and don’t feel any difference for two weeks or more, they wonder if the supplements are doing anything. I’ll sometimes have people come in for treatment and if they don’t feel major changes in one or two visits, they feel like they’re wasting their time and money. Natural health takes time. Proper effort and patience will pay big dividends in the long run.

To sum it up, time does not heal anything. Only healing processes heal. However, all processes take time. Use your knowledge, intuition and inspiration to know what paths to follow in all aspects of your life. Then follow through, stick with it and give it sufficient time to allow natural processes to do their job and bring you the health, happiness and success that you seek.

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The Complexity of Healthcare

June 14, 2013

Internal organs

The human body is extremely complex. I believe that any comment or approach that implies otherwise is naïve and an insult to the Creator. I have been treating people for over 30 years and I think I’m less confident now in giving patients a prognosis than I was in the beginning. That’s because I’ve found that people are very unpredictable. We’re not machines produced on an assembly line. Each of us is a unique individual. What’s normal for one person may not be for another. There is a saying that goes something like this: if all you have is a hammer, then you see every issue as a nail. It’s that way in healthcare. If you’re a surgeon, you’re far more likely to recommend surgery. That can be motivated somewhat by greed, but in all fairness, it’s natural to look first for a solution that you typically work with. Someone who isn’t involved with surgery is more likely to consider it a last resort. As a chiropractor, I see many health problems as being related to nerve interference secondary to vertebral subluxations (spine out of alignment). Most of the time, I’m proven right, but I realize that’s usually not the complete picture. Health problems generally have many facets to them.

There is frequently a temptation to oversimplify. We get one or two clues about a possible condition and suddenly we think we know all about it. Non-professional friends and relatives are quick to give you a diagnosis and give you a suggestion for how to manage it. Even professionals may do the same thing. Have you ever gone to the doctor with four different problems and walked out with four different prescriptions? That happened to me a few years ago. I was taught to look at the whole picture before offering a diagnosis, which is the basis of the prescribed treatment. So I wanted to see what my medical doctor would say about some issues that I was having at the time. So I gave him a list of my symptoms. Instead of looking at the bigger picture to see how the symptoms fit together so he could have a good understanding of what was going with me, he looked at each symptom separately and prescribed treatment for each one.

When I was in chiropractic college, which is similar to medical school in many ways, I was always amazed at the number of physiological principles that were not totally understood. It’s important to understand that, in spite of all the fancy instruments, scientific studies and research, healthcare is more art than science. There’s a helpful article about the problems with research entitled “That Study Is Wrong: The Truth About Research”. In actual practice, there is not a great deal of precision. We should certainly strive for greater precision and the ability to duplicate positive results. However, it’s important to understand that it’s not an exact science. That’s why a little inspiration and intuition can be so helpful.

I am constantly amazed at the functioning of the human body. (I realize this all applies to animals also, but the human body is what I work with.) It’s not only a highly coordinated system of many thousands of intricate chemical and electrical processes, but when you add in the mind, the spirit, the electromagnetic fields and so forth, it’s totally astounding! (And to think that all of that came about by accidents of nature! [yeah, right]) I’ve seen lots of people who talk about their body as if it were some old piece of machinery held together by bubble gum and baling wire and that anything they can do to it would be an improvement. That simply is not true. I have great respect for the body. I rely on treatment methods that work in conjunction with the wisdom of the body, rather than fighting against it. There are many drugs (pharmaceuticals) out there that are necessary. However, many drugs are designed to “trick” the body, to make it think that internal conditions are different than what they really are so that we can get it to provide a desired physiological response. The problem is that the body is far smarter than the doctor, not the other way around. So you need to be very careful taking that kind of control into your own hands!

I firmly believe that our bodies were designed by an all-knowing, loving Creator. Our bodies have great wisdom. For the most part, if we remove interference and give them what they need (physically, chemically, emotionally, etc.), then all we need to do is get out of the way and let them function as they were created to do.

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Moon, Stars & New Paradigms

June 6, 2013

moonstarsI recently got to look at the full moon through a telescope. It was so amazing. I’ve seen detailed pictures of the moon, but this was very different looking at it myself. What was so astounding to me was the fact that I was seeing something that I had seen thousands of time, and yet I never saw it like this. It was like seeing it for the very first time.

There’s another astronomical fact that causes me deep reflection. When I look up at the night sky, whether through a telescope or just the naked eye, I realize that I’m not seeing how the stars are, but how they WERE. The closest stars are 4-6 light years away. Most of them that we see are much further away. What that means is when you look up at the stars, you’re actually seeing the past. You’re seeing the stars as they were several years ago. While it’s very cool to actually be able to witness the past, it’s also a little disturbing that I cannot see the stars as they are right now. Astronomers can come up with extremely powerful telescopes, but even they cannot see what’s happening in the distant cosmos right now.

I used to put a lot of faith in science and research. It seems like the older I get, the less faith I have in it. Research, even the highly respected double-blind studies, can be biased, results can be manipulated or misinterpreted, and so forth. Even when research is done very carefully and without bias or agenda, we can be limited by our senses, our degree of understanding, and the methods used in gathering data. I’m definitely not saying that we should do away with science. Quite the contrary. However, we just need to recognize its limitations. Many people have set aside religion in favor of science. But then they treat science as if it were a religion. To be scientifically minded is to be open minded, not clinging to dogma or preconceived notions of how the universe operates.

As I progressed in my practice as a chiropractor, over the years, I realized that body, mind and spirit all work together. I needed to learn to see things in new ways. I didn’t have to set aside the scientific model that I had been clinging to. I just had to open up its boundaries to allow new ideas in. I had to realize that the way I was looking at the human body didn’t tell the whole story. As I opened up my mind to new ways of gathering information, including tapping into the storehouse of data contained in the subconscious mind, I was able to accomplish much more with my treatment and help people with a broader range of problems.

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The Power of Hope

May 30, 2013

hopeMy father died of brain cancer when he was only 55 years old. It was a tragic event for our family. I wished I could have done more to help him. I was just barely starting chiropractic college at the time. Even if I would have had all the training and experience that I have now, it was unlikely that I could have saved him, but I would have given it my all in trying. The approach of the medical doctors really bothered me. I know they would have also saved him if they could, and I realize that they were being honest with him. However, they robbed him of a crucial element of healing — hope. They told him that he would definitely die. In fact, the treatment that they put him through, which left him sick and bald, was, as the doctors put it, for research purposes only. By giving him a definitive prognosis like that, they essentially declared a death sentence. Every prognosis is nothing more than an educated guess. No doctor can absolutely predict the future. There should always be a balance between best guess and positive thinking.

I once heard of a lady who had some routine lab work done. The results the doctor got back for her indicated that she had a fatal condition and so he gave her only a few months to live. The lady believed him, got all of her affairs in order, and sure enough, in a few months, she passed away. Shortly thereafter, it was discovered that the lab had mixed up her results with someone else’s and that there was in fact nothing wrong with this lady. She died simply because she believed she would. She had lost hope.

On the other hand, I’ve heard of many people who were given only a short time to live, but they refused to give up. So years later, they were still alive and kicking. What you believe about your health, as well as the faith you place in things you are doing to preserve your health, will definitely have an impact on how healthy (or sick) you really are. One of the things that I never tell patients is that they just have to learn to live with their condition. It doesn’t mean that I will be able to help everyone and give them the relief they’re seeking, but that doesn’t mean that no one can. I believe it’s the height of arrogance for doctors to take the attitude that if they can’t help a certain patient with a particular problem, that a solution doesn’t exist. I tell my patients that although I can’t make specific promises as to how well they will progress under my care, I will always hope for and strive for the best. Because I don’t put limitations on the potential benefits of my treatment, I do sometimes witness miracles.

Certainly it’s unethical for any kind of doctor to make promises that he or she knows will not come to pass, whether it’s to make a buck or to build up his or her ego or just to make the patient feel better about the situation. However, no doctor has the right to rob someone of hope or to place limits on the patient’s ability to heal.

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