Blueprint for Holistic Healing. C. Norman Shealy
Therapies: Chiropractic, Osteopathic
10 Manipulative Therapies: Massage
The American Student Medical Association (ASMA) established syllabi for teaching all these CAM approaches, but few medical schools offer anything significant in these fields. To a great extent all of these fields can just as easily be considered holistic medicine, integrative medicine, or energy medicine. Of course, I have to mention that spiritual and soul medicines are part of mind-body medicine and are the most critical issues avoided by the Establishment and integrative medicine. I am pleased to have written the ASMA syllabus for training in mind-body medicine. Conventional American medicine uses only drugs and surgery—none of the more critical issues are addressed by most MDs and DOs.
My own practice began in 1971 to offer all the CAM categories. The Shealy Institute and Shealy Wellness Center became the most cost-effective and most patient-effective clinic I know. Ninety-plus percent of what we did required no physician. That is why I founded Holos University Graduate Seminar, www.holosuniversity.org, to train competent individuals in the broad field of spiritual healing and energy medicine. These include essentially all the CAM, holistic, integrative, and energy medicine approaches to health.
In 2008, my movie, Medical Renaissance—The Secret Code, www.Medical-Renaissance.net, was produced. It is the best overall presentation I know to demonstrate the effectiveness of holistic medicine. Recently I have released the most exciting result of the influence of spiritual intuition—rejuvenation of DNA telomeres, the key to life, health, and longevity! For the first time in history, we have demonstrated rejuvenation and regrowth of this key to health and longevity!
As mentioned before, I receive almost daily requests for referrals to a truly holistic clinic. The only way I can see a solution to this problem is to begin again and to create the model for holism, the International Institute of Holistic Medicine, which has now been done with a world-class migraine specialist, a world-class cardiologist, a world-class sound physician, and the original pain and depression specialist in Springfield, Missouri.
This book explores the many dimensions needed to integrate body, mind, and soul into the holistic whole. In 1988 Caroline Myss and I co-authored The Creation of Health, in which she wrote the metaphysical intuitive concepts of health and disease while I dealt with the medical concepts. Here, I hope to integrate an even broader overview of life itself.
In the late 70s, Dr. John Knowles wrote a hallmark article, The Responsibility of the Individual. He stated, “99% of individuals are born healthy and become unhealthy because of human misbehavior.” Today statistics state that only 95% of babies are born healthy and a striking 12% nationally are born prematurely! Forty percent of babies are born to single mothers, setting the stage for the greatest possible variety of the ideal, because inviting a soul to incarnate requires two potential parents who love one another and carefully prepare fully for the possibility of a healthy child who will be nurtured to optimal life.
If both parents are truly healthy and reasonably well-adjusted mentally and share spiritual ideals, then the soul choosing to incarnate with them has the best potential to arrive physically healthy. Obviously there are rare genetic inheritances that may show up despite the best of plans. Nevertheless, with this foundation the chances are at least 99% that the baby will be born healthy.
The requirements for such ideal parents are between the ages of 25 and 35, socially well-adjusted with adequate income. They do not smoke and they drink alcohol moderately, if at all. They have a body mass index of 18 to 24. They eat at least five total servings daily of fruits and vegetables. They exercise a minimum of thirty minutes at least five days a week. Unfortunately, only 3% of Americans have these essential basic habits! In addition to these critical habits, this couple will likely take some supplements, perhaps at least Vitamin D 3, a minimum of 2000 units daily and a multivitamin-mineral with up to 25 mg of B complex, with a minimum of 1000 mcg of folic acid, and at least 1000 unit of Omega-3s. During the pregnancy, the couple will avoid significant stresses, such as fluoridated, chlorinated water; smog, and excessive exposure to electromagnetic pollution. They will have regular spiritual practices, setting the mental and emotional stage for a nurturing welcome to the baby. Although I will attempt to deal with possible corrective measures for some health problems, I prefer to start with the ideals for an optimally healthy baby and childhood first.
The parents will avoid today’s Round-Up® polluted wheat and the vast majority of packaged foods, as well as all “fast food” restaurants, sugar, monosodium glutamate, hydrogenated fats, all artificial sweeteners, substitutes, and artificial additives.
At the end of nine months the mother will go into labor and have a reasonably comfortable delivery, without anesthesia or significant drugs. The healthy baby will be welcomed and kept with the mother, who will nurse it for at least the first six months of life.
Statistically, if this baby has good health habits, it will live an average of one hundred years. If it adopts the average American habits, it will live only seventy-eight years. The difference in longevity is likely to involve many more problems. Life in the US is shortened by accidents, stokes, heart attacks, cancer, infections, and a wide variety of problems—most of which are the results of behaviors and habits.
Smoking shortens life by an average of six to seven years for each pack of cigarettes smoked daily. Obesity shortens life as much as smoking three packs daily, if the person is forty or more pounds overweight. Unfortunately, being a man shortens life by about three years over that of a woman’s.
Excellent studies have shown that the major causes of premature death are:
Obesity
Smoking
Medical services
Poor nutrition
Inactivity
Inadequate sleep
Only three percent of Americans have the essentials:
normal body weight
no smoking
adequate intake, five servings daily, of fruits and vegetables
exercise of thirty minutes five days a week!
If all Americans had these habits, within twenty-five years, average American life would be one hundred instead of the current seventy-eight. Therefore, to start our discussion of a healthy body, it is critical to emphasize that true health is virtually impossible without these habits. Indeed, with these habits our major diseases of heart attack, hypertension, stroke, and cancer would be diminished 75 to 80%! Essentially, a vast majority of illness and premature death results from not caring for self. And this care-less-ness appears to be the result of low self-esteem, depression, and anxiety. Thus, I begin with evaluating the stress that is the foundation of a huge majority of disease.
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Stress and Distress |
Sixty years ago in medical school, I was told that 75% of all the patients I would see would be there because of stress. But not one word was said about treating that stress! Indeed, even the major cascade of stress was not significantly taught. In the late 70s Joseph Califano, Secretary of HEW, emphasized that the only way we would decrease disease was to prevent it. But there has been minimal attention to preventing disease. And shortly after Califano’s statement, Dr. John Knowles wrote that “Ninety-nine percent of people are born healthy and become unhealthy because of human misbehavior.” The human misbehavior that Knowles was emphasizing was the responsibility of the individual. I will emphasize also the misbehavior of society in the broader sense, as well as the individual!
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