It is bound to happen

Today I am pondering the impact of practicing medicine when a friends health is being impacted. Today one of my patients came in and told me she is waiting on the results of a breast biopsy. She has a genetic prevelance towards breast cancer and her yearly mamogram has some areas of concern. The biopsy was last Thursday and the results will be told to her later this morning.

I am realizing many things as I write this. First of all I am seeing the potential for how cancer can impact any one's life so suddenly. I do not believe that she has cancer, but I may be wrong. But I am also thinking of a good friend and class mate that is dealing with breast cancer. It feels to me like everyone's life, on one level or another, is being impacted by cancer. Do you know of anyone that does not know someone that is dealing with some form of cancer?

I am also realizing how allopathic medicine treats cancer and I see, immediately, my bias coming into focus. I do not think that we have to "Fight" cancer, I think there can be a way to work with the cancer and to minimize its impact.

I am also remembering the saying that "There can be a healing without a cure and but there is not a true cure without a healing."

If ones lifestyle has created the dis-ease how can there be a cure (resolution of the dis-ease) without a healing (awareness of the latent cause of the dis-ease)? In that case [a cure without a healing] it seems to me that the dis-ease will return. Maybe in a different manner or presentation, but I believe it will return. Conversely if there is a 'healing' it does not matter as much if there is a cure. There are some things worse than death.

The incidence of cancer in our society is significant. One hundred years ago it was not as prevalent, but in truth we did not have the diagnostic abilities that we do now so it may have been somewhat higher than we understand it to have been. Nonetheless the incidence of cancer is significantly higher than historical levels.

Would I be going TOO FAR OUT ON A LIMB to say that I believe this is because of three or four significant "technological advances" that have occured within our time.

1) The use and or overuse of chemicals. The food chain is saturated with chemicals. We are all eating these chemicals and worse yet cooking them which significantly alters their composition.
2) The use of growth hormones. I could write a book on this one, but suffice it to say that a substance that makes cows and chickens grow bigger and fatter IS going to alter our bodies natural growth and maturation process. When that natural cycle is altered and out of balance cancer has an open door tosneak in through.
3) Electromagnetic fields. We are, on one level, a electromagnetic field, when our 'field' is constantly being bombared with other, much higher powered EMF's it has to, on some level, affect our intrinsic electromagnetic field.
4) Microwave energy. Aside from cooking with a microwave (which deplete the qi from the food youare going to eat) we are all being bombarded by microwaves, TV towers, Cel phone towers, satelite communications. The list goes on, but this is an extremely high powered form of energy. If it can boil water, you know it can cook you as well.

So I would love to hear from any of you (except the woodworkers guild...) about your thoughts on this. Am I reading dread into nothing? Am I just freaked out because of a set of coincidences? What do you think???

By the way, my friend/patient called in and reported the biopsy is clean. AT LEAST THAT IS SOMEGOOD NEWS TO BE THANKFUL FOR.

With Love & Respect
Michael

A comment I don't understand

I really enjoy writing this blog and reading the comments made. But there is one set of comments I just don't get.

The woodworkers that say how they were surfing and found my blog. Without exception the format of their response is identical, though the links they put in are different. This leads me to think it is some kind of a program that crawls the web and post comments in blogsites. That is lame. Why would anyone write a program to make annonymous comments and then to return to that site many, many times. I would like to turn that switch off, but still allow comments from 'annonymous' readers.

In the mean time, I will just see if there is a way to delete their comment/ads.

On to a more pleasant topic next blog. I promise. ;-)

Interfacing the Medicine

One of my many projects lately has been trying to reach out to allopathic doctors to develop a refferal network. Some of the doc's are slightly interested, some are highly skeptical. But that is an improvement from five years ago, so at least there has been some movement in the paradigm.

One of my challenges in this adventure is that the doctors want to do research, I want to treat patients. While it may seem like a natural fit, there are a few kinks for me to work out. I wrote about my abiguity around research acupuncture earlier this year. In a nutshell this ambiguity revolves around the concept that TCM adjusts the treatment for each patient for each visit, research needs a set guide to folow to see if it works.

My theory being "After 4,000 years if it did not work we would probably stop doing it..."

I know that the allopathic paradigm 'needs' to have research to back up claims of effectiveness, but I also know that TCM is based on empirical evidence; we know what the effects are due to thousands of years of experience. Note I did NOT say we know "how" it works, just that we know that it does.

Somewhere, somehow I would love to develop a working relationship with an allopathic OB/GYN doc, TCM is so effective in the area of women's health and postpartum depression. The treatment is safe, effective and non-invasive.

In the mean time I will just continue my focus of building my practice and reaching out to doc's. On the 30th of November I will be giving a presentation to the U-of-A 'Program for Integrative Medicine" on how TCM works with HIV/AIDS. The audience will be med students. I would like to capture their interest and expand their vision of medicne.

I'll let you know if it works....

They were on to something

It is always interesting to have a patient come in and tell their stories of the week. Today I had the pleasure of treating a 74 y.o. man for hip pain. He had his hip replaced 4 1/2 years ago and "It has never been right." I saw him last week for his initial treatment. This week I had a report.

"When I left your office my hip felt the same as when I went in, nothing had changed. Then in the evening I noticed that my hip was not hurting as much. My wife commented that I was standing up straight and I was not limping as much. Things were good from Wednesday until Saturday. I tried to get out of my truck without moving my legs together. I pulled the muscle again and the whole thing started hurting again."

Today when I treated him I used a micro-current electrical stimulation, just like last week. Only this week I used three leads instead of one.

Micro-current stimulation works from the principle that pain is caused by a condtriction, or blockage of the flow of qi. The micro-current is used to literally break up the stasis and allow the qi to move. It is amazing when it works, and I have had very good results from it in my own personal experience.

After about 20 minutes I removed the currents and needles, gave him a little bit of body work and sent him on his way. But as he was leaving I had to laugh at my thought that, "Ya know, these Chinese really were on to something with this acupuncture stuff."

I can't wait to see him again and hear what he has to say next week.