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!

WholeHealth Wellness: the idea of balance June 24, 2011

When we talk about becoming healthier with WholeHealth Wellness, we talk a lot about balance.

Balance is a somewhat nebulous term and is often called harmony.  Our premise is that all human body processes are interrelated and they are in continual interaction with each other and with the environment.  A state of balance or harmony with these interrelationships is what we call health.  Disease is simply a pattern of disharmonies.

Symptoms and physical signs help the practitioner access what is out of balance and by helping to correct  the imbalances assist the patient to heal.  Imbalances can occur in many different forms, since we as humans are very complex and imbalances tend to be multi-factorial.

Any model or theory of health or disease is just a model and not what is actually there.  It is a simplification so we can analyze and act. The old saying is that “the map is not the territory”. Still, maps are very useful symbolic representations and can help us find our way from here to there.

Chinese medicine has various models for how we look at the world and what can be out of balance.  “Yin and Yang” is one of the most useful models.   Yin and Yang originally denoted opposite sides of a mountain.  In the morning, one side was in shade, the other in sunlight.  Later in the day, the sides reversed.  Yin and yang describe the continuous force of change and the intertwined nature of things; they symbolize balance and harmony in our perpetual interplay with our internal environments and our exterior environments.  Yin and Yang relationships are more than just opposites:  they support and require each other.  The traditional, circular yin and yang symbol shows the interrelated nature of yin and yang, where each flows into the next and each has a component of the other within.

Examples of yin and yang pervade the universe and illustrate that one cannot exist without the other.  Male and female, hot and cold, up and down, activity and rest, day and night, inside and outside, front and back….there is no end to the examples.  One can think of the action of a wave at the ocean with its ebb and flow.  More technically, think of the sine wave, where positive and negative polarities oscillate in rhythmic frequencies.

Some yin and yang examples:

Yin                                            Yang

Cold                                           Hot

Rest                                         Activity

Lower body                           Upper body

Inner body                             Outer body

Chronic diseases                  Acute diseases

Deficiency conditions         Excess conditions

When yin or yang dominates, disharmony and disease result.  Paying attention to yin and yang helps to assess balance and harmony, and also gives the practitioner insight into how to assist in restoring harmony.

We can go back to the Buddhist idea that attachment leads to suffering.  When this natural flow of yin to yang and back is blocked in some way (attachment), disharmony results and suffering or disease occurs.

The acupuncture meridian system is another very useful model of looking for patterns of disharmony.  Qi is the basic life energy or life force referred to in many traditions.  It can be considered the sum of all your body’s electrical, chemical, magnetic, and subtle energies.  Your body is nourished by, cleansed by, and dependent upon the flow of Qi.  Normal flows of Qi (and its yin counterpart blood) are the basis of good health.

The acupuncture meridian system consists of fourteen major channels and numerous minor channels.  These are interconnected and flow is normally continuous from one meridian to the next.  When the flow is blocked for some reason is when problems occur.  The meridian system provides a means for the body to balance itself between inner and outer, left and right, and up and down.  Acupuncture points are like switches and can be used to regulate the flow of energy along the channels and to their associated organs.

A very useful model that I use often is called “Eight Principals” in Chinese Medicine.  The eight principals are four yin-yang pairs of conditions:  excess/deficient, inside/outside, hot/cold, and damp/dry.  Chinese medicine uses these eight principles to access the location and nature of an illness.  Once this is known, the treatment often becomes obvious:  if the condition is too hot, cool it down; if the condition is too damp, dry it out.

Excess/deficient:  these terms describe too much or too little of some component of nature, disease or the patient.  Sudden illness comes from excess, chronic illness suggests deficiency.  Symptoms of excess are usually stronger than those caused by deficiency.  A severe sore throat suggests excess (viral and yang) while a persistently scratchy throat implies heat caused by a deficiency of coolness or moisture (yin).

Inside/Outside:  Does the disharmony originate from outside (yang) or inside (yin)?  Is it some exterior pathogenic factor such as airborne viruses, or a bacterial infection?  Exterior factors can penetrate the body and become interior diseases if our defenses are not strong or if we have created an interior environment open to the pathogenic factor.  However, some diseases are primarily interior creations and result from deficiency, emotions, or other forms of stagnation within the body.

Hot/Cold:  Hot and cold pairings refer to more than just relative temperatures.  A heat symptom could be something like hyperactivity or inability to rest and may not be reflected in body temperature.  Heat suggests an oversupply of Qi or an inadequacy of the body’s cooling system.  Cold suggests the opposite:  under-stimulation, poor flow, Qi deficiency or weak metabolic function.  Of course we can usually find examples of both present in the same person:  some aspects or regions will be too hot and some too cold.

Damp/Dry:  All life is dependent on moisture but too much is also not optimal.  Excessive dampness inside the body gives pathogenic factors such as bacteria or fungi an opportunity to multiply.  We see this excess moisture in the form of swollen tissue, water retention such as edema, or excess phlegm.  Dryness is the opposite and demonstrates a scarcity of fluids.  In dryness, there is not enough moisture to harmoniously sustain life; dryness can be both the cause and result of blood or yin deficiency.  So when conditions are too dry, we try to help them become more damp; if too damp, we try to make them more dry.

Whatever the pattern of disharmony, our role as a practitioner is to help bring the body/mind back to harmony.

There are many other models within Chinese medicine: the five elements is a major one that I don’t often utilize.  The twelve organs is a model that I do often use.

The point is that most models or maps have their uses. If the maps are accurate and are applied correctly, the patients find their way to better health.  Ultimately that is how we judge the usefulness of any theory:  does it help produce the results we want?

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.

Energy Medicine September 7, 2009

Underlying the material structure and physiology of our bodies is an energetic level.  Our sensory perceptions of the material forms of our bodies and our surroundings are somewhat illusory:  to our senses everything seems very solid and distinct, but actually what we are perceiving is mostly empty space with energetic connections.  Our understanding from modern physics and ancient spiritual teachings is that what we term matter is interchangeable with energy and that matter is simply a more dense form of energy.  Clinically we can view the material form of our bodies as a lower frequency version of our energetic nature. 

Disease begins at the energetic level long before it can be detected physically, and healing usually begins at this same energetic level.   When body energy is flowing correctly and in the right quantities, the chemical/structural aspects of the body come into alignment with the body energy and healing proceeds rapidly.   We see this over and over in the clinic. 

Our understanding is that chronic disease or pain states usually occur on an energetic level first; when these imbalanced states persist for periods of time ranging from weeks to years, a physical change occurs that reflects this.  It is at this point that the Western Medicine diagnostic methods can usually identify the problem. 

So many times patients have gone to Western medical doctors with various symptoms and been told that the lab tests do not show any problems.   However, as time passes and the patterns become frozen into physically detectable forms, treatment becomes much more difficult.   If imbalances are treated in their earlier energetic phases, balance is much easier to restore and most physical symptoms can be avoided.  It is these energetic imbalances that we focus on discovering and correcting with our WholeHealth Wellness^TM techniques.

Coming soon:  The four predominant historical  systems of Energy Medicine.

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.