You Have Amazing Options When it comes to Healthcare

What I’ve found over my years of investigation as someone who is self motivated to maintain my own health, is that there are a rich choice of alternatives to conventional medicines out there. In my experience, everything has its place, and with an open and curious mind, and a holistic approach to health, the goal of feeling well, having energy and vitality is entirely achievable.

In Want Better Health? Be Shrewd About Stress, I mentioned there have been many times in my life that I couldn’t find satisfactory answers from medical doctors. This is not to say there is no place for conventional medicine, on the contrary, but it is only one avenue among a great many.

​An example, close to my heart, was when I was trying to conceive and kept having miscarriages. I got told that Blighted Embryo’s (a cause of miscarriage) only generally happened once and were rare twice. Yet this happened to me on four occasions. Ultimately the response from doctors was a shrugging of the shoulders and not having any answers.

In the end, I found success in conceiving and delivering healthy babies when a couple of factors converged. The first was finally finding myself in a place where it was possible to forget about conceiving, since we had exhausted all natural and medical avenues and were on the wait list for IVF treatment. The second was a referral from someone, who had also had trouble conceiving, to an alternative health practitioner.

The practitioner had earned the nickname of baby doctor from his clients, and I sighed at the thought of going to see this guy who was a herbalist and used iridology to assist in diagnosis. As I suspected, I came away with recommendations for radically changing my diet (not high on my list of habits to change) and herbs. With nothing to lose I did as I was advised and – to my great delight - was pregnant with my first child the next month. The same happened with my second child.

Looking back on my notes of that first appointment, I can see he also picked up (just by looking at my eyes), the injury I sustained to my lower back when I was young, and a sluggish left kidney (which later produced a kidney stone) though I’ll admit I paid no attention to that issue at the time.


It is often the case that people explore alternatives to standard medical care when they are unable to find answers, and find their way back to more ancient wisdom and systems of healing. In the process people begin to gain a deeper understanding of their bodies and what is necessary for healing to occur. This is called the wounded healer phenomenon, a term first coined by Carl Jung.

In Wake Up to the Truth About Healthcare and Healing, I noted that people often accept that when they go to see their doctor (or go into hospital) with chronic conditions they are likely not going to come out cured, they are going to come out with more medicine. This may temporarily ease the condition rather than cure it, but is likely to be creating deeper issues.

For example, my partner has chronic back pain, many trips to the doctor later they are still just as unaware of the cause or how to fix it and have told him his only option is pain management. His job is physical, so this means committing to decades of potent painkillers such as Tramadol.  These painkillers cause huge degradation to the internal environment of our bodies, ultimately creating breeding grounds for far more serious conditions.

Aspirin on its own, as a more benign example, has the effect of weakening the mucous membranes on the stomach wall and prone to resulting in an ulcer if taken over a long period. Yet if a very similar painkiller is taken on its own in a natural form, like the herb Meadowsweet, the constituents in that counteract that particular side effect. 

When my children then came along, I found myself at the doctor’s surgery more than I liked. In that first four years my kids had already been prescribed antibiotics at least once a year for relatively minor chest and skin infections, so I decided to focus on the more natural healing methods I’d come across over the years.

As I said in Want Better Health? Be Shrewd About Stress, my journey around health and healthcare has been a long and windy road over a number of decades. I’ve tried many different types of healthcare by many different healthcare practitioners, and read and researched a whole lot more.

There was an article in the Telegraph last year in the UK, about their Royal Family’s commitment to holistic health, which then went on to do a bit of a spot poll online that probably demonstrates the split in attitudes I come across in others quite well:

• 51.65% said “Yes – I’m a believer in maintaining harmony with our minds, bodies and natural world”
• 7.09% said “I’m very skeptical of choosing unproven medicines over evidence-based real ones” (for this read Wake Up to the Truth About Healthcare and Healing)
• 41.25% said “Not at all – there’s no evidence that homeopathy (which is apparently the British Monarch’s preferred healing modality) is effective as a treatment option”

 
I do find, however, many of the greatest skeptics and cynics, while vocal and crude in their opinions, have simply not been put in a position where they’ve yet needed to go beyond the bounds of the medical and surgical treatments on offer via their publicly funded or subsidized doctor.

Recently I was told by a cynic that homeopathy could, in fact, be dangerous. I suspect they meant in the sense that they believe it’s no more than a placebo and thus an absence of ‘proper’ healthcare. For my part, I think the only thing that's dangerous is when people stop thinking for themselves and put their health in someone else's hands. 

Personally I find homeopathy extremely effective, especially now that I have found a Heilkunst practitioner, which refers to the more comprehensive system of healthcare homeopathy’s founder, Dr Hahnemann, developed. I’m finding it has a very real and impactful way of unraveling the various traumas and indignities my body has weathered over the years.

In an article in the Huff Post in December 2017, Dana Ullman observed that skeptics and cynics spread a lot of misinformation. He found it remarkable that many skeptics of homeopathy actually say that there is “no research” that has shown homeopathic medicines work. Such statements are false, and yet, these assertions are common in the media and even in some peer-review articles.

Misstatements and misinformation on homeopathy are predictable because this system of medicine provides a viable and significant threat to economic interests in medicine, let alone to the very philosophy and worldview of biomedicine.

In fact Dr. Luc Montagnier, the French virologist who won the Nobel Prize in 2008 for discovering the AIDS virus, set out to disprove homeopathic medicine and then surprised the scientific community with his strong support for it after his findings.

In an interview published in Science magazine of December 24, 2010, he said “I can’t say that homeopathy is right in everything. What I can say now is that the high dilutions (used in homeopathy) are right. High dilutions of something are not nothing (i.e. not placebos). They are water structures which mimic the original molecules.” The answers are not found in Biochemistry therefore, they are found in Physics.

Putting aside homeopathy, it is wise to consider the broader history of human healthcare (Wake Up to the Truth About Healthcare and Healing), take the anthropologists view, which was largely based on herbal remedies. Herbs and fungi used to form around a quarter each of our diets, along with plants and animals. This gave us the required nutrients in a form that kept us healthy. As we focused more on just the plants and animals we've eroded our natural healthcare plan.

After all my own research and experience I came to the conclusion that the focus exclusively on pharmaceuticals in the world of conventional medicine and mainstream media is money driven. No one is looking for cures; they're creating symptoms and things to soothe symptoms.

This was no clearer to me than when my mum was diagnosed in 2017 with late stage bowel cancer. Like many of the baby boomer generation, steeped in the beliefs of the era that biochemical medicine and doctors alone are to be trusted, she was not to be dissuaded from her path.

Now, everyone dies, I accept this, so not everyone is going to be saved. However, I was completely stunned that in the valuable months while she underwent tests and awaited results, there was not a single recommendation or reference to her diet. Setting aside any skepticism about any other healing modality, the concept that what we eat has the ability to harm or heal is almost universally accepted.

​When I watched an episode of the docu-series Remedy about cancer, there was general agreement among the various practitioners that an integrated approach is probably best. One thing that stuck with me from that programme was the comments about those people who choose the solely natural route and then die, like Steve Jobs. As one practitioner commented, people die from the conventional treatment all the time (and in great numbers), and yet everyone seems to accept that.

Chemotherapy started from the use of mustard gas in WW1, they started using it and getting successes in the 1940’s, so after WW2 the electrical and nuclear industries got into the medical game. I just can’t get my head around a concept that basically nukes our bodies, it is so drastic and – while it does prolong some lives – it often has devastating effects.

In the Transcendence docu-series, Chris Wark’s story of beating cancer through breaking negative thoughts and emotions, and using the power of nutrition is remarkable.

He talks about how the fear alone (created from being told you have cancer) creates an internal environment in your body conducive to perpetuating the cancer. Out of fear he booked chemo, but never showed up. Instead he got busy creating better lifestyle habits, predominantly raising his thinking and nutrition. Every time fear would creep in, he’d have to catch it really quickly so those emotions didn’t rule him; instead he used gratitude to focus more positively.

A later Remedy episode talked about The Gonzalez Protocol: a proven, evidence-based, all-natural method that is achieving extraordinary results on both early and late stage cancer cases. The late Dr. Nicholas Gonzalez was the pioneer who brought this forgotten method back into practice.

He was ridiculed, called a quack, and lived under constant threat of having his medical license taken away, or worse, but he believed in this protocol so strongly (he had healed hundreds of cancer patients with it) that he never stopped until his death a few years ago. Luckily, his work has been carried forward by his colleague Dr. Linda Isaacs who continues to save lives to this day.

There was a patient of his called Ann that reminded me of my mum’s situation. She had gone to Dr. Gonzalez with late stage pancreatic cancer after being given 3 months to live by modern oncologists. Unlike mum, twenty years on she was sharing her story.

What I liked about Ann’s story was her recount of going to see an Oncologist and refusing to book in for treatment after hearing what he had to say. He had told her that he was recommending chemotherapy in order to give her maybe another 15 months; this is pretty much what my mum had been told too.

When she refused the treatment he said very aggressively “woman, this is your best shot, without it you will die!” She stood up and replied “doctor, we are all going to die!” When she walked out, the nurses (who had all overheard) stood up and clapped her.

When I was in hospital for a minor procedure a couple of years ago, I was talking to the various and many nurses I encountered about my thoughts on the inadequacies of the public medical system, feeling quite sorry for those who feel called to provide care and healing within it. Without exception, they all expressed similar views, opening up to me with their stories.

It was quite interesting to hear about how many of these medical professionals turn to alternative methods of healing in their home. Far from discounting alternative medicines and modalities, it’s that they are not funded, trained or allowed to recommend anything other than the conventional methods and pharmaceuticals available within their workplaces. 

What is really exciting are the advances the scientific community have made just in the last ten years when it comes to explaining some of these other modalities, with the fields of Epigenetics and Quantum Physics really leading the way. Anyone who hasn’t explored the latest research is out of date.

One of the really cool talks I heard lately was a Sound’s True podcast with Mark Wolynn on becoming aware of inherited family trauma. As part of his studies Mark had worked with German Psychotherapist Bert Hellinger, who is known for his pioneering work with Family Constellations.

Family Constellations is one of those modalities that really sounds like woo-woo. According to Hellinger, one way we can express our family lineage is by unconsciously carrying the pain of previous generations so that it might have a chance to heal through us. The thing I liked about Mark Wolynn’s podcast is his scientific explanation as to why that makes sense.

As mentioned above in relation to Dr. Luc Montagnier (the Nobel Prize winner in 2008), who surprised the scientific community with his strong support for homeopathic medicine, these latest discoveries are not always welcomed and many (even in the scientific field) still resist the findings, vigorously expressing oppositional views.

You will find that there is disagreement among experts on both sides of the argument, because all anyone really has is an opinion based on what they currently know. What most people (even the experts) know is often misinformed, outdated and, certainly, always changing.

There is so much information and so many choices out there; I’ve only touched on a few. Every day I get new emails going deeper into other areas. Just this morning I got an email from The Shift Network about a free online summit on Sound Healing and one from sacredscience.com promoting a free 12-day event called Regain Your Brian, with world renowned doctors and neuroscientists exploring enlightened ways to reverse mental decline and think about Alzheimer’s, dementia and all forms of cognitive decline differently.

​At the end of the day, my only plea in all of this is to think for yourself when it comes to your health. I believe there is no one right answer for any of us; only what you feel is right for you in this moment. Embrace life, knowing that our time here in this body is limited, and take back your power – the sovereignty over your own body, mind and spirit - in order to live it as well and as fully as possible.
 
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