Inspired

Drugs, alcohol, teens, and homeopathy

Last night I spoke at the Vashon PTSA meeting about being a teenager in a small town: isolation, limited access to teen-friendly clubs and events, raging hormones, and plain old confusion around "who am I now?"

Not an easy time. I remember when I was 16 growing up in a small town near Boston in a similar situation. I had an eating disorder nobody knew about. In fact unless you were paying attention, I looked like a normal straight-A student, member of the French club and Track team, a dancer and artist.

Inside was a struggling young woman with huge self-image issues that I hid fairly well - like many teens. My parents, like most, wanted the best for me. But their own marital issues cast a fog over my teen years.

If I had known a non-toxic, non-addictive, inexpensive form of medicine existed that could have helped me with my changing body and my low self-confidence? I would have jumped at the opportunity.

Flash forward to 2008. Many teens are on SSRIs, Adderol, birth control pills, painkillers, speed, pot, and now crystal meth to deal with their mental, emotional, and physical pain. Most parents, nevermind teens, have no idea that homeopathy can treat these isses: painful periods, depression, anxiety, ADHD, acne, and insecurities. This medicine can help ease the transition of hormones, gently support the development of an adult identity, decrease the pain that physical changes can create.

I'd like to imagine a world where the teen years didn't have to create so much pain, where people had access to more resources and felt part of a community that sincerely cared about the quality of their young adults' lives.

Deida: In the Spirit of Love

.....I will quote David Dieda from his newest book, "Instant Enlightement: Fast, Deep, and Sexy."

Praise
"Imagine praising the next person you see. Praise him or her as fully as possible, so you are embarrassed that you are so praiseful. What praise would you give? Picture someone you know - anyone - and feel what is the most magnanimous praise you can offer them.

Remember your mother and father as you offer this praise. Imagine doing so now. How do you feel?

You have probably chosen a career and sought an intimate partner in reaction to the praise you never got from your parents. Take time to remember what you didn't get from (them), and look at what you seek through your career and intimate relationship.

What do you wish your parents had told you more? Really feel into your childhood. Feel, as a child, what your parents said or didn't say to you. What do you wish your parents had given you more of? What do you wish your parents had said to you?

To the next person you see, silently give the praise you didn't get enough of from your parents but wish you had. Give this praise silently to everyone you see for the next three days. In your imagination, give this praise silently to your parents, right now. How does it feel to offer the praise you never got, but wished you had?

Holding back praise limits all the love you are willing to give - through speech, sex, and touch. It also restrains the love you could offer through your life's work. Give the praise that you wish your parents had given you more of. Give it silently to everyone, and give it out loud to your lover, whether you feel they deserve it or not. Find out what happens when you do. Discover the full offering you were born to give, as a gift, to everyone."

Happy Love Day everyone. May your heart be opened more deeply.

Fecundity

a. the intellectual productivity of a creative imagination
b. fertility: the state of being fertile; capable of producing offspring
c. fruitfulness: the quality of something that causes or assists healthy growth

Why socialized medicine? Sicko says it all.

Like in his other movies, Michael Moore makes you laugh, cry, cringe, and growl in his healthcare documentary. And as usual, many comparisons are made between Canada and the U.S. Geez, they have free healthcare, live longer lives, AND they don't have guns. How DO they do it??? Here are some facts I borrowed from his website:

(Those Canadians are so radical ~ I'm always impressed by my colleagues in B.C. who tell me Naturopathic and Homeopathic medicine are household terms, rather than mysterious symbols of "unscientific experimentation.")

Canada spends only $3,165 per capita on health care, compared to over $7,000 per capita in the United States.
Source: Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services

The life expectancy in Canada is three years longer than in the United States.
Source: World Health Organization

The infant mortality rate in Canada is 5.0 per thousand, compared with 7.0 per thousand in the United States.
Source: World Health Organization

24 percent of Americans did not seek medical care because of cost, compared to 5 percent in Canada.
Source: 'Inequities In Health Care: A Five-Country Survey,' Health Affairs.

There are nearly 50 million Americans without health insurance, compared with none in Canada.
Source: Centers for Disease Control

The median waiting time in Canada is only three weeks for diagnostic tests and only four weeks for specialist visits and non-emergency surgery.
Source: Statistics Canada

70 to 80 percent of Canadians feel their wait times are acceptable.
Source: Statistics Canada

Homeopathy explained

History
Homeopathy was developed by a German MD by the name of Samuel Hahnemann. Dr. Hahnemann's work was mainly as a medical translator and chemist. Inspired by the idea "like cures like," he began experimentation with toxic substances to see how he could make medicine out of them without killing people. In Hahnemann's day it was popular to treat syphilis, for example, with mercury. What he discovered is that by diluting and shaking repeatedly (potentizing) various substances (some toxic), healing was possible with previously unseen results of his time.

Safety
Currently about 120,000 people die every year from physician error or negligence, including misuse or incorrect pharmaceutical prescriptions. In the last 200+ years since homeopathy was developed, there have been zero deaths as a result of having taken a homeopathic medicine. In fact, circa the 1918 Influenza pandemic (symptoms were similar to Ebola) approximately 80% of people treated with conventional medicine died, while > 60% of people treated with homeopathy survived. Probably not placebo affect.

Worldwide Practice Today
Today, more than 250,000 physicians are practicing homeopathy in India alone, and 10 million people there are being treated with it. Millions in South American and Italy, Spain, England, and Germany also regularly use homeopathy. In fact, in the U.S., one out of 6 physicians (MDs) at the turn of the century practiced homeopathy. Infants and animals, along with skeptical adults, have been successfully treated for everything from boo-boos to flus to endocrine disorders to autoimmune disease. Even cancer, though it wouldn't be legal in the western world. Again, doubtful that 10 million people alone in India are getting well on placebo alone. Unless Indian people have some kind of special susceptibility to placebo. In the U.S. both MDs and alternative healthcare providers such as NDs as well as Psychotherapists practice Homeopathy.

How It Works
That is the $ 60k question that nobody can answer to this day. It is theorized that in the making of homeopathic medicines, or "remedies," the energy or wavelength of that substance is imprinted upon the water used in making the medicine. Sounds rather bizarre and far-fetched, except that research has shown that water contains memory. The bottom line is that we don't know how it works. Then again, neither do we know how antidepressants work. Don't believe me? Check out this link to Wellbutrin. When a homeopathic medicine is incorrect, nothing happens because it isn't "resonating" with what needs to be cured in you. That's when the homeopath needs to give a different medicine that more closely resonates with your dis-ease.

What Homeopathy Treats
Homeopathy can treat things like bruising, allergies, asthma, acne, hormonal imbalances such as those in menopause or menarche, PMS, uterine fibroids, cysts, hemorrhoids, sexual dysfunction, neurological diseases, assist healing from surgery, and depression and anxiety. But what's different about homeopathy is that it isn't just stopping the symptoms of your illness. It takes into consideration everything that makes you tick: your past history, upbringing, emotional patterns, and your beliefs. The prescription encompasses how your life experiences and your genetics have shaped you up to this point in time. And it actually does, and has, cured illnesses, both simple and complex.

The Job of a Homeopath
What a homeopath needs to do is understand YOU, as a person, and to differentiate your ILLNESS from WHAT'S WELL WITH YOU. A homeopath's job is to perceive how the totality of your symptoms, some of which may be emotional, i.e. mood swings, or mental, i.e. nightmares, fit with everything else that is causing pain in your body. The homeopath needs to recognize patterns or themes; to see, in techie terms, the core of your operating system. That requires a lengthy consultation with you that can last up to 2 hours, and then researching to find the exact medicine that addresses the core of who your are. Then you follow up to report changes over a period of months and years, with less frequency as your issues resolve.

What Treatment is Like
It's not that subtle. When clients get the right remedy, they know it. Their PMS, headaches, anxiety, sexual dysfunction, depression, (fill in the blank) starts to resolve. After receiving the right remedy, every month the symptoms lessen. The catch is that it's not an instantaneous fix. What's happening is that your body's own vital force, called chi, prana, Life Force, or energy, depending on what culture you identify with, is reorganizing itself. Your vital force goes to whatever is the most important system, such as your brain, lungs, heart, or liver, and starts to support that system's functioning at a higher level. What that looks like to you is less headache, less intense herpes outbreaks, less depression, more happiness, less painful joints, better digestion, higher energy, deeper sleep, etc. Symptoms that are less life-threatening, such as skin eruptions or dandruff, take longer to resolve.

The Potential of Homeopathy
Treatment can resolve many different types of physical, mental, and emotional problems. However, it does require some committment from the patient/ client as well as the prescriber. The skill and experience of the prescriber is important, though the relationship of trust that is established as with any practitioner is probably moreso. I have seen clients resolve not just physical illnesses, but also be able to reduce or eliminate medications, make huge strides in psychotherapy, improve relationships with family and partners, let go of past traumas, increase freedom of movement and vitality, further their personal expression, even clarify their life's purpose. Homeopathy is not psychotherapy nor reiki; it is not acupuncture, herbal medicine, or psychic healing, and it is not placebo. It is the medicine of the future, and it is here to stay.

Click here for a wonderful FAQ about homeopathy from Hahnemann Labs.

What does dis ease really come from?

Science is finally catching up with alternative medicine, once considered "woo-woo," showing us just how powerful the mind portion of mind-body medicine IS. Did you know that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) states 85 PERCENT of all diseases have an emotional element? Do you know that Bruce Lipton PhD has promoted a new theory explaining the science behind the mind-body, think-it-manifest-it practice? Check out his ideas about how we can change our genetic expression through changing our belief system. Maybe some day we'll understand how homeopathic medicines work to help shift genetic expression by altering our self-concepts, expanding our awareness, and promoting evolution!

5 Worst Foods You Could Possibly Eat

I lifted this directly from Dr. Mercola. Read if you want to know why eating fries increases your risk for cancer, why soda will make you fat and depressed, and what seafood is really risky. If you want to know how to clean it all up, or when you're ready to detox from the holidays, go here.

Brave Doc Brings Secrets into the Light

Looks like there are a few good women docs out there willing to Risk It All so that many women can benefit. If you, or anyone you know has had an ABORTION, this book looks like a good one to read. The subject has long been controvertial but how few conversations ever center on the experience, rather than the "right?"

Fall Turns us Inward

When I notice weeks have gone by without me writing, that tells me the sun is turning away and the inwardly-focused time of year approaching. How might self-reflection benefit the body as well as the psyche?

In 1998 I travelled to a matriarchal village in Southwest China with a group of students and teachers to study Qi Gong, the practical science of energy. We learned to enhance the flow of energy inside our bodies, and how to guide energy from the environment through our bodies. The toothless elders who descended from the founders of Taoism taught us many things from their matriarchal culture. In days of old, people read the stars and felt the earth, wind, water, and trees so they would know what time it was. And what it was time "for." This practice of "feeling" and "reading" the energy of the microcosm inside connects us with the macrocosm of nature.

These skills can only come from reflection. When you know yourself and know what quiet feels like, you know when your mind is distracting you from the obvious "felt" truth. When you can be still enough, you can dial up that place of peace when it's time to make difficult decisions. Whether it's a major shift in life or a series of endless choices, your body always knows what's best; you just need to listen.

Endocrine Disrupters: why your hormones are whacked

I attended a lecture last week with Michael Lerner, founder of Commonweal, at Antioc College in Seattle. He spoke eloquently about the relationship between environmental toxicity creating havoc in our bodies and the increasing risks we all face for cancer, infertility, autoimmune diseases, and more. The growing body of evidence is compelling and public awareness barely exists except in people already suffering from serious life-threatening illnesses.

Almost everyone I see in my naturopathic clinic shows signs of endocrine-disrupting chemical toxicty. Chronic pain, migraines, irregular menses, PCO, breast lumps, chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, infertility, neurological symptoms, depression, and anxiety are some of the most common.

Sources of toxic disrupters? Plastic Nalgene bottles we reuse over and over that slowly leach plastic molecules into our water are only the beginning of the problem. Any molecule that mimics the shape of a hormone, most of them like estrogen, is considered a disrupter. These molecules sit on receptor sites and block normal communication between cells. Read more about endocrine disrupters.

The bad news? Most of the 80 thousand chemicals we are exposed to on a regular basis have untested affects in our bodies. The good news? There is a way to help your body excrete them without harsh methods.