RP On The Radio
Next Monday, February 5th, I am going to have the privilege of having a one hour conversation about Healing, Meaning and Purpose with Kimberley Colvard at Radio Sandy Springs. We are going to be on from 12 noon to 1PM EST. The show gets repeated twelve hours later for you folk in Europe and Australasia.
Here is the neat thing: you can either listen on the radio (AM 1620 in Atlanta) or listen in on line. I am hoping to put the audio file on this website. So you can listen at your leisure as I explain how we discovered that the Laws of Healing are changing, what it means for your health, well-being, personal development and business, and how you can use these new insights starting today.
I do a lot of radio and TV work, but I am particularly happy to be doing this particular show. Kim is the author of an extremely interesting book – Life is a Perception, What’s Yours?: How your thoughts and beliefs determine your life – that is full of novel ideas clearly showing that she is completey in tune with the aims and objectives of Integrated Health and Medicine. When I first started explaining the principles to her, she was one of the few people who “got it” straight away. So I am expecting this to be a very dynamic and creative program.
Stayed tuned (!), and you will be able to assess that for yourself!
Free Thinker's Day
Today is Freethinker’s Day, ostensibly because January 29th is the birthday of Thomas Paine.
Born in Thetford in Norfolk in 1737, he emigrated from England to Philadelphia in 1774 after he met Benjamin Franklin in London, who advised him to seek his fortune in the Americas, and gave him letters of introduction. It was two years later that he published Common Sense, a popular pamphlet that argued for complete American independence from Britain and was an important influence on the American Revolution. This, probably more than any other single publication, paved the way for the Declaration of Independence.
Later that same year in his pamphlet The American Crisis he wrote his famous line, “These are the times that try men’s souls.”
After the revolution was won, Paine returned to England in 1787, and in 1791 he published The Rights of Man, which opposed the idea of monarchy and defended the French Revolution. The book immediately created a sensation, with at least eight editions being published in 1791, and the work was quickly reprinted in the United States where it was widely distributed by the Jeffersonian societies.
The Rights of Man began as a defense of the French Revolution but it evolved into an analysis of the basic reasons for discontent in European society and suggested that republicanism was a remedy for the evils of arbitrary government, poverty, illiteracy, unemployment and war.
He was always a free thinker, and I’ve recently re-read the Rights of Man and been impressed by his writing, even if I don’t agree with all of his conclusions.
Free thinking is what lead to the creation of Integrated Medicine and the discovery that some of the Laws of Life have been evolving and changing over the last few centuries. These discoveries were all the fruits of thinking – and living – “outside the box.”
Here are a few of Thomas Paine’s quotable quotes:
“A bad cause will never be supported by bad means and bad men.”
“A constitution is not a thing in name only, but in fact. It has not an ideal but a real existence, and wherever it cannot be produced in a visible form, there is none. A constitution is a thing antecedent to a government, and a government is only the creature of a constitution. The constitution of a country is not the act of its government, but of a people constituting a government. It is the body of elements to which you refer, and quote article by article, and contains the principles on which the government shall be established–the form in which it shall be organized–the powers it shall have–the mode of elections–the duration of Congress–and, in fine, everything that relates to the complete organization of a civil government, and the principles on which it shall act, and by which it shall be bound. A constitution is to a government, therefore, what the laws made by that government are to a court of judicature. The court of judicature does not make laws, neither can it alter them; it only acts in conformity to the laws made; and the government is in like manner governed by the constitution.”
“A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right.”
“A republic properly understood is a sovereignty of justice, in contradistinction to a sovereignty of will.”
“A thing moderately good is not so good as it ought to be. Moderation in temper is always a virtue; but moderation in principle is always a vice.”
“Accustom a people to believe that priests, or any other class of men who can forgive sins, and you will have sins in abundance.”
“Action and care will in time wear down the strongest frame, but guilt and melancholy are poisons of quick dispatch.”
“All the religions known in the world are founded, so far as they relate to man or the unity of man, as being all of one degree. Whether in heaven or in hell, or in whatever state man may be supposed to exist hereafter, the good and the bad are the only distinctions.”
“Belief in a cruel God makes a cruel man”
“Character is much easier kept than recovered.”
“Civilization, or that which is so called, has operated two ways to make one part of society more affluent and the other part more wretched than would have been the lot of either in a natural state.”
“Compassion, the fairest associate of the heart.”
“He is not affected by the reality of distress touching his heart, but by the showy resemblance of it striking his imagination. He pities the plumage, but forgets the dying bird.”
“He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.”
“I believe that a man may write himself out of reputation when nobody else can do it.”
“I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress, and row brave by reflection. ‘Tis the business of little minds to shrink; but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death.”
“It is error only, and not truth, that shrinks from inquiry.”
“It is from our enemies that we often gain excellent maxims, and are frequently surprised into reason by their mistakes.”
“It is necessary to the happiness of a man that he be mentally faithful to himself.”
“Man must go back to nature for information.”
“Moderation in temper is always a virtue; but moderation in principle is always a vice.”
“Most other passions have their periods of fatigue and rest, their suffering and their cure; but obstinacy has no resource, and the first wound is mortal.”
“My country is the world, and my religion to do good.”
“My mind is my own church.”
“Mystery is the antagonist of truth. It is a fog of human invention, that obscures truth, and represents it in distortion.”
“Reputation is what men and women think of us; character is what God and angels know of us.”
“Tears may soothe the wounds they cannot heal.”
“The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly; it is dearness only that gives everything its value. I love the man that can smile in trouble that can gather strength from distress and grow brave by reflection. ‘Tis the business of little minds to shrink; but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death.”
“The nearer any disease approaches to a crisis, the nearer it is to a cure. Danger and deliverance make their advances together; and it is only in the last push that one or the other takes the lead.”
“The real man smiles in trouble, gathers strength from distress, and grows brave by reflection.”
“The sublime and ridiculous are often so nearly related that it is difficult to class them separately. One step below the sublime makes the ridiculous and one step above the ridiculous makes the sublime again.”
“The world is my country, all mankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion.”
“There is a natural firmness in some minds, which cannot be unlocked by trifles, but which, when unlocked, discovers a cabinet of fortitude.”
“These are the times that try men’s souls.”
“Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must, like men, undergo the fatigues of supporting it.”
“Though the flame of liberty may sometimes cease to shine, the coal can never expire.”
“Time makes more converts than reason.”
“’Tis the business of little minds to shrink; but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death.”
“Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value.”
“We feel something like respect for consistency even in error. We lament the virtue that is debauched into a vice; but the vice that affects a virtue becomes the more detestable.”
“We fight not to enslave, but to set a country free, and to make room upon the earth for honest men to live in.”
“We have it in our power to begin the world over again.”
“What we obtain too cheap we esteem too little; it is dearness only that gives everything its value.”
“When men yield up the privilege of thinking, the last shadow of liberty quits the horizon.”
“When the tongue or the pen is let loose in a frenzy of passion, it is the man, and not the subject, that becomes exhausted.”
“When we are planning for posterity, we ought to remember that virtue is not hereditary.”
Communicating About Complementary and Alternative Medicine
Two of the key points about Integrated Medicine are transparency and integration of different approaches.
It is true to say that all healing is ultimately self-healing, but at the heart of healing lies relationship: how we communicate with every part of ourselves, with other people and with our health care providers. At the most mundane level, there is published data that if a health care provider has a good relationship with the person coming to them for help, the chance that the person will follow through on a treatment plan is four times higher than if they meet a health care provider who just grunts at them.
There is also a magic that can happen in strong, dynamic relationships based on partnership rather than dominance: one of the themes of Healing, Meaning and Purpose.
It worried, but did not surprise me to see a study released today.
Most Americans age 50 and older use complementary and alternative medicine (CAM), such as supplements, herbal products or acupuncture. The trouble is that – according to a survey conducted by AARP and the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine – they often do not tell their doctors or nurses.
It is very much in person’s best interests to tell their doctor about the CAMs that they are taking because some unorthodox medicines may interfere with over-the-counter medications, prescription drugs, or other conventional medical approaches. See here for an example of some herbal remedies and supplements that may interact with psychotropic medicines.
As the report says, "Communication between patients and physicians about CAM and conventional therapies is vital to ensuring safe, integrated use of all health care approaches."
It goes on to say something that we have been preaching for years: an open dialog "allows patients and physicians the opportunity to identify CAM practices that might be beneficial and also minimizes risks to a patient from potential therapy interactions."
Among a total of 1,559 individuals age 50 and older surveyed in the spring of 2006, 63 percent reported having used one or more CAM therapies.
According to the survey – which can be found here – people between the ages of 50 and 59 are the most likely to report CAM use.
Forty-five percent of CAM enthusiasts used massage therapy, chiropractic manipulation or other bodywork; 42 percent used herbal or dietary supplements; 15 percent used mind/body practices, including hypnosis and meditation; 14 percent used naturopathy, acupuncture, or homeopathy; and 10 percent had tried energy therapies.
Sixty-six percent of CAM users said they did so to treat a specific health problem; 65 percent for overall wellness; 45 percent to supplement conventional medicine; and 42 percent to prevent illness.
Sixty-nine percent of those who reported using CAM had not discussed it with a doctor.
The intersting qustion is, "Why?"
Forty-two percent said because their doctor never asked; 30 percent said they did not know they should; 19 percent felt there was not enough time during the office visit; 17 percent didn’t think the doctor would know about the topic; and 12 percent thought the doctor would be dismissive or tell them not to use CAM.
Women were more likely than men to have discussed CAM use with their doctor (26 percent vs 16 percent) and those younger than age 65 were more likely to discuss CAM use than were older individuals.
The report concludes that "patients need to mention CAM use to their physicians and physicians need to ask about it."
Separation and Integration
“The ego always seeks to divide and separate. The Holy Spirit always seeks to unify and heal.”
–A Course in Miracles (Book of Spiritual Principles Scribed by Dr. Helen Schucman between 1965 and 1975, and First Published in 1976)
Many of us feel that we have lost or forgotten something important and it nags at us. In the Matrix, Morpheus tries to capture this when he says, “There is a splinter in your mind.”
What we have forgotten is the hidden secret not only to who we are but also to what we may become.
There are hundreds of thousands of books, websites, classes, groups and, of course, religions that all say that they have an answer to those two questions. And I tend to believe that they probably all do. But each has only a part of the puzzle.
Integrated Medicine was always designed to provide answers synthesized from the very best of what is already available.
I am always being asked whether Integrated Medicine is an approach toward health and wellness, a method of achieving personal growth and development or some form of holistic treatment?
The answer is “Yes!”
The goal is not to replace other forms of self-care or treatment, but to integrate and enhance them. The reason for using the term “Integrated,” and why it is a little different from Integrative or Integral medicine, is that it aims to:
- Integrate an individual’s current health and wellness practices into a combined whole
- Integrate all the parts of a person, for the quotation is true: the role of the ego is to separate itself from the rest of the Universe, and healing come from the Source: your Informational Matrix, your Inner Light or Soul
- Integrate healing methods that will ensure that each aspect of you being is addressed and respected so that the healing can flow. Not only of your body, but of your mind, relationships, the planet, society, subtle systems and your spirituality
- Integrate your views about the nature of reality: healing is not simply a matter of fixing a physical machine. In any case, this is not always possible. The objective is not to “use” methods and insights to heal the body. It is rather to ask that your Overself or Higher Self teach you the right perception of your body and your mind. That is why I am always recommending that the first thing that you can do for yourself is to develop your intuition so that it provides a delicate counterbalance to your ability to reason. If you have ever been to a gym, you know the importance of exercising not just your bicep muscle, but your triceps muscle as well. One without the other will make you lopsided. So it is with intellect and intuition.
- Integrate the personal you with something beyond yourself. The ultimate aim of Integrated Medicine is not simply to stay well, but to return to Wholeness
And all have been done already with tens of tousands of people around the globe.
Will you be next?
“To have a curable illness and to leave it untreated except for prayer is like sticking your hand in a fire and asking God to remove the flame.”
— Unknown Author (Sometimes attributed to “Sandra L. Douglas”)
"A house divided against itself cannot stand.”
–Abraham Lincoln (American Statesman and, from 1861-1865, the 16th President of the United States, 1809-1865)
“In the integral Yoga, the integral life down to even the smallest detail has to be transformed, to become Divine.”
— The Mother of Pondicherry (a.k.a. Mirra Alfassa, French-born Indian Spiritual Teacher, 1878-1973)
Rethinking Cancer
Over the last thirty years, there has been a gradual change in the way in which we conceptualize biological processes. Although the lion’s share of research is still dedicated to biochemical processes involving DNA, RNA and the cell membrane, other important concepts are being quite widely accepted. They include:
- Fetal imprinting
- Epigenetic control
- Self-organization
- Self-regulation
- Coherence over time
- Information exchange with the environment
- Symbiosis
- Morphogenesis
One way of thinking about this is to describe cells, organs and bodies as coherent information-rich processes. And when things go wrong, it is because these processes have gone awry. Information medicine is designed to bring the system back into coherence and harmony.
I have spoken before Integrated Medicine and in the next posting I am going to talk more about the difference between Integrated, integrative and integral medicine. But at this point suffice to say that Integrated Medicine is information medicine based on an understanding of these principles.
Several years ago I presented a paper at a closed meeting where I introduced the term “adult dysmorphogenesis,” to describe the way in which some disease processes – such as arteriosclerosis, arthritis and Alzheimer’s disease – could be better understood not as degenerative conditions, but as deranged information systems. These in turn disrupted the normal self-organizing principles of the body that lead it to constantly correct and repair itself. Part of my reasoning was that we were constantly seeing apparently irreversible conditions like broken down joints being repaired by information medicines like acupuncture and homeopathy.
With that background I was very interested to read an important paper in the journal Theoretical Biology and Medical Modelling.
The paper begins by highlighting three odd observations:
- Throughout the animal kingdom cancer hardly ever occurs in tissues that have a strong ability to regenerate
- In animals in which cancer occurs frequently, its incidence rises with age. If it occurs in a young animal it usually occurs in a tissue that has already been damaged
- In animals that have a strong ability to regenerate and repair organs, these mechanisms remain fairly efficient throughout life. In animals with weak regenerative and repair mechanisms, they tend to become less efficient with age.
The authors propose that when an organ is damaged it receives a signal to start undertaking repairs. The cancer cell is the one cell in an organ that is able to respond to the signal telling it to start to proliferate. It is the one cell that is trying to restore function. So simply removing a cancer might not work if the organ remains damaged: new tumor cells would simply keep emerging.
This paper is a good complement to another in the same journal. This one is a bit more mathematical, but also views cancer as a dynamic systems problem.
Ideas like this have come and gone before, but I have not seen them so well presented before, and they open up some new ways of thinking about a set of problems that is altogether too common.
Moving away from thinking that cancers are all simply the result of mutated or messed up DNA toward the idea that they may owe just as much to the environment in which they grow makes very good sense.
Medicine and Creativity
The Lancet medical journal has just published this year’s themed issue on the topic of ‘Creativity and Medicine’.
If you click on the link, you will be taken to a digital edition of the special issue. The digital edition is an exact facsimile of the print copy and is available for one month. You can turn pages just as you would with a print edition and even print off the pages for your own personal use.
The Lancet is one of the journals that you will find in the "Journal" listing on the left of this blog.
Many of the articles are extremely interesting and thought provoking: "Writing and healing;" "Development of children’s creativity to foster peace;" "Healing through art therapy;" "Theatre – a force for health promotion;" "Hospital clowns;" "Healing architecture; " "Healing gardens;" "Chance favors the prepared mind" and "What can the arts bring to medical training?" were some of my favorites, and give you a good flavor of what’s in store for you.
You will also see how this fits very precisely with a true Integrated Medicine.
One caution: it IS a medical journal and there are one or two articles near the back that are not for the squeamish.
With that caveat, there is much food for thought in these articles, and the Lancet deserves our thanks for making them available for free. Even if it is only for a month!
Growing Evidence for the Efficacy of Homeopathic Medicine
When you first hear about homeopathy it sounds like utter nonsense: "like curing like"; vital forces; miasms and super-dilute remedies that no longer contain a single molecule of the original substance.
The trouble is that – apart from two centuries of clinical experience – there is a respectable and growing body of evidence that there is indeed something to homeopathy. David Reilly from the Center for Integrative Care in Glasgow, Scotland, has written a very useful paper that is available for free download.
Over in the "Resources" section on the left hand side of the blog I have a link to a reading list that I put together for Amazon.com.
There are many good introductory books on homeopathy, and I have mentioned some of the best. There are also a few books that delve into some of the science that could well provide a mechanism by which homeopathy may work.
In the coming weeks I shall be putting together some more reading list as well as summaries of the research into this fascinating field.
There is a final point. Homeopathic medicines, Flower essences and many forms of "Energy medicine" seem to have been becoming more effective over the last few decades, and this observation was one of the reasons for believing that New Laws of Healing are emerging.
Let me give you a simple example. Two weeks ago, I heard about a woman in the first trimester of pregnancy was being seen because of a quite severe mood problem. She had such severe morning sickness that she asked to have a trash can positioned next to her chair. Many experts believe that morning sickness begins as a reflex to expel food toxins that might harm the baby, but then develops into a neurologically-mediated cycle.
The patient had never heard of homeopathy and probably did not understand why she was asked some apparently irrelevant questions. She answered that she would feel better in the evening, if she applied pressure or a wash cloth to her stomach. She also reported that the sudden cold spell had made her much worse, and that stress and spicy foods made her much worse.
She was given the remedy Nux vomica in a very low potency. The nausea and vomiting stopped immediately, never to return. And her mood – which had been bad for many months before she became pregnant – also improved.
This is another one of those "N of one" reports, and the plural of anecdote is not data. But I was trained by homeopaths, some of whom had been in practice since the 1930s, and all had sat at the feet of some of the greatest homeopaths on the last century. Yet they all said that problems like morning sickness normally need repeated treatments over several days. Not a single treatment and it’s gone.
If you keep you eyes open you will be amazed to see how the efficacy of some forms of treatment appear to be getting better, while some others are becoming less effective with time.
Healing the Broken Brain
I recently reviewed a fascinating book on adult neurogenesis: the creation of new neurons; something that was thought to be impossible until very recently. It is still thought to occur in certain specific regions of the brain, but even that may be changing.
The field is moving forward very rapidly and is important to every one of us, which is the reason for writing so much about the topic.
There is an exceptionally interesting article in the current issue of the journal Neuron. Researchers from Lund in Sweden have shown that cells generated from stem cells in an adult, diseased and damaged brain function as normal nerve cells. Not only do the new cells function like proper neurons, they also try to make connections with other neurons, indicating that they are trying to repair, or compensate for diseased or damaged parts of the brain.
This work was done in rats and is in its infancy, but it part of a global effort to learn more about how new neurons are formed, how they function and whether it is possible to help the brain heal itself after a disease or injury.
I am going to go out on a limb and say that it is possible. In Healing, Meaning and Purpose I described an individual with a severe neurological problem that responded to a novel treatment method using the subtle systems of the body. One of the goals of Integrated Medicine is to establish how best to use such methods in combination with conventional medicine not just to treat someone, but to initiate healing.
“A therapist doesn’t heal, he lets healing be.”
–A Course in Miracles (Book of Spiritual Principles Scribed by Dr. Helen Schucman between 1965 and 1975, and First Published in 1976)
Journals, Science and Personal Empowerment
Education is empowerment: a vehicle to help you to take control of your life.
Regular readers will notice a new list on the left hand side of the blog, entitled “Journals.”
It is always my aim to provide you with as much documentation and supporting information as possible. As I have said before, the days of passively accepting the words of an “expert” are coming to an end.
In the self-help arena, we are entering what I refer to as the fourth phase, in which any advice on psychology, relationships, health or medicine must be supported by empirical data. Personal advice is fine, but it has to stand the test of research. But there’s an important point that sometimes gets missed: research is not just aimed at testing whether or not something works, but also at improving existing methods. As an example, there is research going on today that is refining and often improving traditional healing techniques that have been in use for centuries.
There are tens of thousands of journals focusing on health and wellness, medicine, psychology and spirituality. I scan a large number of them each week, and if I see something that looks interesting and relevant to our themes of Health, Integrated Medicine, Meaning and Purpose, I delve into it in a great deal of detail before writing an article here.
If you would like to follow up on something that I have written, I thought that it would be very useful for you to have access to some of the main journals.
My criteria for selection were that they had to be peer-reviewed, they had to carry pertinent articles and at least the abstracts of articles would be available on line. A few of the journals publish the whole text of selected articles.
I have not been able to find a listing like this anywhere on line: if something like it exists, it must be well hidden!
I do hope that you find that this new resource will be valuable to you. If people have ideas for other journals I shall have a look at them and tell you what I think! I shall aim to keep the list around about 100 journals and I shall keep things moving: if journals are no longer publishing articles which will support our mission, I shall move them off to make room for someone else.
New Medicines for Schizophrenia
Many health care providers read this blog, although most focus on non-invasive healing methods.
But it is still important to know a little about conventional medications, and one of the basic tenets of Integrated Medicine is that we use orthodox medicine together with precisely individualized treatments aimed at harmonizing the whole person.
Last night the Food and Drug Administration in the United States granted final approval for a new medicine for the treatment of schizophrenia. It is called paliperidone, and will be marketed under the name Invega.
We have also heard that three other new medicines are in the late stages of development: bifeprunox, asenapine and iloperidone.
It is a sad fact that many people with severe mental illnesses are not well served by any currently available treatments, be they medicines, psychotherapy, nutrition or anything else. So it is good news that new treatment options are emerging. The next step is to see how these new medicines work in practice and if there are any side effect issues that did not show up in the clinical trials.
Paliperidone will become available in the United States in early January. You can read something about it here.
We expect that bifeprunox will be the next one to come to market, and you can read something about it here.
We shall continue to provide up to date and independent information about all the new approaches to treating major mental illness here.
