Wellness East & West: Achieving Optimum Health through Integrative Medicine

Introduction

Somewhere between the diaphanous folds of living, loving, grieving, and dying lies the hidden truth of healing. But much like the early morning's mist gently rising above the dewy ground, its simplicity eludes us. We reach out, but often in our desperation we try too hard, and the answer scatters among the tubes, needles, drugs, and heroic measures. Begging for life and healing at any cost becomes our mantra. But there are those who in recent years have asked, why? And while the answers are as individual as those exploring new healing avenues, common threads emerge: the need to examine our own beliefs about healing; the desire to connect physically and spiritually with healers; the quest to simplify; and the willingness to try alternative paths. This book illustrates how ancient Eastern remedies are being integrated with Western treatments and offers an overview of the transition that is gradually occurring in our nation's health care treatment options. It offers insight into not only patients' feelings and experiences but also practitioners'. And perhaps most of all, it shows that many people have the desire to meet somewhere in the middle.

This journey has been one of excitement, agony, discovery, and wonder. Having worked for many years as a health reporter and writer, I was very familiar with conventional Western medicine and its practitioners. I have seen the good and the bad over time. And because of this I was often disillusioned with a system that I believed was seriously failing those seeking help and guidance. This book has changed my mind. It is a book about hope. It is about love. It is about healing, not curing.

This project began when I was given a newspaper assignment to cover a story on an acupuncturist. My editors pushed me to verify all her credentials. This was in 1995, a time when people in Reading, a city in south central Pennsylvania, didn't often hear about alternative healing or such crazy ideas as moxibustion—the Chinese practice of burning moxa (mugwort herb) over an acupuncture point—or cupping—the Chinese practice of placing heated jars on the back to help restore the flow of qi (the body's energy). To further legitimize the article, I asked the acupuncturist to have a few patients available for me to interview.

I arrived at her office on a cold February day. It was icy, and I was certain no one would be there. Running a few minutes late, I flew into the front waiting area where I was struck by the number of faces meeting my astonished gaze. There were grandmothers and farmers and young people and businessmen, all there to tell me their tales of recovery. I could hardly keep pace. But all the stories had a common thread. The patients had a tremendous loyalty to Carolyn Jaffe, their acupuncturist, because they felt she listened to and loved them. She had helped free them of conditions that had plagued many of them for twenty-five or thirty years. They spoke of getting off all their medications, of getting off the breathing machine, of being able to work or play tennis or just be well. I have to admit I was overwhelmed by all the people who showed up, and finally I had to tell Carolyn, No more people.

The story ran several weeks later in the Lifestyle section of the paper, and within twenty-four hours I personally had received nearly a hundred phone calls at the newsroom. Do you think she can help my arthritis? Does that help headaches? I have cancer. Do you think she can help me? Simultaneously, Carolyn's phone was ringing off the hook, and she was booked with appointments for nearly six months. Not to mention the Lifestyle editor, who got calls similar to the ones I received. It was obvious; people were searching for more. So I began researching the topic. Now, three years later, I bring you Wellness East and West. It is a compilation of the information I have gathered from around the country, of my conversations with practitioners and patients, and a limited survey of what's happening with research, the National Institutes of Health, with insurance companies, and in anecdotal studies. This is only the beginning. I am only barely scratching the surface of the countless changes and improvements happening across the nation.

Although I write about the Eastern and Western approaches to treatment and how many people have found ways to blend the two, my greatest discovery was the unifying force between the medical traditions of the East and the West. It is a meeting in the middle, in love and compassion. I learned that our healing comes from within, and that we must find ways to simplify and love ourselves. Then the force of love will radiate out from our own center.

I think in many ways that when we are sick, we tend to get lost in all the technology and drugs. Our health care dilemma could be less complex if we could rid ourselves of the barriers to treatment. And while some of the blame for these barriers can be laid at the feet of the third-party payers (insurers, managed care, health maintenance organizations) and the regulators (like the Food and Drug Administration), some of the burden is our own. We are too stressed, we eat all the wrong foods, we isolate ourselves from others, and we have been persuaded to believe that there is something inherently wrong with natural physiological processes and life cycles. Menopause is as natural for women as puberty or childbirth, yet many women fear its onset. Death is seen as a failure of our doctors. But we all will die. We need to understand that there can be healing even in disease. Granted, Eastern and Western therapies cannot provide a cure for everything. And sometimes learning to live, even with disease, is part of healing. The choice is ours; to die while living or to live each day in grace, with ease, seeing the beauty and wonder in all that is ours. We need to reclaim memories of lying in the tall grass on a summer's afternoon and watching the clouds transform from dinosaurs to witches to angels. Let's recapture the burning pleasure of doing just about nothing, remembering the days when we would go to the pond's edge to catch frogs and etch our names in the red clay or make mudpies topped with flaming dandelions. At a time when our legs were still short enough to keep us close to the ground, we knew how to live. The answer lies somewhere between here and those dreamy summer's days. It's as individual as there are people on this earth.

We need to start following our heart. To make loving, living choices. It's not an us and them thing, it's an us thing. We need to live more simply: to enjoy the intensity of a shared smile; the beauty of autumn's changing hues or the ethereal image of winter's frozen flakes performing a gentle waltz in the incandescent rays of the city lights. Beauty is everywhere: inside and out. It's in the city, in the mountains, in the desert. We need to take the time and look for it in our hearts, in the face of a homeless person, in a dog's gentle kiss, in the wondrous giggle of a child.

Blessings of the universe,

Kathleen F. Phalen

ONE

The Birth of

Integrative Medicine

The utmost in the art of healing can be achieved when there is unity. When the minds of the people are closed and wisdom is locked out, they remain tied to disease. Yet their feelings and desires should be investigated and made known, their wishes and ideas should be followed, and then it becomes apparent that those who have attained spirit and energy are flourishing and prosperous, while those perish who lose their spirit and energy.

—From the Nei Ching Su Wen

CENTURIES OF HEALING WISDOM

We are certain the cure will be in the next pill, the next prayer, the next visit to the doctor. And in many ways we are not alone. The search for a cure has led even the crustiest of souls to the far reaches of the earth—to the healing waters of Lourdes, to an appointment with the surgeon's scalpel, to the shaman's medicine bag, to the acupuncturist's needles, to taking transfusions of another person's blood, to exposing ourselves to deadly gamma rays, or to taking addicting pain deadeners. Sometimes it seems we would do just about anything to find the golden cure.

Ancient cultures were no exception. People in the earliest civilizations suffered from chronic and life-threatening conditions—very similar to today's ills—and they, too, searched for remedies to stop the pain and extend life. Those ancient peoples knew much more about tending each other, the living and the dying. Their connection to the heavens and the earth wasn't complicated by 156 selections on satellite television or the horrors of the evening news, and, while they often faced the harsh realities of nature's elements with fewer protections, their essence was not lost in a lonely world where everything happens too fast. They listened to themselves, to their neighbors, and to the hearts of their ancestors.

In their less complicated lives, they were not spared the pain of living—the grieving, the loss, the sickness. And as primitive scratchings on dampened cave walls indicate, even in the earliest of times man suffered from headaches, chronic conditions, and sexually transmitted diseases. Archeological digs have revealed prehistoric art showing that holes were bored through human skulls to relieve pressure. Neolithic man endured the daily pain of osteoarthritis. There are the calcified remains of parasitic eggs known to cause the tropical disease schistosomiasis in Egyptian mummies.¹ And petrified syphilitic skulls, dating back prior to Columbus's historic journey to the New World, have been uncovered in North America.²

Just like the diseases and the physical and mental ills that existed long before us, the natural impulse to stop the suffering, to find a better way, is nothing new, even though some try to lay claim to this innovative thinking. Today bulletin boards at trendy health food stores contain messages of healing—the new blue-green algae, the latest inner child healing workshop, or the spiritually centered ads about reconnecting with nature—tacked to their cork surfaces with multicolored pushpins. Or better yet, there are tear-off phone numbers so that the desperate can call for help twenty-four hours a day. Hip, pop-culture magazines are filled with the claims of new life from New Age healers. On the Internet you can get a reiki consultation, and herbs to kill your bad breath and the dog's at the same time. The secrets behind these dramatic breakthroughs and discoveries about stopping the pain and healing our bodies, our odors, our relationships, as well as the universe around us, can be ours with just a credit card number.

What we often don't realize in our search for healing is that many of the concepts and theories that are being touted these days have been around since a time when it was OK to believe in myth, a time when legend was passed from generation to generation. Finding a way to wellness dates back to an era when legend could become reality. Today we have come to a threshold in which we understand what our ancestors perhaps took for granted—that healing is everyone's business and responsibility, and that it is something that involves our understanding and active participation.

The healing traditions of our neighbors in the East, which go back centuries of generations, are steeped in parables and evidence a connection between health, spirituality, and the cosmos. In China, Han dynasty tombs preserved fragments of exemplary medical information, which, according to legend and generations of believers, were first penned by the mythical Yellow Emperor, who is said to have reigned from 2696 B.C. to 2598 B.C. Beginning with conversations between the emperor and his physician, the Nei Ching Su Wen, or The Yellow Emperor's Classic of Internal Medicine, establishes the concept that supports the need for a positive doctor-patient relationship. With information on drugs, surgery, medical theory, spirituality, life force, the balance of yin and yang, the five elements (wood, fire, metal, air, and water), and the four seasons of healing, this comprehensive record remains a main source of guidance for many Eastern cultures and health practitioners today.³

Sumerian cuneiform clay tablets, dating from somewhere around 2500 B.C., tell tales of illness and list the details of medicinal plants and animal parts prescribed for treating the ills of the time. Historians are unable to determine whether the Sumerians actually discovered these healing arts or whether the concepts were borrowed from other cultures. Many of these medicinal remedies were divided into organic and inorganic categories, with plant remedies such as figs, dates, anise, jasmine, juniper, coriander, caraway, and willow.⁴ Passing this legacy of knowledge and healing on to the Babylonians, the Sumerians set in motion a generational chain of curative information that formed the rudimentary foundations of Western medicine. The embryonic Sumerian teachings traveled history's course, crossing lands and time. Eventually uncovered by Egypt's Pharaohs, these healing arts evolved to yet another level. And as writings preserved in papyrus tell us, elaborate theories explaining the cause of physical ills took on dramatic proportions. The Egyptians believed that sickness originated in the supernatural realm, and that healing took place on the physical and spiritual planes.

As the discoveries of healers became paradigms for their culture, the integral rhythm of contrasting internal and external forces was seen as reigning over the body. Chinese healers set forth the delicate balance of yin and yang: yin, the feminine force of darkness, night, moon, moistness, quiet, and earth; yang, the masculine force of light, sun, day, dryness, fire, heat, heaven, noise, and function. Yin, representing the internal, descends; yang, the external, ascends. It was believed, and is still believed today, that each of the body's organs has an element of yin and yang, and that health is achieved by keeping the two in balance.

Similar to Chinese healers, Greek physicians looked at the nature of disease as sets of opposites: hot and cold, moist and dry. They also described and diagnosed illness based on the four humors—blood, phlegm, and black and yellow bile. The thread that binds these ancient beliefs is the theory that a vital life force, when kept in balance, can ward off disease. And whether it is called qi (Chinese, pronounced cbee), lung (Tibetan, pronounced loong), or prana, meaning breath, maintaining or restoring balance was the physician's secret for preventing disease.⁵

Ancient healers developed an intimate bond with their patients; they believed, above all, that nothing must be done to injure the patient. Whether taking a history, feeling the pulse, or gauging the heat of the body, each practiced the gentle art of his or her respective beliefs. Medical advice, even in more primitive times, paralleled much of what the adventurous preach today—diet, exercise, prevention. The Chinese, much like the Tibetans, talked openly about combining tranquil, moderate exercise with seasonal diets, stressing the importance of a serene mind. They believed that it is better to prevent illness than to try to cure it once it occurs—a concept we're just getting around to understanding in this modern age of Western medicine. We've certainly made a lot of progress in the last two thousand years!

The use of plants and herbs was already highly developed in many cultures many centuries ago. Thriving pharmacopoeias were produced in China, Egypt, and Greece. The Chinese, who were using acupuncture in addition to herbs, massage, and gentle exercise, had delineated points on the body that could be needled or cauterized to cure or alleviate pain associated with most ailments. Historians indicate that the Chinese may have filtered water and prescribed boiling water and eating hot dishes as a means of avoiding infection.⁶ Because Egyptians actively engaged in embalming the dead, they began to learn the delicate intricacies of the human anatomy. Egyptians and Greeks used herbs and foods to balance the humors, often using St. John's Wort, yarrow, and plantain to heal wounds and ward off illness. And whether Chinese, Egyptian, or Greek, disease prevention teachings, along with suggestions for keeping the body in balance, were a major component of these early beliefs.

During medieval times and even later, setbacks were not uncommon. Wars, cultural revolutions, plagues, malnutrition, and rampant disease left many victims in their wake. Keeping pace with the turbulence and magnitude of disease and death was challenging for physicians, at best. And in the 1500s and early 1600s, when the ancestors of some of us first set off across the Atlantic in search of a better life, scurvy and rickets were taking thousands of lives before the historic ships ever reached America's shores. Unprepared for the primitive life of the New World, women and babies died in childbirth, and nature's bitter elements took many lives as well. Native American healers, familiar with the restorative powers of their lands, shared shamanic teachings about the healing properties of plants, grains, and community. Recognizing the value of these natural remedies, the earliest settlers continued the medical evolution by sending these ideas back to Europe to incorporate them with the European healing tradition.

As the oceans' waters ebb and flow across sand, pebbles, and jagged rocks, so has medical theory over the centuries. The eclectic blend of Native American, African, Eastern, and European traditions eventually evolved into the new medicine: the Western way—the path that continues to dominate our medical treatments today. Corresponding with the U.S. industrial revolution, the mid-1800s marked an end to the free-spirited, anything-goes medicine of earlier times. Just like factory managers, physicians began to value the importance of fixing parts and keeping our bodies working like finely oiled machines. This type of thinking, along with the concept that bacteria produce disease and that antitoxins could be used to ward off these bacteria, formed the early roots of biomedicine. The American Medical Association was formed in 1847, and by the end of the nineteenth century its members were lobbying for state licensing laws. In the twentieth century, Western biomedical theory, as the conventional route to caring for the sick, was designated the one true path to health. Virtually every state in the United States passed laws governing medicine and its practice.

Because the medical establishment was quick to label alternative approaches to the Western way as hocus-pocus and quackery, chiropractors, homeopaths, and practitioners from other schools of thought (often women) were pushed out of the mainstream medical arena. The Pure Food and Drug Act, regulating the prescription of medicinals, was passed by 1906. With the release of the Flexner Report, Medical Education in the United States and Canada, in 1910, competing forms of medicine were virtually obliterated. Abraham Flexner, a U.S. educator and founder of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, developed the report to set standards for American medical school education.