The Blinkers of Allopathic Medicine

THE MEDICAL MODEL OF DISEASE

I have since gathered some interesting insights into the perception of the allopathic doctors towards disease which I would like to share with you. In my attempt to try to understand their way of thinking, and their general approach to disease, I have postulated a model which I have entitled “The Aetiology of Disease” – this is the premise of Holistic Medicine which incorporates allopathic as well as all the modalities of natural medicine.

Generally, with few exceptions, allopathic doctors perceive the body as a physical and chemical composition, much like a mechanic would view a machine. It is important to examine this structure using a variety of technologies such as X-rays, MRI’s, CT scans, biochemical lab tests and the like are all measuring the physical structure and existence of different parts of the body from organs (their size, shape and whether there are any structural abnormalities), the various tissues down to the cellular level to determine pathology of their structure (number of erythrocytes, white blood cells, platelets, histopathological structure of different cells etc), and the biochemical constituents of the blood, plasma and body fluids.

Allopathic doctors are extremely well trained in looking at the physical and chemical composition of the body, and they spend many years in medical school doing just this. However, this “mechanistic” perception of the body has many limitations as this only allows us to view one perspective of the human body, when in fact there are many different levels that are important in diagnosing and fully understanding the aetiology of disease.

When observing the allopathic profession examining a patient based on this mechanistic approach, it becomes obvious why they sometimes behave in rather irrational ways. Generally, the “Medical Model of Disease” is based on collating the symptoms, placing them into a diagnostic category with a specific label, and then using some form of drug, surgery or radiation to eliminate the symptoms. This is a “symptom suppression” approach to dealing with disease and rarely identifies the real causes of disease, let alone removing these causes.

If there is a part of the gut, for example, that is ulcerated and cannot be eliminated using medicinal drugs, then the next logical step is to remove it. This may sound rather surprising to the objective onlooker, but personally I have heard from many patients that have been victims of this narrow-minded approach.

LET’S WHIP OUT THE GUT!

Only a few evenings ago I was at the local general hospital seeing a young woman in her 20’s who has ulcerative colitis. She was admitted to the hospital as she had slight haemorrhage with diarrhoea, probably related to something that was irritating the gut. In the month while in hospital she has been taking IV cortisone with strong antibiotics which have wiped her gut clean of all the protective, friendly bacteria, she has taken chemotherapy – what they give to cancer patients – God knows what the logic is here – as well as a visit from the psychiatrist who readily prescribed anti-depressants as he felt that her gut problems were psychosomatic. Recently, her parents were invited to a round table discussion by the head doctor who with a solemn but serious face suggested that the gut should be removed immediately to stop the bleeding and irritation, as nothing else seems to be working.

The doctor added, in a final, desperate attempt, they may decide to give Cyclosporine, a powerful immune-suppressing drug that is given to organ transplant patients to prevent rejection – this literally puts the immune system to sleep. Apart from the chances of catching a nasty bug in hospital which would be near impossible to combat without an immune system, the other side effects of this powerful drug are gum hyperplasia, convulsions, peptic ulcers, pancreatitis, fever, vomiting, diarrhea, confusion, breathing difficulties, numbness and tingling, pruritus, high blood pressure, potassium retention and possibly hyperkalemia, kidney and liver dysfunction (nephrotoxicity & hepatotoxicity)!

Yes, I know you are stunned, just as I was – it sounds unbelievable for a relatively simple case that is easy to bring under control simply by altering the diet and using some healing herbs and homeopathics. Far from it, the patient was told when questioning the food she was eating that it was a “controlled diet” that had been carefully planned by the hospital dietician – white bread, margarine, marmalade, hamburgers with spices, white macaroni and toxic chicken, as well as various dairy products and sweet foods – obviously the dietician need to go back to school if she considers this a healthy diet!

For the last few days the patient has changed her diet completely, eating mostly steamed vegetables, vegetable juices and fruit, while taking Omega 3 and 6 fatty acids which help the body produce natural anti-inflammatory prostaglandins, as well as a mixture of herbs known for their anti-inflammatory effects such as curcumin (tumeric) and boswelia, as well as aloe vera juice. In the last three days she is feeling a lot better on this simple regime, and there is a lot more that can be done such as identifying and removing her food intolerances, as well as optimizing her diet based on her Metabolic type, which will need to wait until she is discharged from the controlled hospital environment.

WHY THE BLINKERS?

So, why do all these intelligent doctors who were “A” grade students at school think in this narrow-minded, blinkered and insular way? In order to understand why they are so blinkered in their approach to disease, let’s take a step back and look at an analogy of man – I have used an iceberg to demonstrate as about 10% is visible above the waterline, while the remaining 90% is below the waterline.

This is important to note, as most medical doctors are trained to observe only what is above the waterline – the 10% of causative factors that lead to disease. But, just as the iceberg in its entirety is composed of the 10% above the waterline, as well as the 90% below the waterline, so is man composed of many different perspectives that all interact to bring on health or disease – this is the HOLISTIC MODEL OF DISEASE – looking at the complete iceberg, as opposed to the MEDICAL MODEL OF DISEASE, which focuses on the tip of the iceberg.

The tip of the iceberg represents the physical and chemical composition of the body – we have already mentioned that medical doctors are extremely well trained at examining these parts in detail and using this knowledge to diagnose. Moreover, in the field of emergency medicine where it is a matter of saving lives after an accident or coronary, there is no doubt that allopathic medicine has saved many lives.

The problem is when it comes to treating chronic, degenerative diseases that has taken the body many years to develop due to causative factors that the medical profession simply does not see as their focus is on the tip of the iceberg – this is akin to having ones nose firmly pressed onto a tree, you know everything about the tree in detail, but the real culprit is in the forest! You obviously need to move back from the tree in order to see the forest – simple logic that is extremely difficult to acknowledge and implement when one has been brainwashed, but more on this later!

Now let’s examine the part of the iceberg below the waterline, the BIG part making up 90% that modern medicine does not regularly look at. It is only in seeing this part too that we can really begin to understand the causative factors of degenerative diseases and begin offloading to facilitate the body’s natural healing process.

NUTRITION & HEALTH

We all know that nutrition plays an imperative function in health – you have all probably heard the saying “we are what we eat” – well, you better believe it! Why do we eat? We eat to nourish all our cells with vital nutrients such as vitamins, minerals, trace elements, amino acids, fats and phytonutrients. Therefore, the foods that we choose to eat should be nutrient-dense foods, rich in these nutrients, not ones that are empty and deficient.

How many of us consciously choose foods on this basis? You will find that many people around you eat because they like the taste of food, not because they are thinking about nourishing their cells. This is the emerging science of orthomolecular nutrition, or clinical nutrition (not dietetics) – “orthomolecular” is a Greek word coined by Professor Linus Pauling, two times Nobel prize winner which means “correct molecules” – choosing the correct or necessary molecules that the body requires to work correctly.

If any part of your body is deficient in the numerous nutrients that it requires daily to function then it is only a matter of time before symptoms appear. The body cannot build enzymes, hormones, blood, muscles, immune responses, let alone detoxify itself without many vitamins, minerals, trace elements and more. It’s akin to a builder trying to build a house without bricks, or without cement – the end result will be defective and likely dangerous.

There is also another emerging science which is looking at the effects of certain foods on health – it is now well known that certain individuals react adversely to certain foods – this is the embryonic science of food intolerances or allergies, even though this was identified and studied by certain scientists more than 50 years ago (Drs. Von Pirquet, Rowe, Rinkel, Mackarness et al). Virtually everyone is intolerant to certain food substances – often they do not realize this as they are “masked food allergies” meaning that the symptoms can appear many hours, or even days after eating the suspect food.

These masked food allergies cause the body to produce inflammatory chemicals such as cytokinines and COX-2 – these will no doubt create further symptoms and imbalances. There are many recent studies too numerous to mention here that have been published in peer-reviewed journals, but still allopathic doctors and dieticians, who know very little about orthomolecular nutrition and the effects of food on the body still ignore statements made by the World Health Organization and other organizations that say that over 80% of all chronic diseases are preventable by changing dietary habits and lifestyle.

Instead, doctors believe that patients with “incurable” symptoms, like the patient that I mentioned above with ulcerative colitis, are neurotic and “imagining” their symptoms. If the patient disagrees and resists they often get a visit from the psychiatrist. Medical doctors believe that patients get better because “someone is taking an interest” in their case and “giving them attention” (don’t laugh, as a distinguished gastroenterologist said just this to a patient of mine who appeared on national TV in Cyprus recently, talking about how her Irritable Bowel Syndrome had been cured by avoiding food intolerances). This intransigent and obdurate attitude is very frustrating to the patient and their families!

MAN & ENVIRONMENT

Man interacts with the environment daily, and it is getting tougher and tougher to avoid toxins, radioactive fallout, electromagnetic radiation, microwaves from mobile phones, geopathic stress and much more. All these factors, if we are exposed to them for long enough, can be very detrimental to health.

I have heard the argument that these factors cannot really play a role in chronic diseases as we are now seeing an increase in childhood cancers, leukemias and diabetes, so how can young children be affected by the environment from a very young age? Well, there are numerous studies that have shown that infants are actually born with an array of toxins, all directly transported from the mother.

An interesting study that was done by the Environmental Working Group a couple of years ago in the USA that took neonate cord blood and analyzed it for numerous toxins – they found an average of 287 toxic chemicals in these newborns, of which 180 of these were carcinogenic! A similar study found toxins and heavy metals in newborns in the North Pole born to Inuit Eskimos, so it is clear that we cannot escape these toxins in today’s world – this is why we all need to learn how to detoxify and clean our bodies on a regular basis. What would your bedroom look like if you had not cleaned it for 20, 30, 40 or more years – it would not be short of a stable full of rats, mice, cockroaches, parasites, bacteria and viruses – the body is no different!

Other studies have shown that these toxic chemicals can be directly transferred across the placenta from the mother to the baby – another reason why detoxification is important before deciding to become pregnant. Large amounts of mercury has also been found in young babies due to the preservative Thimerosal that contains 50% mercury that is placed in vaccinations – there is a lot of evidence to suggest that this is one of the main reasons why the rate of autism and ADHD has greatly increased.

We also need to be aware of the effect of various energies such as microwave ovens, mobile phones, electromagnetic and geopathic stress on the body. If a pregnant mother were sleeping on a geopathic stress line (underground water), then inevitably the baby would be effected, as well as herself. There have been many experiments to show that if a person is sleeping on two crossing geopathic stress lines then they will inevitably develop cancer in a matter of a few years. These stress lines upset the natural electromagnetic waves of the body causing a variety of diseases.

ENERGETIC MAN

Man is also made up of electromagnetic waves and other particles that all resonate at set frequencies. Even as far back as 1923, Georges Lakhovsky, a Russian engineer working in France, built a simple apparatus capable of registering microvoltage measurements from human cells, plants and microbes. In his studies of normal and diseased cells, Lakhovsky found that there were marked differences in their oscillation patterns. Each group of cells emitted frequencies specific to its organ or tissue of origin. Cancerous cells emitted a different, abnormal pattern. Lakhovsky also discovered that harmful factors such as faulty nutrition, environmental pollutants containing toxic chemicals or heavy metals, bacteria or viruses weaken and distort cellular electro-magnetic fields prior to the onset of illness and death. After years of research he concluded that health is nothing but a state of electro-magnetic equilibrium of body cells, while diseases and death represent just the opposite – a broken energetic balance.

Around the same time, Professor Harold Saxton Burr of Yale Medical School confirmed Lakhovsky’s findings in his own series of experiments – he called these electro-magnetic fields emitted by different body tissues “L-fields” with “L” representing Life. Regretfully, the work of Burr and other ended with their deaths. Modern medicine, dominated and essentially controlled by the pharmaceutical industry, offered no inducements to spur research for energy medicine. There is no profit to be made from energy medicine, hence there is no particular interest to “Big Pharma.”

Professor Robert Becker, MD, a pioneer of Electromedicine in the U.S. and Chief of Orthopaedic Surgery at the VA Hospital of SUNY in Syracuse, was able to induce tissue and bone healing in many hopeless patients by applying small currents through the tissues’ electrical pathways. Mainstream medicine, he said, was based upon a scientifically outdated model that relied exclusively on the chemical-pharmaceutical approach, to the exclusion of the more fundamental dimension of body energetics. As a result, he concluded, the tremendous healing potential of energy-based medicines such as homeopathy, acupuncture, visualization and electromedicine were neglected, to the great detriment of the public.

In 1994, two biophysicists from the Max-Plank Institute of Physics in Gottingen, Germany, Drs. Erwin Neher and Bert Sackmann, were awarded a Noble Prize for their discovery of the essential role that the flow of charged atoms – the ions of body fluids and tissues – play in physiological processes in living cells. Professor Fritz-Albert Popp and Professor Herbert Frohlich established that cells in the body interact through coherent oscillations. They have demonstrated that electromagnetic communication between cells constitutes the primary process governing chemical reactions.

This vast body of scientific evidence makes it apparent that the physiology of all living systems is being controlled via computer-like electromagnetic communications. Homeopathy is indeed unique among all therapies in its ability to influence cellular memory.

So why do the medical profession not know this? Simply, because it is not taught in the medical schools they attend as the curriculum is controlled by the pharmaceutical industries who are interested in discovering and patenting medicinal drugs for huge profits. The truth is that there is no profit to be made in homeopathics which they cannot patent, as you cannot patent something that is natural, so they are not interested. It is a sad fact of the greed that prevails in the health industry – let’s keep looking at the body as a physical and chemical factory because we can give drugs to change the chemistry, and this is where the profit is.

PSYCHOEMOTIONAL MAN – STRESS & HEALTH

We all know that chronic stress can cause heart disease, including hypertension and stroke; a compromised immune system which can lead to infections, allergies or even cancer; and gastrointestinal conditions such as ulcers and irritable bowel syndrome.

There is a new branch of medicine that looks at the connection between the mind and stress, and diseases of the body – it is called psychoneuroimmunology (PNI), with many research studies that have been shown clear relationships between stress and disease.

HOLISTIC MEDICINE – THE COMPLETE ICEBERG
This completes the analogy of the iceberg – it should be clear that modern medicine who has their perception fixed on the tip of the iceberg are not going to be able to identify and eliminate ALL the causative factors of chronic diseases. Instead, they will identify and structural and biochemical problems in the body and try to alleviate the symptoms using drugs, surgery or radiation.

If you were a patient with a chronic disease, would you not want to know what the causes of your degeneration were? Certainly you would, but often we hear from medical doctors that the cause is “idiopathic” – another word for unknown. We also hear “psychosomatic” a lot, meaning that the causes are psychological and emotional. This is the “dustbin” of modern medicine where all the “unknowns” are thrown – the patients that do not get better with drugs or surgery, mainly because the causes of their problems are elsewhere.

Modern medicine rarely asks the patient what they eat or drink, let alone look at food intolerances and allergies. I was shocked when a 33 year old man who had a heart attack two months prior and was now suffering from deep vein thrombosis with a huge oedema (swelling), a very serious blood clot in the veins of the legs that could have been lethal. He was being treated by the medical profession with Warfarin, a blood thinning drug for the last month, but generally was not getting better. What I was shocked about was how no medical doctor of the numerous that he had seen had asked him about his lifestyle habits. He was smoking 2 packs of cigarettes per day, drinking alcohol daily, eating lots of junk food and drinking only 2-3 glasses of water.

Within 4 days of drinking more water, cutting out the junk food, smoking and drinking, and beginning a detoxification diet of fruit and vegetables his swelling had greatly reduced and he was feeling so much better.

Its important to work in a holistic fashion with these chronic patients – the therapist must begin working through the levels of the possible causative factors – this is what we do at the Da Vinci Natural Health Centre in Larnaca, often identifying more than 15-20 possible causative factors that when eliminated that patient begins to recover from all sorts of degenerative diseases, including cancers, remarkably quickly.