Paul K. Branch, M.D. - Holistic Medicine and Classical Homeopathy


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The Alternative Healer

June 10th, 2010

Planetary Cycles & Medicine

All the ancient civilizations of the world measured sacred time through tracking the Moon, planets, and stars.  The cycles of nature were the basis of their calendars and lives.  We, on the other hand, are uneasy with the ancients’ astrological knowledge.  Being bound to the cycles of nature runs counter to our independence and self image.  It is important to be “self-made,” particularly here in the West.  So, as the aspirations of men built amazing modern cities and a host of different technologies to keep us separate from cyclical time, we became increasingly cut off from the light of the universe.

Take away electric lights, and women’s menstrual cycles move precisely with the 28 day cycle of the Moon.  This rhythm of nature can give us a clue about what is really going on at the deeper levels of our existence.  We are swimming in the cyclical, vibrational energy of the universe.  Everything in nature buzzes and hums to its cycles.

Rarely do we take a deeper look and form a genuine opinion about what the study of planetary cycles is about.  We have not taken time to study their meanings, because they run counter to our egos. We may connect astrology with Nancy Reagan, finding it “unsophisticated” and passe.  We may think the daily horoscope actually sums up hundreds of years of astrological investigation and knowledge.

Thus, today, if we take a step further into cycles of the night sky, we quickly lose touch.  We understand  the cycle of the Earth around the Sun.  We all celebrate the passing of another year on New Year’s Eve.  We are familiar with the waxing and waning of the Moon.  Yet there our understanding ends.  Few have an awareness that there is a yearly cycle of Venus and that it has a relation to relationship and love, a 2 1/2 year cycle of Mars and it’s relation with self-asserting, ego driven activity, a cycle of Jupiter and it’s relation to growth and expansion, and a cycle of Saturn as it relates to the boundaries and pain of the physical world.

Although I take much from the astrological tradition of the West, it is the extensive knowledge coming down from ancient India that most has my interest.  In India it is called “jyotish”, which means “science of light.”  In this instance, “light” refers to a torch that lights your way in the dark.  It is my conclusion, over years of observation and study, that this knowledge is too important to ignore.

A critical matter in Vedic astrology is the planetary periods we go through individually. I for example, was born in my Mars period.  I went into the period of Rahu (north lunar eciipse point) when I was 8.  Around 21 I went into my Jupiter period.  In 1996 I went into my Saturn period.  In 2015 I will go into my Mercury period.

Nothing more accurately describes how my life has played out.  You have to look closely at the state of the planet at birth to say what the planetary period will bring.  Do this objectively and much is revealed about what a person is going through.  In certain lives you may get dramatic changes.  For example, a person may have gone from a very powerful period to a very weak, dangerous period.  When you see this you know there is a strong probability things fell apart, and you know exactly when it started to fall apart.

Imagine this scenario:  a patient comes to your office.  Beginning 12 years ago of fatigue and depression.  No doctor has succeeded in helping this patient.  This is a situation that begs for a deeper look.  Set up an accurate Vedic astrological chart of the birth, and this deeper look invariably emerges.  You can see the energetic shift that happened 12 years ago.  You can see which energies are blocked and causing the problem.  You can look ahead and see when some relief might be coming.  In certain cases, if the patient is open-minded, you can talk about the ancient remedies to give relief from specific afflictions.

The truth is, most of us–uneasy as we may be with it–crave this sort of deeper knowledge.  Technology and its promise of liberation from cyclical time has not made us wiser or happier.  Spiritually it has done nothing for us.  We are out of touch and our health is awful.  We have only been successful in giving ourselves more chronic disease.  Wrapped up in the bargain came more numbing pharmaceuticals  to try to escape the pain.  In observing planetary cycles in relationship to our life, we cast light on our experience and our place in the cosmos.  Such information is inextricably tied to our health.

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Posted in Spirituality, The cosmos & medicine | 12 Comments »

April 25th, 2010

Energy & Weight Loss

Here’s something you intuitively know but probably haven’t thought much about:  weight loss is a matter of energy.  

What you know is that if you feel like you have no energy, the pounds come off slowly.  People usually put it this way, “'I'm tired. I don’t feel like exercising, and therefore I can’t lose weight.”  It’s true that having no energy points to a problem, but if your energy were great, you would be unlikely to be overweight in the first place.  Exercising is unlikely to solve your problem.

Every inch your waist expands represents a loss of energy in your system.  Put a different way, an increase in waist size represents a decrease of the “energy-of-the-middle.”  In Chinese medicine this is associated with the energy of the stomach and the spleen.  Note, this is a little bit different than putting on weight in your hips and thighs, which I will discuss another time. 

The energy-of-the-middle is what takes in food, transforms it, and sends it to your muscles as energy.  In other words, it is your metabolic energy. 

I hear the following complaints a lot: 

    “My metabolism is shot.”
    “I just eat a little bit  and I still gain weight.” 
    “My appetite is low.” 
    “I have to work so hard to just lose an ounce.” 

These are just a few statements that point to weakness in the energy-of-the-middle.  I also get statements like

    “My thyroid is shot. I have no energy.” 

The energy of the stomach is closely associated with the thyroid in Chinese medicine and, I suspect thyroid issues occur along with weakness in the energy-of-the-middle.

Metabolic energy is important for losing weight.  It would be difficult to get too much of it.  The key strategy for maintaining a healthy weight is to first focus on where energy is weak.  Then you devise a strategy to build up where you are weak.   If you are interested in your own specific energetic issues, then I recommend you come in and let me test your energy meridians with the Digimeridian machine.   This can lead to some precise recommendations on how to help your own system with weight loss.  

Not always is weak energy the main cause for becoming overweight.  Often there is an excess or toxicity that leads to weakness of the-energy-of-the-middle.  The number one culprit here is the liver, which gets overheated and "invades" the-energy-of-the middle, weakening it.  In fact, it appears that a poorly functioning liver is at least a partial cause of most obesity. 

The liver is a subject for a future blog. 

 

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Posted in Chinese Medicine/Vital Energy Dimension, Disease Conditions, Weight loss | 18 Comments »

February 9th, 2010

Filling the Void of Conventional Health Wisdom

In thinking through the dilemmas we face in staying slim and healthy, one overriding problem trumps them all:  the absence of traditional health wisdom in our country.  If we had traditional wisdom, would we believe that taking Lipitor was an answer to our heart ailment?  If we had traditional wisdom, would America be reaching for the can of SlimFast, believing it to be the solution to obesity?  Would we believe that getting our gallbladder removed was the answer to our late-night gallstone attack?  The list is long.

Of course, we did have threads of traditional wisdom at one time, but they have been eradicated by science.  Every week the latest medical journals eradicate everything that preceded them.  Very few Americans know, for example, that homeopathy was a dominant medicine in our country for much of the 19th century.  We are a nation without a medical history, and worse, without a traditional cultural wisdom on how to stay healthy.   Now we are paying the multi-billion dollar price tag for it.

Although there may be a place for continual scientific revolution in the realm of electronics, it is doubtful if we are so well served in the realm of our health.  The irony is that if our exorbitant health care spending were suddenly slashed to nothing, after recovering from the shock, we would quickly work our way to being a much healthier country.  We would find out that most of what we spent on pharmaceutical drugs, surgeries, and other technology, in the end was not only unnecessary, but counter-productive.

The ancient traditions of China and India went into great detail on how to stay healthy.  Not only health, but happiness was the direct result of following the wisdom laid down by the ancients.  In India, the ancient Vedic scriptures defined “right living,” teaching you exactly what to do to stay healthy.  In China arose the great Taoist tradition, which emphasized being in tune with natural forces.  Although there have been refinements to this wisdom, very little has changed, and even today people still use it to live long and avoid medications and doctors.

The idea of “balance” or “staying in tune with nature” is central to most ancient cultural wisdom.  Listen to the attitude expressed in this excerpt from The Yellow Emperor’s Classic of Internal Medicine, written in China 4600 years ago:

I have heard that in ancient times the people lived to be over a hundred years, and yet they remained active and did not become decrepit in their activities.  But nowadays people reach only half of that age and yet become decrepit and failing.  Is it because the world changes from generation to generation?  Or is it because humankind is becoming negligent (of the laws of nature)?

Every morning, I wake up, do my qigong (an ancient Chinese breathing exercise), marvel at it, and wonder, with what do we fill the void?  How do we develop an intrinsic knowledge in our country about how to stay in balance?  Although I love the ancient Vedic system in India, I do not think it will ever take root in the US.   Acupuncture I think will become more mainstream here, but probably never will be used by a majority of us.  Chinese herbalism and the Chinese tradition of energy work (qiqong), on the other hand, have much greater adaptability.

We need to do some work on translation, developing our own language of energy and healing.  Then we need to develop channels of passing on the wisdom we gain.  Schools should begin the day with fifteen minutes of health practices that tap into ancient wisdom.  We should teach our children a holistic approach to food and eating and how to keep our bodies in tune with seasons.  It’s not that difficult.  The first step is realizing that most of what we do is not working.  The second step is accepting that our absence of traditional health wisdom is the main reason why.

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Posted in Energy Healing, Homeopathy info, Medicine and Society, Spirituality, The cosmos & medicine | No Comments »

January 11th, 2010

Just Alone in Space: Healing Deep Depression

It’s just despair.  I have no purpose really.  I don’t belong anywhere, he said.

Over the years, I have had cases of depression that seemingly nothing could touch.

To get a better idea of what one such case was like, read the following words, details of which have been changed.

I just don’t have any motivation. No fuel.  No energy.
I can fake it, but it’s just like an emptiness.

Describe it, I prompted.

Hollow, detached.
I’m just not connected to anything.  Just alone in space.
I’m like blank, a blank slate, no agenda, no nothing.

People deep in depression have a profound disconnection, as if something deep inside the person made the decision to withdraw.  Another dramatic example of this was a person who spoke so slowly it took me hours to get the case.  She slept way too much, and she couldn’t concentrate on what was going on.

I’m like numbed out, completely numb, she said.
I always get this feeling that I haven’t done enough.
I have remorse, guilt, a feeling of worthlessness.

I asked her to tell me more.  She continued,

I don’t have much feeling anymore.
I don’t get super excited, I don’t get super sad,  I get frustrated with myself.
I don’t feel any highs anymore.
I feel like I’m trying to grasp reality, trying to stay sane.

How to heal such disconnection?  The accepted medical solution is anti-depressants, because the source of the problem is declared “a brain chemistry abnormality.”  Too often, though, the results are not good enough.  Moreover, the downside of antidepressants are underplayed and insufficiently talked about.  The first is the sexual side effects, which can be devastating, particularly with young people.  Another is the addictive nature of anti-depressants.

This is why, for me, the first choice in treating depression is always to reach in to the actual energetic source of the depression and heal it with a precisely chosen homeopathic remedy.  On the surface, these two depressed patients sound similar.  Nevertheless, listen to each of these patients and you find a deeper feeling, an “explanation,” so to speak, of why they are disconnected.  The first man said,

I don’t trust many people.

Tell me about trust? I asked.

Sort of expecting something bad to happen, expecting people to be mean.  Having to sort of hide, being sort of guarded.  It’s like being a fugitive.  It’s like you want to trust people but you can’t.  If you trust people they can hurt you.

Compare this with the other case.  Listen as she talks about her isolation.

It’s almost like you are in a bubble.  You see what’s going on, but you are unable to participate in anything.
You’re invisible.  Your substance is there but people look right past you.
It’s the worst feeling, not being on common ground with anybody.
It’s like reacting, in a certain way that other people think is inappropriate.  You are laughing at something inappropriate,  yet it’s not familiar.  It’s not their norms.  It’s completely foreign.

This is a different situation from the first case.  In this case the disconnection is in the state itself.  This person spoke as if she wasn’t part of this world.  In the first case, the disconnection is a reaction to the feeling of distrust, like someone hiding from a dangerous enemy.  It’s as if something in the  thoughts whispers, “Retreat and hide or you will be hurt!”

After taking a precisely chosen homeopathic remedy that matched the energy of their respective feelings, both of them shifted toward connection and happiness.  I gave the first case a remedy potentized from a spider source.  The second case I gave a remedy potentized from a gas.

In follow-up, the first case told me,

I’m much happier.  I feel much less isolated.  I’m not as angry and am getting along with people better.

The second case put it differently.

I feel like I’m actually alive again, able to like communicate with a lot of people.  Feels like I’m in tune with what is going on.  I wake up in the morning, and I’m not just dragging around.   My attention span is a lot better.  I feel more involved in whatever I’m doing.  It’s really refreshing.

When did it start? I asked.

Maybe a week after I took the remedy.

There is no better way to heal deep depression.  Classical homeopathy offers hope to those who feel isolated and withdrawn.

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Posted in Case Studies, Disease Conditions | 6 Comments »

December 21st, 2009

On Milk Products…and Ghee

I’m a big fan of clarified butter, or, as it is called in Ayurvedic medicine, “ghee”  (pronounced with hard g as in “go” and ee as in “glee”).   In working with people on weight loss, I am confirming that ghee is an excellent fat for weight maintenance.

Ghee is butter with the milk protein skimmed off.  Ghee is used extensively in Ayurvedic medicines.  Ayurvedic doctors consider this fat to have many health benefits, as follows:

▪    It maintains the lining of the stomach, protecting it from excess acid.
▪    It is very resistant to free radical damage, so it delivers fatty acids and cholesterol in a pure form that can be safely utilized by the body’s cells.  It is maintained that cholesterol is good for the body unless it is subject to free radical damage.   Unfortunately, we usually get cholesterol from very unhealthy sources.
▪    It is said to promote the functioning of the mind–learning, memory, and recall.  It is interesting to note that low stomach energy is associated with poor mental functioning in Chinese medicine..
▪    It is said that the cholesterol in ghee helps balance the bile.  A balanced bile helps prevent gallstones.  Moreover, cholesterol in its pure form supports the production of many important hormones.

Ghee can be used along with flax seed oil as a superb fat.  Any time I cook in oil using medium or high heat I tend to use ghee because it is extremely stable.  That is, it does not change into a toxic, liver clogging substance when cooked on high heat.  Get some!

Why skim off the milk protein?  To answer, I also need to discuss milk.  Don’t drink cow’s milk!

First off, milk is mostly sugar.  It is phlegm producing–i.e. it creates mucous, makes you sluggish, and promotes weight gain.  But there is a deeper problem.

If we were lucky, we were breast fed for well over a year.  Because a baby’s small intestine is not fully developed, the intestinal wall is very leaky and permeable.  This is how it’s supposed to be, because the mother’s breast milk reaches the small intestine and rushes into the blood stream.  This supports the baby’s need for lots of calories and nutrients during the first year of life.

Breast feeding has been unpopular in the US.  Thus, with a good percentage of infants, the mother quickly switches them to a cow’s milk formula, given by bottle, and problems begin.  The cow’s milk hits the baby’s small intestine…and goes rushing into the blood stream.  We are humans, not cows, and this is a shock for the baby’s undeveloped immune system, which overreacts by creating antibodies against the cow’s milk.  This is the reason such a high percentage of Americans have an allergy to cow’s milk.
There is a good chance that you have an allergy to cow’s milk.  This is true even if you have no obvious symptoms when you drink milk.  Nevertheless, if you have even a mild allergy, drinking milk will tie up some of your immune system.  Here are my recommendations:

▪    Avoid all cow’s milk
▪    Avoid as well cheese and yogurt made of cow’s milk.
▪    Cheese of goat or sheep is OK.
▪    Yogurt or kefir made of sheep or goat’s milk is good.
▪    If you have to drink milk, use goat’s milk or sheep’s milk.

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Posted in Alternative Medicine Basics, Weight loss | 10 Comments »

December 14th, 2009

Myths about Weight Loss

When it comes to dieting and losing weight, consider the following, and mark True or False:

1.  Overeating, i.e. taking in more calories than one needs, causes weight gain.   
2.  If you restrict your calorie intake enough you are guaranteed to lose weight or at least stay the same.   
3.  Exercise regularly and you will lose weight. 
4.  Eat a low-fat diet and it will help you lose weight. 
 
Let’s examine these in order.

First of all, many people overeat constantly and never gain weight.  Conversely, many people restrict calorie intake–even severely restrict it–and still gain weight.  Both #1 and #2 are false.  Overeating is not the cause of becoming overweight.  Under eating is not the cause of slimming down.

#3 and #4 are a couple of the more astonishing myths of the last-half century, only this time they have been spread by experts who are supposed to know–doctors.  Have you gone to your doctor recently, complaining that you want to slim down?  What does he tell you?  He tells you to eat non-fattening foods and exercise.  What has been the outcome of these recommendations?  All but the lucky few have gotten fatter.

So why do we persist in running the same old treadmill?  Why not call a failure a failure? 

It is difficult to argue against the obvious:  of course eating too much makes us fatter, particularly too many fattening foods.  Everyone knows this.  The only problem is that it is wrong. 

Money has to be another part of the reason.  Somebody has to be making money on these myths.  The first culprit is the food industry.

Let’s be accurate:  overeating does not cause weight gain, fat production does.  The two are different.  Some people can overeat like crazy and their fat cells don’t get very excited.  They stay slim. 

What causes fat cells to produce fat?  This is the billion dollar question, which no researcher has been able to exactly answer.  What can be said is that fat production and becoming overweight is a hormonal problem.  If you are more than 25 pounds overweight, you have a hormonal imbalance, and likely multiple hormones are involved.  

A major hormonal player is insulin.  Insulin has been called “the hormone of abundance.”  When abundance comes into your life you can become a “fat cat,”  and this is what tends to happen when your body produces a lot of insulin.  Once you get to be 25 pounds overweight, the insulin system gets stuck in overdrive.  Because you are fat, you produce more insulin.  Because you produce more insulin, you crave sugar, and because you answer the cravings with eating more sugar, you produce more insulin.  This vicious circle causes the fat to get fatter.

I have been working on treatment regimens to interrupt this vicious cycle and correct the underlying hormonal imbalances.  Patients are already doing it and finding success.  Feel free to talk to me about it.  For right now, just a few pointers about the protocol:

1.  Don’t buy any foods that say “low fat.”  Low fat means “high sugar.”  Avoid milk, but if you have to use it in your coffee, use cream instead.
2.  In general, avoid ALL processed flours and sugars.  In fact, avoid all processed anything.  That’s 80% of what is at your grocery store.   
3.  Get to sleep at night early and sleep long.  (Staying up too late aggravates the hormonal imbalances.) 
4.  Eat lots of good fats.  These include olive oil, ghee, coconut oil, avocado oil, and flax seed oi. Unless you take them with gobs of sugar, they will help you slim down.  When you fry foods make sure you match the oil to whether you are cooking low, medium or high heat.  And don’t be overly scared of butter, which although not in the category of “good fat,” it is in a neutral category, i.e. it won’t in itself cause you to get fatter. 
5.  Exercise in moderation.  Realize that it will cause you to become hungrier, but not thinner.  I prefer activities where deep, rhythmic breathing are key.  Yoga is a great example. 

 

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Posted in Alternative Medicine Basics, Disease Conditions, Weight loss | 5 Comments »

June 11th, 2009

Treating Diabetes

My energy is erratic, she said.

I do too much, or I just don’t want to do anything at all.
I feel really uncomfortable in my body right now.  I don’t quite fit.  I think if something is going to happen it’s going to happen soon.  It’s scary.

Over the years, two themes stand out in cases of people with diabetes, a disorder where blood sugars are too high.  By this I do not mean that these are the only possible themes.  It is what I have observed.  The first theme is a certain instability, as exemplified by this case.  She told me,

I feel like I’m kind of frozen in some way.   I feel unsure of what I’m doing.  Unsure of my body.  Unsure of my mental capabilities…I feel kind of fuzzy in the head.  My memory is not consistent.

This lack of consistency occurs in all her symptoms, physical as well as emotional.  It is not surprising when she says,

My blood sugars have been all over the place.

The second major theme I have seen in diabetes is different, but in some way connected.  In this example, I asked my patient what bothered her the most, and she told me,

I miss companionship.  I wish I had more connections. That’s the thing I miss the most, some kind of family.  I have my children, but they are all over.

Later on in the case she came at this from a different angle.  She told me:

I was the only child.  My parents were not very nurturing.  I don’t think my parents knew how to be parents.  There was much more of a “feed-em-and-clothe-‘em-and-call-‘em-from-the-porch-for-dinner” attitude when I grew up.  My parents were so busy with their own problems.  They didn’t have a lot of useful input for me.

I would sum up this 2nd theme as “I didn’t get the sweetness.”  We nurture from the mother’s breast, and interestingly, homeopathic remedies made from milks of animals are strongly associated with diabetes.  The feeling these patients often have is that they nurtured at a “bad breast.”  They didn’t get the sweetness.

Notice how the pattern repeats when she became a mother:

I had my first child and suddenly I had to do everything based on the needs of that child.  I couldn’t maintain my house, cook, do chores, read or relax.  It’s pretty overwhelming having a new baby.  It’s not that I objected to having her, but I felt sucked down the drain.

We are  not surprised to hear her children are “all over,” because we get the sense that she is not so close to them.  It is likely her children did not feel well-nurtured themselves.

People with diabetes often have issues of distrust and control.  These issues are particularly aggravated in doctors’ offices.  It takes care to gently bring these patients to health.  Nevertheless, from a homeopathic perspective, diabetes cases are often not that difficult to heal.  In my experience, a well-prescribed homeopathic remedy stabilizes blood sugars quickly.  It brings a profound emotional shift, because the instability, distrust, and resentment resolve along with the blood sugars.  From a homeopathic perspective, you cannot heal the blood sugar instability without bringing the emotional shift as well.

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Posted in Case Studies, Disease Conditions | 3 Comments »

May 11th, 2009

Healing Lyme Disease

My internal driver feels like it is shut off, she said.   It’s not like me to sit in this woe is me place.  I want to eat without feeling miserable,  I get migraines.  I get aches and pains.  I’ll be sitting around and I’ll get crushing finger pain.  I will be lying around and my toes hurt like crazy, like they are in a vice.

She was 43 years old and could barely stand up out of the chair in front of me.  At the onset of her disease she could not walk up a few stairs without feeling my heart bounding out of my chest.  If this was not bad enough, there was the treatment:  several months of antibiotics.  She ended up on IV doxycycline, which she  stayed on for three months.  She told me, I was deathly afraid of coming off the IV antibiotics.

She did not want  to live on IV antibiotics for the rest of her life.  Seeking another answer, she ended up in my office.

Such a story is common when one hears about  Lyme disease.  It is a serious matter, and the extent of which it affects our population is difficult to appreciate.  (See this short video on youtube for a further look into it:  Lyme disease video.)

One of the many confusing factors surrounding Lyme disease is that it is so often misdiagnosed.  Lyme disease has become the new  “great imposter.”  It has taken over this role from syphilis, which before the discovery of antibiotics, was much more common.  Syphlilis, like Lyme disease, can produce a huge array of symptoms and was able to mimic many different diseases.   Affecting internal organs as well as the skin, both these diseases may require a healthy bit of suspicion on the part of the doctor.  In fact, today physicians frequently order a Lyme disease lab test if a patient has symptoms without any obvious cause.

A while back, I had a patient with chronic fatigue whose tests had turned up a suspicion of Lyme.  As is often the case, the Lyme test was inconclusive.  Did he have Lyme?  Had he had Lyme?  Would antibiotics help his chronic fatigue?  So far a course of antibiotics had done nothing.  It is frustrating and confusing to patients and physicians alike.

If you have any strange symptoms, particularly affecting your joints, it is best to be keep a healthy suspicion.  This is particularly true if you are in areas where the tiny deer tick lives, such as Long Island, New York.  The Center for Disease Control data tells us that approximately 70-80% of people who get Lyme disease have a rash that clears in the center.  From the many stories of people contracting Lyme without such a rash, one wonders if this percentage is exaggerated.

But to return to this patient’s case, after a few months I found  a homeopathic remedy that allowed her to heal.   Here is her testimony:

I could barely function at a minimal level and the fatigue and body pain was overwhelming. Through partnering with Dr. Branch, I have been given a whole new lease on my life. I feel better than ever, and people I know continuously comment on my healthy transformation.

Classical homeopathy represents a powerful healing resource for people with Lyme disease.  In this particular case, my feeling was that the disease had affected her heart, which Lyme can do.  Even though studies of her heart showed it was beating normally, there were strong indications that there was weakness in her heart muscle.  Classical homeopathy can help those with heart failure.  I have seen evidence for this in my office.

Today I have many tools to approach the treatment of Lyme disease.  This is a complex disease that often can benefit from a multi-dimensional approach.  In addition to treatment with classical homeopathy, I assess the energy of the acupuncture meridians and develop a strategy around treatment with Chinese medicine, which may include working with an acupuncturist.  I generally will use the herb Una de gato (cat’s claw) to help with the immunity, giving this in the form of Arcozon from Amazon Herbs Company.  Depending on the case, I may use some other herbal or nutritional therapy.

This disease for many can be difficult, but precise treatment can work wonders.

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Posted in Case Studies, Disease Conditions | 342 Comments »

March 21st, 2009

A case of Chronic Leukemia

I have had a number of tragedies in last few years, I try not to dwell on it, she said.

This woman, in her 70s, had come to for help in treating her leukemia, a cancer of the blood.  Although deeply concerned about her health, she focused on  difficulties in her emotional life during our interview.  She told me,

Divorce is almost worse than death.  I have seen so many people hurt.  The whole family is devastated, and it never stops, we are still picking up pieces.

She paused.  I feel like I’m out there alone.

Although her leukemia was a slow-progressing kind, it was making her increasingly fatigued.  We can observe a certain emotional fatigue in her words as well, for example when she says, “and it never stops, we are still picking up the pieces.” Hers is not a vitality that immediately picks itself up and dusts itself off after one of life’s blows.  We get the sense that she is numb from repeated shocks.  On describing the effects of having a close friend die, she said,

You go numb.  You almost wilt; your strength leaves you.

In some way, this feeling “the strength leaves you,” ties in with her fatigue.  This relates to her leukemia, which was progressively sapping her of strength, as her blood became more and more diseased.  Which came first, the emotional fatigue, or the leukemia?  There is no way to know.

To find out what was happening, I needed to go deeper.  I had to further explore the feeling she had of being alone.  Reaching back to her childhood, she told me,

I never felt anyone would stick up for me.  My mother resents that I learned to stick up for myself.  I knew I had to do it myself,  I knew I couldn’t depend on her.  I was just independent.

There was a detachment to her state.  She used the words “aloof” and “cold.”  She also used the term “putting up a wall,” and it began early with her mother.   Drawing from her sensitivity and the specifics of her detachment and aloneness, I gave her a plant remedy from the Malvales family.  This is the family from which we get cocoa and chocolate.

This remedy has given her much strength over the past 7 years.  I have needed to repeat it often because she would periodically fall back into a state of feeling shock or fatigue or alone.  For her, all three of these are connected.  The energetic strength in the homeopathic remedy enabled her to hold the line.

In the first part of her treatment, her leukemia stalled out in progressing.  Originally she was told by her oncologist that her white blood cell count would keep rising as her cancer progressed.  To the contrary, her white blood cell count simply stopped increasing and held steady.  This is something that can happen in homeopathic treatment of slow-moving, debilitating diseases.  Many neurological diseases, such as Parkinson’s, fall under this category.  As a homeopathic doctor, you can give a Parkinson’s patient an exact prescription and the disease stops progressing.  It is another reason why it is best to seek homeopathic treatment sooner rather than later.

The good news in this case is that, after stalling out for a few years, after continued homeopathic treatment her blood counts returned to normal.  In her latest appointment with the oncologist, he had nothing to do and told her to come back for a check-up in a year.   Is this a “cure”?  After five years of improvement culminating with normal blood tests, things are looking good.

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Posted in Case Studies, Disease Conditions | 2 Comments »

March 5th, 2009

Cellular Memory–and its Relationship to Classical Homeopathy

I heard a true story recently that brings insight into life and healing.  It is about an eight year-old girl who had a heart transplant.  The story is related by members of her transplant team.  Malcolm Robinson has written about it, Case 6 in his studies of cellular memory. 

The donor heart for her transplant had become available with the sudden death of a woman.  The transplant went well.  The only hitch in her treatment came a few months later.  The girl began having vivid nightmares.  In these terrible dreams she was being attacked and stabbed to death by a man.  The dream would repeat, revealing a new detail.  The panic, and the being stabbed remained the same. 

This waking up at night in abject fear was traumatic for the girl.  Moreover, it was unusual–the girl had never had nightmares like this before.  They were entirely new and out of context.

Members of her team, which included psychiatric care, puzzled over this, and finally, as the girl continued to have these disturbing nightmares, one of them delved deeper into the matter.   What turned up is both astonishing and, in the end, the most “logical” explanation. 

The woman to whom the heart originally belonged was the victim of an attack and had died suddenly:  she was stabbed to death.  The dreams of the girl who had received the transplanted heart exactly reflected her violent demise.  Based on the details of these dreams, the attacker was caught and tried.  In some way, the cells of this woman’s heart carried the memory of her traumatic, violent end, and this cellular memory was transplanted with the heart.  

Cellular memory is some form of energy–an energy powerful enough to stir up intense fear and nightmares.  This energy is not yet measurable by any machine yet invented by biomedical technology–and without this “proof” many scientists would deny its existence.  Nevertheless, almost all of us have experiences that are difficult to explain in any other way.

Cellular memory has a close relationship to classical homeopathy.  The preparation of a homeopathic remedy involves extensive dilution and shaking of each dilution, leaving no trace of the original substance.  There is only the “memory” left in the triple distilled alcohol of the original substance.  This leads me to believe that homeopathy works on a similar energetic plane as cellular memory.  In the same way as the cellular memory from a transplanted organ can disturb a woman’s dreams, a small, infinitesimal dose of substance in a homeopathic remedy can energetically match and shift an ill patient to health.  

Classical homeopathy likely affords the deepest  energetic therapy we have. It is able to reach places and heal problems where everything else has failed.

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Posted in Alternative Medicine Basics, Energy Healing, Homeopathy info, Spirituality, The cosmos & medicine | 1 Comment »

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