What if I told you that you have a certain finite amount of life energy and that the success you have in managing it either results in long-term peak performance or the greater risk of illness and an earlier death?

Your active response to this truth will either help to set you free or produce undesirable consequences.

What is the primary secret that if acted upon will set you free to build and sustain health over your lifetime?  It is the creation and multiplication of positive momentum. Momentum in this case is the force of your life in motion in a given direction.

Momentum is critically related to energy utilization since it requires large inputs of extra energy to create or change momentum. For example, it takes considerably more energy in the form of fuel, manpower and time to turn a big cruise ship traveling at a high rate of speed toward the opposite direction versus continuing along the same path.

Consider a basketball game. One team will often get on a roll. The other team can become tentative, lose their flow and very quickly get way behind. The coach will often call a timeout to refocus the players and shift them back to their game plan. Soon the announcers are discussing the change in momentum and the trailing team now regains the lead.

However, since it requires a large input of focused energy to move momentum in the other direction, sometimes late in the game when the players are tired it becomes too difficult and therefore too late to turn the tide and mount the comeback.

The same is true relative to your health status. Adelle Davis said that “every day you do one of two things: build health or produce disease in yourself.” Your thoughts and actions are daily contributing toward momentum in either a positive or negative direction.

What daily choices have you been making over the last months to years that have created momentum toward greater health (wholeness) or toward disease (loss of system integrity)?

Momentum carries you like a river. This can be incredibly advantageous if moving in the right direction.  Which way and how fast is your river of health or disease choices carrying you? Hopefully you are not rapidly approaching Niagara Falls looking in futility for something to grab onto in a last ditch crisis effort to survive. If the injuries and stresses of life, your responses to them, and your lifestyle choices have created momentum in the vitality — depleting direction, then you must make a change before it is too late. It can become too late you know.

Cancer is an unfortunate example. It doesn’t develop until cumulative life distress has interfered with vital function for so long that the immune system is incapable of providing sufficient protection. Typically, at this point, even if radical lifestyle changes are made, there is insufficient life energy available to shift momentum and bring enough healing to restore vitality and save the life.

We typically do not become aware of our accumulated negative momentum until we experience significant and /or prolonged pain or an illness. The common response at this point (frequently due to lack of awareness) is not to make any significant changes that add life or promote healing. Instead, we only treat the symptom manifestations of pain, sickness and declining health.

The superior choice is to summon radical amounts of energy and focus to take multiple daily life-restoring actions to create self-healing momentum. This is imperative even when you choose to treat the symptoms or illness as well. Several strategies are mentioned in Healing Hints below :

What if you have already established momentum in a health- enhancing direction through positive lifestyle choices and healing interventions? Your river is already carrying you toward your full potential of body, mind and spirit well being.

You have two basic choices here as well. You can stop investing during these times of wellness and coast. However, as a result of ongoing stresses and injuries, you will be prone to drift and lose your momentum. It will then require more energy to work your way back to the previous level of vitality.

The other option is to continue to invest in your health and build more momentum while you are riding the crest of the wave. The positive motion over time then begins to multiply exponentially rather than add incrementally. It is like the difference between simple and compound interest.

It takes so much more energy to start rather than continue in a positive direction. There is an incredible long-term cost savings as well. It is like the difference in fuel costs and car wear between stop/start city driving versus highway travel. It becomes even better when shifting over to cruise control. This is akin to making routine, automatic health investments.

It takes much less vital energy to run an existing business rather than start one and a high percentage of an airplane’s energy expenditure occurs during take-off. Don’t wait until your health fuel tank is critically low to take off on your journey toward wellness. It may cost more than all of your reserves. Also, don’t stop regularly refueling if your desire is to run well the marathon race of life with abundant joy and a diminished risk of damage.

Healing Hints on “Life Energy and Momentum”

• These are just a few of the daily vitality momentum builders that, if routinely practiced, will yield a huge life energy bank account.  There are many others that we will discuss, as well as revisiting these in more detail in future issues.
• Try walking, running, swimming, bicycling, treadmill or some other aerobic activity.Any combination of these should be incorporated into your daily routine at least 3-4 days/week (preferably more). These capacity-expanding sessions should be easy at first and then gradually be increased in intensity. 20 to 30 minutes initially becoming 40-60 minutes as fitness increases.
• Dietary fine-tuning is another important element.It is important to consume abundant servings of fresh fruits and vegetables each day (organic when possible). Minimize processed foods (including white sugar and white flour). Avoid all hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated oils. Avoid all foods with MSG and Aspartame (NutraSweet), as they are central nervous system excitotoxins.
• Drink more pure water and less coffee, sodas, and other sugar and caffeine-rich fluids.Reduce alcohol consumption. Newer research is touting the benefits of all types of tea, black and green. Beware of those with excessive sugar. Making your own at home with pure water is best.
• DO NOT SMOKE The cost here is incredible. It is the single greatest cause of preventable death!
• Sleep 7-8 hours per night with an occasional nap as often as possible. More sleep is necessary going into and emerging from excessively stressful times.
• Acknowledge and release distressing emotions. Receive their message, take any necessary actions and then let go and move forward.

Do the genes you inherited determine your overall state of health or which diseases will show up in your body? That concept is genetic determinism. It makes you a passive victim since you didn’t get to choose your own DNA.

But, is it really that simple? Contemporary research is proving otherwise, and your understanding of these new insights will empower you to avoid disease, live longer with increased vitality, and amazingly, also improve the health of your children, even if you haven’t conceived them yet.

This is the science of epigenetics, and it’s capturing the minds and research enthusiasm of today’s scientists. According to a Winter 2008 article by Laura Beil in Cure magazine, “epigenetics is at the epicenter of modern medicine” and “may hold the secret to flipping cancer’s ‘off’ switch.”

This is critically important news: You have access to the protective switches through your lifestyle choices!

“The human genome still retains its status as the blueprint for the body. But the epigenome—the way the genome is marked and packaged inside a cell’s nucleus—tells a cell which of the many sets of instructions on that blueprint to follow, which ones to ignore, and which ones to follow over and over again. If the genome is the blueprint, the epigenome is the contractor directing how the walls and windows are made, and whether the plumbing is correctly installed.”

“Because it has the power to switch our genes off and on, epigenetics is the reason that identical twins, even though they are pretty much genetic clones of one another, don’t get the same diseases. And it is often the reason that a perfectly normal cell goes bad.”

Cell Biologist Bruce Lipton, in his excellent book The Biology of Belief, states that “Genes are not destiny! Environmental influences, including nutrition, stress, and emotions, can modify our genes, without changing their basic blueprint. And those modifications can be passed on to future generations as surely as DNA blueprints are passed on via the Double Helix.”

Epigenetic mechanisms have been found to be a key factor in a variety of diseases, including cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, lupus, and even autism. In fact, according to the research of Willett (2002), “only 5% of cancer and cardiovascular patients can attribute their disease to heredity.”

“While the media has made a big hoopla over the discovery of breast cancer genes, they failed to emphasize that 95% of breast cancers are not due to inherited genes but environmentally-induced gene alterations.” (Kling 2003; Jones 2001; Seppa 2000; Baylin 1997)

From “Epigenetics and Your Overall Health” also in Cure Magazine, Beil declares that “if epigenetics has as broad an impact on our health as many scientists think, it means that almost every aspect of our lives slowly writes our medical playbook. Doctors have long said we are what we eat. Through epigenetics, perhaps, we are also what we do.”

Your nervous system directs and coordinates every aspect of your systemic functioning, including the epigenetic influences upon your health and those of your kids. The ramifications are huge. Increasingly, scientists are looking at dysregulation of the autonomic aspect of the nervous system, which regulates all organic functioning and adapts us to the stresses of life, as a central component of all disease processes.

We will explore this concept further in upcoming posts as well as discussing lifestyle action strategies you can employ to gain epigenetic victory.

One key aspect will be examining how injury, stress, and toxin-induced spinal misalignments disturb your nervous system, which then disrupts critical immune, endocrine (glandular), and other system functioning, leading to altered physiology and eventual pathology (disease).

You won’t want to miss the startling research revealing enhanced DNA repair after long-term chiropractic intervention! Subscribe today so you won’t.

I’ve had many thoughts going through my mind the last couple of days and my hope is that sharing some of them might be helpful. Allow me to summarize four recent precipitating experiences and then next time we’ll examine some important research that affects how likely you are to develop cancer or other degenerative diseases.

#1 - While caring for my patients the other day I noticed their repeated references to experiencing increased energy, better sleep, improved mood and sense of well-being, and an enhanced capacity to handle stress. These weren’t the reasons they came to see me as a doctor of chiropractic but they were pleased, even elated. Most never would have thought of these benefits nor considered they had a need for them.

These people entered my office seeking relief from back pain, neck pain, or headaches, often desperate after other efforts had failed.  The cultural consensus is that chiropractic is only necessary and helpful if you have pain in these areas. Is that your understanding? Is it true?

#2 – That evening I taught a program on the growing body of research that confirms the autonomic nervous system as a foundational factor in our health and disease and then explores its powerful relationship to spinal function. Part of this science examines the connection between chiropractic adjustments, improved nervous system communication, enhanced immune function, and even DNA repair. The audience was blown away.

#3 – The next afternoon I had a meeting with a local medical doctor (a member of the Healthcare Experts Alliance for Life group I’m organizing) who specializes in regenerative medicine. This field focuses upon restoring lost function and repairing organs damaged by lifestyle and disease through stimulating tissues to heal themselves. He does this mostly through intravenous nutrition. We discussed our common worldviews as well as our unique and complementary care approaches.

We initiated plans to collaborate on a community educational presentation and to explore a combined treatment approach for patients suffering with cancer and other degenerative disease conditions. Keep reading before you fall off your chair in disbelief or distress at that statement. We didn’t even mention back pain (although my care is amazing in solving that issue).

#4 – Later that evening I overheard my son, who’s getting ready to move to Atlanta to begin Chiropractic College, having a Skype conversation with a friend about her breast cancer fears, given her mother’s death from that disease. It started with her interest in genetic testing to assess whether she had breast cancer genes. It led to some stressful moments as my son shared some of his understanding of how lifestyle choices and environmental exposures are predominant factors in cancer development versus a sole focus on defective genes. He wanted to empower her through knowing she didn’t have to express whatever genetic possibility she possessed, but this was obviously a foreign concept to her.

She asked him how he knew anything about this, to which he responded that he’d learned these things in conversation with his chiropractor dad. She replied with a statement to the effect of “I wouldn’t look to a chiropractor for information about cancer.”

Where do you go for your health or disease information and understanding? Do you place limits on who might possess insights that could lead to your healing? Novel ideas that could set you free may be found in unexpected places.

Let me be clear that chiropractic is not an alternative treatment for cancer, and not really a “treatment” for anything.

In my work I assess how disturbances in people’s spinal function are negatively impacting their nervous system communication and then restore optimum function through gentle, precise, instrument adjustments. This is critically important because the nervous system directs and coordinates every single action in our bodies. Then the body that was made to regulate and heal itself can get back to doing what it already knows how to do.

• For over 27 years my patients have reported these and many other life-changing results.
• An expanding body of research is confirming and providing its scientific basis.
• More forward-thinking medical doctors are becoming aware of the holistic connections between our specialties, not primarily for condition or symptom management, but for restoring function and overall health and well-being.
• Naturally the majority of the public has no background framework for seeing these holistic health connections. I don’t expect them to understand, but my commitment is to teach and serve all who are open.

Are you available to keep learning? The Earth used to be flat and it wasn’t until the early 1990’s that investigators confirmed that the nervous system regulates the immune system. There’s always new knowledge. We must keep reaching.

Remember the Weakest Link television show that experienced brief popularity several years back? It’s most memorable element was the host’s dismissive declaration to the contestant who was considered least effective in the team’s drive for success in each round of competition. “You are the weakest link…Goodbye!”

Photo Credit: dcJohn - www.flickr.com/photos/dcjohn/

What is your weakest link? The area of your life where you’re least effective as you reach for greater health and success? The aspect that prevents you from experiencing Holistic Abundance? The answer to that question may hold the key to the life of sustainable joy you’ve been seeking.

Have you noticed recently how many more things there are vying for your time and attention? Maybe it’s always been that way, but it sure feels more pressing to me with each passing year (or even passing day). Maybe it’s related to a greater sense of urgency I experience in the use of my time, which is most likely appropriate given the fact that there’s less of it ahead than when I was younger.

The more complex life gets, the easier it becomes to mentally divide the various aspects of our self into separate boxes. We have our work life, our family/home life, our spiritual life, etc. While we tend to think that we’re good at multi-tasking, research reveals it not to be true. We can shift rapidly between objects of attention, but it’s not simultaneous and the cost is depth of concentration. We do get more done when we narrow our focus to one thing at a time.

However, when we narrow our focus onto specific things to be more effective, we risk neglecting the meeting of other important needs. We tend to get out of balance and fragment. We start to focus more on some individual parts of our lives and miss the impact on our complete system. We lose our big picture vision, sometimes referred to as “I can’t see the forest for the trees.”

We lose our holistic integration.

You are a whole person with physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual aspects. There are no actual walls separating them but invisible walls can appear as areas remain underdeveloped or neglected. Allow me to share a personal example.

I have some big visions within me that contribute meaning, purpose, and passion to my life. They get me up each morning and drive me through my days. I am extremely grateful and love the life I live. I wouldn’t trade for anything or to be anyone else.

My various interests have led to multiple business involvements, all connected to my areas of health expertise and are all important to me. Each of the three primary areas of business focus are requiring a great deal of startup or transitional energy and attention right now. There are many balls to keep in the air while I work to develop the infrastructure to pass them off more.

The risk for me is becoming overwhelmed, thereby losing productivity in any or all of my business endeavors, as well as failing to adequately attend to the other important components of my “Holistic” life.

This can include lack of proper attention to my physical body, such as optimum exercise, nutrition, or sleep. It can involve my emotional/relational life such as having less of me available for my wife, children, and friends or failing to get quiet enough to refill my perspective tank.

Sometimes I fall short in alloting enough time for new learning and other elements that keep my mental focus sharp and creative. At other times, I rush forward without slowing to communicate with God sufficiently about my next steps or to listen adequately to tune into my intuitive sense.

The see-saw of life doesn’t remain balanced at neutral. An active life is made up of continual tipping from one priority or point of attention to another. This is natural. However, it is important not to drift and lose track of tending well to the various aspects of a well-lived life.

How about you? Have you drifted too far off center for too long now? If so, then weak links are developing that will leave you vulnerable to loss. Loss of health, family, business, peace, etc. Stay awake and be willing to shift before that weakest link causes you to say goodbye to a successful, significant, and sustainable life. “You are the weakest link…goodbye!”

Thankfully it’s rarely too late to improve your health and this is the attitude you need to hold:

“Never, never, never, never give up.” – Winston Churchill

Far too often people buy the easily dispensed negative prediction that there’s no real solution or hope for their healing, especially when the condition is quite serious. I couldn’t disagree more strongly.

When we approach healing from a holistic viewpoint we need to consider body, mind, and spirit and then take constructive action that addresses each aspect.

Adopt these 3 elements to create a healthier, more joyful life:

• Choose hope – It can heal. A positive sense of calm and control can help prevent as well as overcome disease.

• Expand your vantage point to see your life from a more eternal perspective – This will allow you to better transcend the narrow specifics of your current problems and the all too common sense of hopelessness that can follow.

• Commit to ongoing actions to regain and optimize physical function- This is frequently the best portal of entry to effect improvements in your mental and emotional realms as well. This includes upgrades in exercise, food choices and supplementation, and also the detection and correction of spinal misalignments that are often quietly disturbing your critical nervous system function and sabotaging your well-being.

Consider the words of Dr. Candace Pert in Molecules of Emotion regarding the value of bodywork for mind-body health: “…the touch therapies of massage, chiropractic, and any other modality that includes the body is a means of healing the mind and emotions. It’s true, we do store some memory in the brain, but by far, the deeper, older messages are stored in the body and must be accessed through the body. Your body is your subconscious mind, and you can’t heal it by talk alone.”

In a recent article by French psychiatry professor David Servan-Schreiber in Ode Magazine, an experiment is discussed wherein “two groups of rats receive transplants of malignant tumors and are given electric shocks. One of them can avoid the shocks by pushing on a lever; the other can’t. In the group that can avoid the shocks, the immune system does its job. It counterattacks and eliminates the cancer cells in 64 % of the animals. In the other group, animals soon get discouraged, the immune cells are paralyzed and the cancer spreads in a few weeks. Only 23% of the rats reject the tumor.”

“Cancer seems to develop faster and more aggressively in patients who have less control over the inevitable stress of existence.”

Healing is the process of returning to wholeness.

From a holistic perspective this would involve wholeness of body, mind, and spirit. Wholeness means not being wounded, injured, or impaired or at least having been restored fully to health.

How much wholeness is still possible for you if you’re in your 40′s, 50′s, or beyond when you’ve suffered physical injuries and endured significant life stresses?

How can you make sure you’re doing your best to avoid or overcome chronic pain and degenerative illnesses?

To be continued…

In my last post I discussed the foolishness of the positive conclusions drawn from a recent study that used a dangerous cholesterol-lowering medication in an attempt to prevent heart attacks and strokes in supposedly high-risk people who don’t even have elevated cholesterol levels.

Using a poison as a proactive cardiovascular health measure seems to me to be like giving a drug that blocks emotional expression to everyone who might ever become angry (which would be everyone) because anger increases heart attack risk. In another arena it might be like banning marriage to save lives since most women homicide victims are killed by their husbands. All of these ideas are ridiculous although they appear rational.

Atomistic approaches divide people into separate pieces that can be treated without consideration for the impact on their whole system. In this world it somehow makes sense that we should spend most of our resources attempting to find disease solutions that are based upon toxic chemicals that don’t belong in our bodies.

We claim progress toward cures when studies show reduced signs or symptoms as though health and wholeness were produced by less expression or awareness of underlying conditions. All we really accomplish through this is fostering the illusion of well-being in people who are still sick and have disturbed function.

From this mindset, holistic approaches get dismissed when they fail to adequately manipulate disease indicators within limited atomistic study designs. Allow me to share a few examples from the Associated Press news source in November.

While an artificial drug with harsh side-effects is stated to provide protection against heart attack and stroke, vitamins C and E (essential for a vast array of vital functions foundational for health) are found not to be helpful in preventing heart disease or cancer. So say the bold headlines that lead people to conclude that their poor diet and lack of quality supplementation don’t really matter anyway. All they really need is another medication to save them once crisis ensues.

The atomistic orientation of these studies arrived at a very concrete conclusion through very generic methods that failed to consider the many contextual variables of a chaotic human system. The article headlines categorically declared these key antioxidant nutrients useless in heart and immune support or protection. But let’s examine a few flaws inherent in these studies from a more holistic approach.

Study Flaws

First of all, how did they arrive at the dosages used?

Current research recommendations for vitamin E are 400-800 international units daily depending upon stress levels and overall health status, whereas the study only provided 200 IU. Only 500 milligrams of vitamin C were used daily rather than the 1300 mg. now considered to approximate our needs.

Not only is dosage an important variable but the study doesn’t consider the form or quality of the supplement used. For example, using a blend of mineral ascorbates rather than simply the ascorbic acid form of vitamin C has shown to make a major difference in how much gets into the blood serum where it counts and how long those levels are maintained. The same is true for the form of vitamin E, which has shown greater bioavailability with a blend of the d-alpha and mixed tocopherols and mixed tocotrienols.

Were these distinctions taken into account in study design or before rendering the sweeping no-benefit verdict?

In addition to dosage and bioavailability of form, there is the factor of purity. Were they pharmaceutical-grade or merely food-grade supplements? There are also the synergistic effects of supplemental nutrients that are lost when extracted out as one or two individual vitamins.

How about the incomprehensible number of individual variables in each person? What was their general state of health? What did the rest of their diet consist of? What was their work or home environment like? Were they leading happy, vital lives? What was the extent of their physical, mental, and environmental stress, especially given the fact that the study participants were all male medical doctors?

Protective nutrients are used up more quickly under high stress conditions.Life context is a critical factor in health and illness. It is rarely taken into account, partly due to the atomistic lack of understanding of this issue, but also because it is nearly impossible to account for in large studies.

How do you best prevent any disease? It’s always the same. Provide everything necessary for optimum body, mind, and spirit functional wholeness. Then you make it nearly impossible for disease to develop regardless of your genetic inheritance, because you optimize the expression of your genetic possibilities.

Be careful about what you read. Read between the lines and think more holistically, in your health and the rest of your life.

In my last blog posting I challenged you to begin paying close attention to the news and to your daily life for evidence of “atomistic” perspectives or practices. I asked you to see how often these appear versus messages that are more “holistic” (See the Nov. 15th posting for several distinctions between these worldviews) and then to let me know what you notice by posting comments.

Allow me to point out what I believe to be a great recent example of atomism from my local newspaper. The article headline was:

“New Approach May Halt Heart Attack, Stroke”

It tells of a new study that found a blood test that can spot “seemingly healthy people” who are at increased risk of a heart attack or stroke and discusses the protection afforded by placing them on an already widely used cholesterol-lowering statin drug named Crestor. Paul Ridker of the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston said “It really changes the way we have to think about prevention of heart attack and stroke.”

The study was funded by AstraZeneca, the maker of Crestor. Several leading authorities predicted the findings would prompt many doctors to prescribe a powerful cholesterol-lowering drug for millions of healthy people with normal cholesterol levels.This seems to me like a wonderful marketing strategy to get more financial gain from a drug whose 2007 first quarter sales jumped 59% (over the same quarter in 2006) to $628 million bringing AstraZeneca to a $1.56 billion first quarter profit.

If you go to www.ADrugRecall.com/crestor/risk.html here is just a portion of what you’ll find. “The risks associated with Crestor have long been known and discussed since before the drug was even on the market. They are serious and can be life threatening. The drug can cause intense muscle damage that can progress into kidney damage and failure. Crestor can damage the muscles of your body to such an extent that the muscle decays and dies, flooding your bloodstream with toxins. The kidney cannot handle such a large amount of toxins and substances, and is either severely damaged, or fails. Kidney failure can often lead to death. Crestor risk factors also include liver damage. This risk is especially heightened when Crestor is used with other medicines.”Do you think all these negative side-effect concerns will be openly discussed with all of the potential candidates for this drug? I’m guessing not.Read the four descriptions of “atomism” I listed in the previous post and tell me whether you think this Crestor heart attack and stroke “solution” is a perfect example.

Is it really a good idea to give millions of healthy people with normal cholesterol levels a powerful and dangerous, even potentially fatal, drug as a form of protection?

Pause and think about this for a moment. Is this a picture of insanity or is it just me?

More insanity next time as we explore a study on Vitamins C and E. It appeared in the same newspaper on the same day and would lead the uninformed to choose Crestor instead. What is the optimum level of Crestor in the body anyway?

Join in the dialogue by posting your impressions.

I’m convinced that our long-term health and well-being requires that we better understand and integrate holism into our lives.

The long-dominant medical/pharmaceutical symptom-management and disease-treatment approach can sometimes save a life under crisis first-aid conditions, but is generally upside down and a failure when it comes to restoring or supporting our health.

Far too many people live in pain and are sick and dying as a result of “excessive belief” in this worldview.

What do you think?

I want to challenge you to begin paying close attention to the news and to your daily life for evidence of “atomistic” perspectives or practices. See how often these appear versus messages that are more “holistic”. Let me know what you notice by commenting on this blog post.

Here’s a summary of some of the distinctions to assist you.

Holistic methods:

• Are concerned with wholes and systems rather than an analysis based upon the separation into parts.
• Approach disease by taking into consideration every part of the body with the goal of bringing the internal environment into balance.
• Nurture the entire person – physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual.
• Promote balance and harmony for the individual, society, and the planet.

Atomistic methods on the other hand:

• Divide people into separate and seemingly disconnected pieces.
• Focus almost exclusively on treating painful or diseased parts rather than seeing and exploring a system out of balance and locating its underlying cause.
• Fail to see people and their health conditions in the context of their environment and life as a whole.
• Don’t see people as self-healing by nature or understand that sick people don’t get well through toxic chemical treatments.

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Prescription drugs, according to the American Medical Association, are the 4th leading cause of American death behind only heart disease, cancer, and stroke. They are killing more people in the U.S. and Canada every year than were lost in the entire Vietnam War.

Why? What will it take to stop this unacceptable loss of life?I’m not exactly certain, but one absolute requirement will be a major awakening of the people of this land, one that makes investing in our health a greater priority and leads more people to “just say no” to expensive drugs that fail to produce real solutions.

Vast numbers of us will have to understand that our health is a gift and that we have the privilege, the power, and the responsibility to nurture it through lifestyle and health care choices that support our self-healing design.

We must also become crystal clear that neither health nor “magic” disease cures will ever come from a pill. That idea is an illusion based in our western “atomistic” (health is achieved by the treating of separate body parts) worldview. It’s also a violation of the “holistic” understanding of the chaotic subtlety of living systems, wherein nobody will ever be able to control the unforeseen side-effects of medication.

An Important Legal Decision

A landmark Supreme Court case will be decided today. Wyeth v. Levine, called the “business case of the century”, will decide if patients have the right to sue pharmaceutical companies for personal injuries stemming from prescription drugs approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

Please take the time to read the complete story in the October 29th post of Health Beat by Maggie Mahar at http://www.healthbeatblog.org/. The information about the health- and life-endangering FDA drug approval process is essential for you to understand for your own protection.

“The case is about whether or not the FDA can be second-guessed, even after a patient has been harmed by a product that the agency has approved. If the court rules in favor of Wyeth, the drug company, an FDA stamp of approval on a drug would essentially function as a shield from law suits.”

The agency is extremely understaffed and under funded and is continually being pushed to expedite the drug approval process. However, even without these factors, it’s unreasonable to think that we won’t become aware of drug safety issues after FDA approval and thousands to millions of people are taking a drug. It’s happened over and over already.

For example, according to the September 29, 2008 Hollywood Today in an article entitled Heath Ledger Legacy: Prescription Drugs a Silent Killer, “one out of five new drugs in the U.S. is taken off the market for harming or killing patients or will have the highest level of warning placed on the label. It has become more and more common to discover the dangers of drugs after they have been on the market, despite the FDA approval process, which has been tainted over the years.”

Let’s hope for Supreme Court wisdom that will at least permit our legal system to provide a check and challenge to an industry veering out of control.

Please join our “holistic” community and become a part of the dialogue. I want to hear your voice and collectively we can make a healing difference in the world. Join the RSS feed and invite your friends to read and contribute.

I solicit your comments on this post.

Welcome to the new “Whole Body Health Blog”!I invite you to join me on an exciting journey each week as we explore health and well-being from a “holistic” perspective. I’ll be your enthusiastic guide as we examine the centuries-old, frequently neglected, but now resurgent holistic model.

We’ll look at how holism applies not only to our own personal lives but also to larger issues of global concern that affect us personally in ways that we never expected.

I promise that you’ll be amazed at how much your quality of life can be improved by choosing a more holistic approach—not only with your health but with your relationships, work environment, goals, spirituality, finances, and every other part of your life.

In the midst of our busy lives, why is it important that we invest time and energy in this pursuit, and why is holism once again becoming the most effective approach to well-being?

It’s because the alternative approach is ruining our lives.The opposite of “holistic” is “atomistic,” which is the worldview currently holding reign in the Western world. Atomistic means focusing on small parts rather than the big picture, and it is the cause of almost all personal and world problems.

Atomism isn’t working in any sector of our lives and it’s the reason we see so many systems crumbling around us.

Atomism violates our basic design and the importance of taking context into account.

Atomism results in decreasing joy, purpose, and satisfaction; increasing loneliness, anxiety, and depression; and an epidemic of chronic pain, disease, and premature death on the individual level.

Atomism is producing environmental destruction, financial crises, relationship breakdowns, and non-stop wars, just to name a few of the consequences on a global level.

The failure of atomism was revealed in the health care arena by Walter Cronkite when he said that “America’s health care system is neither healthy, caring, nor a system.”

When we perpetually view the world of people and situations as divided into separate and dissimilar elements, solutions to big problems not only aren’t clearly apparent, but may actually become impossible.

When an entire “system” is sick or out of balance, placing bandages on a gaping wound or two won’t ever restore integrity of function and wholeness.

The next time you hear the word “holistic,” remember that it means “focusing on the whole person or system rather than just a small part.”

As America’s Holistic Doctor, I have dedicated my life to sharing the life-changing message of holism with the world.

“Whole Mind, Whole Body, Whole Spirit….Holistic.”Please join us each week for the further development of these ideas and for tools and information to upgrade your mind—the software of your life.

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