Reality Based Medicine: Part 2

Part 2 of our discussion on reality based medicine continues following up on this notion of medicine using too narrow a focus when it comes to healthcare and choices of acceptable or “proven” modalities.

Another example to illustrate this point is found in music.  Could any of us imagine if only one form of music was considered acceptable, while all the other genres were excluded?  This would never fly in our society where choice is so highly revered. 

And yet, in the world of medicine, we stick to conformity and accept what we hear on television.  They tell us, if we have a certain condition, the best and only way to treat it is to take the next greatest medication on the market.  How many times have these medications ended up harming significant portions of the population because of side effects (either known or unknown)? 

To me, this is evidence of what can happen when the mistaken assumption is made that when something is good for some it must be good for all.

I am constantly made aware of how symptom oriented our society is.  We are so fixated on naming syndromes and diseases that we’ll even make some up to sound good on commercials and thereby draw in people looking for an answer to their problem.  I’m not saying these are not real conditions but I am questioning why a description of one or a collection of symptoms is elevated to the status of a disorder or disease. 

I think this is very misleading and should not be tolerated.  It simply obscures the underlying causative issue and delays the proper treatment, or in the worst case scenario leads to the lifelong postponement of even addressing or finding out what the underlying cause is.  I don’t think most people would elect to do this if they were given proper and complete information from the outset.

I have learned through my clinical experience and my own study of energy medicine principles that this huge missing piece of the puzzle cannot be kept from the public any longer.  It is simply too easy to get this information now.  I believe we as physicians owe it to our patients to let them know they have a choice.  And the choice is to encourage them to explore their own questions on health, using their own body as a living laboratory, not the statistics of the next research study in the newspaper or on the nightly news.

Finally, I admit that I must accept a dose of my own medicine.  That is, while I may think a certain way about the need for choice when it comes to our own healthcare, I also acknowledge that there will be some people who make the choice to follow the conventional approach and only choose those treatments that have been “proven” in research studies.  I respect and honor that choice, whether or not it has been arrived at with the full knowledge of the alternatives, the consequences, and the existence of differing opinions.

-Part 2 of an excerpt from “Energy Medicine Principles for Parents: A Pediatrician’s Perspective on How Energy Medicine Can Help Your Child” published in May, 2009.

Additional comment: And so we arrive at the point where we must acknowledge that people are different; they have different needs, coping mechanisms, ways of responding to the world and other people, and yes, individual ways of responding to health challenges no matter what the statistics say. Instead of limiting our viewpoints to only those results of studies done on populations rather than individuals, I think we will all be better off taking in a bigger dose of reality based medicine.

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Reality Based Medicine: Part 1

Nowadays we hear about the importance of evidence based medicine.  I believe this is an attempt by our collective left brain to hold on to its position it has held over the last couple centuries.  Even when there is “evidence” in other scientific fields like physics, the medical establishment has been slow  to accept the notion that we as human beings are much more than physical beings.  We are composed of numerous energy fields, many of which can be demonstrated and viewed with the instruments available today.

Reality Based Medicine

I propose a new term called “reality based medicine” in order to more accurately describe what’s really happening in and around us as human beings.  If one of the smallest known components of our universe is the atom (I won’t get into subatomic particles) and we know that an atom can “appear” as either a particle or a wave, then we as human beings must also have this characteristic of dual appearance as particle and wave.  Is this not logical?

The energy medicine paradigm allows for this and in fact embraces it as part of its foundational principle, which is that we are energetic beings.  All of the “alternative medicine” systems incorporate this energy component in one form or another.  Isn’t it time that we as physicians caught up with the rest of the world?

My main criticism of “evidence based medicine” is the fact that the main supposition is that we are all the same.  Of course, everyone knows this is not true.  So how can smart people like doctors and researchers make this error?  I believe it comes from microfocusing on what can be proven statistically at the expense of what can be incorporated realistically by everyday people.  It’s one thing to say a certain medication is good for your heart, it’s quite another to say that same medication is going to force your body to do something it was never designed to do.

This is one of the greatest pitfalls of modern medicine.  I believe if people have more complete information about what’s going on in their bodies and the consequences of only following the evidence based medicine route, they will be able to make more sound decisions for their own individual situation. (I want to make it clear  that I think evidence based medicine is valuable and provides useful information. I just think it should not be the only factor used in medical decision making and healthcare choices by parents and patients.)

This can be further illustrated if we look at the example of how a child learns.  It is well known that kids learn differently.  Some are more visual, some auditory, some kinesthetic or feeling oriented, and this influences how they are best able to learn.

As a practicing physician in pediatrics, I have seen countless examples of all three.  Would it make sense to make all kids conform to learning in one way only?  Of course not.  Then why would we allow the same strategy to reign in the field of medicine?  It doesn’t make sense.  We should be striving to individualize treatments, not designing one  protocol and expect it to fit everyone.

-This is Part 1 of an excerpt from “Energy Medicine Principles for Parents: A Pediatrician’s Perspective on How Energy Medicine Can Help Your Child” published in May, 2009.  Part 2 will be posted soon.

Childhood Worry: Uncovering the Cause

As a pediatrician with a holistic medicine practice, I see kids of all age groups for various reasons and at various stages of development. Seeing kids with excessive worry or anxiety has become commonplace and I’d like to explore the possible reasons why.

Back in the 1990′s, I recall seeing children in my practice who had nervousness or anxiety in certain situations, or who would worry about their parents or other family members seemingly over and above what would be considered “normal”.  Over the last 5 to 10 years the picture has changed to where now it is extremely common for kids to show up in my office with all sorts of symptoms related to undue worry and anxiety. Is it just the times we are living in or are kids just under more stress nowadays?

The answer to these questions requires an attention to individual details and the circumstances relevant to each child and family. If we as doctors are willing to look, using a broad energy medicine based approach, I believe we can get much closer to uncovering the causative factors and defining the solutions to overcome childhood worry.

As I have mentioned in several other places, I rely on the Chinese medicine approach quite a bit in my evaluations with kids and their parents. It turns out that the spleen energy circuit is often responsible for the excessive worry, thinking, rumination and obsessive thought formation which affects many children without an obvious external cause. By carefully going through proper questioning and history taking, we are often able to see where and when the pattern started which resulted in the symptoms being brought to our attention.

Another very important contributing factor which deserves mentioning is the degree of sensitivity that many kids exhibit both outwardly in how they respond to environmental influences and triggers like noise levels, and internally in so far as their emotions, mood and self esteem are reflected and perceived by themselves.

Things make more sense when we see that the spleen energy circuit in the Chinese medicine system is responsible for the digestive system, clarity of thinking, food cravings especially sweets, and the emotional component of worry, among many other functions.  The common concurrent finding of stomachaches, nausea, decreased appetite and other problems related to eating come as no surprise when excessive worry is dominating the clinical picture.  Obtaining this added information is crucial to differentiate the individual child’s pattern from what may be expected or assumed.

Further details that might be obtained from the child’s history are the timing of events and related historical features. For example, a child who develops anxiety and worry after the family moves to a new house or a new town will need to be differentiated from an energy perspective from another child who might be in a stable home situation but who may have experienced pneumonia or some other lung related illness in the recent or distant past. The spleen and the lung circuits are very closely aligned in the Chinese medicine system. If this relationship remains unknown, the connection between them will not come to light and the energy distribution implications will not receive proper attention.

By far and away, I find the most useful aspect of this whole exercise is informing parents of the relationship between worry as an emotional state that requires energy, and the demands and needs of the child’s system as a whole. Of course, there needs to be balance maintained and a sense of order and priority, which fortunately a child’s system takes care of automatically through the function of the nervous system (brain and spinal cord) which includes the autonomic part of the nervous system.

One last bit of information I’d like to share is that the spleen energy circuit is very closely associated with the parent’s role of “nourishing” the child, both physically providing food, as well as other forms of nourishment like encouragement, positive reinforcement, security, a stable home life, etc. If you’d like to learn more about how this topic is important to your child and how I use this strategy to evaluate kids in my practice, you may read more details on this page on my Principles for Parents website called spleen energy and your child.