June 2006 newsletter

The Underground Health Care Revolution

William B. Ferril, MD

Power complexes historically begin to falter long before the ruling elite realizes that the oppressed are organizing. Czarist Russian elitists did not fully appreciate the formidable force of organized peasants. The French revolutionaries similarly surprised their oppressors by the magnitude of underground support for a new way of doing things.

The uprising against the dominant medical industrial complex is no different as it meets the same old slumbering elitist components.

While the elitists smugly continue pandering their symptom control methods, which always have side effects, a better way continues to gather momentum. Slowly but surely, the downplayed art of healing is being rediscovered and is increasingly practiced within the alternative community. More western humans with each passing day leave the dominant medical treatment model. Often their departure centers on a sense that something very important is missing from mainstream medicine's approach to health versus disease.

Some of us argue that mainstream medicine has lost its soul. Instituted in place of the soul, from which all healing effects emerge, are the symptom control treatment strategies. But symptom control always comes with a price, and that price is paid within its practitioner's bodies, manifesting as side effects and toxicities. A vicious cycle follows when these side effects and toxicities are treated with yet more symptom control modalities.

True healing has but one side effect: its impact on the medical industrial complex's bottom line.

The medical industrial complex is a profit-oriented system. The multi-conglomerates that make up this system exist to make money. The system works quite simply: products (pharmaceutical drugs for instance) developed by this industry for sale to the public are sensationalized through the media. Of course, the pursuit of maximum profit provides a disincentive to share more effective healing strategies. Meanwhile the downsides of these products (side effects and toxicities) are minimized.

To protect its profits, the medical industrial complex conducts various disinformation campaigns. The media, with its own advertising revenue goals to consider, is generally all too happy to promote these half-truths, which engender fear in those who seek alternative counsel.

Common methods of disinformation include: the results of poorly run studies trashing various alternative modalities; the professional opinion of 'certified' experts; and the mantra about the "lack of scientific data" when they know very well that it is they who control which data are collected in the first place.

If you're in the system but rock the boat, consequences can be quick and severe. Dr. John Lee relates in the introduction of his book, Some Things Your Doctor May Not Tell You About Menopause that his reputation initially suffered at the hands of the complex. However, he adds that the complex underestimated the power of the international women's network regarding what works.

Owners

A medical system run by the profit interests of the medical industrial complex is analogous to a diet of junk food. Although junk food tastes like real food, it will harm the body if it is continuously ingested. And so it is with modern medicine.

I call a living human being in the possession of a body an "owner." American owners are bombarded by clever advertising schemes that encourage the consumption of injurious ingredients, whether fast foods or mainstream medicine's latest drugs and procedures. In the case of junk food, until recently almost everyone seemed to eat them. But slowly, more owners are catching on to the fact that these processed foods are harmful. Owners have become aware that processed foods, altered by chemicals, hormone mimics and nutrient depletions, will injure the body. The food industry's media campaigns still tout the latest clever come on, but there are less vulnerable owners with each passing year.

Similarly, the underground health care revolution cultivates an awareness of the consequences that follow from our obedience to the profit-generating dictums of mainstream medicine.

My Medical History

Part of the success of the dominant medicine paradigm arises from the incomplete education of physicians on: 1. what science has revealed, and 2. the verifiable results of other healing modalities. I, too, was a victim of my complex-funded education. Without realizing it, I became a believer in the corrupted mainstream view of the medical universe. As a consequence, I have been unintentionally guilty of prescribing treatments that were not in my patients' best interest. I believed in a system of health care where side effects and toxicities were treated with more medications and procedures. I regretfully remember discouraging patients from seeking or continuing alternative treatment modalities. However, I thank several of my doggedly stubborn patients who continually pointed out to me the inconsistencies of my educational paradigm. To my credit, I kept mulling over in my head the unexplainable outcomes in patient healing when they adhered to fringe advice. As the years ticked by, I continued to collect inconsistencies that were unexplainable using the mainstream view of health versus disease.

A major breakthrough occurred when I married my wife, Brenda, about ten years ago. Brenda is a Chiropractor. Initially, I humored myself by offering her space in my office. I still remember with humility witnessing what two hands accomplish compared to my medical training for a variety of afflictions. My wife also began to instruct me in the importance of medicinal herbs, colon health, and nutritional supplements.

As often happens, part of the solution for my brainwashing was to be found right in the place where I had set up my medical practice, the Flathead Indian Reservation. I practiced for many years amongst these wonderful people before I was asked to begin praying in their lodges with them. Once the initiation began, I came to view things differently. It was a gradual process, like so many other important steps in life. So gradual, in fact, that my favorite medicine man nicknamed me 'slow learner.'

This medicine man began to patiently teach me about the matters of the heart. To protect his privacy and ways, he shall remain anonymous. He comes from a long line of medicine people and is a full blood. He has taken no short cuts. He knows the songs, the prayers, the language and the medicines. He was a traditional Indian before it was trendy. Like the few others of his kind, he lives a lifestyle that respects all of creation.

One of his first lessons for me concerned his observation that I was a typical white person who did not know how to pray for myself. He taught me that life was a prayer. He taught me songs to sing with my prayers. Slowly I began to change. Part of the change allowed a renewed interest in how we heal from chronic degenerative disease.

About four years ago my inner voice began to say, "walk off the abyss." Initially I clung to my comfy life and possessions. However, the internal discontent grew stronger and the inner voice cried out more often. About the time I consented to walking off the abyss into the unknown, an Amish family approached me about buying my farm. Somehow, I was able to walk away from a piece of land that I loved dearly. I sold my practice and other encumbering possessions.

While running on the beach in Oregon three months later it came to me that I was to write a book about how the body heals itself. It was really slow going at first. Looking back on it I am grateful that I was very naïve about the long and difficult task I was undertaking. During the past three and one half years, I have realized that I am one of the warriors in the transforming revolution for the empowerment of the people in regards to their healing choices. When I say that I am a warrior for health care change, I do not mean to imply I have great importance by myself. Rather, I am one of many channels through which love's light travels through and expresses itself. I am more accurately described as Pooh Bear, in The Tao of Pooh. For some reason the angels are working through me to deliver an important message about how we heal. How we heal has little to do with the dominant medical system with regards to its treatment strategies for the diseases of middle age.

Seven Principles of Healing

The middle-aged body wants to heal itself. Around middle age there are seven interrelated principles of health that tend to falter. Unless all are attended to, the chronic degenerative diseases of middle age begin to insidiously propagate. The result is deterioration of the body form. Common examples of these imbalances, which arise from one or more faltering principles of health, include: obesity, high blood pressure, heart disease, asthma, arthritis, hormone imbalance, and diabetes. Each of these common diseases can be healed without side effects when all seven principles of health are rebalanced.

The achievement of balance requires the afflicted owner's active participation. When this first requirement continues to be ignored, symptom control medicine becomes the only treatment possibility. However, for owners willing to take an active role in their own disease solution there are many cases where the above diseases heal or at least stabilize.

The seven interrelated principles are:

1. Preventing rust formation within the tissues
2. Preventing hardening processes within the blood vessels
3. The hormones giveth and the hormones taketh away
4. You are what you supply and absorb
5. Take out your cellular trash water
6. Avoid low voltage cell syndrome
7. Maximize the ratio between the energies that heal and the energies that maim the body tissues

The underground revolution in health care choices is particularly impacted by principle seven. This principle concerns the quality of the life energies' integrity, an important consideration almost completely ignored by mainstream medicine because of its overwhelming preoccupation with disease and symptoms. This mainstream approach can be likened to the 'slab of meat' perspective. The slab of meat is all that is left when the mysterious life energies are removed from consideration. As a person and as a healer I take exception to this inhumane approach. There is more to people than their symptoms, and besides, no one wants to be treated like a slab of meat during a medical exam.

Fortunately, these important life energies form a common denominator between many alternative-healing modalities. Chiropractic, homeopathy, acupuncture, massage, yoga, meditative prayer, and chakra energy work all, each in their own way, reinvigorate the life energy field. The life energy field improves because these modalities share something important in common - they facilitate a release of the chaotic energies while facilitating the rhythmical energies.

I recently attended a course in Denver offered by the American Board of Holistic Medicine and sat for the exam. Unlike other medical conferences that I have attended, this group was committed to seeking the truth. Part of the course emphasized the healing power of love itself. Other parts of the course taught us about how to properly refer patients to chiropractors, acupuncturists, homeopaths, massage therapists, energy workers and herbalists.

Sometimes the messenger of truth does not possess an official title. For example, there was a medical intuitive there who could see the life energies within. She counseled numerous conference attendees and the physicians in attendance believed her.

The underground healthcare revolution bears the burden of educating those who are unaware. As in other times of exponential change, the dominant power elitists are largely unaware of the strength and conviction within the alternative health care movement. Let them slumber into oblivion. A new day is not far off.

Description

Jo-Ann Ordano California Academy of Sciences © 2004 Google Cynara scolymus Wikipedia Cynara scolymus

- The Globe Artichoke is a silvery green thistle related to the daisy. It is a perennial. The plant does best in a moist but well drained loamy or somewhat sandy soil where the summers are cool rather than hot and dry, as hot weather tends to toughen the edible parts of the bud. It does not over-winter well in areas with hard winter freezes.

The artichoke plant reaches a height of 3-5 feet. Flower buds form on the end of both the main and lateral stems. Prior to opening the bud resembles a greenish pinecone, with the still closed "flower" surrounded by tough leaf-like structures or "bracts." If not harvested the bud opens to display what appears to be a deep purple flower that is in fact a tightly packed collection of tiny flowers arising from a common head or capitulum (the "heart of the artichoke").

Chemical Compounds - The artichoke is popular for its pleasantly bitter taste. There are a number of compounds that contribute to this, the most well known is the bitter cynaropicrin. The highest levels are present in the plant just before it flowers and again when the fruit has ripened. Only the green parts of the plant contain the bitter principle.

Uses - Artichoke extract stimulates the liver and gallbladder via action as a choleretic (increases the production of bile), a cholagogue (causes bile already produced to flow more freely), a hepatoprotective (protects the liver) and antihepatotoxic (detoxification of the liver). It also acts to lower fat and cholesterol levels in the blood.

Artichoke also has the unusual property of synthesizing biochemical antidotes to local pollutants. This protects the plant from nearby pollutants. Eating artichokes confers this antidote effect on the consumer, particularly when the artichoke is locally grown and has produced antidotes to local pollutants.

Contraindications - there are no generally known contraindications.

Movie Review: An Inconvenient Truth

Good movies come and go, but this is so far beyond good that I have to discuss it in this newsletter.

An Inconvenient Truth is such a must see that movie critic Roger Ebert wrote this about it:

Ebert also had this to say:

Janos Gereben of Entertainment Insiders writes in review:

• Check your tires. Keeping your tires inflated properly can improve gas mileage by more than 3%. Every gallon of gasoline saved keeps 20 pounds of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.
• Plant trees, as many as you can. A single tree will absorb one ton of carbon dioxide over its lifetime.
• Avoid products with a lot of packaging. You can save 1200 pounds of carbon dioxide if you cut down your garbage by 10%.
• Adjust your thermostat. Moving your thermostat down just 2 degrees in winter and up 2 degrees in summer could save about 2,000 pounds of carbon dioxide a year.
• Use less hot water. It takes a lot of energy to heat water. Use less hot water by installing a low flow showerhead (250 pounds of CO2 saved per year) and washing your clothes in cold or warm water.
• And of course the big elephant in the room: Drive less. After all, it is not industry alone that spews carbon dioxide into the air. It is primarily the energy uses of the over 6 billion individuals that inhabit the planet, with the U.S. using a whopping 30%, although we comprise less than one half of one percent of the world population. Those of us reading this may be able to find some way to reduce the miles we drive each year. Some may be able to walk, bike, carpool or take mass transit. Others can't, but may be able to find a way to work closer to where they live, or move closer to where they work. You'll save one pound of carbon dioxide for every mile you don't drive. And with gas prices as high as they're getting, it may just pay you to make that job change or house change that would reduce your commute as much as possible.