L.A. Times Article - Does it matter what the doctor weighs?

Dr. Regina Benjamin with President Barack Obama

Here's an interesting article from the L.A. Times on the personal health of doctors. Does it matter? Do medical health professionals need to be healthy to be effective?

"A doctor doesn't need to be perfect, but it'd be hard for me to take financial advice from a CPA who had just filed for bankruptcy," said Dr. Timothy Harlan, medical director of the Tulane University School of Medicine, who says he believes physicians should make a genuine effort to be healthy.

Personally, I believe it's my responsibility to be as healthy as possible. I'm kind of a health nut. This morning Nini and I had vegetable juice for breakfast, as we usually do: carrots, beets, cucumber, ginger, and an apple (on the weekends, when we have time, we like to follow that up with bacon and eggs with tomatoes, onions and cheese). Most mornings I'm out at Mar Vista park doing taijiquan or qigong. I drink a lot of green tea.

I don't usually advertise these activities, because people sometimes don't react well to hearing about them. Instead of "hey, good for you" it's some hardcore eye-rolling and "well of course YOU do that. You're healthy! I could NEVER be as healthy as you are."

The fact is, there's no hard line between a "healthy person" and an "unhealthy person." I haven't always had these habits. I only started juicing about a year ago (note: I'm talking about this kind of juicing, NOT this kind). I only started exercising every morning during the past month, when I finally had the freedom to organize my own schedule. I drink green tea because I like how it tastes and how it makes me feel - I'm not choking it down because it's good for me. In the future I may not have the time to exercise every morning, or make juice and then clean the juicer (which takes awhile and is kind of a hassle but still worth it - if you've never had ultra-fresh juice straight from the juicer it's like a punch in the taste buds - much better than anything you could buy in a bottle. Besides that there are all kinds of health benefits which have to do with how fast the nutritional content of juice degrades when you let it sit around - for best results drink within two to three minutes of juicing).

My general philosophy is that you should enjoy life. If life isn't enjoyable, what's the point? I've tried drinking, and cigarettes, and various recreational drugs. I've tried all different kinds of exercise. I've tried not exercising. As a patient, I've tried acupuncture, massage and herbs. I've tried meditation and talk therapy and EFT. For myself, I have found what works, and continue to discover new things all the time. Through learning and teaching martial arts and four years of formal TCM education, I have tools that can help me to understand what works for others. I encourage you to experiment, and find what works for you. If you want to change something about your health, or your life, your body, your mindset, try something different. Don't be afraid to ask questions or seek guidance in unexpected places.

Find a doctor that you connect with. Everyone needs help with health challenges, so don't be afraid to accept professional help. But the best doctor is within yourself. Go look for him or her. They're in there.

After Treatment, Then What?

From Dana Jennings prostate cancer blog:

When I had radiation for about two months last winter, it began to feel as familiar as a job. I knew the names of the hospital parking attendants and the receptionists. The nurses, doctors and therapists all smiled and said hello, and I did the same.

Each day I arrived at radiation oncology, checked in, got my hospital bracelet, changed into a drafty gown, then waited with my fellow patients — my colleagues in cancer — to be treated. Once a week, my weight, blood pressure and temperature were taken and I met with my radiation oncologist. I had become a regular at the radiation spa, had even learned to artfully jiggle the key in the stubborn locker doors.

You can read the rest here...

Is it just me or does this seem kind of perverse? How could you love treatment so much that you would be disappointed when it ends? As a patient you should be looking to get better, not enjoy your treatment. If medical treatment is so enjoyable, why not be sick all the time?

Swine Flu, Concerned Parents, Western Medicine and Chinese Medicine

Yesterday I got an email from my dad. I've been sick for the past few weeks, but what with finals and the end of school, I only got serious about treating it last Friday, when I went to see Dr. Yuhong Chen at the Yosan clinic (scroll down to read her bio). I had two acupuncture treatments and she wrote a kick-ass herbal formula, and five days later I'm back to 100%.

My main symptom was sore throat, persisting for three weeks, plus fatigue, and at various points during that four weeks I had body aches, slight fever, night sweats, thick sticky green phlegm streaked with blood, thin white phlegm, and probably something else too. It sounds bad when I write it all out, but it didn't bother me too much. All those symptoms didn't occur at the same time, and when they did occur they only lasted a day or so. The only thing that persisted was the sore throat.

In a phone conversation last weekend, my dad suggested that I go get a throat culture and, if it turned out to be strep throat, take antibiotics. I told him that I was fairly sure it wasn't strep, and even if it was, I'd rather take Chinese medicine. Like many Americans, I don't have health insurance, and my last trip to the ER cost me nearly $1000.

Then the swine flu media panic got out of control over the weekend, and I had the email exchange reproduced below with my dad. I guess I was a little defensive about Chinese medicine - after all, I just spent four years studying this completely different, completely effective system of medicine, and now my dad wants me to take antibiotics and Tamiflu? Sheesh.

But I think it's instructive about the way a lot of people feel about Chinese medicine - that's it's good for mild symptoms, but if it's "something serious," then you absolutely have to "go see a doctor," which means an M.D. The fact is, Chinese medicine can treat everything. Let me say that again: Chinese medicine can treat everything.

And now, without further ado...

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
11:54 AM (22 hours ago)
(My Dad)
to me

Hey Jonah,

Not sure if your symptoms fit this profile, but if they’re in the ballpark I would urge you to go to a clinic or even a hospital ER somewhere to get a test. This has public health implications – the only way the CDC can track what’s happening is by monitoring test results – but more important the health networks are well stocked with anti-virals (tamiflu and another one whose name I forget) that so far have been effective if the result turns out positive. So no need to panic, but also no reason not to be proactive. From the news reports it looks as if this could get serious down the line. As you have probably been reading, the group most at risk from this outbreak are healthy young adults in the 20-40 age range.

Love,

Dad



From: Lisa
Sent: Sunday, April 26, 2009 7:29 PM
Subject: IMPORTANT UPDATE! Swine Influenza Outbreak.
Importance: High

Fellow Employees:

The World Health Organization (WHO) and Center for Disease Control (CDC) have confirmed an outbreak of the Swine Influenza A/H1N1 (swine flu) in Mexico with now twenty (20) confirmed cases in the United States. Swine Influenza is a respiratory disease found in pigs caused by type A influenza that regularly causes outbreaks of influenza among pigs. CDC has determined that this swine influenza A (H1N1) virus is contagious and is spreading from human to human. However, at this time, it not known how easily the virus spreads between people.

The symptoms of swine flu in people are similar to the symptoms of regular human flu and include fever, cough, sore throat, body aches, headache, chills and fatigue. Some people have reported diarrhea and vomiting associated with swine flu. In the past, severe illness (pneumonia and respiratory failure) and deaths have been reported with swine flu infection in people. Like seasonal flu, swine flu may cause a worsening of underlying chronic medical conditions.

Spread of this swine influenza A (H1N1) virus is thought to be happening in the same way that seasonal flu spreads. Flu viruses are spread mainly from person to person through coughing or sneezing of people with influenza. Sometimes people may become infected by touching something with flu viruses on it and then touching their mouth or nose.

Your health and the health of your family is greatly important. Please take some general precautions during this time.

Since influenza is thought to spread mainly person-to-person through coughing or sneezing of infected people, there are many things you can to do preventing getting and spreading influenza:

Everyday actions:

· Cover coughs and sneezes with tissues or by coughing into the inside of the elbow. Throw the tissue in the trash after you use it.

· Wash your hands often with soap and water for 20 seconds, especially after you cough or sneeze. Alcohol-based hands cleaners are also effective.

· Avoid touching your eyes, nose or mouth. Germs spread that way.

Try to avoid close contact with sick people.

· Limit close contact (within 6 feet) with others when possible.

· Stay away from places where there are large groups of people.

· If you get sick, CDC recommends that you stay home from work and limit contact with others to keep from infecting them.

All offices remain open at this time. However, we would like to recommend that business travel to/from Mexico be delayed/re-scheduled. In lieu of travel, please consider conducting conference calls and/or video conferences.

The following link is the CDC’s Q&A which provides the detail regarding when to contact your health care provider, especially for children or someone with pre-existing health issues. http://www.cdc.gov/swineflu/swineflu_you.htm

We will continue to send you updates on any important information as it becomes available. Please contact your HRBP or the Benefits Team if you have any other questions or concerns.

Regards,

Lisa
Vice President, Human Resources

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1:23 PM (21 hours ago)
Jonah Ewell
to (My Dad)

Hey Dad,

I appreciate your concern! But I'm getting much better. Chinese medicine is much much more effective for any kind of influenza than drugs. When SARS broke out in China, they used herbal medicine. If Chinese medicine were in wider use in the Americas, swine flu would be much easier to contain. Obviously, to treat the root of the problem you need to stop having factory farming and crowding huge amounts of pigs together, which concentrates effluvia (aka pigshit!) and breeds disease. Until that happens, Chinese medicine, handwashing, and rest are the best way to recover from a flu.

I'm currently taking a Chinese herbal prescription which consists of 15 herbs. Some of the key herbs, such as 茵陳蒿 Yin Chen Hao (a type of artemisiae) and 山豆根 Shan Dou Gen (a type of sophora root) have been proven in laboratory testing to have broad-spectrum antiviral and antibacterial actions. No need to worry, Chinese medicine is on the case!

love,
Jonah
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1:53 PM (20 hours ago)
(My Dad)
to me

OK, sounds good. But do you know whether you have the particular virus that’s in the news?

Love,

Dad

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2:35 PM (19 hours ago)
Jonah Ewell
to (My Dad)

In the framework of Chinese medicine, it's unimportant what exact microbe or virus is causing you problems. Western science and medicine is reductionist, always looking for that ONE THING that they can point to and say is the cause of illness. When you find the exact bacteria or virus, all you have to do is kill it, or remove it, or block it, or any of the other things Western medicine does. This is a relatively recent development, hinging on the invention of advanced microscopes. Thanks to these instruments, we have made incredible advances in being able to look at and detect these small microbes and viruses, which has helped the world deal with serious health problems. However, as we are seeing, looking for the one microbe and trying to eliminate it is a textbook case of missing the forest for the trees.

What causes disease? Why do some people get sick and others don't? If the swine flu was really so contagious, why haven't more people become sick and died? According to what I've heard on the radio and read in the newspapers, less than 10% of people with swine flu have died. Over 90% recover. Think of fruit in a basket. If you leave it for awhile, you might find that one piece of fruit has mold on it. Another piece of fruit, sitting right next to it and even touching it, cheek-by-jowl, is unaffected. Why is that?

Louis Pasteur, the father of modern bacteria studies (the process of pasteurization was named for him) was said to have renounced bacteria-based medicine on his deathbed, saying "Terrain is everything." Terrain means our bodies, our immune system, our environment. If you have a strong immune system (what the Chinese call 卫气 wei qi, or defensive qi) without underlying deficiencies, and live in harmony with your environment, you will not become sick.

Chinese medicine has, over the course of 2000-3000 years of recorded history, developed a number of powerful diagnostic systems that, properly applied, can cure nearly everything. Modern medicine has a place, and it adds to the world's knowledge. But it doesn't replace Chinese medicine.

Chinese medicine looks at the totality of a person and treats the person, not the disease. The herbal formula I'm taking was written exactly for me, taking into account all my body systems, my constitution and my presenting symptoms. This is what good medicine is. Simply telling millions of people, young, old, tall, short, skinny, fat, to go dose themselves with Tamiflu is ridiculous.

If you have an epidemic situation, in Chinese medicine it falls under the general classification of 温病 wen bing, or warm disease. There are many subcategories within it, but one of note is called 杂气 za qi, or miscellaneous qi. This is a type of qi that arises under special circumstances and is outside the realm of the ordinary system of Chinese medicine, which holds that there are six types of exogenous pathogens. This seventh type of qi was discussed by 吴有性 Dr. Wu Youxing in his work the 温疫论 Wen Yi Lun in 1642 A.D., many centuries after the main classics of Chinese medicine were written but two centuries before Dr. Pasteur made his discoveries in the area of germ theory.

In other words... don't worry!

love,
Jonah

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6:05 PM (16 hours ago)
(My Dad)
to me

In principle I can see your point, but the 1918 flu pandemic killed millions of people in a single year before it ran its course, and the treatments that have been developed since then to combat viruses of this type are pretty specific and pretty effective once the agent has been identified. Not sure of the details, but I think that anti-virals are different from antibiotics, which are less specific and also ineffective against viruses. Also, according to the NYT article on it yesterday, what makes this particular virus so deadly is not so much what it does directly as the immune reaction that it triggers, literally drowning the patient as the body tries to activate its natural defenses to meet a perceived but not well understood threat. Viruses (which are basically small free-floating pieces of genetic code) are tricky, and developing an effective anti-viral agent on the molecular level seems mostly to be a matter of strategy. So maybe the most appropriate medical text for this kind of threat would be the Sunzi…

Anyway, my 2 cents for what it’s worth.

Love,

Dad

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10:03 PM (12 hours ago)
Jonah Ewell
to (My Dad)

Sunzi is used as a medical text, but antiviral medications are a far cry from the wisdom of Sunzi. One of Sunzi's basic tenets is to follow the laws of Heaven and Earth. In medical terms, that means the exterior and the interior, the environment and the body. Viruses are highly adaptable, which is why getting a flu shot is such a crap shoot. They have to guess which flu strain is going to go around, and a lot of times they get it wrong, so all these old folks are immunized against something which poses no threat, and they have no defense against the flu strain that actually does come around.

They would be far, far better off to do the basics: light exercise daily, eat foods in accordance with the seasons, and have a stable emotional life. Add handwashing, proper clothing for the weather, and there's your natural flu vaccine. It's easy to tune out because it's so basic. The basics are hard! Huaching Ni says that having a normal life is actually quite difficult, and that few people ever achieve it. Instead of focusing on the basics, everyone's looking for the magic pill or injection which is going to allow them to continue with their bad habits.

The CDC is doing their job by telling people to wash their hands (http://www.cdc.gov/swineflu/), but that doesn't get picked up by the media. Everyone's looking for a vaccine or treatment. As the Neijing says, treating an illness after it has started is like digging a well when you get thirsty, or forging weapons after the battle has begun.

There is an "attacking school" or "detoxification school" of Chinese medicine that concentrates on using harsh, bitter, cold herbs to drive pathogens from the body (攻邪学派 Gong Xie Xue Pai). It's one of the four famous schools of medical thought from the Jin-Yuan period. Most modern western medicine can be thought of as an extreme example of the attacking school. Antibiotics, antivirals, chemotherapy, radiation, are all very effective if used correctly (big if) but they absolutely destroy your body and leave it open to further attack. This mode of thought is just one of many overlapping theories that are used concurrently in Chinese medicine, and certainly not a dominant one.

love,
Jonah

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10:34 PM (11 hours ago)
Jonah Ewell
to (My Dad)

You're correct in that strategy is important, but if the only time you apply strategy is in a quest to find the best anti-viral medication, that's a misapplication of strategy. Everyone is looking through the microscope, which is fine, but if the virus is underneath a microscope that means it's not in a human body. At the same time as you bend over the microscope, you also have to step back and look at what's going on in a real live sick person, and then step back again to look at where that person lives, the state of the environment in which he or she lives, and all the people around them, sick or not. The strength of Chinese medicine is that we deal with living systems in their natural environments.

Modern machinery is great - who wouldn't want an MRI machine to peer inside the body? - but it doesn't replace the basics of the four examinations - palpation, listening/smelling, observation, and questioning. When you add blood tests, X-rays and scopes to that, you have a some very powerful diagnostic tools. If you rely too much on the machines and lab reports, as many modern doctors tend to do, you can very easily be misled. Western medicine, until very recently, made good use of palpation, physical exam, and the verbal investigation to form a complete diagnosis. Nowadays, it's just testing. Some of my patients in the clinic get sent for test after test after test. Some of these tests are very invasive, and at the end of it the doctors say, "we can't find anything wrong. It must be psychological." Well, they're looking in the wrong place, with the wrong tools, and the wrong mindset.

Ice Cream, Don't Do It

Here's a fun factoid: ice cream makes you sick. It's true.

Well, I should say that it made me more sick than I was before.

I had started to come down with something on Monday evening, starting with a sore throat and heaviness in the head. I blasted myself with herbs, and upon waking I was feeling better. By the end of my shift at noon, however, my sinuses were completely congested, and it felt as though it was clogged through to my ears.

I went home and nursed myself, taking a different set of herbs for my congestion. I even stayed home and canceled my shift, not wanting to infect anyone else with my evil qi. By the afternoon, I was feeling so much better that, despite better judgment, I decided to celebrate with some ice cream. Two spoonfuls, to be exact.

Before the ice cream, I had no sore throat, no headache, no congestion, and no runny nose. After the ice cream, within minutes, my nose clogged up and I was back to wiping snot off my face and I had to drink hot tea to combat the coldness I started to feel. It's as if the ice cream canceled out all of the herbs I've taken and the sleep I've gotten in the last two days.

So next time you think of having ice cream, just don't do it... Unless it's Ben & Jerry's New York Super Fudge Chunk, in which case it might be worth it.

A Plug For Mona Vie

To state it bluntly, I'm a skeptical cynic and don't believe most things I'm told unless I experience it myself. Although it can be a set-back in terms of time spent researching to find my own truth, all while indulging the OCD-side of me, it has led me to where I am today. With that disclosure statement, today's post is about a product called Mona Vie.

Maybe you've heard of it, maybe you haven't. It has been featured by Lara Spencer on The Dish with Rachel Ray, freestyle motocross pro Brian Deegan on MTV Cribs, and Dr. Oz on the Oprah Winfrey Show, to name a few. For a multi-level marketing product, it has gotten more exposure and endorsement than any other health-related MLM product in recent times - and trust me, being Vietnamese and all means that I know a thing or two or three about MLM's... (I don't know what the obsession is, but Vietnamese people love them!) It's also received a fair amount of skepticism and bad exposure as well.

I didn't know anything about Mona Vie until my sister started selling it. Now I know way too much about it. For weeks she's asked me to post a little something on her behalf, and I have been reticent... until now.

Both my parents have chronic health problems, and the kind of lifestyles that produce and perpetuate those problems. I have tried for the last year - since moving closer to home - to convince them to change their habits. I've given them teas, came over on weekends for acupuncture, tried to influence their diet, only to fail at almost all attempts to help them long term. Every time I left their house, they just went back to their same old ways.

My sister has been selling Mona Vie for only a few months now, and with that she has managed to change my parents' ingrained habits more than anything I've done. Every day, she makes sure our dad drinks the recommended 2-4 ounces a day of Mona Vie, and with that he's stopped drinking his requisite coffee every morning, as well as the three cans of soda he used to drink throughout the day. She also got our mom to drink it too: my mom's a Type 2 diabetic who is extremely uncompliant with her meds and dietary recommendations, and she's got a raging sweet tooth. When she checks her fasting blood sugar, it's usually at 180 or higher, but after taking the Mona Vie regularly, she's leveled at 73. She's been checking her blood glucose levels every day just to make sure it's still at 73.

My sister, who just had a son this past year, started taking Mona Vie given to her by a friend. She noticed that the pain she had in her heel, which began during her third trimester of pregnancy and persisted after birth, had disappeared. She also was delighted to find that she had lost 6 pounds, and decided to find out more about the stuff. Now she won't stop talking about it.

Mona Vie is a blend of different fruits: acai, concord grape, pineapple, apple, prickly pear, pomegranate, elderberry, yumberry, bilberry, blackberry, blueberry, cherry, cranberry, raspberry, aronia, acerola, strawberry, cupuacu, and camu camu. It's basically a super-duper fruit juice. It tastes great, which is why it was so easy to get my parents to do it.

So that's my plug for Mona Vie. People argue that it's just a juice, and that it's network marketing at it's best, making for tons of hype and misinformation. Personally, the fact that it is just a juice proves to me that healthy living doesn't have to come from a pill. A larger percentage of Americans suffer from chronic health illnesses compared to populations of other developed countries. The food group we are missing the most of in terms of both quanitity and variety are fruits.

The argument that it's exobitantly priced leads me to ask people to compare what they are spending on coffee every day, or for drinks at the bar each week, to the cost of Mona Vie. Ideally, we should all be buying low-cost unprocessed foods, especially fresh seasonal fruits and veggies, but the fact of the matter is that most of us are lazy, and that there is limited access to affordable healthy food choices in many parts of the country.

I try to get my parents to eat more fresh fruits and veggies. They live in California where fresh foods are abundant year-round, and they even have a juicer, which unfortunately sits in their cupboard untouched. If Mona Vie, with it's easy-to-swallow taste and easy-to-pour refrigerator-ready bottle, is the only way they'll take in their daily servings of fruit, then that's good enough for me.

Here's my sister's contact info if you want to learn more about Mona Vie:
Nina, 714-860-3518 or email her at ninamai at myway dot com.

Happy Halloween! Don't Eat Too Much Candy!

I hate to be the guy who gives out the apples, but I feel it's our duty to point out that nearly all Halloween candy is chock-full of empty calories and high fructose corn syrup.

Be safe, have fun!

No Drugs Down The Drain Week

It's official, folks. There is a week-long celebration in the state of California dedicated to NOT dumping your pharmaceutical drugs down the toilet. Your BCP's and Viagra now join the likes of pet alligators and paper towels.... Just don't do it.

Why is it so important? Why are we focusing for an entire week on Drugs Down the Drain, when there is only one day dedicated to all of the presidents of the United States combined? Because that stuff can end up in your drinking water, that's why!!

Forget about saving the environment, and all that stuff about polluting the rivers and killing innocent plants and animals.... think about your internal environment!! Pharmaceutical drugs are nasty, they are meant to be nasty. They are designed to be pervasive and work really well at what they do, which is destroy their target micro-organism/chemical pathway/physiological process. Because they are so good at what they do, they sometimes do things that drug-makers and researchers had no idea they would do until after they'd been in use for a while. The pharmaceutical drug industry is still very young, beginning with the advent of penicillin in the 1930's. This revolution in health care has saved a lot of lives, but it has also bred a lot of super drugs that now threaten our ability to utilize them as useful tools, as well as threaten our own immune systems with their potency.

Here's a more eloquent quote from the book, The Lost Language of Plants, by Stephen Harrod Buhner:

Many excreted pharmaceuticals and their metabolites are not biodegradable and go on producing chemical effects forever. Most that do biodegrade are regularly replenished by the need for continual dosing or by new prescriptions for new people. As pharmaceuticals are excreted in pure and metabolized forms they also intermix in the waste streams that flow into the environment in ways that cannot be predicted, with effects that are not understood. Researchers have found that metabolites, chemicals produced as by-products of pharmaceutical interaction with the body, tend to be more persistent in the environment, and are sometimes more powerful in their actions, than the drugs from which they are derived.

The mixing of chemical compounds in the environment is like mixing your drinks; if you start the night with a fine wine and end it with plastic-bottle vodka and whisky, you're going to regret being alive the next morning. But unlike alcohol, which does metabolize and degrade in our bodies and in the environment, these synthetic compounds do not.

So, remember, when your hands reach for that bottle of pills you no longer need, and you feel the temptation of the shiny white porcelain, think of yourself for a minute. You don't want to drink that in your water later, do you?

Acupuncture Mitigates Side Effects of Conventional Breast Cancer Treatments

There's a new study which confirms that acupuncture can relieve the unpleasant side effects of standard medication. In this case it's tamoxifen and anastrozole, which are used to help prevent recurrence of breast cancer.

Tamoxifen is a selective estrogen reuptake modulator (SERM), which disrupts the body's ability to bind with estrogen. Anastrozole decreases the amount of estrogen made by the body in the first place. Estrogen is targeted because some breast cancers respond to estrogen.

This is from the National Cancer Institute:

The known, serious side effects of tamoxifen are blood clots, strokes, uterine cancer, and cataracts (see Questions 5–8). Other side effects of tamoxifen are similar to the symptoms of menopause. The most common side effects are hot flashes and vaginal discharge. Some women experience irregular menstrual periods, headaches, fatigue, nausea and/or vomiting, vaginal dryness or itching, irritation of the skin around the vagina, and skin rash. As with menopause, not all women who take tamoxifen have these symptoms. Men who take tamoxifen may experience headaches, nausea and/or vomiting, skin rash, impotence, or a decrease in sexual interest.

And this from the NY Times:

The acupuncture worked just as well as the antidepressant Effexor to curb hot flashes. Women who received acupuncture also reported fewer side effects and more energy, and some reported an increased sex drive, compared to women who used Effexor, the study showed.

So, to recap: All the women in the study were taking tamoxifen and anastrozole. Half of them took Effexor, and half got acupuncture once or twice a week for twelve weeks.

This sort of study is very important in advancing acceptance of acupuncture in mainstream circles. For those women who are taking these highly toxic medications, which suppress the production of their natural hormones, acupuncture should be available to alleviate their suffering.

If we accept the dominant bacteriological medical paradigm, this is the best that acupuncture can do: cleaning up around the edges after the worst diseases have taken their toll. This role is least threatening to pharmaceutical money and M.D. status, and therefore is not crushed.

The "modern" medical model ignores the role of emotion, jeers at notions of "energy" and would rather wait years for highly selective "evidence" to become available before admitting that dirty air and chemically-tainted water can cause disease.

But if we are true to our medicine, and do our best to advance the Chinese medical model of health, that is where I believe we will do the most good. Cancer is a form of stagnation. Therefore, to avoid stagnation, you have to move. It follows that exercise is one the single best ways to treat just about everything.

Stagnation can also be caused by overburdening the body's digestive system. Therefore, to avoid stagnation, don't eat too much. Limit your intake of fatty, greasy and sweet foods.

Lots of people talk about the "mind-body" connection, but in Chinese medicine there is no clear line between the mind and body. The mind, as a set of neuro/emotional habits distinct from the physical brain, is a part of the body just as much as your thigh bone or your endocrine system. In Chinese medicine, we say that long-term stagnation can transform into fire, and that is certainly true of emotions. It is therefore vitally important to your health that you understand your emotions. Meditation is a wonderful way to separate yourself from your "self", to gain some perspective on your personality and see yourself from the outside. When you realize that you aren't a slave to your emotions, the whole world becomes your playground. Or so I'm told... I've still got work to do in that department. ;)

Eat well, exercise, and express yourself - the three E's. It's easy advice to ignore because it's so bland. But it becomes less bland when you personalize it. One person's eating well is entirely different from another person's eating well - a small, weak person needs fortifying foods like lamb and small amounts of alcohol to aid circulation. But give that same prescription to a 6 foot tall, 300 pound 50-year-old man with high blood pressure and you'll be sending him to an early grave. Some people have a lot of energy and need to go to kickboxing class to work it off, while for some others, some gentle tai ji quan or qi gong would be best. And of course, emotional expression varies widely.

There is a fourth E! The three E's should be done everyday! Avoid cancer! Live your life! Be happy!

Chinese Medicine Case Study: Diabetes

This video follows one woman's experience with Chinese medicine. Note that in addition to acupuncture and Chinese herbs, she changed her diet, cutting out all greasy fatty foods, eating more fresh vegetables and less meat. Eating a healthy diet is important for everyone, but especially so for diabetic or pre-diabetic patients. Don't go see the acupuncturist expecting miracles if you won't change your bad habits!

So Cold... So Cold...

A new study has shown that the so-called "cold shoulder" can actually feel quite chilly.

In Chinese medicine, it's understood that emotions can have a very clear physical effect. In fact, emotions are one of the three classical causes of disease (the other two being weather and external trauma - newer Chinese medical concepts include "miscellaneous qi" or "pestilential qi" which roughly correspond to bacteria and viruses).

For instance, grief is said to "consume the qi." If you've ever known someone who was in a major depression, you know this to be true (remember, qi is roughly equivalent to breath or energy). Anger makes the qi rise quickly - if you know someone with an anger problem, you know this is true. What happens? Their face gets red, they start yelling and screaming - all indications that the qi has risen quickly to the upper part of the body and needs to come out.

It should therefore come as no surprise that even other people's emotions can affect you. A particularly devastating type of ostracism put to use during China's ruinous Cultural Revolution was to be "struggled" by your comrades - you would be put in the middle of a circle and made to confess to your various sins against the revolution. To be repeatedly publicly shamed (as well as physically beaten) drove many to suicide or insanity.

The next time you feel like shooting someone an evil look, or yelling obscenities at the guy in the parking lot who just took "your" spot, take a moment to reconsider. Beware of the casual use of insults or bad manners, even if you're "just joking" or "my friends know I'm only kidding". You could really hurt someone, emotionally and physically. The traditional Chinese belief is that the universe has a circular energy - what you put out there eventually comes back to you. So be nice.

White Coat Syndrome

Today's entry comes to us from Jason Moskovitz, a fellow intern at Yosan University of Traditional Chinese Medicine. He's also a medical qigong intern, herbologist, and certified qigong instructor. Jason lives in Los Angeles with his wife Breanna and son Bohdan. You can email jason at jason.moskovitz (at) gmail.com.

In the short time I've worn a white coat as a clinician I've encountered many patients who've been intimidated or even frightened by the message it sends. Most people, myself included, grew up with doctors in white coats, doling out scary news or dogmatic orders regarding our life and health. No wonder the people I'm seeing so automatically put themselves in an inferior, docile position.

"I know I should be getting some exercise."

"But I just love my nightly glass of wine."

"I realize smoking is wrong."

These are the things I hear from people who are so clearly uncomfortable saying them. You might be surprised to know, as are my patients, that I and many of my TCM colleagues don't hold our patients to our suggestions. We communicate information and if it's not well received because a lifestyle, behavior pattern, or addiction is too well engrained; then we take a step back and ensure the patient that we, in these white coats, are not here to keep people from doing what they want. If people want to smoke themselves to death, they have that choice. But for those that are clear they want change, they'll find themselves in a supportive union with the TCM physician. Either way, the white coat eventually gets stripped of its power and the patient sees they'll find support no matter how they decide to live. Engendering that deep level of trust sets the foundation from which progressive life-altering steps can be taken.

It's too bad not many people know the history of the white coat. It's current pristine symbol of superiority couldn't be further from its roots. Yes, its use was primarily to communicate an antiseptic practice, despite many physicians noting their tendency to spread infection due to the lack of regular laundering. But one reason they were white was to display the blood they'd been working with. More blood meant more experience. Ironically, today you might only find that image in the local butcher shop.

Diet Soda Is Not Better Than Regular Soda

A new study further confirms that diet soda is bad for you. It's nice to know that some scientific studies follow the principles of common sense. From the New York Times:

Researchers have found a correlation between drinking diet soda and metabolic syndrome — the collection of risk factors for cardiovascular disease and diabetes that include abdominal obesity, high cholesterol and blood glucose levels, and elevated blood pressure.

This study looked at the eating patterns of real people, rather than trying to calculate the nutrient value of specific foods those people ate. Take a look at this quote from ScienceDaily.com:

In general, the Western-pattern diet was heavy on refined grains, processed meat, fried foods, red meat, eggs and soda, and light on fish, fruit, vegetables and whole grain products.

Prudent diet eating patterns, by contrast, favored cruciferous vegetables (e.g., cabbage, radish and broccoli), carotenoid vegetables (e.g., carrots, pumpkins, red pepper, cabbage, broccoli and spinach), fruit, fish and seafood, poultry and whole grains, along with low-fat dairy.

Guess which one is better for you.