Positive Health Online

Introduction

Medicine is in a constant process of evolution, thus we need to be open to new concepts and ideas even if they don¡¦t always make complete sense at the time. Fully understanding the new is something that we can sometimes only achieve with hindsight. For the patient this is both exciting and frustrating. Exciting because there are constantly new avenues appearing, offering new ways of dealing with on-going health problems, and frustrating because with this new knowledge it raises more and more the very real questions of, Where do I start? Where do I go from here? What do I try next?

Twenty-first century medicine increasingly encourages us to see a far bigger picture of who and what we are, and the many different factors that contribute towards our ill health. For many of us we no longer see ourselves as simply mechanical robotic bodies; we understand that our emotions, our lifestyle, our diet and many other factors have a highly significant effect on the quality of our life. We start to realize that the body is far more than just a bunch of chemicals reacting with one another. We are discovering that there are also complex energetic systems operating within our bodies.

Disease patterns also appear to have radically changed, and with that we have to also change our medical approaches. For example, we are currently seeing an increasing incidence of cancer, fatigue, mental illness/depression, addictions, allergies, diabetes/obesity, inflammatory diseases and toxicity. This prompts the question what has changed over these years to encourage these disease patterns, and what can be done to not only detect the early signs, but also to encourage the healing process?

Environmental toxins have increased dramatically, most of which are invisible and without our consent. Associated with this there are marked deficiencies of basic nutrients in our food compared with years ago. In addition we have increasing levels of stress, both bio-chemical, physiological and circumstantial. We may not have choices over circumstantial stresses but we do have choices on lifestyle habits which primarily influence us on a physiological and biochemical level.

Patient-Practitioner Partnership

What is becoming a necessity for this integrated approach to work is a genuine working relationship between patient and practitioner. The patient takes more responsibility for their actions and consequences, shows commitment investing time and energy in activating their healing process. The practitioner or doctor is there to oversee, guide and supervise, acting primarily as the catalyst, but the patient does the healing. My experience over the years is that the more time, energy and commitment that the patient puts into this, the more he or she will see real and lasting results. It is essentially a team effort that creates success and it is my job in my practice to offer expert, innovative advice and direction to my patients to help them achieve and maintain their health potential.

Tests and Investigations

Early detection of symptoms is important. It is far easier to correct a problem in the early stages of imbalance. The more compromised our organs become, the harder (although not impossible) it is to reverse an escalating disease process.

While standard conventional blood tests and scans remain important in the initial assessment of a medical problem, especially in acute cases, it is also a great frustration when, in many chronic conditions, most of these tests come back as normal yet clearly somewhere there must lay an explanation for people's on-going symptoms.

The challenge is to find an explanation and solution to the problem and this requires incorporating several different but valid perspectives to find what that underlying common thread might be that links all of one's seemingly disconnected symptoms together.

Examples of integrated tests and investigations used to complement standard medical tests include:

Digital Infrared Thermal Imaging is a modern tool that looks at physiological changes taking place in the body. Physiological changes almost always precede anatomical changes and this makes it extremely valuable for early detection of breast cancer;

Saliva or Urine hormone profiles provide valuable information on unbound hormone levels as a means of monitoring HRT, including the use of natural Bio-identical hormones;
Hair Mineral Analysis is a useful tool for detecting mineral imbalances as well as metal toxicity;
Dark Field Microscopy cleverly shows what is happening on a microscopic cellular level simply from a finger prick drop of blood. It accurately represents how toxic we are on the inside and is a great motivator for making certain lifestyle changes that are necessary to restore health;
Electro-dermal Screening is a good test for measuring the exact level of toxicity on a cellular level as well as determining which is the most stressed organ in our body at that moment in time. It also helps in selecting the best remedy that is energetically compatible for a person;
Clinical Applied Kinesiology is another valuable test that takes patient individuality into prime concern. It is a useful method of filling in the gaps of conventional medicine especially where for example, detection of viruses, parasites and fungus overgrowth is difficult to clearly establish;
Traditional Chinese Medical Diagnosis is an ancient and reliable method of assessing a person¡¦s health primarily from clinical observation with tongue diagnosis, taking a thorough history of symptoms and body systems and pulse diagnosis;
Energetic Evaluations of Life-Force provides a measure of one¡'s life-force as an indicator of one¡'s self-healing ability which commonly measures quite low in this modern time. By clearing negative frequencies, many of which are beyond our control, it is possible to have our life-force elevated to healthier levels that bring with it a higher level of consciousness or awareness as well as a chance to live our life'¦s destiny to its fullest.

The purpose of any test is to gather important and relevant information that might offer explanations for our symptoms. As there is no one test that can offer all the answers, by using a variety of tests, based on different perspectives, it becomes easier to find explanations and solutions.

It is important to have these different tests overseen and supervised by a doctor who is familiar with recognizing the values and limitations of them so that the patient does not get confused or lost down one pathway.

This is where the talents of a doctor may also have to rival those of a top criminal detective. The clues are there somewhere but may be hidden away. It takes knowledge, experience, and often intuition to get to the bottom of the mystery and find the real causes of the patient¡¦s dis-ease.

Treatments

With the body knowing and striving always to find and be in balance or homeostasis the purpose of any good treatment must ultimately be geared towards patient individuality and doing whatever it takes to:

Reduce the toxic load on every level, especially the cellular level;
Stabilize the blood sugar levels;
Activate and maximize our bodies¡¦ innate powerful resources for self-healing;
Treat the most stressed organ first with the best suited remedy.

With the gut being the first line of defence for the body as well as being the 'second brain', it makes sense that healing starts by paying attention to the gut. This naturally involves taking a closer look at the foods we eat, ensuring adequate digestion and finally cleansing the bowel.

It is ironic how people tend to be so obsessed about cleanliness on the outside surface of the body, yet on the inside, in the gut, there is old dead and often fermenting matter from incomplete digestion as well as incomplete elimination.

A bowel cleanse is quite different to colonic irrigation; this involves clearing the old dead and hard faecal matter accumulated in our bowels over many years in which unwanted pathogens, parasites and fungus naturally thrive.

Another important treatment to consider for people is to select the correct drainage remedy, which is often a herbal or homeopathic preparation. As maximizing elimination is the key to reducing our toxic load, it is necessary to use such drainage remedies to enhance elimination of toxic waste on a deep cellular level. This is especially useful in women who on their thermal breast scan show areas of marked lymph congestion around the armpits/lymph node region. This would be an early indicator of toxic accumulation causing lymph congestion. and elimination is encouraged on many levels.

Stabilizing our blood sugar levels, encompassing all aspects of nutrition, is often what is needed to sort out a multitude of symptoms and is therefore encouraged in any treatment programme.

Hypoglycaemia, a term for erratic blood sugar levels, causes chaos in our system affecting every organ and disrupting the natural and smooth rhythm that our bodies were designed for. One fundamental aspect of correcting hypoglycaemia involves learning the art of balancing our meals to include the correct ratio of protein, fibre and good fats. Specialized foods exist that make this easier and possible, going back to real basic principles ¡V something we seem to have lost in the modern society of refined and processed fast foods.

Traditional Chinese Medical treatments are important for addressing issues such as excess heat¡, kidney deficiency blood stagnation liver Qi stagnation blood deficiency amongst others, all of which offer clear explanations of patients¡¦ symptoms and which are not easy to address with other means. For example, if the body is shown to be hot and damp, this could well explain many symptoms of fungal overgrowth or candida and by simply clearing this hot and damp terrain involving dietary adjustments and/or taking a short course of specific Chinese herbal pills, the symptoms and fungus have no choice but to disappear. This method is useful to consider in most inflammatory conditions which persist so long as this background overheated terrain is not dealt with. This explains why with most inflammatory conditions, when the steroids are stopped, the symptoms gradually return.

More subtle forms of treatments involving energetic frequency balancing addresses, in particular, environmental toxins and inherited disease patterns both of which are invisible, without our consent and very difficult to treat using more conventional approaches. Clearing some of these heavy unwanted frequencies can sometimes be all that is necessary to maximize our healing process. It must not be forgotten that the body knows well how to heal itself once certain insults or toxins are cleared out of the way.

And now there even exist energy patches that focus our existing energy fields along the well-established acupuncture meridian points, allowing for more rapid detoxification and improved energy, all of which is maximizing on what we already have within us. This truly is integrating energy medicine of the 21st century.

Some Clinical Case Histories

A 50 year-old lady with an itchy right ear that only seems to be controlled by the use of topical steroid creams. With the help of Clinical Applied Kinesiology, it became clear that this ear is being irritated by fungal overgrowth. The correct selection of the most suitable natural anti-fungal resolved this long-standing irritation without the need to depend on long-term use of steroid creams.

A 35 year-old man with acne on the face responded best of all to treatment following the Traditional Chinese Medical diagnosis of excess ¡¥heat in the stomach¡¦ as well as dealing with a degree of mercury toxicity shown in the hair mineral analysis, which was consistent with him having a mouthful of such fillings.

A 38 year-old lady with a five-year history of ulcerating skin lesions on her right upper arm responded best to doing a bowel cleanse programme which halfway through, resulted in a dramatic healing of these lesions. She now recognizes that in her case, recurrence of skin lesions signals a time to repeat the bowel cleanse.

A 55 year-old lady whose bloating, hot flushes and wakefulness at night responded best to avoiding wheat, yeast, caffeine and sugar as well as eating those foods that served to stabilize her blood sugar levels. This was clearly a good foundation to then look at fine-tuning any other symptoms.

Conclusion

An integrated approach to 21st century medicine needs to incorporate and address the challenges of modern day living.

We have moved from times of survival of the fittest to an era of medical symptomatic treatments and are now moving into a time of incorporating the best of both approaches to include more of the value and benefits of vibrational and energetic medicine. We already know and accept the value of Homeopathy, Chinese Medicine, Acupuncture, Qi Gong, Prayer and Meditation all of whose power and effectiveness has stood the test of time. It is important, therefore, that we remain open to newer concepts and ideas that follow similar principles of healing.

With the current climate of legislation where the Government appears to want to make it even more difficult for us to find balance with our health, we are being forced to return to more simple means of redressing our imbalances and becoming less dependent upon quick fixes. I actually find this very exciting. No two cases are ever exactly the same. The challenge is to look at the facts and then find the way forward using a combination of the different approaches I have described. The solution is there somewhere and with teamwork much can be achieved.