PARADIGMS OF HEALING - THE OLD AND THE NEW

by Lawrence Wilson, MD

"Your Money or Your Life" was the title of a recent television program about our health care system. The program painted a sober picture of the future of health care:

"If you are over 50, you won't be able to have kidney dialysis. If you are over 60, you won't be able to have a hip replacement. We must make these choices consciously, or just slide into them."

Is the future really so dim, or is it only so within the present context or 'paradigm' of health care?

WHAT IS A PARADIGM?

Astronomers of the 15th century felt the earth was the center of the solar system. New planets were being discovered. Each time a new planet was sighted, it became more difficult to figure out its orbit. A complex system evolved, called the Ptolemaic system of astronomy.

In 1525, an astronomer named Copernicus made a bold assertion. He said the sun, not the earth, is the center of the solar system. This was a new paradigm, or way of looking at things. Many astronomers opposed Copernicus' view. However, eventually his theory prevailed because it worked, and it made explaining the planetary orbits much simpler, and it even predicted the orbits of not-yet-discovered planets.

This is called a paradigm shift. It was a new way of looking at things that worked much better, explained things in a simpler way, and even could predict scientific facts that had not yet been verified or discovered.

THE OLD OR ALLOPATHIC HEALTH CARE PARADIGM

In the health care field, the old or really the current paradigm or way of looking at things has several basic premises:

1.The passion. There is a fascination with diseases as entities or realities.

2. The goal. Finding diseases, studying them, naming them and hopefully eradicating or killing them. The technical words used for this process are diagnosing, treating, and prescribing for diseases.

3. Methods of correction. Often toxic and invasive methods are used and easily justified to ‘kill’ or destroy every bit of disease. This results in many side effects, also called adverse effects and unintended consequences. These are usually discounted unless they are extremely dangerous. Replacement of parts is also done often.

4. Research. Since disease is the focus, more and more diseases are found each year. New technology is primarily used to make more diagnoses, earlier diagnoses, and to find more ways to remove disease entities or masses.

5. Prevention. Little can be done for people until they have one of the named diseases, so prevention is mostly lip service. Allopathic preventive measures can be invasive and dangerous such as vaccination, fluoridation of the water, x-rays, CAT scans, and some others.

6. Defining of health. Health is defined within the allopathic paradigm as the absence of disease or masses in the body. In other words, health is defined in a negative way, as not having diseases.

7. Personnel. The use of dangerous and toxic methods requires armies of highly trained, highly paid professionals.

8. Role of the patient. The person is less the focus than the disease entities. In part for this reason, often little is asked of the patient. In other words, the patient is to be patient and mainly passive. There is little focus on self-responsibility, diet, lifestyle, attitudes and other ways that clients or patients can participate in the healing process.

9.Cost of the system. The system is very costly for many reasons. It requires many highly trained professionals, liability and malpractice problems raise costs, the methods of treatment and even diagnosis are often toxic and dangerous, the drugs are patented products that can be very costly, and the system is not preventive, so people keep getting sick over and over. Also, the system is not very helpful for many common ailments such as cancer, heart disease, diabetes, arthritis, ADD, autism, and scores of other problems. As a result, the costs in financial terms, and in terms of human suffering and disability, are mounting year after year.

10.Integration of the system. The whole system is highly fragmented. Medical doctors specialize in parts of the body, such as heart doctors, or lung doctors. Others specialize in diseases like cancer doctors, diabetes specialists, etc. This is helpful in some ways, such as for surgery. However, it often leads to prescribing of drugs by multiple specialists without taking into account the interactions between drugs for different problems. This adds to the cost and to the side effects of the system.

The body is viewed as a collection of parts, not primarily as one whole system. The old or conventional allopathic paradigm is a method that is often based on studying and treating parts, and not on looking at whole system behaviors.

THE NEW NUTRITIONAL BALANCING PARADIGM

1. The passion or focus. There is a fascination with vectors or dynamic movement patterns or energetics in the body-mind system.

2. The goal. It is to identify movement or vector patterns, and then figure out how to modify them to restore ideal and balanced functioning of the whole system. It is a very dynamic focus. There is no focus on naming or giving substance or mass to disease entities.

3. Research foci. The search is not for more disease entities, but to find out more about energetic patterns or vectors in the system, and how to alter them gently but effectively. These patterns have to do with how the body alters itself to cope with its environment. This is reflected in its tissue mineral levels, ratios and patterns.

For example, research often focuses on finding the best mineral levels and ratios, and the best foods to eat or the best attitudes to hold. It also focuses on better ways to recreate ideal whole system behaviors and patterns.

4. Focus on prevention. This constant focus on ideals and perfection means that nutritional balancing is extremely prevention oriented. If one can align or follow the ideals, then one will be better able regain and maintain optimum health.

5. Definition of health. Health is defined positively as optimum adaptive energy production, and optimum whole system parameters. These include but are not limited to optimum mineral levels, ratios and patterns, overall behaviors, and ability to cope successfully. This includes coping physically, biochemically, socially, financially and perhaps in other ways as well.

This is closer to the original meaning of the word health, which comes from the same root as the words whole and holy. Health is far more than an absence of symptoms. It is the natural state and a dynamic ability to cope successfully with one's physical, mental, emotional and spiritual environment.

5. Definition of disease. In the nutritional balancing paradigm, disease is not an entity. It is not a real thing. It is simply the absence of health, wholeness or vitality in some way. This, also, is much closer to the derivation of the word disease, as dis-ease or lack of ease.

6. Assessment methods. The new paradigm can, at times, use all of the diagnostic tools of the old paradigm. However, in many or perhaps most cases, the blood tests, x-rays and other diagnostic methods are not needed, or are less important. What matters is to figure out what is out of balance in the body and that is done with the tissue mineral analysis, a rather inexpensive and non-invasive test.

The savings in cost just from not doing so many laboratory test such as x-rays, scans, blood and urine tests would be staggering if the new paradigm were adopted.

The saving is even greater because the new paradigm is preventive. As a result, many of the diseases would not even occur that are routine today including most cancers, most diabetes most heart disease, many infections, and countless others.

7. Methods of correction. The new paradigm can make use of all of the corrective measures used in the old medical paradigm. However, most drugs, hormones and even many herbs and nutritional products are not needed. In most cases, they are best avoided because they are toxic to some degree. Those few that are needed are used only if no other means is available.

This occurs in surgery, for example, with anesthesia drugs, although acupuncture anesthesia could be used, as well, if it were made available. I hope this will come to pass. I once watched a video presentation of acupuncture anesthesia that was remarkable because the patient was awake during abdominal surgery.

Emergencies and a few other situations also require medical drugs from time to time, but not that often, in our experience so far. Instead, with nutritional balancing, the focus is on supplying and balancing the factors of health. These include the proper balance of diet, nutrient supplements, rest, physical activity, fresh air and water. It also includes supplying or teaching the proper balance of healing attitudes, thoughts, emotions, social interactions and even spiritual or religious values needed to cope optimally with one’s environment.

8. Different types of dysfunctions. These may include nutrient deficiencies, toxic metal poisoning, energetic imbalances, or even entity possession.

9. Balancing and Normalizing. In addition to expanding the old diagnostic and treatment methods, wellness is often more concerned with balance. Diseases result from imbalances. Re-establish the balance and many diseases vanish.

Nutritional balancing seeks to normalize the metabolic rate and the balance of the major minerals in the body.

QUALITIES OF THE NEW PARADIGM

1. Less Toxic and Less Invasive. One of the major problems with conventional medicine is iatrogenic disease, a fancy word that means physician-caused illness, disability and death. Most medications weaken the body, making it susceptible to other health conditions. The problem is nothing to sneeze at. It accounts for thousands of hospitalizations and deaths each year, and costs literally billions of dollars. It also adds greatly to malpractice costs and malpractice insurance that doctors must pay for, and which adds to the cost of their services.

Nutritional balancing, in contrast, is far gentler and safer, following the Hippocratic principle of "first do no harm". It avoids the use of toxic procedures and toxic drugs.

2. Whole system thinking. The focus is on the person, not a body part. The body is seen as one integrated system. All functions are related to each other.

3. Highly preventive. Sensitive assessment methods such as hair mineral analysis can often detect imbalances in the body long before a disease occurs. This is a true science of preventive medicine. I see no other way to control health care costs and improve the health of the population.

4. Encouraging personal responsibility for health. Nutritional balancing emphasizes full participation and full responsibility on the part of the patient or client. Changes in lifestyle and diet, and procedures such as saunas and coffee enemas daily require and demand self-discipline.

As more is asked of the patient, the parent-child style of relating to the doctor is often replaced by an adult-adult or client-consultant relationship.

Another aspect of responsibility often taught by holistic practitioners is that both health and disease are at some level the creation of the patient. The notion that everyone has the power to influence their health replaces the victim mentality - that illnesses and accidents just happen. This can lead to blaming oneself , but it need not. The attitude of taking responsibility can be very empowering, replacing the futile and energy-wasting attitudes of blame, guilt, anger, fear and self-pity.

5. Symptoms may be a message. In nutritional balancing science, rather than just “kill” diseases with drugs or cut them out with surgery, we often attempt to find out if the symptom or disease is a message, a signal or even an attempt to correct or compensate for some other imbalance. In other words, an illness can be a type of a conversation the body is having with us. It may be to alert us to our living habits, our attitudes, or our incorrect diet.

With the new paradigm, in other words, more of an effort is made to really understand the causes of symptoms, to dispel fear and empower a person. This helps activate the body's own restorative powers.

Some symptoms may even indicate positive change, or spiritual development and not disease at all. Symptoms may be stages one must pass through to arrive at a higher level of functioning.

6. Addressing Deeper Causes. Many drugs and medical procedures suppress symptoms. If this is all that is done, symptoms tend to change form and become worse or more chronic. Suppression may mask a more serious condition. Healing using nutritional balancing science addresses deeper causes of illness. These may include mechanical, structural, nutritional, electrical, emotional, social, vibrational, or even spiritual causes.

7. Healing follows certain laws and rhythms. Deep healing that occurs with nutritional balancing science, but not with most allopathic and even with most holistic care, tends to follow certain laws and rhythms. For instance, Hering's Law of cure states that healing occurs from the inside out, from the top down, and symptoms disappear in the reverse order in which they first occurred.

William Frederich Koch, MD found that healing occurs in cycles of three days, three weeks and three months. While not hard and fast rules, healing at deep definitely involves retracing, releasing traumas and other rather unusual principles, seen from a medical perspective.

8. Health as successful relationship or coping. Nutritional balancing views health as a process of successfully relating or coping with one’s physical, chemical, emotional, intellectual, social, financial, and even spiritual environment.

Therefore, health is never a commodity that can be bought and sold, doled out to the poor, or administered by a government agency. All such thinking is incorrect. Health is an outcome of understanding ourselves and perfecting our relationships with our surroundings. It is up to each person, not some government agency.

9. A non-linear, multiple-cause, multiple-effect world view. The old paradigm is primarily linear. This germ produces that disease. This drug or procedure is used to cure that disease. The new paradigm views illness and health as having multiple causes and multiple effects. One must consider many factors contributing to any particular condition. Like ripples on a pond, factors combine to create a health condition. Likewise, healing is often the result of an interaction of modalities and behaviors.

10. A more spiritual approach. By this I mean that nutritional balancing takes into account metaphysical or non-tangible factors of healing such as the balance of forces in the body called yin and yang. Another example is taking into account vitality, which is not a physical factor, exactly, but has to do with energetic qualities within the body.

The body is understood as more than a collection of glands and organs. It is nothing less than the temple of the living God. It is governed by spiritual laws and principles, as well as physical ones.

Rather than the view that we live in a body, the perspective is that the body lives inside of us. Our thoughts are very powerful in creating health and illness. Perhaps we live in many dimensions at the same time.

None of this is new, and including a spiritual aspect or dimension in a healing science is simply integrating a long tradition into a modern system of healing.

CONCLUSION

The new paradigm of healing involves protecting, supporting and promoting life on many levels, in many ways. It is an expansion of the old medical paradigm, with some fabulous additions.

The challenge of learning the new paradigm is first to understand that health is more than the absence of diseases. It is a particular state of matter characterized by high enough vitality or adaptive energy to ward off all or at least most illness and disability.

Then the task becomes to correctly assess a person’s level of health in some objective and repeatable fashion and then devise strategies or methods to assist people to move through the levels of health to reach the higher or purer levels of health and wellness. This is the challenge of the new paradigm of nutritional balancing.

Courses | About Dr. Wilson | The Free Basic Program