A poison ivy story October 2, 2011

Last summer a patient came in to get treated for her severe poison ivy allergy.  She lived out in the country and often got extreme and lingering poison ivy reactions even from indirect exposures such as handling her children’s clothing.

She lived a few hours away and I knew that I wouldn’t be able to see her often enough to take her through our normal allergy elimination process.  I gave her one bioenergetic treatment for the poison ivy, and then taught her how to do EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique).  EFT is an easily learned method of tapping the acupuncture points and it often works on physical as well as emotional symptoms.

She recently sent an e-mail, so I’ll let her speak for herself:

“I came to see you July 2010 asking to try treatment for responding to poison ivy.

I keep meaning to let you know that I did do the EFT for 2 weeks after the treatment and then went and brushed poison ivy on my arm. I covered
it for a day and watched it. I never got any reaction. Since then I have watched my kids go through poison ivy many times, knowing that I
would have to handle their clothes, take off their shoes…..etc. I myself have brushed up against it on trails with no reaction. I am
very glad about this outcome.”

We see allergy outcomes like this frequently; however it usually takes longer!

EFT is a branch of what is called Energy Psychology; psychologists discovered that they could clear a lot of emotional issues by simply tapping on acupuncture points while focusing on the problem.  Later the methods were applied to physical symptoms as well, often with equally good results.  EFT is similar in concept to much of the bioenergetic clearing work we do right in the office as part of our WholeHealth Wellness protocols:  Identify the imbalances, then use various energetic clearing methods to neutralize the problem.  We often teach the EFT techniques to patients as part of our normal course of treatment.

The highest form of medicine is teaching patients to take care of themselves!

Preventing Cancer October 8, 2010

In a sense, we all have cancer.   We all have a small proportion of cancer cells among the trillions of cells that make up our bodies.  The normal healthy immune system easily deals with these, breaking down the cancer cells harmlessly while performing all the other immune functions.  What is normally called Cancer, (groups of cancer cells that become large enough to diagnose) usually occurs after a long period of immune dysfunction.  Allergies, inflammation, poor diet, stress, genetics, poor digestion, exposure to environmental toxins and inability to detoxify all can contribute to this immune system dysfunction.

Our task with WholeHealth Wellness^TM is to do everything we can to maintain healthy immune system function before cancer can develop. It seems significant that to my knowledge no patient who has had regular care using WholeHealth Wellness^TM has ever been diagnosed with cancer. This is probably not statistically significant and will undoubtedly change at some point; still it is very comforting both for patients and for me as a practitioner.

Acupuncture, herbs, enzyme therapy, homeopathic detoxification, stress reduction, and bioenergetic clearings are all components of WholeHealth Wellness^TM .   Using these modalities, we seek to balance and enhance your immune system so that cancer and other diseases never develop in the first place.

Remember the old saying:  An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure!

 

Did you know that acupuncture is often used to relieve the side effects of chemotherapy?

The National Cancer Institute recently compiled numerous studies showing the beneficial effects of acupuncture on chemotherapy patients.  Reduced pain, less fatigue and less nausea are the main effects. Patients who receive acupuncture while undergoing chemotherapy experience reduced pain, less fatigue and less nausea than patients receiving chemotherapy alone. There is also an enhancement of immune function that occurs with those who receive acupuncture.

Here is the link to the National Cancer Institute compilation about acupuncture and chemotherapy:

http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/pdq/cam/acupuncture/HealthProfessional/page5

In addition to acupuncture, our chemotherapy patients often receive digestive enzyme supplements to help with healing and energy.  We generally do not give herbs while a patient is receiving chemotherapy since there could be some interactions with the chemotherapy and we view our role in cancer treatment as an adjunct to the Western Medicine primary care.  However, once the course of chemotherapy is completed, there are many wonderful herbs that can help patients to recover rapidly.

Of course prevention is always easier and more effective than treatment after an illness has occurred.  The true and higher calling of our medicine is to prevent illnesses from occurring in the first place.  I’ll discuss how this applies to cancer in the next post.

 

PAIN, SUFFERING, AND THE ROAD BACK TO HEALTH July 23, 2010

Pain is one of the major reasons that people seek medical attention, and physical pain is responsible for about 25% of patient visits to our practice.  Pain is very mysterious… sometimes a small stimulus can lead to great pain and likewise, very simple treatments can often lead to great pain reduction.

For physical pain, I often use a technique called “Battlefield Acupuncture”; we insert small gold plated needles into the outer ears and pain intensity usually drops dramatically in a matter of minutes. We see this happening over and over again, even with people who have been in pain for months or years….how can this possibly work?  Read on for our explanation…

What is pain?  We know it when we feel it.   Pain is often defined as an unpleasant sensory or emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage.  In a larger sense, pain can include emotional suffering not specifically tied to tissue damage, but to damage of any sort.  Pain may come in all degrees of intensity, from mild to intolerable.  Duration and frequency of occurrence can increase our feelings of pain or suffering.

Pain can serve a very useful purpose to motivate us to withdraw from damaging or potentially damaging situations, protect ourselves while healing occurs, and to avoid the causes of pain in the future. Most pain resolves promptly once the painful stimulus is removed and the body/mind has healed, but sometimes pain persists despite removal of the stimulus and apparent healing of the body; and sometimes pain arises in the absence of any detectable cause.

The Western medical view is that physical pain is initiated by stimulation of nociceptors in the peripheral nervous system, or by damage/malfunction of the peripheral or central nervous systems. Traditional Chinese Medicine and other forms of Energy Medicine take a very different view:  We view pain as being primarily caused by a blockage of energy. There is an energetic network underlying our physical bodies. When this flow of energy is blocked or constricted for any reason, the body/mind senses this as pain. This applies to emotional suffering as well as physical pain.   (A classic statement of this concept for emotional pain is that attachment leads to suffering, but that is a topic for another day.)

On a physical level, pain causes our muscles to tighten, which in turn compresses the nerves and decreases blood flow.  The nerve compression can increase the feeling of pain, while the reduction in blood flow prevents tissue healing.  Pain caused by trauma is a little different since there is also an inflammatory component; in that case the swollen tissues can also reduce blood flow and compress the nerve endings.

Whatever the cause, reducing or eliminating the energy blockages reduces pain and speeds healing by increasing blood flow.  Emotional pain is more complicated, but restoring energy flow results in much the same results and reduces emotional suffering as well.

We use many techniques to remove blockages and restore energy flow in our practice: body acupuncture, herbs, homeopathy, electrical stimulation, yogic breathing, ear acupuncture,  and more.  We try to select the specific modalities that will result in the most rapid improvement for each individual.  For physical pain, I like Battlefield Acupuncture because of the often immediate and dramatic pain reduction it brings….please see our previous blog post about Battlefield Acupuncture for more specific information about this wonderful technique.

While no medical treatment works on everyone all the time, it seems clear to me that people are enduring far more pain and suffering than they need to.  Simple acupuncture techniques that restore energy flow can often dramatically reduce pain and speed recovery times.  Our own clinical results and twenty-five centuries of acupuncture history have demonstrated this over and over.

Stress, Digestion, and Allergies June 22, 2010

In our practice we find stress and poor digestion to be the two health problems at the root of most others.  We find that up to 80% of the symptoms that people initially present with are improved when stress and digestion are dealt with first.  We also find that the remaining symptoms become much easier to deal with.   We see less pain, less fatigue, better sleep, improved fertility, moods improved, and reductions to allergies when we deal with stress and digestion first.

When stress is reduced, immune system function is automatically improved.  Good digestion gives us the energy to heal.  This is why simultaneously reducing stress and improving digestion results in improvements to so many other symptoms.

 Keys to digestion improvements:

• Reducing long term chronic stress:  Stress initiates the “fight or flight” syndrome—our body energy goes to where it is needed for “fight or flight” : To the arms, legs, and short term mental functions.  Consequently our energy goes away from digestion, immune system and all of the bodies repair and restore functions.   Long term chronic stress substantially impairs our digestion system.
• Avoiding highly processed foods (the center aisles of a supermarket mostly contain highly processed industrial foods)
• Avoiding foods grown on soils with heavy fertilizers and pesticides use.  These result in nutritionally deficient foods.  Our bodies have to work harder to draw nutrition from these foods.
• Supplementing with digestive enzymes:  Digestive enzymes are what our bodies use to break down the foods we eat.  As we get older our bodies produce less of these; supplementing can result in great improvements to digestion.

 

 What are the usual results of chronically impaired digestion?  

• Fatigue
• The creation of food sensitivities and food allergies.

 

 How does impaired digestion lead to the creation of food sensitivities and other immune system dysfunctions?

• When food is poorly digested in the stomach, incompletely broken down food passes into the intestines.
• The intestinal walls gradually become inflamed, allowing larger than normal molecules to pass through the intestinal walls into the blood stream.  This is sometimes called “leaky gut” syndrome.
• The immune system senses these incompletely broken down foods in the blood stream and reacts to them as though they were pathogens.  Gradually allergies to certain foods can be developed.
• The immune system can become exhausted by having to continually react to foods and may become unable to react to true pathogens, leading to chronic illnesses.  Alternatively, the immune system can become too reactive in general, and begin to attack the bodies own tissues.   This can lead to auto-immune conditions such as lupus or rheumatoid arthritis.

 

Remember:  Poor digestion can be successfully treated.  Improving digestion is the first step to clearing allergic sensitivities.  Energy and overall health will also greatly improve once the digestive system is functioning optimally.

Allergies June 18, 2010

What is an allergy?

An allergy is an abnormal, adverse physical reaction to an allergen.  The allergens can be either toxins such as automobile exhaust fumes or pesticides, or nontoxins such as pollens or foods.  Allergy sufferers react to small quantities that are harmless to most people.  When exposed to an allergen, allergic individuals develop an excess of an antibody called immunoglobulin E (IgE).   These IgE antibodies react with allergens to release histamines and other substances from cell tissues.  These produce the familiar allergy symptoms of watery eyes, runny nose, itching, nausea, hives,  etc…  Allergies can also cause a predisposition to colds and flu by compromising the immune system.

However, not all adverse reactions rise to the level of an IgE allergy reaction detectable by a blood test.  These lesser reactions we call sensitivities. Allergies or sensitivities can be either immediate or delayed.  Allergies/sensitivities  are not a yes or no issue, there is a full spectrum of disorders ranging from mild delayed sensitivities to immediate anaphylactic shock.

What are common symptoms of food sensitivities or food allergies?

• Congestion
• Headaches
• Chronic fatigue
• Diarrhea, constipation or Irritable Bowel Syndrome
• Acid reflux
• Depression, anxiety, and other mood disorders
• Brain fog
• Attention Deficit Disorder and Hyperactivity, especially in children

The most common food allergies/sensitivities that we encounter in practice are the following:

• Wheat (usually but not always to the gluten in the wheat)
• Milk products
• Peanuts
• Corn products
• Soy products
• Refined sugar (usually not actually an allergy but more of an overdose)

Notes:

• Wheat is by far the most common food allergy/sensitivity
• The production of corn and soy is heavily subsidized and corn and soy or their byproducts are found in virtually every processed food.

Many people are sensitive to one or more of these foods and don’t even realize because they consume one or more of these virtually every day.   When these sensitivities are identified and then avoided, most people experience major reductions to their symptoms within two weeks and sometimes within a few days.

Reasons that food sensitivities have become so prevalent today:

• Stress
• Environmental toxins
• Depleted soils
• Consumption of over refined foods
• Chronic poor digestion
• Foods bred for our industrial food system rather than for taste and nutrition
• Leaky gut syndrome

Food sensitivities or allergies are not necessarily forever! They can be successfully treated.

How we treat food allergies/sensitivities in our practice:

• First step is always to identify the sensitivities and avoid those foods at least for a while.
• We treat the body’s energy and re-educate the body’s immune system to respond more appropriately to these non-toxic food substances.  Often we do this in a step-by-step manner, treating each component of the foods:  amino acids, vitamins, minerals, sugars, etc…
• Stress reduction
• Digestion enzyme supplementation
• Assistance with detoxification and repair of damaged body tissues

Another Long Deep Breathing Newpaper Article! February 26, 2010

This article form the Fairfax Times actually came out in December, 2009.   In addition to talking about the Long Deep Breathing App, it talks  about our practice.

Here’s the link:

http://www.fairfaxtimes.com/cms/story.php?id=779

Here’s the article:

Software application teaches benefits of deep breathing

by Gregg MacDonald | Staff writer

Shamus Ian Fatzinger/Fairfax County Times

Darshan S. Khalsa, of Reston’s Khalsa Integrative Medicine, LLC, displays the iPhone application he helped design to lead users through a series of deep breathing exercises.

A Reston alternative healer has teamed up with a Herndon software developer to create an iPhone software application that helps people practice holistic deep breathing techniques — and it is selling all over the world.

Darshan Khalsa, 61, and his wife Carol O’Donnell Khalsa are Reston-based alternative medicine providers whose Khalsa Integrative Medicine practice centers on holistic care, including Oriental medicine, acupuncture, herbal and enzyme therapy, nutrition, yogic breathing, detoxification, sound therapy and fertility medicine.

The practice has been in existence since 2003.

“In holistic medicine we take a logical, step-by-step approach to discover what is out of balance and bring people back into balance,” Darshan Khalsa said. “Stress is the catalyst for 70 percent of other problems, and getting it under control is a logical first step.”

Khalsa achieves this in part by having patients utilize the Kundalini Yoga technique of long, deep breathing that he has practiced since converting to Sikhism more than 30 years ago.

“Sit with your spine straight or lay on the floor with your spine straight,” the application instructs. “All inhaling and exhaling is through the nose …”

“Stress creates short, shallow breathing, much like a fight-or-flight response,” Khalsa said. “By controlling breath, you induce a more relaxed state in your body and enable it to lower blood pressure, increase blood circulation and aid in digestion.”

“Every form of yoga has its form of breathing practices,” agreed Suzanne Leitner-Wise, founder of U.S. 1. Yoga Teacher Training Academy in Alexandria.

“Scientific study has shown that breathing practices are extremely beneficial to health as they help to release toxins from the body, and can lower high blood pressure and help asthma sufferers,” she said.

Carol Khalsa attributes the original spark that led to developing the iPhone application to President Obama.

“When we went to President Obama’s inauguration, we were inspired by the president telling people to go out into their communities and ‘do some good,'” Carol Khalsa said. “So we thought, ‘Why not figure out a way to tell more people about the benefits of long deep breathing exercises?'”

It turns out that the Khalsas already had the means to make their vision into a reality.

Jeanne Churchwell is a patient of Darshan Khalsa. She is also half-owner of Herndon software company Tech 2000 Inc.

When the Khalsas related their desire to get the deep breathing technique out to a wider audience, Churchwell knew exactly what to do. “I told them, ‘You need to make that into an app!'” she said.

“As soon as I saw an iPhone, I wanted one,” Darshan Khalsa said. “I’m a little bit of a techie, so the idea appealed to me.”

Tech 2000, which employs about 15 people, has been in business since 1984 but only began developing iPhone applications this year.

The Khalsas and the Churchwells collaborated and came up with the Long Deep Breathing application that launched last month. “The Khalsas really hit a niche market,” Churchwell said. “We were amazed. It began selling in Great Britain and Australia the day it came out.”

The application, which sells for 99 cents, has both an informational component that lists the benefits and history of the deep breathing technique, and a feature that allows you to set the pace and duration of your breathing exercise regimen. An optional verbal prompt can assist users as they perform their breathing.

A visual aid helps the user to inhale and exhale correctly by following a moving vertical scale and keeps track of time, so that the user can perform the exercises for the correctly allotted period.

Although the application is currently selling at a rate of about 20 a day and their costs are expected to be recouped in about six months, the Khalsas insist that they did not create the application for the money.

“This is our gift to the community,” said Carol Khalsa. “In our office, we can reach at most a couple of thousand people a year to let them know about this technique.

“With the application, we can reach untold millions.”

To Vaccinate or Not Vaccinate? October 16, 2009

Patients have been asking me lately about whether or not they should get the flu vaccinations, both regular seasonal flu vaccination and the H1N1 swine flu vaccination.

I think the short answer for most of my patients is no.  However, this is not a simple question, so I’m going to take a round about way of answering it, and first discuss vaccinations in general.

Even if every bad thing you have ever heard about the effect of vaccinations on individuals is true: (vaccinations contribute to autism in children, they can cause auto-immune disorders, people often get sick immediately after getting vaccinated, some of the additives in vaccines can contribute to cancer or neurological diseases); even then, from a public health perspective, vaccinations are still often beneficial. The benefits to the general public of not getting epidemics outweigh the individual negatives. Over the course of the 20th century vaccinations have apparently helped reduce the incidence of infectious diseases such as smallpox, whooping cough, and polio. At the same time, for most individuals there seems to be very little immediate negative effects from getting vaccinated.

So what we have to do is find a reasonable balance between the severity of the epidemic threat, the effectiveness of the vaccine against the epidemic threat, and the potential harm to the individual from getting vaccinated.

At this time, for the regular seasonal flu vaccine, there is little or no evidence that the flu shot is even effective at reducing the incidence of flu. You can see a very interesting article in this month’s Atlantic magazine, titled “Does the Vaccine Matter?” (Available online at: http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200911/brownlee-h1n1 ).  The years that the flu vaccine has been a good match for the seasonal flu have no difference in outcomes from the years in which the flu vaccine has been a poor match. No large scale double blind testing has ever been done. There is a widespread belief that flu shots reduce the incidence of flu, but very little evidence that this is true.

For the H1N1 swine flu vaccination (now just starting to be available) here is the situation: While the virus spreads easily, the sickness itself is so far relatively mild and most people have developed no lasting problems. At the same time, the effectiveness of the vaccine is unknown and the risk of potential harm from a new, relatively untested vaccine is higher than normal.

So it seems that for both seasonal flu and H1N1 swine flu, there is very little benefit from getting the vaccinations and very little risk incurred from not getting the vaccinations.  This is why I have been recommending that patients not get flu shots and that patients instead take other steps to build their immune systems naturally.

Aside from the lack of benefits, there are potential downsides to getting the flu vaccinations. These downsides apply to most other vaccinations as well, and that is why vaccinations should be individually evaluated for benefits and risks.  There is no effective treatment that doesn’t potentially cause some problems.

Here is a partial listing of some of the potential downsides of vaccinations:

Mercury in the form of Thimeresol is used as a preservative in many vaccines. Mercury is a known neurotoxin and can combine with other factors to induce neurological and auto-immune disorders.

If you are already sick, getting a vaccination may throw your immune system further out of balance and cause long lasting problems. Never get a vaccination when you are feeling sick. This is a particular problem with young children since their immune systems are not fully developed. Likewise, receiving multiple vaccinations at once is not a good idea. Children in this country receive far more vaccinations than in other countries with some evidence that their overall health is worse.

Introducing an infectious agent directly into the blood stream means that it is not mediated by the normal immune protections. In addition, some vaccines contain aluminum, formaldehyde and other toxic substances. These substances can cause allergic reactions that can lead to auto immune disorders in those who already have compromised health. Even non-toxic vaccine additives such as squalene or egg whites can induce allergic reactions when introduced directly into the blood.

There are many more potential downsides. Some people will develop either immediate or long term problems after getting vaccinated. Of course, most relatively healthy people will have no problems whatsoever with the vaccines.

In the case of the seasonal flu or H1N1 flu vaccinations, the risks of getting the vaccine are not balanced by the potential rewards.

The answer for other diseases or for future pandemic diseases could be different.

Why Do So Many Patients Exhibit Sensitivities to Wheat? August 23, 2009

What is it with wheat?  Why are so many of our patients now testing sensitive to wheat and wheat products?  Wheat is by far the most common food sensitivity we encounter when testing patients.  (Other very common food sensitivities are milk/dairy products, soy products, peanuts, and eggs.)  By simply removing wheat products from the diet, we often see great clinical results, particularly with children.

Wheat probably couldn’t always have been so allergy inducing.  Is it the way wheat is grown and processed in this country?   I’ve had patients who were highly sensitive to wheat here, but who were able to go to Europe and eat the European bread while there with no problems.  Was it just because they were less stressed when on vacation and therefore their digestion performed better?  Or is there a difference in the wheat itself?  When I went to India recently, the wheat there tasted much better than anything I remember having here.  Their wheat was grown locally and probably freshly ground (they were harvesting while I was there); their method of preparation used hot steel and fire and this also probably helped counteract the “damp” producing effects of wheat.  (Damp is a Chinese medical term roughly equivalent to congestion.)

I have read that the type of wheat we are mostly eating today is much higher in gluten than what was historically grown—in other words, the wheat has been bred to be much sticker and starchier than what we historically ate.  The highly refined nature of the wheat and the possible presence of genetically modified wheat are not helpful either.

In addition to the way our USA wheat is grown, stored, and processed, there are probably other environmental stressors that we experience here.  Our country has experienced a vast increase in asthma over the past twenty years.  The same cofactors are probably creating the increase in wheat sensitivities that we see today.  Our overall air quality is much better than in many parts of the world, and yet we are seeing an increase in allergies and asthma.  Why is this?

More on this later….

Welcome! July 29, 2009

Welcome to Khalsa Integrative Medicine’s WholeHealth Wellness^TM  blog.  I hope you discover that these thoughts are both interesting and useful.    My intent is to create a handbook for patient health and longevity. Some ideas I explain to almost every patient and since it is hard to absorb everything the first time, this is the place patients can go to for more explanation or a repeat explanation.    Eventually I will be expanding these entries and gathering them in a more organized and coherent way for a book.

 Over the last few years I have assembled a group of techniques that have enabled the surprisingly successful treatment of a wide variety of health conditions. This collection of protocols is called WholeHealth Wellness^TM.

 The key to WholeHealth Wellness^TM is our application of the oldest healing method in the world: Discover what aspects of the body/mind are out of balance.  Use various therapies to bring the unbalanced aspects into balance.  The body/mind will then heal itself.  Allow this healing to occur and repeat the entire process as needed.

 When the sources of symptoms are reduced or removed, healing can happen relatively quickly. Although the basic concept is very simple, finding and reducing imbalances can be somewhat complex.   As we practice this WholeHealth Wellness^TM technique, the application includes acupuncture, yogic breathing techniques, enzyme therapy, herbal medicine, homeopathic medicine, kinesiology, energy psychology, and various bioenergetic clearing methods.

I will be discussing all of these and more in upcoming entries.   Please feel free to leave comments.  If you have a question, please leave a comment or e-mail me at DSK@KhalsaMedicine.com.