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If you were a scientist, how would you study reiki or other energy therapies? How would you go about determining the effectiveness of a multi-pronged treatment plan? And how in the world do you measure Qi? These are some of the quandaries that face researchers who study complementary and alternative medicine (CAM). The traditional randomized, controlled trial can be an excellent way to look at single agent therapies like pharmaceuticals. Unfortunately, this kind of trial doesn’t quite fit when you’re looking at systemic, individualized, or unknown entities.

The way a study is designed can have everything to do with the results. Unfortunately, the study results are usually all that are reported in news headlines, while little details like poor instrumentation, a lousy control, or numerous confounding factors don’t usually see their way into print. In addition, a number of CAM therapies have unknown mechanisms, which makes it awfully difficult to figure out how to study them. (Click here for an excellent paper on the difficulties of establishing a correct sham [or placebo] for a modality whose mechanism is unknown).

Acupuncture is a good example of this. There are a number of theories on how acupuncture might work, but no one is certain. If you were to set up a randomized, controlled trial of acupuncture for shoulder pain, what would your control be? You would have to make it something that felt like a true acupuncture treatment, so perhaps you would instruct the study practitioners to insert the needles in non-acupuncture points. Maybe you would use retractable needles, so that the patient would feel a pinch, but the needle would not actually be inserted into the body. But what if something about that control treatment caused the same effect that ‘real’ acupuncture does? The results would come out looking like acupuncture was no different than a placebo control, when in fact both were causing a therapeutic reaction. This is an illustration of just one of the dilemmas facing CAM researchers.

While there is a push to build an evidence base behind many CAM treatments, research on these modalities is still in its infancy. Until science is advanced to the point where CAM is a little less mysterious, the medical and scientific community runs the risk of shunning potentially beneficial treatments or conversely, embracing useless therapies based on faulty research findings.

So, what to do? Be healthily skeptical when you read a news article declaring once and for all that a particular modality is completely ineffective, or reliant on placebo effects. On the other hand, be wary of unquestioningly accepting the results of a study that supports your particular worldview – there’s danger in that as well. Citing a poorly done study as proof that a treatment works or doesn’t work does nothing to further intelligent discussion on CAM modalities. Open-minded skepticism is better than close-minded cynicism or naïve conviction any day. Better yet, join the cadre of scientists who are working to establish ways of studying CAM, and in doing so, are pushing the boundaries of scientific thought.

Ensuring that you are consuming safe and nutritious food goes way beyond what is listed on the nutrition label. How food is grown, its quality, and freshness is just as important (if not more) than the carbohydrate, fat, and protein content in food. As a registered dietitian, I am often frustrated by how many medical professionals overlook these key elements to health. It is about time that we start offering fresh, nutritious and organic foods in health care institutions, including hospitals, because these organizations are supposed to support our health and encourage healing.

I am very excited to hear that hospital food directors across the country are starting to incorporate “green” food purchasing in their food service operations. One food service director at Swedish Covenant Hospital on Chicago’s North Side, Maria Simmons, is running an almost 100 percent organic and local kitchen. The Urban and Environmental Policy Institute, member of Health care Without Harm, is working to improve food offering in hospitals through out the nation by getting food service directors to buy local organic produce, rBGH-free milk and antibiotic-free meat products. They are also working to get hospitals to offer farmers’ markets on hospital grounds. Kaiser Permanente, a non-profit hospital system, is now sponsoring over 23 farmers markets through out Oregon, California, Washington, and Hawaii. I suggest you check out the websites listed above to see how you can impact what food is being offered at your local hospital.

Food. Food is a big one. We all need it, we all eat it, and we all have our opinions about it. I love talking about food. Here’s some information about how you can begin eat locally and support your health and your community.

Food and diet is a big topic in naturopathic and Chinese medicine. That old phrase ‘we are what we eat’ is the truth. My family has always been committed to eating organic food as much as possible. To me, organic food is a no-brainer. I simply do not want to ingest chemicals in any way, if I can help it. Now, I am not perfect. I love a box of Red Vines at the movies, and there are plenty of ways to eat sugar and still eat organic. Until recently, however, I have not always been really aware of eating locally. I always just thought that if it was organic, then it must be good.

There is another layer to this discussion, and that is the idea of eating locally. This means to eat food that is grown organically by local farms; starting with food that is grown in the same country, better yet, the same state, or food that has been grown and raised in your own garden. One of the reasons for this is to take into account how far and how much gas it took to get that food to your kitchen table. The fuel costs to drive food everywhere is astronomical. If that banana (which I really like to have in my smoothies in the morning) comes from somewhere tropical, then it had to be driven to me from somewhere far away from Portland. From somewhere I would love to be as we enter into February in the Pacific Northwest. Avocados are a big one as well. Those do not grow here in Portland in February either.

I was really excited to read Barbara Kingsolver’s book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle about how her family took on a food challenge: to live a year in which they vowed to only consume food raised in their own neighborhood, grown by themselves, or otherwise learned to live without it. All along the way, their 19 year-old daughter gives little vignettes with food planning menus and recipes, while also talking about her experience with the project. As the book cover says:

“Their good humored search yields surprising discoveries about turkey sex-life and overly zealous zucchini plants, en route to a food culture that’s better for the neighborhood and also better for the table”.

This book made me further examine my own relationship with food, in an amazingly simple way. What types of food are growing right now that I can eat? Growing my own food gives me so much pleasure. It also makes me more in touch with the seasons. I am aware of the seasons in the way the flowers and trees change. However, being able to buy anything at any time of year, despite growing my own food garden, I was still quite ignorant to the food growing seasons. Bananas in winter? No problem.

Now, back to those avocados: do I really need to eat them in the winter? They have definitely had to travel a long way to get to Portland, Oregon in the winter. Even though they are organic, they have still costs a lot of money to ship them up here. Can I get my monounsaturated fats and B-vitamins elsewhere? I know that those blueberries are not growing in my backyard so where did they come from? Is there a company making flour closer to me then where this one comes from?

Now I ask myself: “how far did this have to come to get to my table?” The goal is: the closer it came from, the better.

Farmer’s market’s are popping up all over this country, so there is no excuse for people not to get in their cars, or better yet, get on their bike, or ride the bus and go to one (click here to learn more about farmer’s markets in your neck of the woods). The food is local, the people are growing it, so the money is going right back into the pockets of the people who grew it. Eating locally is cheaper as well. The cost of transportation is huge, and only getting bigger with increase gas prices. Thus, things can cost less if they are less expensive to get to your table.

Winter is hard for food choices; there is not as much variety. As I mention before, I am not perfect. I still buy bananas for my smoothies. I try to buy them a lot less, and also be grateful and aware that they have come so far for me to enjoy them. I also try to keep my out of season foods intake to a minimum and keep in balance with eating foods that are readily available this time of year. In other words, I eating all the root veggies and collard greens, I can get my hands on.

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To learn some more about local farmers and co-ops, take a look at these successful organizations and checkout how they have interlaced themselves into the community. If you’re into vegetable gardening, perhaps with the help of others, your fruit stand could feed others! Organize and revolutionize the way we work with food!

The Genesee Valley Organic Community Supported Agriculture

New Seasons Market

People’s Co-Op

All of us at Helfgott are excited about our upcoming conference Transforming the Mind: Consciousness in Medicine. This two-day conference will bring together nationally renowned speakers, leading scientists, and health practitioners to discuss the current models of understanding consciousness and its function in providing quality patient care. Historically, medical traditions have facilitated healing not only through the physical body, but also through shifts in consciousness. This holistic approach to health and healing requires an awareness of the body as a dynamic, intelligent, and evolving system. Our conference brings together revolutionary thinkers to discuss elements of consciousness, quantum biology, and methods to inspire transformational change. Our goal is to provide a forum for students, practitioners and the community to explore a deeper understanding of consciousness in medicine. For more information about the event, click here.

“Most people live, whether physically, intellectually or morally, in a very restricted circle of their potential being. They make very small use of their possible consciousness and of their soul’s resources in general, much like a man who, out of his whole bodily organism, should get into a habit of using and moving only his little finger.”

-William James

a letter from the rolltopped desk of C.Biscuit….

To the disenchanted and the disillusioned,

Fear not, for there is hope. I, too, have traveled through a road lined with thorns, but spring has come and there are beautiful roses now blossoming amongst the trenches of our health care system. Each rose has a unique story to tell, detailing the fruition within each organization afoot in the fertile ground below. For this, my heart soars. But it wasn’t always this way for this little potentillas; it was a wrought path, challenging a rise above the unrest, allowing illumination only after a retrospective contemplation.

Over the past few years I have discovered many inadequacies within our health care system, and these areas of neglect made me feel disappointed and disillusioned about making change for the better. The items of discord continued to mount, adding more to the side of what was wrong, and less to what was right. For a while, I avoided all media, feeling as if contemporary society could never truly commit to a healthy change of the existing systems, and that investigative reviews would prefer to poke holes in viable solutions, rather than attempt to understand. My myopic view insisted that a benevolent health care system was unattainable, citing that politics and institutions were always about the money and not about providing quality health. Corruption of values seemed the norm, as were side effects from medications in addition to a continuous progression of chronic and preventable diseases…. At times, the situations made me feel under equipped and overwhelmed, burdened, what could a horse like myself do to create change? If health care is about health, shouldn’t that be the cardinal point for all health-related endeavors? If only they could see and understand that taking care of the individual would in turn, provide a healthier economy, healthier domestic and international relationships, and a savings of money overall! But it was never really about the money for me and would explain why for so many years I grappled with the line for communication to these entities.

During the Dark Ages in search of the Gilded Ages, I coped, bandaged up my wounds, yet continued to persevere, by padding myself with new information and then stepping back into the health care arena for a few more rounds. How did I manage? Anger is the emotion that initially directed me towards health care and kept me at it through this point in my life. And it wasn’t the typical violent or aggressive form, rather my anger manifested as a slow and festering feeling of frustration. However, the fuel of frustration burned me at both ends, scalding my insides, wearing my sanity thin. How could our health care be so misdirected? What was so tantalizing about monetary gain that it usurped basic and sound reasoning? All of these questions remained unanswered for years and smoldered beneath my red badges of courage.

Through all of this, I adamantly focused upon every detail as to why the world appeared built backwards in respect to health care. Hence the hiatus from the media, and in some respects exodus from the southerly foothills of Georgia. I was fed up with stretched medical advice, superficial constructs and quick-fixes, tactics based upon a limited point of view, and all other perspectives that chose to parcel a piece out of the whole picture for diagnosis and treatment. My frustration swelled and my steppenwolf reared its head instructing me to find solace, find a state of balance so that the entire situation could reveal itself to me. I was too emotionally involved to act a part in the play of sustainable health care; my internal biases would interfere and unseat anything I would construct. It took about 5 years of academic isolation in Portland, Oregon (my current stomping ground). And under the direct guise of NCNM and the Helfgott Research Institute: a holistic perspective was finally achieved. All those years of grooming had paid off!

Over the past few months I have began to monitor the activity of negligence and unjust loopholes in our medical systems again, watching the short-sightedness undermine even the best of attempts at correcting the imbalance. Initially, nothing seemed to change, and the litany of “wrongs” continued to heap upon my computer’s desktop, collaging my backdrop with pale unanswered blank stares, all awaiting closure, awaiting solutions of change. Like fatty white deposits, they clogged my thought processes until the day I decided to organize the ideas, categorizing those little white pages in order to sift, refine, and construct conduits where the Pony Express failed to express before. All that was needed was an open line for communication and an impartial ear. Surprisingly the list of “not dones” was exactly the starting point for addressing the necessary change and paved the way for the Helfgottblog. What was at first a clutter of cantankerous confusion turned into a strategy for creating change, clarity was achieved.

My primary focus has, and will always be, about the ultimate goal of a universal and sustainable health care system, but my own limited perspective kept me from figuring out at truly feasible solution! How silly of me to exclude some of the pieces, unknowingly believing that those dark areas could be overlooked in the process of putting the whole puzzle together. So, I give you a distillation of my thought-processes over the last few weeks: how can we effectively relate the message of functional health care to others interested in the same ideal as well as organizations out there to make money? The two internet solutions resulting from this question were The Vivid Health care Plan and Community Resource page. Both of which are in regards to awareness and facilitating information about viable health care solutions, directing quality care and knowledge to the patient and the entire health care system, from the bottom up. There are still numerous opportunities to make money during this process, for those that like the monetary reward, but these fiscal features will take a backseat to health and prove more lucrative in the long run. The ideas are based upon something sung to the tune of functional health care; it’s that plain and simple, with no strings attached.

My pursuits will continue to grow exponentially, acting as clerk: collecting and providing avenue to those desiring functional health. However, I am still a horse and my animalistic qualities run deep, and my steppenwolf will inevitably resurface in my pursuit to get to the bottom of the details, my absolute attempt to make horse sense out of all this pretense… but that’s okay. I’ll mull on those areas of friction, rein in my focus, and eventually figure out what part it, too, can play in the grand scheme of things. Luckily, my internal struggle led me to where I am today, doing what I’m doing, outlining the silver lining to the clouded view of the health care system at present. What I enjoy most about the blog is that it provides a dynamic resource for others to see the change that is ongoing both inside and outside the Portland community. All of those unanswered questions that plagued me before have, in fact, found solutions from other compassionate and like-minded individuals. And it feels good to know that this information can be outsourced around the globe and provide knowledge to others who are also seeking answers to some of humanity’s most troubling and problematic sore spots.

So fear not, sit quietly with those areas of unrest, devoid of understanding and no clear direction for solution because one day your thoughtfulness will prove worthwhile in the end. Persevere my friends: the rewards of your journey shall prove abundant and fruitful.

Humbly surrendered to the illuminated light within each of you,
C. Biscuit.