Alternative Medicine Even a Science Geek Can Embrace

I was contracted recently to promote a new documentary called The Living Matrix, which will have its world premier at The Science of Healing Conference in London next month. Quite an assignment for a self-acclaimed science enthusiast: a film that challenges the conventional medical community to reconsider its understanding of human biology. Energy and information fields -- not genetics -- drive human physiology and biochemistry, the scientists and researchers in the film assert. Now, I'm no stranger to alternative health care. My kids have had engaged in energetic medicine for their food allergies, a sort of electrodermal screening of their energy fields and the ingestion of drops imprinted with healing information. For myself, I'm under the care of an integrative medicine practitioner MD who combines conventional and alternative care. I've also participated in energy healings, body work, homeopathy, yoga, and meditation. But the idea of redefining my beloved subject of biology to include energy and information fields was a stretch for me. Until I did the research for my writing assignments. Turns out, there's lots of science to back it up. Here's a sneak peak at one of the pieces I created for the documentary press kit:

What is bio-energetic medicine?

To understand bio-energetic medicine, you have to connect some dots that conventional medicine leaves unconnected. We know that all living things emit energy in the form of electromagnetic frequencies. We measure these frequencies in the heart with electrocardiographs (ECGs) and in the brain with electroencephalographs (EEGs). In fact, magneto encephalographs (MEGs) measure these frequencies in the brain without even touching the body, so we even acknowledge that these frequencies extend beyond the body; that they are being broadcast outside the physical structure. Next, when quantum physics was discovered 80 years ago, we all came to agree that matter, including the human body, is made up of subatomic particles that emit energy. And we know that these particles react with other particles to create more energy.

That’s a lot of energy moving through the human body, and thousands of years ago, these fields of energy were central to our understanding of health and wellness. That was when medical practitioners understood how these systems of energy interacted with the physical and chemical systems of the body to make us well, and how the disruption of these interactions made us ill. However, when scientists wanted to record the universe in measurable terms, they separated it into components that they could label: the mind from the body, people from each other, and space from time. Newton further defended the notion of the human body as a separate machine, the heart as a stand-alone mechanical pump, the brain as a distinct repository of information, and DNA as the only information the body needed to operate. Because the machines to measure and label energy were generations away, modern scientists defended the ultimate and most damaging separation of all: the separation of energy from biology. Eastern medicine continued to thrive on an understanding of the role of energy in human biology; Western medicine wanted evidence before it would reconsider.

Bio-energetic medicine brings back together the body’s energy systems with its chemical and physiological systems to reestablish a comprehensive understanding of human biology. And because we are all connected to and influenced by our environment, this energy exchange also includes the transfer of energy between the human body’s energy field and all other things around us that also emit energy. Because we now have ways to measure the human body’s energy fields and because scientists have studied and recorded evidence of energy healing, conventional medicine is more receptive to its effectiveness. It is called “bio” energy to reinforce its connection to not separation from biology.

Quantum physics. Newton. EEGs and ECGs. What more could a science geek ask for?

FOR Patients, Not TO Patients

The Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley did a darn good job presenting its third Business of Health Care conference yesterday. The business of health care being a titanic scheme, proportionately it was an intimate affair of about 250 attendees. But, the three keynotes all were relevant to the economic stimulus package and its three controversial health care components. In fact, Paul Keckley’s keynote was so timely, he had to cut it short to catch a plane to D.C., where, in his role as executive director of the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions, he would advise senators in the final sprint towards their vote on Tuesday. The panels offered something for everyone, whether you wanted to spend the entire day bathing in health care reform, stick your heart in either the vice of global health or the vice of chronic disease management, or stir your entrepreneurial spirit in technology and innovation.

A few stand-outs:

In the proper system, we would do things for patients, not to patients. Doug Goodin, MD, Director of the Multiple Sclerosis Center, UCSF Medical Center.

65 percent of Californians are overweight. David Ormerod, MD, Regional Medical Director, Blue Shield
I looked up this fact, so shocking did it sound for a population obsessed with looks, fashion, and cosmetic surgery. According to various charts, he is in the right range. CalorieLabs’ chart says we are 59 percent overweight and 23 percent obese. The CDC has a scary animated map that shows how the country has gotten fatter year by year since 1985. In 1985, no state recorded obesity rates of more than 15 percent. In 1995, only half the states had obesity rates of less than 15 percent, and by 2008, only one state, Colorado, could make that claim. By 2008, between 25 and 29 percent of Americans were obese.

Health care will make up 32 percent of the Gross Domestic Product by 2037; 49 percent by 2062. Leonard Schaeffer, chairman and CEO of WellPoint.

125 million Americans have some chronic illness. 75 percent of the health care expenditures in the U.S. go towards chronic care. Steve Shortell, Dean of UC Berkeley’s School of Public Health.

In the current system, nobody has any incentive to manage health care. For chronic disease, for example, physicians get paid only to treat, not manage. So they tend to keep their distance once their job is done. Medicare pays only 60 days of home health. In one extreme example of incentive gone awry, cited in my lunch conversation with Duncan Ross, VP and General Manager of Blue Shield, at one time, stomach bypass surgeries were covered only if the patient was officially obese. Nearly obese folks who didn’t qualify started packing on the pounds if they wanted the surgery.

A universal voucher payment system: Consumers would receive vouchers that they could use with health care insurers. The voucher system would be funded by taxes imposed on items that are known to impair health, such as junk food, tobacco, alcohol. Omerond.
So, in theory, that extra 50 cents you pay on the big mac goes toward the insulin shot you might need in 10 years. Seems fair, except even teetotalers and athletes get sick.

45 percent of the treatment in the U.S. is not based on diagnosis. Schaeffer

“In looking at drugs that will cure neglected diseases in some of the poorest regions of the world, sometimes there isn’t a market.” Jana Armstrong, Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative.

“Unless costs are controlled, budget hawks will combine forces with national security experts to set health care policy by default.” Schaeffer.