Blog# 168: Shortcuts Rarely Lead to Good Health

“Just take this pill or this magical concoction or do these exercises and in a few hours or a few days or a few weeks or a couple of months at most, your blood sugar will be under control, you will no longer be depressed, you will lose 30 pounds, you will look and feel 20 years younger….”

Plenty of commercials on YouTube insult our intelligence that way.  So do lots of other get better schemes – just eat only meat and exercise; just get this shot and you will stay healthy; just tune in to this computer music and your mind will be calm, and so on.  Occasionally, some of these things work.  Most of the time, significant lifestyle changes are needed, and that takes time, determination, commitment, and thinking for oneself.  Since each person is unique, each of us may need to make slightly or even vastly different choices to attain a desirable outcome. 

When my father had an advanced cancer, which his oncologist said was incurable and offered him only a 50% chance of a six month remission with chemotherapy, my dad decided to choose what he felt was best for him.  He did lots of reading and thinking and praying.  He and I talked about various options. Frightened by the oncologist’s assessment, he decided to take chemo treatments, but chose also to accompany those medications with Chiropractic adjusting, Acupuncture therapy, and a modified Gerson Therapy (a nutritional therapy that has helped many people with serious illnesses). Dad practiced positive visualization daily, and, additionally, chose to do things that he had longed for, but had been too busy to pursue.  He took art classes and became an accomplished artist in watercolors, winning many prizes and gifting family and friends with his paintings. He traveled to beautiful destinations, such as Hawaii, Arizona, and the California redwood forests, listened to great classical orchestral music, opera and jazz daily, and explored several new religions and philosophies.  

He did a great deal of reading and came up with a few medications he wanted added to the program his oncologist had chosen for him.  His oncologist agreed, (after all, Dad had already lived several years beyond all his doctors’ prognoses), wrote those prescriptions, and my father benefitted.  I would have liked him to follow an even more natural approach to healing.  Problems arose with chemotherapy – in the first month, he ended up in the hospital with pneumonia.  But my father was an intelligent adult, and I supported him in all his choices. He ended up living almost twelve years past his terminal diagnosis and prognosis. A round of chemotherapy finally killed him, but along the way, he got to do and become much more than he had imagined possible after illness forced his early retirement.  

So my father’s answer to move toward healing was not just one simple medication or prayer or diet, but many different choices and attitudes, working together to support and enrich his life.  Some of his watercolors hang in my treatment room today; I consider these beautiful paintings part of the many healing influences I share with patients. 

This blog’s offer:  if you or a relative have seen me for treatment in the past, call or email if you would like to work together on an individualized approach to improving your health (though I don’t offer primary treatment for cancer or for several other extremely serious illnesses).  Also, if you would like information about the Gerson Therapy, or if you would like to once again see some of my father’s watercolor paintings, feel free to contact me.  I wish you a beautiful rest of the Winter-into-Spring.