A NEW
UNDERSTANDING OF ALTERNATIVE MEDICINE
BY JACK ZIMMERMAN
| The thrust of twentieth
century medicine can be described by the metaphor of
war. Disease is considered an invasion by an enemy and treatment
is aimed at developing "magic
bullets" in the form of drugs and vaccines to
eliminate that enemy. We have seen, for example, a failed "war on cancer," a proliferation of antibiotics, and a
growing number of surgical procedures, cell-killing
radiation treatments, and chemical medications (such
as chemotherapy), all of which do harm to the body, in
one form or another, in their attempts to restore health. Lost in this approach is the concept of repairing the imbalances which allow the illness to occur in the first
place. Medical science has become one sided in its focus, increasingly losing sight of the whole person in its attempt to treat the body's individual parts. A more useful metaphor for medicine would be repair, not war, says Dr. Lee. "If we think of the body as a house, we see that problems are in the gaps and breakdowns that occur in the foundation, allowing various pests to make their way inside. The contemporary physician addressed this problem by selling you poisons or traps to kill or catch the pests. But this still doesn't prevent other undesirables from coming inthrough the gaps. in the future. How much better it would be for your physician to learn where the holes are
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while teaching you how to
prevent them from occurring again. Because the emphasis ofconventional medicine
remains upon war and not repair, it has led to the
organization of medical schools with their various departments such as cardiology,nephrology, neurology,dermatology, orthopedics and psychiatry. This forces students to focus their study on one
organ system at a time as if each bodily organ functioned
independently of all the others; or to choose one for
exclusive study in preparation for a career in medicine as a
"specialist" in that organ system. "Our
system of disease classification is based on specific organs as
well," notes Dr. Lee. "We name our diseases by the organ that
is being
affected. Thus, we have arthritis, tonsillitis, appendicitis, heart or gallbladder disease, colitis, prostatitis, and many other examples. We even name the cancer we get by the organ it affects. This diverts attention away from the intrinsic inter relatedness of all parts of our body and the complex dynamism of life forces. It is no wonder that our "modern" doctors understand so little of holistic concepts of health." WHY ARE WE ILL? Health is far more than the absence of disease. When we are healthy all our bodily functions are harmoniously
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balanced and integrated
with eachother and we are also in balance with our
environment. In this state of equilibrium our
defense mechanisms and our immune FOUNDATIONS OF HEALTH According to Dr. Chaitow, positive health
depends upon three factors, which are interconnected.
The first of these is the body's structural
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