Three Keys for Parents

The three keys I think all parents should know and use in their daily routines are awareness, context and education in that order. These three topics outline three skills that you can practice in order to benefit your child. They spell out the acronym ‘ACE’, making it easy to remember.

Awareness Context Education

Let’s look at the first one called awareness. There are so many things that remain hidden or below our level of awareness. While it is true we live in a time of hustle and bustle, stress is perceived as par for the course, and kids have daily routines that bounce from here to there, I believe it all comes down to an awareness of what the reality is from your child’s point of view. If we can be aware of the actual perceived feelings, thoughts, visual and auditory cues your child is receiving in realtime, then we have a chance at understanding and helping them to cope with this world we are living in.

The second key is context. I delve into this topic in much more detail when I am conversing with parents in my office but suffice it to say the contextual framework has so much importance I cannot emphasize it enough. In medicine, we have a tendency to zero in on lab values, physical symptoms, and visible parameters. What I want to focus on is the context of your child’s situation. We have to take into account the surrounding environment, family dynamics, school situation, peer group interactions, and a whole host of other categories that make up the context of what your child is experiencing every day. Once we open up this framework and explore these topics, any condition or situation becomes much more understandable to all concerned.

Finally, I want to touch on education. We all know how important education is to kids for their overall growth and development. What I want to remind parents about is the importance of education beyond the classroom. What I mean is, your child has life lessons to learn at various stages and ages during their lives. Since many of these are long term and ongoing topics like developing individuality, self reliance, self confidence and self esteem, and personal interactivity and rapport with others, they tend to get the short end of the stick when it comes to our focus and attention. But by educating ourselves (you and me included) we can be in the best position possible to help your child through their formative and very important growing years. I guess what I’m trying to say is keep learning, exploring, contrasting and comparing what you know to what you don’t know yet. I believe this is the best stance to model for your kids and the nice side effect is it will keep you young at heart and constantly engaged in your child’s daily life, even after they are all grown up and on their own.

So remember these three keys with the acronym ACE: Awareness, Context and Education. I know it will help you as it has helped me to learn new things every day as a holistic physician and pediatrician.

Thanks for coming back to visit my blog. If you like the content I have here, let all your friends know and make sure you send me your questions and comments.

Energy Medicine Book for Parents Published

After the release of my ebook called Energy Medicine Principles for Parents, several people asked if I was considering publishing it as a softcover book. I looked into it and I’m happy to say it is now available in my office, on my website’s online bookstore, and even at New Renaissance Bookstore in Portland, Oregon!

I’d like to say a special thanks to those of you who encouraged me to undertake this project and to those of you who have given me feedback.

I also took the step to make an audio version of the book which is available on 2 CD’s, as some people prefer to listen rather than read. I have some copies of the audio CD’s in my office as well as available to order through my online store here.

I also want to let you know that I recently teamed up with the International BodyTalk Association (IBA) to raise awareness of this energy medicine/consciousness based modality. I have a special page where visitors can buy my ebook and contribute 50% of the proceeds to the IBA to help with the funding for the many projects and good works they are doing throughout the world. Here’s the link to this special page here:
http://www.principlesforparents.com/pfp-and-iba.html

As always, please feel free to give me feedback and comments on my blog or through the contact form on the website.

Thanks,
Peter Hanfileti, MD

Childhood Bedwetting

Childhood bedwetting is a common and distressing situation for both kids and their parents. This condition is also known as nocturnal enuresis which means nighttime urination.

If the child is fairly young, a diagnostic evaluation is done, including seeing medical specialists when needed. If there are physical problems or inherited disorders of the urinary tract then these should be treated right away.

In most cases, however, a child with bedwetting has no physical problems and often parents are told to just wait it out.

While this approach is understandable, I believe it does not give us the whole picture.

By using the very valuable information readily obtained through evaluating your child with a Chinese medicine or energy medicine perspective, we can find those contributing factors that may not be obvious and the treatment or focusing measures that will help accelerate the resolution of the bedwetting.

In many cases it is true that if you wait long enough, the child will “outgrow” bedwetting. However, I have yet to find a child or a parent who is willing to accept that approach without trying anything and everything to alleviate this persistent problem.

In my experience, some of the most common precursors to bedwetting are a history of having had immune system challenges like serious infections or severe allergies. These conditions require energy from your child’s kidney and bladder energy circuits, both when they are actively occurring and in some cases for years afterwards.

Other situations that can take up more of a child’s kidney and bladder energy are fearful or traumatic events like suffering from a bike or car accident, head injury, or even just having elective surgery for things like ear tubes and having tonsils taken out.

It is not that these events are causative in and of themselves, but it is the redistribution of the energy that is required by the child’s system to deal with them in the moment and in the aftermath that can lead to an imbalance in the kidney and bladder energy circuit.

This is such a common situation in kids that I have incorporated asking these specific questions with every new patient I see in my practice. In this way, we are able to get a more holistic picture of what’s going on with the child from the very beginning.

The usefulness of this information and the fact that it can be correlated and given back to the child and family as part of a coherent energy explanation for bedwetting, makes this a key component of my strategy with kids and parents.

The energy medicine way of looking at your child’s kidney and bladder energy evaluates the historical experiences that may be related to current symptoms, and recognizes that the body as a system is called upon to make energy distribution decisions based on priority and the need to maintain vital functions.

In addition, the ability to prevent or anticipate the possibility of new symptoms appearing in the future is something I want all parents to know is possible using this type of energy medicine approach.

You can read more about the energy medicine and Chinese medicine approaches that I use in my practice on my website, where I delve into more discussions on this and many other topics and concepts.

In addition, if you are the type of parent that likes all the details, you may be interested in my book called Energy Medicine Principles for Parents which is available in softcover, ebook and audio formats.

Heart Coherence

I had the opportunity recently to talk with Dr Rollin McCraty who is the Director of Research at the HeartMath Institute in California. They have been investigating the concept of heart rate variability and coherence for many years now. You may have seen Dr McCraty’s appearance in the movie I profiled in a previous post called The Living Matrix Movie. It is a wonderful exploration of energetics in healing, and I think well worth your time to watch it. You can check to see if there is a screening in your area by checking the Living Matrix website.

Our hearts beat with a pattern that most of us don’t recognize and really don’t think much about. Most of the time the pattern is somewhat chaotic and goes up and down in a random fashion. However, there is a pattern called physiologic coherence where the heart rate actually increases and decreases in an orderly, smooth way. On a computer screen it shows up as undulating waves going up and down, which is very different than most people’s baseline heart wave pattern. How is this important to you and your child?

It turns out that this state of coherence is strongly correlated with improvements in health status and one’s ability to deal with stress. It has been found that most people are not in coherence except in very specific circumstances or only after having been trained in certain techniques. The HeartMath Institute did a study several years ago which documented improvement in school age kids’ ability to handle anxiety prior to and during test taking in school. This is a remarkable finding which showed that kids could be taught a few simple self calming techniques and this actually translated into improved subjective feelings on the part of the students, as well as improved objective findings pertaining to their test scores compared to a control group. The full reference to this study called TENDS, which stands for Test Edge National Demonstration Study, is available on the HeartMath website.

I am very interested in exploring this concept of heart rate variability and coherence as a way to document what’s going on with kids in particular when we are using techniques like BodyTalk and other non-invasive, natural approaches to pediatric problems. The heart itself is much more than a muscular organ that pumps blood circulation throughout the body. It has amazing energetic qualities as well, in keeping with the multidimensional aspects of all of our body’s organs and systems. For example, in the Chinese medicine system, the heart energy is in charge of such things as sleep cycles, creativity, dreaming and speech patterns. I believe we must expand our understanding of what it means to have this remarkable body and system operating on different levels of experience and awareness.

Stay tuned for more information coming about the HeartMath Institute and their dedicated researchers. Their work is truly exciting and it is on the cutting edge of natural medicine and healing modalities available to us now and coming in the near future.

Constipation in Children

Constipation is another common digestive system condition that affects many children. As parents, your job is to try and alleviate this frustrating situation and I want to help you to accomplish this. I have a different perspective on childhood problems compared to other practitioners. This comes from my clinical experience as a pediatrician and from my current private practice in alternative/energy medicine.

I rely heavily on the Chinese medicine system to help explain conditions and particularly the timing of when and under what circumstances symptoms develop. In the case of constipation occurring in childhood, parents often ask why is this happening to my child? I think this is a very valid question, especially because most kids have had normal bowel movement habits at some time in their lives.

For example, babies whether they are breast fed or bottle fed, generally have multiple stools per day. The question should be asked then, as to why constipation develops in a child who previously had no problems with bowel regularity. I have learned that the Chinese medicine system of organ and meridian energy pathways can explain much of these changes that happen, using energy as the term used to describe what is going on.

The large intestine or colon is the organ responsible for passing stools and eliminating wastes from the digestive process. If we only focus on the physical organ itself, we will miss a significant proportion of the causative factors at play in the child with constipation. There are very few cases which are attributable to physical problems like blockage, abnormal formation of the digestive tract, or inherited disorders like Cystic Fibrosis or Hirschprung’s Disease. These conditions generally present early in life and fortunately can be diagnosed and treated when found. However, in the vast majority of cases, children develop constipation with no known obvious cause and then we are left to recommend symptomatic care.

There is nothing wrong with treating the symptoms of constipation to provide relief, but we should not mistake the temporary alleviation of symptoms with actual resolution of the problem. It goes without saying, that prune juice or mineral oil is not the “cure” for constipation, although they can be helpful along with other measures like keeping well hydrated with fluids or avoiding too much dairy products. My point is that no child is “destined” to have constipation as part of their natural pattern of existence. We must be much more diligent in looking for and uncovering the cause, not limiting ourselves to a few diagnosable conditions only.

This graphic depicts the inter-relationship between the large intestine, the spleen, the stomach and the lungs in the Chinese medicine system.

I have found that in the Chinese medicine system there are multiple correspondences with the large intestine energy circuit that can readily explain many of these cases of constipation in children. For example, if your child has had any respiratory illness in the past like a pneumonia, bronchitis, upper respiratory infections, ear infections, etc., this will predispose them to preferentially send more of their available energy to the lung circuit instead of the large intestine. You can ask yourself the question, which do you think your child’s system deems as more important to take care of, the lungs and breathing or the large intestine and regularity of bowel habits?

As they say, this is a “no brainer”. There would be no problem with this energy redistribution if it was just temporary. However, in young children especially, these energy changes can become a set pattern which is difficult to unwind. Fortunately, kids are very amenable to energy inputs like the BodyTalk system which I use extensively in my clinical practice. Often it only takes gentle energetic encouragement, focus and awareness to help your child’s system to revert back to its more normal and balanced settings.

You can read more about the large intestine energy circuit on my website and more general information about how I use the Chinese medicine system and the energy medicine paradigm as part of my practice. As always, I encourage you to find the approach and modalities that fit with your child’s individual needs, not some ready-made formula. And finally, be open to new ideas and new information. This strategy has worked well for me as a doctor and I’m sure it can work for you, too.

Stomachaches in Children

Stomachaches occur in children quite commonly and over the years I have seen many kids with this condition. I have a different perspective on the causative factors that need to be taken into account and I feel this is an important topic to discuss with parents.

In my practice I like to use the saying, “The more information, the better”. What I mean is that we can gain a lot more ground by being open to different systems, interpretations, and models of explanation, rather than just relying on one single description.

If we are evaluating a child with stomachaches, we must address the symptom and condition and try to elucidate the likely causes. However, often there is no discernible cause from a physiologic or anatomic standpoint. Then what do we do? I have stated in other places how I am in agreement with doing testing to make sure there are no obvious or hidden physical problems, like blockages, ulcers, growths, appendicitis, inflammatory bowel disease, etc. In the vast majority of cases, however, none of these are identified as the cause and we are left with no answers.

This is the situation where I believe a broader more holistic and energy derived description and evaluation comes in very handy. On my website I have given more information about the Chinese medicine system and how it addresses conditions found commonly in kids. There are specific groupings which bring together body organs and energy pathways in a coherent and clinically significant way, which I find extremely useful as a physician and I think can be very insightful information for parents to know.

In the Chinese medicine system, the stomach organ and channel are grouped with the large intestine, the lungs and the spleen. These four organs and channels essentially work together on the same circuit, and your child’s energy system must distribute or parcel out its energy in the most efficient and beneficial manner that it can in the context of your child’s daily life and experience.

I have found that when we open up the breadth and scope of our questioning and increase the potential topics of inquiry, our chances of finding the right causative explanation for something like stomachaches goes up dramatically.

So, the bottom line is this: Get an evaluation done to look for treatable and serious problems that could be going on with your child. But don’t stop there if those lab tests and procedures don’t reveal anything. It is important to keep looking for the causes, even if it takes you beyond the physical realm and into the arena where energy becomes the more useful explanation.

In my practice, I use a consciousness based system called BodyTalk which allows us to have access to those things which are only accessible through the energy medicine or consciousness based paradigm. I discuss these concepts in more detail in my ebook called Energy Medicine Principles for Parents and you can read more about the Chinese medicine system and your child on my website called Principles for Parents.

BodyTalk: Consciousness Based Healthcare

Dr John Veltheim, the founder of the BodyTalk system, presented a full weekend workshop called Finding Health: Mapping the Healing Process in Portland, Oregon which I found fascinating and awe inspiring. He also gave a public lecture and I was asked to say a few words before the presentation. I have included my remarks below.

“8 years ago, I received a handwritten letter in the mail from someone I had never met, the letter said that a speaker was coming whom I had never heard of, and he was to discuss a technique known as BodyTalk which I never imagined could become part of my daily clinical practice as a physician. I followed an inner prompting to follow the directions in that letter and I showed up for the talk just like you all have done tonight. That night 8 years ago, I listened to an interesting Australian named John Veltheim, and afterwards my pathway was set, I enrolled in the first BodyTalk class I could find and my learning which started back then continues to this day.

This curious twist of fate or what I can call a synchronicity happened when I was in the middle of transitioning from a conventional pediatrics group practice to the complementary or holistic medicine practice I have today. I had always wanted to treat kids with non-invasive approaches whenever possible, and in my opinion, BodyTalk is the ultimate system when it comes to natural, gentle, respectful techniques used in the treatment of children.

Let me just back up a little bit and tell you that I was trained in the conventional way as a physician. I graduated from medical school, went through a 3 year residency program in pediatrics at the University of Michigan, I joined a pediatrics group in Vancouver WA and practiced for 6 years as a primary care pediatrician. My duties included seeing newborns in the hospital, performing well child check ups and school physicals, putting in sutures for lacerations and cuts, and spending time with parents trying to give them the best advice I could.

At that point in my career, I didn’t have the faintest idea what energy medicine was or even how it could be useful to me or my patients. I was on track to put in my 30-35 years and retire along with my colleagues. That was my assumption and I had planned to stick with it.

However, something was pulling me toward new ways of thinking. I was gradually exposed to the energy medicine paradigm which included fascinating fields like acupuncture and Chinese medicine. And then when BodyTalk came along, my mind was really expanded.

What I now realize is that a consciousness based system like BodyTalk is able to embrace the simple notion that we as human beings are much more than what our anatomy and physiology reveals. What I learned in my conventional medical training was no doubt useful and necessary, but I did not realize how incomplete it was until I became exposed to these concepts. Seeing kids in my practice over the last several years has taught me even more about the energy dynamics that play a role in all aspects of health and wellbeing for children and their families.

Before I finish, I want to express my personal thanks to John Veltheim for writing the foreward to my recent book called Energy Medicine Principles for Parents. I wrote it with the intent to make it available to my own patients and families in my practice, but then it became clear that it could be useful to the larger community of parents who are looking for answers to help their kids.

Even though it is our job as practitioners to help alleviate problems and prevent them wherever possible, I have found that it is the awareness of parents and kids themselves that is the first necessary step. It is my hope that this book will serve as an introduction and a resource for parents who are exploring this new realm of medicine called BodyTalk.

I know you will enjoy tonight’s presentation by Dr Veltheim. Thank you.”

-Peter Hanfileti, MD

You can find more information about my ebook at www.principlesforparents.com

You might also want to visit the International BodyTalk Association website at www.bodytalksystem.com.

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.

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.

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