Dr. Bill Benda: A Horse of a Different Color

Recently, I had the pleasure of meeting with Dr. Bill Benda, an eclectic physician who hails from a conventional background yet comfortably and knowledgeably works with all forms of medicine. In fact, Benda is most known within natural medicine circles for his pioneering steps towards integrating medical disciplines. He’s the type of guy that looks for a solid line of truth, seamlessly threading all acts of healing, and then highlighting how to piece our disciplines together to solve any health care problem at hand.

To keep the plates spinning for health care reform, Bill travels a lot, checking in with his various global and national projects and sandwiching appointments together to make the most of his time. My article is a perfect case-in-point, as it details a mere 48 hours of his time. But embedded within that period, he managed to pull on the appropriate strings that keep the plates spinning in favor of supporting health care at its core.

Yep. Bill Benda gets it and he has the sunny disposition to prove it.

Last Friday, Dr. Benda made a quick stopover in Portland to lend a hand at the Natural Doctors International (NDI) annual auction, playfully jeering with guests to up the donation ante, prompting them to purchase more water filters or to support a local farmer for pennies on the dollar. As a board member for NDI, Bill helps to steer the group’s agenda in a productive manner. He offers keen insight on the practices of MD and residency programs, as well as thoughtful commentary on the availability of prescription medications and antibiotic drugs for their international outreach efforts.

Saturday morning in Stumptown, Bill toured the campus of the National College of Natural Medicine (NCNM) with its president Dr. David Schleich, where he surveyed NCNM’s latest developments in its naturopathic and Chinese medicine curriculum. Moreover, Bill learned about its research program at the Helfgott Research Institute, where NCNM’s students honor the traditions of natural medicine and shape the future of integrative medicine through rigorous scientific design. This isn’t the first naturopathic school or research facility Bill has visited. Bastyr is already dialed into his thought-processes and he is an instructor part-time at Southwest, so remaining connected is part of his ongoing strategy.

Saturday evening, Dr. Benda took some time to meet with me. Our conversation took place over a dinner involving brussels sprouts and doughnuts fried in butter and the topics covered were equally as heterogeneous. His experiences seem directly plugged into some formulation he has stewing in his brain because when he is making a profound point, you can see his eyes sharpen with the adroitness of a well-honed machine. I figured his machine must be fueled by something, so I decided to inquire about his personal passion when it came to health care.

“Interspecies therapeutics,” he solidly answered.

Bill then went on to discuss his collaborative work with Therapeutic Riding of Tucson, a non-profit organization that seeks “to enrich the lives of people with special needs by using therapeutic, equine programs.” The term used to describe this technique is called hippotherapy, which is essentially a way to utilize the movement of horses to elicit improved states of being for the riders. Dr. Benda managed to coordinate efforts and produced a cardinal study in the world of interspecies therapeutics, which revealed immediate and long-term improvements in muscle tone and physiology for children with cerebral palsy.

And his work doesn’t stop there. This divergent path of medicine seems only natural for Bill because he understands the power behind seeing all sides of an issue before making a judgment. However, a quick and easy way to get to know Dr. Bill Benda’s ethos, dear reader, is to read his work, as it clearly reveals his character and personal compassion for the health of others. A basic literature search reveals thought-provoking editorials and articles about an assortment of viable therapeutic methodologies. His titles are eye-catching and contextually rich, creating a conversation where none existed before. Pertinent examples include (and are totally worth reading):  Flower Power, Teaching Canaries to Sing, To Forgive is Human, to Err is Divine, and my personal favorite, Lost in a Lost World….

So, to sum up a man that can never be adequately sized up, Dr. Benda means business when he talks about the future of medicine. And he’s not talking about the precarious model that health care finds itself within. Rather, he is thinking forward to health care’s next steps. Like an arrow in line with its target, he keeps his eyes on the prize: a sustainable, vigorous, and productive health care system. I must say that Dr. Bill Benda’s pursuit of non-toxic alternatives for high-quality, low-cost health care, or his research into equine therapeutics makes good horse-sense in a world made up of political pretense.

My impression of Dr. Benda is this: “if you build it, and people understand how to buy into it, then a solution organically unfolds.” Bill just happens to be in the proverbial eye of health care storm, prepared and unperturbed by the chaos around him. His intellectual diversity is extraordinary and when you combine that with his compassion for his fellow man… and animal… we’ll you just gotta love what he’s all about.