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


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The Alternative Healer

Archive for the ‘Practice info’ Category


The Alternative Treatment of Cancer

Monday, June 18th, 2007

I have had some inquiries about my approach to cancer. It is a good question, because there needs to be an alternative approach to cancer. Let me give an example of why:

A few years ago a woman in her 80s presented at my office for treatment of her fatigue. I gave her a homeopathic remedy, and over the space of a couple months, her fatigue was gradually improving. Her progress was interrupted. Her allopathic doctor discovered a large mass in her lung. A biopsy was taken and a diagnosis of lung cancer came from the pathologist. Her doctor immediately sent her to the oncologist. This oncologist ended the appointment by telling her—the way a family member tells it he practically called it out over his shoulder while walking out the door—“You’ll start chemotherapy on Monday.”

After the first chemotherapy treatment her fatigue not only returned, it markedly increased. A month after starting chemotherapy she was dead. For me the most problematic part of this is that she did not want chemotherapy. I know this because she told me. A few members of her family urged her to have it. Her personality was such that she followed the oncologists’s order and bowed to the wishes of desperate family members, who were unable to deal with her—or their own—mortality. Not everyone in her family wanted her to have chemotherapy; it became a family deeply divided. After her death, there was anger and bitterness to process along with the grief. It was a disaster, medicine at its worst, and it all came with a million-dollar price tag. Perhaps needless to say, my opinion of oncology, never good to begin with, darkened, and has never quite recovered.

As this story suggests, chemotherapy is often an “eyewash,” which does little to cure the cancer. There are some very important exceptions, of course, and it is important to know what these are—and to have a doctor who will tell you if you are unable to dig to find out for yourself. There are situations where I would choose chemotherapy if I had cancer, but not many. Given how debilitating chemotherapy tends to be, its low probability of cure in most instances, not to mention its enormous cost, alternatives are necessary.

From my perspective, cancer arises from deep, 4th level (if not even deeper) dynamics, and I can always see what is being expressed by the cancer after taking a good case. The problem is that cancer arises from the 4th level but soon becomes an overwhelming 1st level (physical/material) reality. Overwhelming 1st level problems (a broken bone, e.g.) need an approach at that level. Thus, even the best homeopaths have had difficulty treating it from the classical approach, because shifting the 4th level with an accurate prescription usually does not allow the 1st level disease to shift. It seems that cancer cells ignore the message to heal. It is because of this that an aggressive, often toxic 1st level treatment can be effective in many instances and needs to be considered.

For some time now, there has been a non-classical approach homeopathic approach to cancer. The approach has been more multiple-remedy homeopathy focused straight at the 1st level physical disease. Because I have strongly focused on 4th level treatment, I was not keen on hearing about it. I did have to admit that some of the stories of success may have been true. As I have come to acknowledge that cancer needs a 1st level approach, I have shifted my perspective. My current approach to cancer is as follows:

1) Take the case deep (4th level) and give the appropriate 4th level homeopathic remedy

2) Go after the cancer itself (1st or physical level) with low potency homeopathic remedies, taken on a daily basis, that equate with the physical disease.

3)  Give a well-honed, immune-boosting nutriceutical protocol. 

4)  Give a nutriceutical detoxification protocol 

5)  If available, use an acupuncturist who knows how to unload the tremendous toxicity that develops in the meridians (3rd level). See my following blog from last year to read about this: Share on Facebook

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Getting Off Anti-Depressants

Friday, May 11th, 2007

How to get off anti-depressant drugs—and psychotropic, mind-altering drugs in general—is an issue I deal with it all the time in my practice. It was interesting to read the story of one man’s journey on and off anti-depressants, as detailed in an article in the New York Times Magazine. Find it at Self Non-Medication In this article much important information is discussed, and I recommend it for anyone taking anti-depressants.

My general policy in my practice is that when the patient is getting better, and I see improvements in their well-being and their state, then I have a discussion on tapering off anti-depressants. Overall, most of my patients have not encountered much difficulty. Occasionally it will be bumpy, mainly because the homeopathic case needs more attention.

Even when feeling good, there are good reasons for people to get off anti-depressants. One is the “numbing effect” that anti-depressants tend to have. One often does not experience a full-range of emotion while on them. This is discussed in the New York Times article. Perhaps the best known side-effect is the loss of sexual desire, which I commonly see in people taking them. There are also issues of weight gain in certain people–a common issue in psychotropic medications. One thing not talked about much is the effect anti-depressants can have on dental health. Because they tend to reduce saliva in the mouth, and saliva is a major factor in the health of the gums, anti-depressants can predispose to bacteria overgrowth and the resulting bad effects of gum disease. Anti-depressants likely have other harmful long-term effects on certain individuals that are difficult to pick up.

In getting off an anti-depressant, one important consideration is the half-life of the particular drug. The half-life refers to the time any given drug stays in the blood stream before it is broken down and excreted. Those with short-half lives—such as Zoloft and Effexor–often are much more difficult to discontinue. If there is a problem, the doctor can switch the patient to Prozac, which stays in the blood stream a long time and gradually tapers off by itself. Nevertheless, in my practice, I have rarely found it to be necessary to switch people from Effexor to Prozac. The key point, based on my experience, is give the patient a deep-acting prescription, and psychiatric medications lose their importance for the patient’s feeling of well-being.

Occasionally I will get a new patient who tells me, “You can treat me with homeopathy, but no way are you touching my psychiatric meds.” Usually they have attempted to get off them before and spiralled relentlessly downward. I am fine with this; in fact, it makes a good marker. Always it is the patient’s choice. I give a remedy, and if the patient makes a jump forward, usually he reaches a point where his attitude shifts. When he tells me, “OK, you can taper my meds,” then I know for sure my prescription was dead on. Patients can feel when they are better at a deep level.

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Adolescent Depression

Sunday, April 29th, 2007

I enjoy treating adolescents, because to give them a deep-acting homeopathic remedy changes the rest of their life. They often come into my office dressed angrily, ill at ease in their own bodies and in the world. One of my more interesting cases recently came dressed entirely in black, with an occasional skull and cross bones. He stared at me sullenly, wondering why he was here. His mother, of course, dragged him in to see me. He had been suicidal.

I asked him what bothered him. He told me:

Memories that are plaguing me.
People know things about me that I don’t really want them to.
Things that I don’t really want to talk about.

Then he went immediately to his dreams:

My dreams, in most of them I die. I am hacked into little tiny pieces by pirates. I’m somewhere and being shot. Various ways of dying. Maybe falling off of a really tall building.

I asked him what happened in these dreams where he died.

I go through all the pain that would come with the dying. It goes black and I go into a different dream.

I asked him about the dream of the pirates.

I was in a pirate’s ship. They found out that I was there and hung me up in the ropes on the deck. Cut me open. It happened a bunch of times. I bleed and fall down, go back to things as usual. Another time, they put me up and sliced open my throat. I was only hanging by a vertebra. The ‘me’ that was up in the ropes fell down and died. Then I was another person. I didn’t feel much. I didn’t really feel them slicing me open. After I fell down they hacked me into tiny pieces.

Is it surprising he is depressed? No. Most important, look at the form his depression is taking. Every depression is something exactly specific to itself.

Later in the case, I asked him directly about his nature. He told me,

I have a tendency to forget things that matter, like schoolwork.
Things that have been traumatizing in one shape or form

Notice this word traumatizing. It is the key to the entire case. I asked him to tell me more about trauma.

I guess it’s something that happens in a way that you can’t forget. To me it was just traumatizing the way it happened and why.

This brings us back to his chief complaint, about the memories that plagued him. These memories he directly related to trauma. It was a strange, illogical jump. How would we know this without sitting in front of him and seeking to understand his experience, carefully asking him what he felt? It was important to find out specifically what trauma meant to him. He said

The medical aspect of it is a big head injury. Emotional trauma, something that has happened in such away that it hurts.

How does it hurt?

Kind of that burning pain. It’s almost like I want to take a spoon and gouge out that part of my brain that makes me remember.

Not surprising that at the physical level he had a tendency to hurt himself. He would reach a point where the pain would be so much he would hit his head against the wall or even cut himself. When he felt hurt by other people, he wanted to punch them. This is simply the outer reflection of the inner sense of being injured.

His entire case was about injury and trying to manage the pain of a wound. It made no difference whether he was talking about emotional or physical. To him, trauma at the emotional level or physical level were essentially the same. Thus, the physical plane punching or bruising intersected his deep consciousness in the idea of “injury” or “trauma.”

Many people are familiar with the remedy Arnica, from the daisy family, which is used to treat bruises. Arnica is a remedy for trauma. If you fall and hit your knee on a rock, causing a big bruise, taking a dose of Arnica will likely cause the bruise to disappear quickly. Other remedies in the daisy family treat injury and trauma as well. The remedy I gave this young man was a plant from the daisy family, Echinacea prepared homeopathically in the 200th dilution. This is the purple coneflower. Echinaceae has been a hot topic around treatment and prevention of the common cold. The herbal use of Echinacea has never impressed me. However for a case like this one, in homeopathic form, it is a different story.

This patient came back a month later and his entire energy had changed. He was one of those cases that you could tell from the moment he entered the office that something deep had shifted. He had a new lightness and reported to me that he had been happy since taking the remedy. His speech and dreams notably contained much less much less violence. This is the wonder of homeopathy.

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Notes from my Trip to Bermuda

Sunday, March 18th, 2007

One of the things I tend to dislike about blogs is all the uninteresting, personal information that bloggers churn out. I avoid it. Nevertheless, perhaps once in a while it is ok. To that end, I include a few notes on my recent trip to Bermuda.

I have friends, Sarah McCann and Chris Lytle, who invited me out to Bermuda. They have spent time there 11 out of the last 12 years. Chris is an internationally-known professional speaker. Sarah is the CEO of Apex Performance Systems, which used to be based in Madison, WI and now is in Chicago. Sarah is also known by her pen name, Zola Gorgon. Zola writes a weekly newsletter on cooking and entertaining that goes out all over the world. See her website www.dinnerwithzola.com and sign up for her weekly column. You’ll soon see some of the things I feasted on in Bermuda. Sarah is an amazing hostess.

After a day wheeling around the island on our scooters, taking in the turquoise water and pink sand, Sarah and I chatted about marketing, and, specifically, about the marketing of homeopathy. Sarah, who has spent years at the helm of Apex, is no stranger to networking and marketing, She has been helped enormously by homeopathy. Nevertheless, she has had difficulty talking many of her friends in poor health into seeing me. She said to me the other night, “I don’t know how you do it.” It’s true, learning the discipline, marketing and talking about homeopathy, building a business, and somehow having a life in the midst of it all has been challenging.

I have done it out of love, but I admit to having some dark times along the way. I think of that Lou Reed song “It takes a busload of faith to get by.” Of course this is a line that many people could use in many different situations. It has taken a lot trust in who I am and what I want to accomplish to keep marching on. I have always, always tried to keep my therapeutic intention focused, well-honed, and pure.

An admission: I worked a little bit in Bermuda. Not a lot. I find doing a bit of case study when I’m relaxed on vacation can be both productive and enjoyable. Still, I have “an issue” with working while I’m on vacation. Next time I’m going to try for a record: three days without work.

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Psychotherapy, Homeopathy, and Beverly Hills

Thursday, February 1st, 2007

On Jan 22nd two prominent Beverly Hills psychotherapists, Dr. La Wanda Katzman-Staenberg and Dr Shirly Impellizzeri, hosted a presentation on homeopathy at a posh Beverly Hills club.  I spoke at this event with two of my favorite and closest colleagues, Dr Malcolm Smith, a naturopath from Portland, OR, and Dr. Robert Gramlich, an LA homeopath.  A private audience of about 60 people attended, which included a number of Beverly Hills notables, filmmakers, friends of the psychotherapists, and well-known hollywood celebrities. 

I spoke because Dr. Katzman-Staenberg invited me.  It was a curious link-up.  I happened to treat one of her patients who lived in New York.  This patient underwent a dramatic change after a deep-acting remedy.  I fell out of contact with this person, but Dr. Staenberg witnessed it in Los Angeles.  She also has a connection through her daughter to Wisconsin, and there has been some dramatic changes in these people as well.  They watched my talk on the four levels and when it was heard that I was going to be in California, there was talk of me joining up and speaking with Dr. Smith and Dr. Gramlich. my two colleagues who have been become connected with these two psychotherapists.  Both Dr. Smith and Dr. Gramlich are first-rate homeopaths who have been producing wonderful results in the Beverly Hills community. 

Dr. Katzman-Staenberg and Dr. Impellizzeri are psychotherapists who specialize in working with creative people in the Beverly Hills community.  Highly intelligent and perceptive, they like to be on the cutting edge, pushing the envelope for their high-profile clients–and that includes finding top homeopaths for them.  At the end of our talk they both spoke and strongly endorsed homeopathy, saying that the results they have seen from homeopathy are second to none.  Homeopathy can reach to a level that psychotherapy cannot. 

I spoke first, followed by Dr. Gramlich.  Dr. Smith spoke last and presented a video presentation of some of his patients.  Although I had heard about it, I had not seen this before.  I have since heard through the grapevine that the audience was as impressed as I was.  Well-edited and presented, the videos showed what can happen with great homeopathic treatment.  The video captured some truly dramatic changes on tape.  I only wish that I could put the presentation on this blog site, but patient confidentiality issues prevent Dr. Smith from releasing it. 

For me, after being holed up alone in my office for seven years, trying to take the discipline to its full potential, facing my own contradictions, and undergoing more than just a few attacks, to end up speaking to a well-connected Beverly Hills crowd was heart-warming, reaffirming, and a tad bit strange.  The personal message was "press on."   

Dr. Smith has been working towards making a documentary on homeopathy.  Some of the audience at our talk have the ability to help him make that happen.  Stay tuned for the three of us to join together for more presentations in the future. 

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A Case of Bipolar

Monday, December 4th, 2006

A while back I took a case of an 11 year old child diagnosed with bipolar disease.  “Bipolar” in this case meant depressed with swings to fits of rage.  She also had trouble concentrating.  Her mother told me, “She just isn’t engaged.  She looks lost.” 

A delightful child, the first thing she said when they came into my office was, “Can we call you again if we get lost?”  There seemed to be two different meanings of “lost” in her case. 

It was evident from the start what the mother meant, because I would frequently find the child staring off into space.  Asking her questions led to some curious answers, leading me down blind alleys.  The homeopath ended up lost too.  Not a good situation!

This case took some work to understand.  Some cases are “slippery,” meaning that you think you are on it, have it right in your grasp, only to be mercilessly humbled for your hubris.  This child was certainly such an example, and I worked on the case for a few months, with no deep change.   Then I gave her another remedy, and lost her to follow-up.  I assumed there was no improvement and the mother had lost patience.

This eventually brought a lesson.  Every case matters to me.  I hate failures, probably more passionately than the average.  Over the next few months she would come to mind, and I would worry it a bit, cussing myself for missing her remedy.  It was probably a full six to seven months later that an email from the mother arrived in my inbox.  She told me that her daughter had been completely cured with the last dose.  She was happy, doing well in school.  Things were great.  The mother just wanted to check in with me to give an update.  To think I had put myself through all that psychic turmoil for nothing.  What a waste.  I’m sure there were plenty other cases that could have used a little extra worry for good measure

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Trauma

Thursday, November 30th, 2006

Earlier this week I emerged from my office thinking, “Life is traumatic.”  Preceding that time, devastated by an incomprehensible string of events that life can throw at us, I went to an appointment with Julie Wilke (see my blogs on Network Spinal Analysis under the category Therapies).   Before she started the entrainment, she sat down beside me, and, without skipping a beat, reached her hand over my heart. She held it there, about an inch away from me, moving it back and forth slightly to better tune in.  Not a word needed to be spoken.  I felt like there was a huge hole there.  I wonder:  how did she know so quickly?   

My day started with a “heart of darkness” case, a girl in her early teens.  She only spoke for 15 minutes, telling me the most basic things, before her case ground to a halt.  I asked her a question to move her further, and she would tell me, ‘I don’t like thinking about that,” or “I don’t know what I feel about that.”  And there it ended:  crisis for a homeopath, because 75% of the case was buried.   

Figuratively speaking I began to search out different entrances into this patient’s “house.”   I knocked on the door;  I tapped on the window; tried to get down the chimney; looked for a door into the basement.  Through dogged effort and some sleight of hand to get her talking, her inner story began to emerge.  She felt profoundly rejected, maintaining that the world was full of “mean" people.  But as I delved further I was startled to learn what was implied by “mean.”  Images of torture begin to emerge, of nice and "polite" people who turned on you and murdered you.  Close on the heels were images from horror movies.  Her main image:  the torturer put things inside of a person, which forced them to “cut themselves open to get it out.” 

It was an emotionally exhausting and painful case.  Where do our states come from?  Then came a woman who had been doing wonderfully on her remedy, but recently had slipped back because of a relationship that had gone terribly wrong.  I had repeated the remedy, she snapped back; yet then, about a week later had slipped back again, as the fall-out from this relationship continued to pummel her.  This begged the question of whether she needed a higher potency.

Later came another teen who had been fighting both internally with herself and externally with her parents.  Presenting initially with an eating disorder, she was on a good remedy and had been doing great.  Yet the pressure of being a teen at a new school was proving difficult, and she was swinging periodically into “anger and depression.”  She was expressing this through listening to heavy metal music, which shocked and worried her parents.  They had reacted by taking away her ipod.  I repeated her remedy, confident that things would go well,   

This last case was actually a slice of sun shining through in a day, full of darkness, when patients seemed to lean forward and whisper, “Is it all really worth it?”   

It reminds me of a poem I copied down long ago:

From the blue and black bodies
that walk at times through my soul
come voices and signs that someone interprets.
It’s dark as the sun
this desire.  Mysterious and grave
as an ant dragging away the wing of a butterfly
or as the yes that we say when things ask us
–do you want to live?

(“From the Bodies”  by Jaime Sabines.  Translated W.S. Merwin) 

For those of you who have not read the poem by Len Roberts called Acupuncture and Healing at age 48, I recommend you do so.  Find it on my blog Body and Emotions from Aug 26th.  This poem, more than any I have seen, shows how the body processes the trauma of living. 

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Human Potential

Wednesday, October 4th, 2006

I have been in Colorado for a few days, visiting a close friend.  I have been preparing for a talk I give in Madison 10:00am on Friday.  The talk, addressing human potential, will discuss medicine and classical homeopathy from this vantage point. 

The dawn, or perhaps rebirth, of alternative medicine in North America came in the 1970s.  The 1960s, with its emphasis on new avenues of consciousness, represented a deep shift in our spiritual landscape.  Reflecting this shift, alternative medicines addressing body and mind at once began to arise.  That small stream has now become a large river, which I joined in the 1990s. 

I opened my practice in Madison exactly seven years ago, and perhaps the timing of this talk is fitting, because it will be rich in the symbolism of 7.  In the biblical story God took seven days to create; the 7th day he rested, not for the purpose of rest in itself, but to allow the emergence of a higher order from the preceding chaos.  Following this deeper meaning of 7 in my own way, I will sum up what it has taken seven hard-fought years to figure out. 

Why make the choice to set aside my medical training to practice classical homeopathy?  Thinking back on it, it was out a certain devotion I had to my beliefs about human potential.  What I learned in medical school fell short, and I had to break off on my own.  Classical homeopathy is the most immaterial of medicines.  As people say, “there is nothing there” because the process of dilution is so extreme.  If a homeopathic remedy has therapeutic activity, does this not affect our understanding of what it means to be human and human potential?   I believe it must.   

For those in the area who want to attend the talk, it is in Room 421 of the DOT Hill Farms State Office Building at 4802 Sheboygan Ave. from 10:00 until noon.  There is free public parking in a lot next to the building (not the first lot you will see if you come from Segoe, which is employee only, but on the west side of the building).  All visitors must sign in at the reception area in the main lobby and get a visitor pass.  Say you are there for the EAPA meeting (Employee Assistance Professionals Association).  Then take the elevator up to 4th floor.

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