Category: Wellness

Are Your Children Being Unnecessarily Medicated?

by Author William Parks, DC – ICPA.org:medications

These days, it seems many medical doctors’ first course of action is to recommend or prescribe drugs for any patient complaint; disturbingly, this trend seems to hold true whether the patient is an adult or a child.

An eye-opening study published in the May issue of Pediatrics revealed that many pediatricians have recommended the use of medication for children who suffer from sleep disturbances. In fact, of the 671 U.S. pediatricians surveyed, 75 percent said they had advised parents to administer an over-the-counter (OTC) medication, and more than 50 percent had prescribed a sleep aid.

Surprisingly, antihistamines were common OTC medications recommended, while a commonly prescribed sleep aid was clonidine, which is used to treat behavioral problems. Neither of these medications was specifically designed to treat insomnia; in fact, little is known about their safety and effectiveness for treating sleep-related problems. Moreover, they were administered to children who had difficulty sleeping and/or awoke frequently during the night, which most would agree is a fairly natural occurrence – especially in children.

On the flip side, many of these doctors may be overlooking more serious health problems masked as insomnia, including depression, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, psychological problems, and other medical conditions. And according to the study, the practitioners themselves expressed “a range of concerns about sleep medication appropriateness, safety, tolerance and side-effects in children.”

If your child suffers from sleep-related difficulties, ask your doctor about all the options before opting for a “quick fix” with medication. There are many reasons for insomnia (in children and adults); make sure your physician determines the reason behind your child’s problem – and its severity – before deciding the best manner in which to treat it.

Article originally posted at ICPA.org.

The Vaccine Bubble

by Michael Belkin – ICPA.org:vaccine bubble

My business involves advising portfolio managers about asset allocation in global financial markets. During my career, I have observed several extreme speculative bubbles, including the Japanese stock market in the late 1980s, the NASDAQ frenzy in 1998–2000 and the U.S. housing bubble from 2006–2008.

These bubbles all ended in tears. I see the same elements now in the pharmaceutical industry’s preoccupation with vaccines. I coined the term “vaccine bubble” (in the book Vaccine Epidemic) to describe the economic and psychological factors that are driving the obsession with and over-investment in vaccines. The psychology of making big profits is causing a lemming-like rush into vaccine research and production. Ultimately, many of these companies and vaccine products will likely turn out to be flash-in-the-pan nobodies and nothings that simply waste investment and get discarded on the ash heap of medical history. In the meantime, families and individuals need to educate themselves and make informed decisions about vaccine acceptance or refusal.

The business model of vaccine manufacturers relies on compulsion—you must take their product, or else.

Investing in Health

Taking pharmaceutical company advice about vaccine safety and efficacy is like trusting a stockbroker or real estate agent to tell you the market is in a bubble. As investors and homeowners have learned the hard way, those with corrupt financial or professional incentives cannot be relied upon to provide trustworthy advice.

From a financial and industry perspective, here is what you need to know. Vaccines are licensed by the FDA and recommended by the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP). Vaccine manufacturers perform (or outsource) their own efficacy and safety studies, so there is plenty of wiggle room for juggling the data. Manufacturers can choose their own placebo to either flatter efficacy or safety. If you think vaccine safety studies use saline solution for a placebo, think again.

The Merck Manuals (the pharmaceutical company’s best-selling series of medical textbooks) defines an adverse reaction to a vaccine: “Encephalitis is inflammation of the brain that occurs when a virus directly infects the brain or when a virus or something else triggers inflammation…. Encephalitis can occur in the following ways: A virus directly infects the brain. A virus that caused an infection in the past becomes reactivated and directly damages the brain. A virus or vaccine triggers a reaction that makes the immune system attack brain tissue (an autoimmune reaction).”

Thus, an adverse vaccine reaction that causes brain damage (encephalitis) has the same result as a complication from an infectious disease like measles. In vaccine safety studies, manufacturers can disguise the neurological damage caused by the vaccine they are testing by using another vaccine (or another substance that contains an aluminum adjuvant) known to cause neurological adverse reactions as placebo. The standard language they use is: “Adverse reactions were no different than placebo.” They don’t mention that the placebo causes neurological adverse reactions.

Another trick they use is to compare adverse reactions to a fully vaccinated population that has neurological damage from those vaccines. They claim it is unethical to compare vaccine adverse reactions in their new product being tested to unvaccinated controls, because the unvaccinated would supposedly miss out on all the great benefits of vaccines. This is a cheap statistical trick to camouflage adverse neurological reactions from vaccines.

Products in the Pipeline

The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America’s (PhRMA) 2010 Report on Medicines in Development for Infectious Diseases boasts, “Among the medicines now being tested are…145 vaccines to prevent or treat diseases such as staph infections and pneumococcal infections.” The report didn’t include “medicines in development for HIV infection,” and stated, “A 2009 survey by PhRMA found 97 medicines and vaccines are in testing for HIV/AIDS and AIDS-related conditions.”

The current CDC-recommended vaccine schedule contains 70 doses of 16 vaccines by age 18. PhRMA obviously would love to double or triple that vaccine burden by cramming the new vaccines under development into the ACIP-recommended schedule.

A Government-Subsidized, Captive Market

ACIP vaccine recommendations are a godsend to pharmaceutical manufacturers. The simple ACIP recommendation that so many doses of such-and-such vaccine should be given at such-and-such age is transformed into public school attendance mandates by the alchemy of drug industry sales reps, state health officials and gullible state legislatures. The business model of vaccine manufacturers relies on compulsion—you must take their product, or else. Imagine you were in business selling something and you could snap your fingers and compel everyone to be your customer. Normal businesses have to attract customers with an attractive product and compete with other providers of that product. Compulsion is a nice way to capture an involuntary market, isn’t it?

Since most people won’t pay hundreds of dollars out-of-pocket for every vaccine, manufacturers must find someone to foot the bill. They have been very effective in coercing federal and state governments and health insurers into subsidizing their products. One little-noticed feature of the Affordable Care Act (the Obama administration’s healthcare reform program) is that health insurers must provide subsidized vaccines to their customers. Big Pharma’s vaccine business model consists of taking choice away from the individual and getting someone else to foot the bill.

Filling the Profit Void

Pharmaceutical companies are losing patent protection on about $140 billion of blockbuster drugs (such as Lipitor) over the next few years. Their research departments have produced few product replacements with blockbuster potential (sales greater than $1 billion/ year). This pending loss of business is causing a wave of layoffs and restructurings within the industry. Also, disastrous drugs like Vioxx have caused between 88,000 and 139,000 heart attacks and about 40,000 deaths, according to FDA estimates cited by epidemiologist David Michaels, current head of OSHA for the Obama Administration, in his excellent book Doubt Is Their Product.

According to Michaels’ book, Merck exploited the FDA drug approval process by gaming the placebo and claiming that the higher rate of heart attacks observed in Vioxx clinical trials was due to the placebo (naproxen) preventing heart attacks. According to Michaels’ book, “Merck chose the interpretation that implausibly credited naproxen over the one that more plausibly indicted its own drug and it embarked on a four-year defense of this almost ridiculous hypothesis.” Incidentally, Merck is a primary manufacturer of U.S. vaccines. Its corporate behavior with Vioxx certainly discredits its ethical credibility with regard to pharmaceutical safety studies.

Pharmaceutical companies now tout vaccines as the Holy Grail that will help replace the lost revenues from expiring patents on blockbuster drugs that will face generic (cheap) competition. But the numbers don’t add up. Vaccines are currently about a $25 billion market. As previously mentioned, patent expirations amount to about $140 billion. Pharmaceutical companies desperately need to grow that $25 billion vaccine market in a hurry. Hence the big push to create, license and mandate new vaccines.

Popping the Vaccine Bubble

Now, if you are in the pharmaceutical industry charity market, you can donate your body to Merck and other vaccine manufacturers by volunteering to be a human pincushion for every vaccine recommended by the ACIP or in development. That is your decision, and I fully support your right to vaccinate yourself into oblivion.

However, if you (like me) do not agree with forced medication using products that may have been approved using safety studies involving bogus placebos, then you probably face persecution by your allopathic doctor, public school or employer (flu vaccines are now mandatory for many healthcare workers). I fully support your right to refuse vaccines. In fact, the position of the American Medical Association (AMA) on informed consent states that with regard to patients, “He or she can make an informed decision to proceed or to refuse a particular course of medical intervention.” Please notice the word refuse. It is our right to refuse “a particular course of medical intervention.” Notice it doesn’t say “except vaccination.” Informed consent is the backbone of medical ethics. You have the right to say no. Doctors who assert that you do not have a choice about vaccines are violating this medical code of ethics.

Contrast that AMA official position on informed consent with the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) position on “terminating” vaccine refusers: “If, after discussion about the importance of vaccination and the risks of not vaccinating, the parent refuses, the pediatrician should document the discussion and have the parent sign a waiver affirming his/her decision not to vaccinate (i.e., AAP Refusal to Vaccinate Form). If the situation becomes such that you are no longer comfortable having the parent/patient in your practice, the AAP manual, Medical Liability for Pediatricians, Chapter 3, offers resources for risk communication and termination of the physician-patient relationship.”

The Basis for My Choice

My daughter Lyla died within hours after receiving her hepatitis B vaccine at the age of five weeks. We subsequently had two more children and I looked closely at the rate of vaccine adverse reactions contained in the FDA Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) versus the risk of contracting an infectious disease and the risk of complications from that disease. As a professional statistician who provides econometric forecasts for institutional investors, I am qualified to make decisions based on statistical models. That is what I do, day in and day out. My conclusion? I would have to be a total idiot to vaccinate my children.

If mainstream pediatricians are going to “terminate” patients like me (like a pest control company), then perhaps my family is better off not being a captive of such a totalitarian doctor in the first place. For others in favor of vaccine choice, I’ve written an article entitled “How to Terminate a Relationship With an Uncooperative and Combative Pediatrician.” Sadly, most pediatricians wouldn’t know what to do with themselves and their practices if they weren’t vaccine pushers. As mentioned above, they are simply the agents of a medical system that is addicted to a vaccine bubble. Vaccine refusers should find trustworthy medical professionals who support the AMA’s position on informed consent.

Ghosts in the Machine

Bubbles always have corruption hidden under the surface. Look how the mortgage and banking industries are now choking on lawsuits and destroyed reputations. Corruption in the vaccine bubble probably exists in ghostwritten medical journal articles (penned by pharmaceutical companies but supposedly authored by respectable doctors). Ghostwriting has recently become a huge issue in medical research. We have yet to find out which vaccine studies were ghostwritten by industry flunkies.

Another area of corruption is front groups. Front groups using straw-man citizens are a standard PR technique to hype a product. Full Frontal Scrutiny, a joint venture between Consumer Reports WebWatch and the Center for Media and Democracy, describes the technique as such:

A front group is an example of what is known in the PR trade as the “third party technique.” The idea behind the term is that when one person (the first party) wants to persuade someone else (the second party) to believe or do something that benefits the first party, it helps if the message comes from a seemingly disinterested, independent source. As Daniel Edelman, the founder of Edelman PR Worldwide, has stated, “A third party endorsement can position a new brand so that it’s poised for great success or, conversely, can blunt a serious problem before it gets out of hand and proves disastrous for a particular product or for a company overall.”…

“The best PR ends up looking like news,” bragged one public relations executive. “You never know when a PR agency is being effective; you’ll just find your views slowly shifting.”

When you see supposedly grassroots groups lobbying for vaccine mandates, you may be seeing the invisible hand of just such a PR agency.

Another prime example of corruption in the vaccine bubble is Paul Thorsen, a Danish epidemiologist who is under federal indictment for fraud. Thorsen allegedly absconded with millions of dollars of CDC money. Thorsen’s Danish data forms the backbone of several scientific studies the CDC uses to claim that vaccines and thimerosal (a mercury-containing vaccine preservative) do not cause autism. So far, no one seems to care that a principal author of those studies stands accused of fraud.

One other noteworthy fact with regard to vaccines and autism: In the DTaP package insert, autism and sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) are listed as “adverse events reported during post-approval use…. Events were included in this list because of the seriousness or frequency of reporting.” So much for CDC denials of a vaccine/autism link.

Vaccines are in a bubble. Pharmaceutical companies are working on hundreds of new vaccines that they are drooling to make mandatory to replace their vanishing blockbuster drug patents. If you choose to resist the vaccine bubble, many people (and doctors) will regard you as loony, in the same way people looked down at those who didn’t buy into the NASDAQ bubble in 2000 or the housing bubble in 2007. But look how those people turned out when the bubbles burst—postponed retirements, foreclosures and underwater home equity. Is that what you want?

Article originally posted at ICPA.org.

Playing to Develop Healthy Minds and Bodies

by Kimberly Allen, DC, DACCP – ICPA.org:playing

Having fun with your child is important, but good play routines can last a lifetime.

It is a parent’s responsibility to stimulate their child’s developing nervous system with every motion and activity. These motions are helpful in developing neurological pathways. Parents also need to remember that although “educational” video games have been developed for babies up to young adults, they do not stimulate the same neural pathways in the brain as active play activities. Play activities should include stimulation of all five senses (sight, touch, sound, smell, and taste). The following are some different play activities you can use to incorporate neurological development techniques into your child’s daily routine.

• Visual (sight): Tossing beanbags, blowing bubbles, taking photos with a camera, dancing with scarves or movement with different colored scarves for the infant, using both hands to draw shapes and letters or to hold objects, and tracing letters or numbers on a person’s back and having them traced upon own back.

• Tactile (touch): Different textures (smooth, rough, uneven), splashing water in a bathtub, building blocks, examining natural objects such as feathers and pinecones, petting and feeding animals, eating snacks with different textures, hugging, and manipulating small objects such as Legos, puzzles, and lacing beads.

• Auditory (sound): Dancing or moving to music, humming, musical chairs, beating rhythm on instruments, singing sounds where words need to be added (“Old McDonald had a …” Or “B-I-N-G-O”), and jumping rope while chanting or singing.

• Smells and Tastes: Introduce the child to different smells and tastes and look for appropriate reaction. For example, a sour face in response to a sour taste. Have the child name different smells such as coffee, fruits, and perfumes.

• Vestibular (equilibrium/balance): Spinning in circles, balancing on a teeter-totter, jumping on a bed, climbing on jungle gyms, sliding down a slide, walking on uneven surfaces (sand, grass), crawling through small spaces, allowing child to reach with right hand across the body to any object on the left and vice versa, and also tummy time for infants.

• Proprioceptive (sense stimuli): Pushing and pulling toys or wagon; tumbling to the ground; pillow fights; playing catch with a ball; kneading dough; getting in or out of seatbelts, jackets, boots, shoes, and socks; playing horsy; stretching up to the sky; obstacle courses; and pouring water or sand from one container to the next.

These activities are excellent sources of play techniques that will stimulate the development of your child’s neural pathways. Please remember that even though play is important, safety is more important. Some activities may cause injuries similar to that of Shaken Baby Syndrome.

Shaken Baby Syndrome was originally referred to as a “whiplash” injury. Shaken Baby Syndrome occurs when a child is shaken violently in a to-andfro fashion. Such violence can cause hematomas (bruising) in the area between the skull and the brain, retinal hemorrhaging (bleeding in the eyes), and, less commonly, fractures to the skull.

Though most people feel that Shaken Baby Syndrome occurs only as an act of violence, it can also occur during play activities that were never meant to harm. These activities include:

• Repeated and vigorous tossing of a child into the air. This allows a “whipping” motion of the head and neck.
• Jogging with infant on back or shoulders. Just because the infant is in a carrying restraint does not mean that head is supported in a neutral position.
• Bouncing the child on knee or swaying the leg back and forth, creating a to-and-fro motion and a “whipping” motion of the head and neck.
• Swinging child around by ankles. The child will attempt to move head against force of motion. This can cause “whipping” of the head and neck.
• Spinning child around in circles. The child’s head will feel very heavy and will often fall backwards, causing the “whipping” motion.

Signs and/or symptoms of brain stem swelling (e.g. Shaken Baby Syndrome) include: constant crying, stiffness, inability to wake up or sleeping more than usual, and vomiting. If you see any of these symptoms in your infant or child after any play or injury, take them to their doctor immediately. Please use caution at all times in order to best protect your infant or child from such injuries.

Just remember, having fun is important, but good play routines can last a lifetime.

Article originally posted at Author Joe WithrowPosted on Categories WellnessTags , , , Leave a comment on Playing to Develop Healthy Minds and Bodies

Movement and Infants

by Rae Pica – ICPA.org:movement

Besides the fact that they were built to do so, there are a great many reasons why infants need to move. The truth is, even though their movement capabilities are extremely limited when compared with even those of a toddler, movement experiences may be more important for infants than for children of any other age group. And it’s not all about motor development either.

Thanks to new insights in brain research, we now know that early movement experiences are considered essential to the neural stimulation (the “use-itor- lose-it” principle involved in the keeping or pruning of brain cells) needed for healthy brain development.

Not long ago, neuroscientists believed that the structure of a human brain was genetically determined at birth. They now realize that although the main “circuits” are “prewired” (for such functions as breathing and the heartbeat), the experiences that fill each child’s days are what actually determine the brain’s ultimate design and the nature and extent of that child’s adult capabilities.

An infant’s brain, it turns out, is chock-full of brain cells (neurons) at birth. (In fact, a one-pound fetus already has 100 billion of them!) Over time, each of these brain cells can form as many as 15,000 connections (synapses) with other brain cells. And it is during the first three years of life that most of these connections are made. Synapses not used often enough are eliminated. On the other hand, those synapses that have been activated by repeated early experiences tend to become permanent. And it appears that physical activity and play during early childhood have a vital role in the sensory and physiological stimulation that results in more synapses.

Neurophysiologist Carla Hannaford, in her excellent book, Smart Moves: Why Learning Is Not All in Your Head, states: “Physical movement, from earliest infancy and throughout our lives, plays an important role in the creation of nerve cell networks which are actually the essence of learning.”

She then goes on to relate how movement, because it activates the neural wiring throughout the body, makes the entire body—not just the brain—the instrument of learning.

Gross and fine motor skills are learned through repetition as well—both by virtue of being practiced and because repetition lays down patterns in the brain. Although it hasn’t been clearly determined that such early movements as kicking, waving the arms, and rocking on hands and knees are “practice” for later, more advanced motor skills, it’s believed that they are indeed part of a process of neurological maturation needed for the control of motor skills. In other words, these spontaneous actions prepare the child—physically and neurologically—to later perform more complex, voluntary actions.

Then, once the child is performing voluntary actions (for example, rolling over, creeping, and walking), the circle completes itself, as these skills provide both glucose (the brain’s primary source of energy) and blood flow (“food”) to the brain, in all likelihood increasing neuronal connections.

According to Rebecca Anne Bailey and Elsie Carter Burton, authors of The Dynamic Self: Activities to Enhance Infant Development, whenever babies move any part of their bodies, there exists the potential for two different kinds of learning to occur: learning to move and moving to learn.

Still, recent evidence indicates that infants are spending upward of 60 waking hours a week in things— high chairs, carriers, car seats, and the like! The reasons for this trend are varied. Part of the problem is that more and more infants are being placed in childcare centers, where there may not be enough space to let babies roam the floor. Or, given the number of infants enrolled, there may be little opportunity for caregivers to spend one-on-one time with each baby. This means, in the morning, an infant is typically fed, dressed, and then carried to the automobile, where she’s placed in a car seat. She’s then carried into the childcare center, where she may spend much of her time in a crib or playpen. At the end of the day, she’s picked up, placed again into the car seat, and carried back into the house, where she’s fed, bathed, and put to bed.

Even when parents are home with baby, they seem to be busier than ever these days. Who has time to get on the floor and creep around with a child? Besides, with today’s emphasis on being productive, playing with a baby would seem almost a guilty pleasure! And if the baby seems happy and safe in a seat placed conveniently in front of the TV, in a bouncer hung in a doorway, or cruising about in a walker, then what’s the harm? It’s a win/win situation, isn’t it?

In fact, it isn’t. Being confined (as one colleague says: “containerized”) affects a baby’s personality; they need to be held. It may also have serious consequences for the child’s motor—and cognitive— development.

Other trends in today’s society having an impact on infants’ opportunities to move are the inclination to restrict, rather than encourage, freedom of movement and the misguided belief that early academic instruction will result in superbabies. (In 1999, 770,000 copies of infant software— “lapware”—were sold!)

Humans are meant to move and play. The inclination—the need—is hardwired into them. Babies, in fact, spend nearly half of their waking time—40%—doing things like kicking, bouncing, and waving their arms. And while it may appear all this activity is just for the sake of moving, it’s important to realize a baby is never “just moving” or “just playing.” Every action extends the child’s development in some way.

Article originally posted at Author Joe WithrowPosted on Categories WellnessTags , , , , , Leave a comment on Movement and Infants

Baby Crawling: How Important It Really Is

by Bernardo R. Sañudo Diez, DC – ICPA.org:baby crawling

There is nobody in the world as busy as a one-year-old baby, possibly the most productive year of his entire life. So numerous and so different are all his experiences; he goes up and down and touches, smells, feels, and tastes almost everything that comes into his grasp.

His brain needs to put some order to the myriad of experiences he is coming in contact with; it needs to “file” and organize the areas where culture, beliefs, ideas, and knowledge will be stored along all the life of this being.

The baby is too busy: without his knowledge he is growing and his nervous system is maturing. He accomplishes this by performing many activities, including resting to replenish his strength, doing happy but unarticulated movement of his hands, and kicking the air with his little legs.

As time passes, he is able to hold his head and observe the world that surrounds him with a more horizontal and vertical point of view. After accomplishing this task, he will no longer be satisfied by just lying down—he will enrich his world by remaining upright, gaining perspective and depth of spaces and objects.

This tri-dimensional world floods his brain with stimuli that have to be reorganized, learning and re-learning all the time. Consciously he does not know what he is seeing or touching but this miraculous organism will store it and file it anyway. He is so fascinated with all that surrounds him, he is not aware that his spinal column is strengthening. Around six months of age, he is able to sit by himself and gain strength and liberty for his arms, giving him more options in movement and activities to enrich his world.

The joy of playing—throwing and reaching for objects and toys which are farther and farther away from him makes him crave for more and this is how he first discovers “rolling” and then finally, starts to crawl.

Virtually all parents accept that crawling is a milestone all babies must master, but in spite of this, not many realize why it is so important, or how to motivate their babies to accomplish and get the most benefits from this skill. It is very common to hear some parents say that their baby did not crawl or did not want to crawl. In many cases this is because parents do not have time to properly stimulate their babies to develop this skill. Also, because in our busy schedule we need babies to walk in a very short time, we cut them short of a major stage in their physical and neurological development by putting them in a walker or forcing them to walk early.

Crawling not only means a new way of locomotion: as he moves from one side to the other, a lot of very exciting things are happening inside his little head. More and more studies show that crawling has a paramount connection between the physical and neurological development of the baby which, in the future, will be of major importance in his academic and extra-academic performance.

Crawling allows babies to create connections between both cerebral hemispheres. When the baby coordinates his movements to move in one direction, he mostly first moves the right arm and the left leg and then the left arm with the right leg in a reciprocating motion; this is called cross-crawl patterning. Motor nerve impulses to the extremities originate in each side of the brain cortex and cross in the brain stem in an area called the corpus callosum to supply required motor activity to the opposite extremity. This means that when the baby crawls, both hemispheres must communicate and interchange information very fast. What makes this incredible is that these same patterns, or neurological routes, are the same that later in life will be use to perform more difficult tasks, such as walking, running, passing one object from one hand to the other, or even taking notes in a class while listening to the teacher.

The body of the baby must remain in equilibrium and advance in an orderly and organized fashion. The axis that it is formed between the joints of the hips and shoulders should rotate opposite to each other while the baby crawls causing some torsion in the baby’s spine. This torsion will tonify and model the structures of the spinal column, preparing them for an erect posture when the baby starts to walk. The curvatures of the spine, especially the ones at the neck and lower back area, will start to form, setting the basis for the correct spinal model which will accommodate for a proper spinal function and posture. This is very important for the chiropractic doctor because it sets the beginning of a healthy spine.

In addition, when the baby crawls, his body acts against the weight of gravity, developing his vestibular and propioceptive systems. Furthermore, when crawling, the baby touches different surfaces and textures and this will develop the sensibility of his palms and fingers, allowing him in the future to grasp and hold small objects such as a pencil or crayon to draw, write, or play a musical instrument. These two systems will be of utmost importance in his future neurological and cognitive development.

Another area where crawling is very important is the visual aspect of baby’s development. Crawling helps the baby measure the world that surrounds him; the distance between his eyes and his hand when he is in the crawling position will become fundamental in everything he does and will have an impact in his future development. This is called optical convergence, which helps us to know at what distance an object is located, its volume, and its size. It helps the baby to know how the distance from the sofa to the floor and if it is safe to go down face or feet first. This ability will be important in the future in order to clearly see things that are near, such as letters and pictures in a book, or things which are far away, such as words or drawings in the classroom and be able to accommodate far and near objects instantly. Knowing the distance and volume of objects will also help him with puzzles and brain-teasers and will also set the basis for reading and writing skills. So, binocular and stereoscopic vision, convergence, and accommodation will all be developed by crawling, which in due time helps the baby to solve problems, jump obstacles, and understand spatial relationships.

As stated earlier, crawling creates neurological connections which criss-cross between the right and left brain hemispheres; the more the baby crawls the faster these connections will interchange information. This process will transform the brain and produce the phenomenon of lateralization, in which one hemisphere becomes dominant in certain activities and skills. When you throw an object to a baby he will try to catch it with both hands because the information reaches both hemispheres at the same time. But in an older child, he will catch the toy with one hand or the other. His brain will decide which hand is closer or which hand is more skillful to perform the task.

A newborn infant has a crawling instinct right from birth, but babies will usually be ready to crawl between 8 and 10 months. There are different styles of crawling but most of them allow for simultaneously bearing weight on both arms and legs and alternating the movement of opposing extremities. All babies have their own rhythm and time. There is no use to compare the development of infants of the same age, but it is clear that babies without this experience almost always will have some degree of delay in the performance of skills explained before. Crawling is key in developing crucial brain activities and skills that will allow the baby to succeed and to relate to his world in a more complete and satisfying manner. We should stimulate this activity by giving the baby “floor time” every day: placing him belly down to strengthen his neck, arm, and back muscles and placing colorful objects in front of him to encourage forward movements. And always remember to cheer him and to transmit love and confidence.

Article originally posted at Author Joe WithrowPosted on Categories WellnessTags , , , Leave a comment on Baby Crawling: How Important It Really Is

Emotional Responsiveness

by Carol Goode, Ph.D. – ICPA.org:emotional

Ninety percent of a child’s success in life depends upon emotional responsiveness. Can a child respond to life without hesitance and fear? You have a wonderful opportunity to help your child develop and use strong inner resources.

When we hear a negative thought repeatedly, we start to believe it. It plays on and on in our heads. We give it the power to determine how we interact with the world. All of our thoughts and emotions, good and bad, become imprinted within us over the years. Like the grooves on an old record, the more we hear a negative thought, believe it, and let it run us, the more it becomes deeply imbedded within our consciousness.

The same is true with emotional reactions. We strengthen emotional patterns by repeating them and giving them more power over us. Our emotions become automatic and habitual. Like a repeating program, they run again and again, as long as we let them. The good news is, we can turn the reactions off and change those patterns any time we choose!

Teaching our children to access and use their inner resources defeats negative thinking and erases emotional patterning. Let’s teach them to become aware of their emotions, and to pull new ideas from inside. Here are some simple methods to show them how to achieve an inner focus so they think before they respond.

Take a Breather

We’ve all heard the phrase “take a breather,” meaning to relax and refocus. A few deep breaths relax the body, quiet the emotions and clear the mind.

“My daughter was having problems in school with a little girl who was picking on her,” says Dyan Stein, a transformational breath trainer from Durango, Colorado. “She would come home upset, day after day, until finally we breathed with the intention of sending the other little girl some love.”

“The breathing session helped my daughter shift the way she responded to the little girl, and she didn’t get upset anymore. Now they are the best of friends.”

Stein says that she regularly uses breathing to help her daughter shift her focus when she comes home from school. They spend time together in a positive and loving way, with no distractions. Teaching children appropriate breathing shows them how to safely integrate their feelings, increase skill levels and stay mentally focused on their schoolwork.

Discover the Point of View

To give a 9-year old asthma patient a participatory role in his healing, I asked him how he saw things in his world. He chose to draw his viewpoint. He took the crayons and newsprint and went to his corner with pillows. With great intensity, he grabbed the black and brown crayons, held both in his hands, and drew puffy looking clouds across the top of the page. Next he drew a stick figure in the bottom center page in a bright blue. Then he surrounded the little person in a yellow, egg-shaped circle. Finally, he added some tentacles of the brown-black clouds dripping over the figure’s head.

In less than five minutes, he popped up like a jack-in-the-box to explain his viewpoint of the asthma. He explained, “This stuff on top of the page hangs around me all the time. It’s like my mom, always watching over me. Sometimes it drips on me like this here [he points to the tentacles]. But I feel good [he indicates the bright, blue stick figure]. And I’ve got a lot of energy [he shows me the light around his stick figure] around me so that stuff doesn’t get me.”

Could we have said it so eloquently? The picture hangs in his bedroom to remind him that he has his health and energy. Mom still hovers, but he understands she does it with a caring intention. Even Mom has learned to respect his point of view.

When Words Don’t Come, Move

Twelve-year-old Alaina stormed into the house after several hours at the beach with her friends. Their ages ranged from 11 to 15. It wasn’t unusual for Alaina and her friends to hang out together in the small beach town on the coast of Maine. However, it was highly odd for Alaina to slam the door and sigh loudly in disgust. When I looked at her, I saw a red face ready to explode in anger. Her chesty, fast-paced breathing indicated anxiety.

“What’s wrong?” I asked. She couldn’t speak. She held her hands up as if to say, “Give me a few moments,” while she paced around the kitchen. Wanting to ease her pain, I blurted out, “Move. Just keep moving.”

What she showed me in the next few moments with her actions could never have been so beautifully demonstrated with words. At first she walked briskly in circles, alternating her hands between resting on her hips and throwing them up in the air with a disgusted look on her face.

Her facial expressions were marvelous. She walked up to me with hazy eyes and protruded lips and took a long, slow drag from an imaginary thing in her lips. She slurped the air in and held her breath while smiling dreamily. “You want one?” she gesticulated. Then she turned to answer herself with adamant hand waving in front of her face. “NO!” That was clear! So far I’d determined that the older kids were smoking marijuana and were offering it to her. She got angry and told them no. But the worst was yet to come for this 12-year-old.

She imitated beautifully the charades of being pushed around, laughed at and made to feel as though she were a very uncool kid. She ended the movement by flopping on the kitchen chair and crying. I didn’t say anything. I just put my arms around her and silently thanked her for being so “uncool.”

Follow the Inner Rhythm

Researchers continue to find that children are affected by music in unexpected ways. Preschoolers given piano and voice lessons, for example, were found in one study to improve dramatically in their ability to put together picture puzzles of animals.

When you coach your children, rely on your instincts and experiences in terms of what they need at a given time. Children need quiet music, just as adults do, when they need to relax, sleep or be mentally alert. But if a child needs energizing to engage in tasks or games, lively, upbeat music, such as syncopated Latin dances, will provide the necessary stimulation for movement.

You can coach your child through moments of intense feelings with some musical processes that will make you both feel better. Anger, for example, can be pounded out on a drum; sadness can sing on resonator bells. Talking after the musical expression is much easier and your child will be better able to think of solutions for his situations and answers to his problems.

When you see the warning signs of anger or sibling conflict stirring, reach for the drums! Hand one to your child, along with the drumstick or soft mallet designed for playing it, and pick one up for yourself. Ask your child to use the drum to tell you how she feels. As she strikes the drum, support her playing with a simple basic beat, like 1-2-3-4. Reflect her mood by singing, “You sound very angry. Is that true?” If you get an affirmative response, ask for more: “Let me hear on the drum just how angry you are.” Keep playing your beat as your child lets her emotions out. Depending on your child’s age, drumming, rather than words, may be all you hear for awhile.

You don’t have to do this exercise with a drum. Other musical instruments that are easy and fun to play and to express with include maracas, clavas, jingle bells, spoon bells, resonator bells, sticks, woodblocks, castanets, whistles, kazoos or small horns. If you play an instrument such as piano or guitar, you may want to accompany your child on it while she plays the drum, or you might play a recording that features accented rhythm. West African and Native American drumming tapes are ideally suited for this purpose and are widely available.

Encouraging your child to express with musical instruments teaches him an appropriate way to show intense feelings instead of repressing them. Children who grow up with the freedom to express in a creative and enjoyable way become emotionally balanced adults and willing listeners to others’ feelings.

Music, movement, drawing and breathing are all ways to help relieve your child’s stress by directing their focus inside. As you join in the activities as teacher and coach, you’ll find your own stress will ease, as well. Learning inner focus enables your child to have more productive relationships with their friends, family and life situations. Since a successful life is so dependent upon keeping our minds and emotions clear, developing these skills in our children will strengthen their foundation for life success. All we have to do is be aware, and care. This will lead us to the right action.

Article originally posted at Author Joe WithrowPosted on Categories WellnessTags , , , , Leave a comment on Emotional Responsiveness

The Safety of Raw Milk

by Pathways Magazine– ICPA.org:raw milk

Protective Components: Raw milk contains numerous components that assist in:

Killing pathogens in the milk (lactoperoxidase, lactoferrin, leukocytes, macrophages, neutrophils, antibodies, medium chain fatty acids, lysozyme, B12 binding protein, bifidus factor, beneficial bacteria);

Preventing pathogen absorption across the intestinal wall (polysaccharides, oligosaccharides, mucins, fibronectin, glycomacropeptides, bifidus factor, beneficial bacteria);

Strengthening the Immune System (lymphocytes, immunoglobulins, antibodies, hormones and growth factors).

Pasteurization Harmful: Many of these antimicrobial and immune-enhancing components are greatly reduced in effectiveness by pasteurization, and completely destroyed by ultra-pasteurization.

Dangers Exaggerated: Although raw milk, like any food, can become contaminated and cause illness, the dangers of raw milk are greatly exaggerated. In an analysis of reports on 70 outbreaks attributed to raw milk, we found many examples of reporting bias, errors and poor analysis resulting in most outbreaks having either no valid positive milk sample or no valid statistical association.

USDA/FDA Statistics: Based on data in a 2003 USDA/ FDA report: Compared to raw milk there are 515 times more illnesses from L-mono due to deli meats and 29 times more illness from L-mono due to pasteurized milk. On a per-serving basis, deli meats were 10 times more likely than raw milk to cause illness.

Outbreaks Due to Pasteurized Milk: Due to high volume distribution and its comparative lack of anti-microbial components, pasteurized milk when contaminated has caused numerous widespread and serious outbreaks of illness, including a 1984-5 outbreak afflicting almost 200,000 people. In 2007, three people died in Massachusetts from illness caused by contaminated pasteurized milk.

Ancient History: Claims that raw milk is unsafe are based on 40-year-old science and century-old experiences from distillery dairy “factory farms” in rapidly urbanizing 19th-century America.

Modern Advantages: Compared to 30–50 years ago, dairy farmers today can take advantage of many advancements that contribute to a dramatically safer product including pasture grazing, herd testing, effective cleaning systems, refrigeration and easier, significantly less expensive, more accessible and more sophisticated milk and herd disease-testing techniques.

Unique Food: Raw milk is the only food that has extensive built-in safety mechanisms and numerous components to create a healthy immune system.

The Oppression

The FDA has threatened enforcement and taken action against both farmers and buyer’s co-ops across the country for allegedly violating 1240.61 and 131.110(a). Below are a few recent examples. There was no allegation that the raw milk had caused any illnesses in any of these cases.

The FDA spent a year in an undercover sting operation on an Amish farmer, Dan Allgyer of Rainbow Acres in Pennsylvania. Agency employees lied about their identity and joined local buying clubs. They picked up raw milk from private residences—again, concealing their identities—and sent the milk to be tested. Despite nearly a dozen tests, not one sample showed any contamination. Despite the fact that this clean milk had not made anyone sick, the agency ultimately raided Allgyer’s farm in May 2011. In February 2012, the FDA obtained an injunction in federal court to prevent Allgyer from distributing raw milk across state lines in the future.

FDA officials, together with officials from five other local, state, and federal agencies raided the Rawesome Food Club, a private buying club in Venice, California, on June 30, 2010. Police accompanying the various agency officials entered the store with guns drawn. The officials confiscated 17 coolers of food, including raw milk and raw milk products, even though the warrant stated that they could only take samples. In 2011, the government raided Rawesome a second time on August 3, with FDA officials again participating in the raid. Government agents seized almost the entire food inventory at the store, dumping out all the raw milk on the premises without any court order to do so.
The store manager, a farmer supplying the store, and an administrator for the farmer who did nothing more than take orders and disseminate information, were each charged with multiple felonies alleging violations of state food and dairy laws.

An FDA agent participated in the dumping of more than 100 gallons of impounded raw milk belonging to members of a Georgia food buying club, which had been legally purchased from a licensed South Carolina dairy in October 2009. The primary agency in that action was the Georgia Department of Agriculture, but the FDA official present at that time told the buying club’s agent that even an individual consumer cannot legally cross state lines to buy raw milk and bring it home under 1240.61 and 131.110.

In all of these cases, there was no allegation that the raw milk had caused any illnesses or was contaminated in any way. It’s time to tell FDA to focus on real threats to public safety—the consolidated, industrialized food system—and to stop interfering with direct farmer-to consumer transactions.

Article originally posted at Author Joe WithrowPosted on Categories WellnessTags , , , , , , , Leave a comment on The Safety of Raw Milk

Choose the Right Tomato

by Sam Mogannam– ICPA.org:tomato

With the recent resurgence of farmers’ markets and renewed interest in seasonal eating, it’s easy to take good tomatoes for granted. But a recent experience made me really appreciate good tomatoes. I ordered a BLT at a restaurant, and for some reason the chef made it with raw green tomatoes. It was awful! If the chef had only fried or grilled the green tomatoes, the sandwich would have been awesome.

How to Buy

As beautiful as tomatoes can be, the true test is in tasting them. That’s easy enough to do at the farmers’ market, but you have to be a little proactive in the supermarket. Don’t hesitate to ask a staffer to sample a tomato or two.

But you can—to a degree—judge a tomato by its cover. Tomatoes with full, saturated color all over are ideal. However, many commercial tomatoes are mechanically harvested while still green (when they are sturdier and better able to withstand travel) and later artificially ripened with ethylene gas. This treatment makes the tomato look red on the outside, but the core will still be pink; for this reason it’s useful to check out the cross-section of a cut tomato if you can. Ideally, the color will be consistent from the skin to the very center.

Buy organic tomatoes whenever possible. Most commercial tomatoes are heavily sprayed with pesticides and then treated with fungicides after harvest to prolong shelf life. Organic and unsprayed tomatoes are becoming more readily available, especially at farmers’ markets, so look for and purchase those if you can.

Tomatoes that still have a bit of green stem attached are optimal; The stems themselves have a short shelf life, as they dry and brown fairly quickly. Not only are stem-on tomatoes more work as far as picking goes, but also a bright green stem is a good sign that the tomato was recently picked.

Avoid tomatoes with split skins; it indicates a late rain or general over – watering, and that exposed flesh is vulnerable to mold.

It seems obvious to recommend buying tomatoes in season, but its importance cannot be overstated. Many folks associate tomatoes with summer, so guests start asking for them as soon as the weather warms up. However, because tomatoes are a late-planted crop (they can’t go into the ground until after the final frost), and they require an extended period of heat and sun to reach maturity, tomatoes aren’t ready for harvest until mid-July or later, depending on the weather and where you are.

Farmers’ markets are almost always the best places to find good tomatoes—but you can often find pretty good tomatoes at the supermarket if you know what to look for:

Cherry and grape tomatoes tend to be a little more flavorful than other varieties of supermarket tomatoes. Their small size makes it easy to sneak a little taste and evaluate the goods. Sungolds and Sweet 100s are a couple of varieties that tend to have good flavor.

Heirloom tomatoes are mind-boggling in their variety and proliferation. Some are utterly incredible; others are just so-so. When you’re shopping, it’s important to realize that “heirloom” refers only to the varietal category and doesn’t have anything to do with the way the tomato is grown. Some commercial growers have hopped onto the heirloom bandwagon and grow heirlooms just as they grow their other tomatoes: for size and appearance, not for flavor. So you might buy a huge, gorgeous heirloom, only to find that it’s bloated and flavorless from overwatering. They can be pricey, too—all the more reason to ask for a taste!

Roma and other “paste” tomatoes are the ideal choice for cooking if you have to buy fresh tomatoes out of season. San Marzano is my favorite variety in this category; they’re perfect for canning.

Slicer tomatoes, like Beefsteak, New Jersey and Early Girl, are so named because of their hefty size and round shape. “Vine ripe” tomatoes also fall into this category; they are generally hothouse-grown in Holland. Their flavor is decent, but not great.

Don’t forget canned tomatoes as a reasonable alternative to fresh tomatoes in the off-season. In the dead of winter, tomatoes from a can will have worlds more flavor than crunchy, underripe ones. They work perfectly if you’re going to cook the tomatoes anyway, and even make great salsas.

How to Store

Do not refrigerate tomatoes (and don’t buy refrigerated ones, either); the chill adversely affects the texture and diminishes the flavor. If you buy slightly underripe tomatoes, put them in a paper bag and let them sit on the counter for a few days; they will soften and become a bit sweeter.

How to Use

When you have really excellent tomatoes, especially organic heirlooms, all you need is a sprinkle of salt and a drizzle of high-quality extra-virgin olive oil.

Basil is a natural accompaniment to tomatoes; tarragon, thyme, oregano and cilantro are good partners.

Cherry tomatoes are excellent in salsas, tossed with tender green beans, or briefly sautéed and mixed with pasta. (For a quick meal, toss good spaghetti or linguine with sautéed tomatoes and garlic, basil, extra-virgin olive oil, and salt and pepper. Five minutes is all it takes to make the sauce, start to finish.)

Roma tomatoes are well suited to making tomato paste and sauce.

Heirlooms are at their best when you leave them raw; their subtleties and distinct personalities diminish when cooked. If you can get your hands on a few different heirloom varieties, try conducting a side-by-side tasting of your own. Pay attention to what’s happening in your mouth. You’ll find a surprising spectrum of textures, flavors, and seed structures. Some will seem incredibly sweet, and others will be almost salty.

Article originally posted at Author Joe WithrowPosted on Categories WellnessTags , , , , , , Leave a comment on Choose the Right Tomato

Find Stillness to Cure the Illness

by Leo Babauta – ICPA.org:stillness

It’s a busy day, and you’re inundated by non-stop e-mails, text messages, phone calls, instant message requests, notifications— interruptions of all kinds.

The noise of the world is a dull roar that pervades every second of your life. It’s a rush of activity, a drain on your energy, a pull on your attention—until you no longer have the energy to pay attention or take action.

It’s an illness, this noise, this rush. It can literally make us sick. We become stressed, depressed, fat, burnt out, slain by the slings and arrows of technology. The cure is simple: Stillness.

Pause.

Take a minute out of your busy day to do this little exercise: Pause in the middle of all you have to do, all that’s going on around you. Close your eyes, and sit still. Breathe in, and breathe out, and pay attention to your breath as it comes in and goes out. Just sit still, for about a minute.

“Silence is a source of great strength.” –Lao Tzu

This stillness might seem like inaction, which we’re taught is a bad thing. It’s lazy, it’s passive, it’s against our Puritan work ethic. And yet, this simple inaction can change our world.

Stillness calms us. It gives us a small oasis of quiet that allows us to hear our thoughts, that allows us to catch our breath, that gives us room to breathe at all. It is the antibody to the stress and rush we feel daily.

Stillness has a calming effect on the world around us as well. By becoming still, we cause others to pause, to pay attention. Our quiet also quiets others. We set the mood for those who work or otherwise interact with us.

When we rush and set a frenetic pace, it stresses others and inspires them to rush frenetically too. Stillness has the opposite effect. It slows the world down, allows us to focus, and gives us time to contemplate what matters most.

It takes strength to be still when others rush. It takes courage to be different, to go against the stream. But while others might think us weird at first, that’s OK. Sometimes it’s the weird ones who make the most difference. And soon, as our stillness inspires others to find stillness of their own, we won’t be the weird ones— we’ll be the ones with wisdom.

It takes strength to find stillness when the world around us is a chaos of activity, but it’s a strength that’s in us, and we need only to find it. Paradoxically, it’s stillness that will allow us to find that strength. Be still, look within, and it will be there.

Find Stillness.

It’s pretty simple, really, and you don’t need me to tell you to do this: To find stillness, you just need to take the time to sit still, every day that you can.

Find a time in the morning, when the world is still fairly quiet. Don’t do anything. Don’t plan your day, don’t check e-mail, don’t eat. Just sit, and learn to be comfortable being still.

In practice, we’ll gradually find that comfort, and we’ll become good at it. If mornings are no good, find time during your lunch break, or after work, or just before you go to bed.

Find a place to be still. It can be a chair in your house, or a front porch, or the roof. It can be a park bench, or the beach, or a path in the woods. Let this be a ritual that you come to look forward to.

“Activity conquers cold, but stillness conquers heat.” –Lao Tzu

From this small place of stillness, calm will carry to the rest of your day, radiating like a soothing force. You’ll be calmer throughout the day, and learn to find little pockets of stillness everywhere: when you first start your work day, when you’re ready to sit down and create, when you’re about to eat, when you’re ready to exercise. During a meeting, even.

“Let us be silent, that we may hear the whispers of the gods.” –Ralph Waldo Emerson

Practice, regularly. Practice, and learn. Practice stillness, and the stillness becomes a canvas upon which you can paint the masterpiece of your life.

Article originally posted at ICPA.org.

Tenets of Holistic Health

by Jeanne Ohm, DC – ICPA.org:holistic health

Nourishing the Terrain

When we think of nourishment, we naturally reflect on nutrition…the food necessary to establish a healthy terrain. After decades of propaganda leading us to believe that commercially produced “foods” are OK, we are coming to a rude awakening that we have deviated far from the natural, whole foods that truly nourish our bodies. Because this critical awareness is not upheld by all supporting systems in our society (agricultural, educational, economical, political, medical), only proactive individuals are making this difficult transition. We must be vigilant in selecting the foods we eat, how they are grown, how they are prepared and their consequent ability to nourish our cells. We know the importance of organically grown vegetables and fruits. Finding the best sources and preparations for our families may not be as convenient as we would like, but is certainly worth the extra effort. Our Nutrition section in this issue offers a few important suggestions to incorporate nutrient-dense foods and eliminate those that overload us. Included are family-tested recipes that improve the terrain and enhance immune system function.

Coordinating the Function

The classic medical text Gray’s Anatomy tells us that the nervous system is the master control system of the body, determining the function of all systems, all functions and all organs. Newer to science is the profound interconnectivity between the nervous system and immune system. Once thought of as separate, these systems are now considered intertwined. It is now widely accepted that a healthy immune system supports nervous system function, and vice versa. This is very important for us to recognize if we want to create a healthy terrain.

The nervous and immune systems are interconnected in several known ways. Adrenal glands are one common link. Chemicals and hormones that are produced by cells of both systems are another connection. Additionally, research shows that the brain uses nerve cells to communicate directly with the immune system.

Chiropractic care was first linked to improved immunity during the deadly flu epidemic of 1917 and 1918, when chiropractic patients fared better than the general population. This observation spurred a study of the field. The data reported that flu victims under chiropractic care had an estimated .25 percent death rate, considerably less than the normal rate of 5 percent among flu victims who received no chiropractic care.

In 1936, pioneering endocrinologist Hans Selye began groundbreaking research on the effects of stress on our health. B.J. Palmer tells us:

Selye’s great contribution to science was this clear concept, that disease affects people according to their previously developed ability to adapt. The writer goes on to relate that the physician prefers to hear that you have had childhood diseases rather than avoided them. He knows that a bout of harmless chickenpox while you were a child, will probably immunize you for life, but that if you contract it first as an adult, it could run a very serious course. This is somewhat of a reversal to medical thinking in years past. This may seem strange, but the writer has this to say regarding antibiotics. “All too often, a patient will insist on a shot of glamorous penicillin or some newer antibiotic for a mild infection. The physician will explain that the drug is not necessary—that it is better for the body to use its own defenses—but the determined patient shops around until he finds someone who will administer it anyhow.” “The frequent result is that, although the individual’s own natural resistance would have conquered the infection, the antibiotic suddenly robs the body of the germs necessary to stimulate the antibody producing mechanism into action. And, a stubborn chronic disease takes hold, against which, antibiotics are now powerless.”

In chiropractic we understand that nerve system function can be interfered with by subluxations, which create interferences to the normal transmission of nerve impulses. When this occurs, any and all systems are affected. Certainly immune system function, dependent on proper functioning of the nervous system, can be impaired as well.

Since then, additional studies have supported chiropractic care to improve immunity. One study found that disease-fighting white blood cell counts were higher just 15 minutes after spinal adjustments. In a similar study, the immune system response in HIV-positive patients under regular care for six months showed a 48 percent increase in white blood cell counts. Conversely, the group that did not receive chiropractic adjustments experienced a 7.96 percent decrease in immunity cells. More research is certainly warranted.

Trusting the Process

You may eat a perfect diet of raw organic, biodynamically grown whole foods, drink purified water, jog five miles a day, and get adjusted weekly, but if you are overcome with negative emotions enhanced by adversarial thinking, you will not be healthy. Your immune system, via your nervous system, listens to your inner thoughts.

Holistic healing practices have always recognized the relationship between thoughts and health. In 1910, D.D. Palmer introduced the idea of the three Ts. He explained that thoughts, traumas and toxins could cause distress to the nervous system, impairing its ability to function.

The science of Psychoneuroimmunology (PNI) studies the interaction between thoughts, their effects on emotions, and the resulting immune system function via the nervous system. In 1985, research by neuropharmacologist Candace Pert showed that neuropeptide specific receptors are present on the walls of cells in both the brain and the immune system. This revealed an interdependency between emotions and immunity via the central nervous system. Her work gave scientific credence to the ancient healing practices that have accepted the mind-body relationship. In her book Molecules of Emotion, she writes, “We know that the immune system, like the central nervous system, has memory and the capacity to learn. Thus, it could be said that intelligence is located not only in the brain but in cells that are distributed throughout the body, and that the traditional separation of mental processes, including emotions, from the body is no longer valid.”

That said, being conscious of our emotions is imperative in understanding health. For example, take fear, an underlying emotion that has an immense impact on health. In previous editorials and numerous additional articles throughout Pathways, we have looked at the stifling effects of fear on our well-being and normal, natural function. Fear propels us into the fight-or-flight mode—an override of our sympathetic nervous system. In this defensive state, our bodies limit cellular reproduction and growth as the systems of protection are activated. To paraphrase Bruce Lipton, we cannot live in a state of imbalanced protection and growth at the same time. He maintains that the state of being that fosters growth is love, and that the protection mode is activated by fear. When we are in a state of unresolved fear, we cannot heal, regenerate or be well.

A wise person once said that “fear” could be an acronym for “False Evidence Appearing Real.” When we look at the germ theory and feel the underlying emotion it produces, we can clearly see it is fear-based. The terms used in the course of allopathic medicine reflect this fearful, warlike mentality. We have to kill the cancer, destroy the germ, fight the disease, be rescued in labor, struggle through breastfeeding—the list goes on, with a mental perspective whose constant is fear.

Ah…and here is the killer (pun intended): The solution to these “problems” cannot be accomplished by our own selves; we are dependent upon an outside entity (in this case, modern allopathic medicine) for salvation. For example: Germs are our enemy and our only solution to overcoming them is that hopefully, someday, somebody will find that magic potion that can “kill those germs.” Until then, it is hopeless. Responsibility for our own lives has been stripped, and this disempowered state of mind creates even more fearful emotions. Healing in this model becomes an emotionally charged, futile pursuit.

So, how do we break the cycle of fear? Other than reading inspiring words of wisdom and surrounding ourselves with like-minded practitioners and friends, Pert advises us to get in touch with our bodies: “Your body is your subconscious mind and you can’t heal it by talk alone.” Bodywork, movement therapy, simple exercise, spinal adjustments and massage can all release stuck emotions by clearing blockages to normal body function. Ancient healing arts and modern holistic practitioners all recognize and support the mind-body connection in healing. Pert concludes, “…almost every other culture but ours recognizes the role played by some kind of emotional catharsis or energy release in healing.”

Let’s be honest—the role of the mind in healing is not new, it has just been allopathically suppressed. Hippocrates (the Father of Medicine) made these statements centuries ago:

• Humans are created to be healthy as long as they are whole: body, mind and spirit.

• People are characterized by self-healing properties that come from within and an innate healing force.

• Health and harmony is the normal state for all life.

Now, the accepted definitions of health are returning to Hippocrates’ way of thinking. Dorland’s Medical Dictionary defines it as “a state of optimal physical mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease and infirmity.”

Pert agrees, “Last but definitely not least, health is much more than the absence of illness,” she writes. “Live in an unselfish way that promotes a state of spiritual bliss that truly helps to prevent illness. Wellness is trusting in the ability and desire of your body-mind to heal and improve itself, if given half a chance. Take responsibility for your own health—and illness.”

I am excited to see science catch up to the holistic paradigm, challenging fear-based theories and supporting the return of logical wisdom. The reason why most holistic practices did not accept the germ theory from its onset was because the major premise of their healing model recognizes there is an innate intelligence in living matter: There is order, synchronicity, and a respect for natural law. It is a shift in consciousness, toward understanding and adhering to these vitalistic principles, that will have the most profound effect on our individual selves, our families and the future of humanity.

Article originally posted at ICPA.org.