The Alternative Healer

Medical Advice: Here Today, Gone Tomorrow

The twin disciplines that build the foundation of our health care system are pathology and epidemiology. Pathology studies the actual diseases, such as an erosion in the lining of the stomach (ulcer) or a growth on the skin (skin cancer). The classic instrument of this study is the microscope. The pathologist learns by cutting away a piece of tissue, e.g the stomach or skin, observing it under his microscope, and categorizing it based on what he observes. Note the act of “cutting away.” It’s an important idea, because the piece of tissue is now separate from you, sitting under his microscope. In non-diagnostic systems of medicine (traditional chinese medicine, classical homeopathy, Ayurveda are examples), this concept of “cutting away” does not exist.

Epidemiogy statistically applies what the pathologist finds to a population of people.  We could do a survey of people older than 50 years and conclude that 3% of them develop a condition that looks a certain way under the microscope--colon cancer for example.  This type of information forms the basis of the many health recommendations you hear from your doctor and read in the news.  For example, after finding that 3% of this population has colon cancer, the epidemiologist might then find that 95% of  this colon cancer population happened to eat beef every day, as opposed to the non-colon cancer population, 50% of which ate beef each day.  So then the recommendation might come to you, “avoid beef to avoid colon cancer.”  This might be worth considering.  Nevertheless, the question remains... on the whole, is this good information?   In other words, does it apply to you.  The answer, unfortunately, is often “no.”  Read this paragraph from an article Sunday in the New York Times Magazine ( Do We Really Know What Makes Us Healthy?):

“Many explanations have been offered to make sense of the here-today-gone-tomorrow nature of medical wisdom — what we are advised with confidence one year is reversed the next — but the simplest one is that it is the natural rhythm of science. An observation leads to a hypothesis. The hypothesis (last year’s advice) is tested, and it fails this year’s test, which is always the most likely outcome in any scientific endeavor. There are, after all, an infinite number of wrong hypotheses for every right one, and so the odds are always against any particular hypothesis being true, no matter how obvious or vitally important it might seem.”

A recent example mentioned in the Times article is the “estrogen debacle.” When I was a medical resident, I was told that giving estrogen to menopausal women was good for them. There was solid evidence for this, information I could depend on. Did I believe it? No, but being a good medical resident at the time, I did what I was told. Then medical researchers released studies contradicting this. One of the hallmarks of our age is there is a wealth of information, but little true knowledge. “Here today, gone tomorrow” is not good enough advice for my health. Is it good enough for yours?

The article cautiously suggests that this situation is “part of the natural rhythm of science.” In other words, this is the way medical science is, and the medical advice “given with confidence one year and reversed the next” is something you are going to have to accept. I disagree. Let’s not beat around the bush. Any science of medicine where you can expect to have yesterday’s advice reversed tomorrow is bad science. Fine, it makes people nervous to realize that a good portion of the medicine they place their faith in is built on sand, but it’s the truth. What it means is that much “standard advice” your doctor gives you can calmly ignore. It means that when your doctor gives you advice, it makes sense to ask, “Is this benefitting me or is this benefitting the pharmaceutical company who funded this statistical study?” Of course, you will drive your doctor crazy by taking this stance, but it’s not your fault.

In the end, you as an individual are not a statistical study. You can expect that the recommendations that are good for Jane Doe are not necessarily good for you. It makes sense to delve to find deeper truths about health that you can live by. That may mean developing your intuition about what is good for you. It may mean branching out to seek the perspectives of different types of healers. It may mean reading this blog.

The crisis in our health care system isn’t just a financial one. It’s a crisis of real knowledge. Perhaps more accurately, it is the triumph of technology over knowledge. Medical researchers tend to disavow anything spiritual, energetic, or immaterial in what is human. The system that cuts their weekly paychecks is based on certain ideas of reality. In certain health conditions, that might not be a big deal, yet the more chronic a disease is, the more problematic it becomes. Let’s begin to change those ideas, trying to learn and understand about health from a broader view of what it means to be human. What is true often takes time to emerge. When we live with those principles in mind, we we will not wake up one morning and find out they have suddenly changed.

Heart Arrhythmia

The treatment of heart pathologies with classical homeopathy in many instances is not difficult. A case I had a few months ago, which I took in an hour and half (half my usual time), illustrates my point.

It was a case of 16 year old girl who presented to me with a two-year history of what was diagnosed as “SVT” or “supraventricular tachycardia.” She was athletic, engaging in weightlifting, cheerleading, and various other sports, yet was was often held back by her heart. She would be engaged in an activity, when suddenly her heart would take off, beating so fast as to be a blur. She would get dizzy, short of breath, and feel like she was going to colapse. During the initial year or so she had this, she had many appointments with cardiologists. She had EKGs, wore heart monitors, and had a complete work-up every year to the tune of $5000. The cardiologists discussed ablation (destruction by electrical burning) of the tissue responsible for the erratic activity, yet there were two possible locations, and they couldn’t risk choosing the wrong one.

Just how dangerous the condition could potentially be was not initially apparent. That she lived through a couple years of this suggested it was not going to end her life, in spite of what it might feel like. Nevertheless, it severely restricted her activity, and kept her in a state of anxiety during cheerleading routines where she could put her team at risk.

Listen to her talk about it:

“I feel like if I didn’t have it I would have twice as much energy, as in powerful, I could run longer, lift, be more energetic. When I get it, I have to stop, have to sit down.

It’s just frustrating when I’m cheering if I get them, half way I won’t be able to tumble, because I don’t have enough energy. It like swipes my energy. I don’t always get it when I’m working out, sometimes watching TV and I’ll get it. Sometimes they will last 10 hours and sometimes 10 seconds. When I get it it’s hard to breath. I get really really dizzy. I stand up and black out for a second....I lose all my energy and strength.”

A diagnosis may seem straightforward, but a diagnosis is a superficial understanding until we know what the disease is doing. To really understand what a physical illness is doing is to have within your grasp the tools to cure it.

What is her illness, this erratically beating heart, doing? She tells us: it is swiping her energy, her strength. But there is still more. Listen to how she compensates for this problem:

It takes all the strength I have to keep going. If I’m at my [competition] I can’t just stop. I have to keep going. At that time... everything is harder. I did train while having heart problems, my body does build up to it. I need to be able to train my body to keep going. I have to build myself up almost. If I have heart problems I have to push myself the most, until I can’t even go any further. I try to as far as I can.

Just feel the sense of “great effort” in her words. I have to keep going, she says. Deep within her disease is an idea of an almost superhuman strength. What made her case relatively simple is how directly and consciously she speaks of her inner state--a luxury for the homeopath. Now read notes on the remedy I gave her, which I take from the homeopathic materia medica:

Sustains the strength.
Desire for physical exertion.
Increases the bodily activity.
The effects of small doses seems to be to resist fatigue, which I frequently noticed in long walks.
[When ingesting it] they (the Peruvians) can make rapid journeys, without suffering in their respiration, and can take unremitting exercise without being worn out by fatigue.
Soon after [ingesting the substance] a sensible augmentation of force and a general feeling of invigoration were realized, and continued to be felt throughout the game, so that fatigue was wholly, or in great part resisted.

Can you recognize the relationship here? Remember “like cures like,” (read into the category Alternative Medicine Basics“ or ”Homeopathy info“ if you are new to this blog) so the inner nature of the substance must mirror the inner state of the patient. This law may be a bit confusing here, because all substances have a dual action. Under the notes on this same substance you find the following:

General feebleness.
It produces, in large quantities, lassitude and drowsiness.

Working in the playing field of this dual action, in this instance “great strength” and its opposite “feebleness,” is one of the homeopath’s tasks. As an aside, note that “dual action” has a lot to do with what conventional doctors call “side effects.” In this case, however, the dual action exists within the patient. That is, this patient expressed both sides of the dual action, both the sense of strength and the feebleness. If a the dual action of a drug does not match the patient, side effects become a real possibility. If you think deeply into this, you will come to understand why medicine, from one point of view, comes down to exactness of prescription.

So the remedy I gave her was the plant Erythroxylon coca diluted in homeopathic (low, 30c) potency, the leaves of which the Peruvians chew to sustain hard labor and exertion at high altitudes.

This has been a few months now, but it has essentially cured her condition. She has had two doses, and since the first her heart has had minimal erratic activity. Competitions, where she used to have the most trouble, have gone fine. Her days of visiting the cardiologist should be over.