Dr. Tinus Smits is a prominent Dutch physician and homeopath with thirty years experience and who has achieved some major breakthroughs in the treatment of autism. I am pleased to announce that I will be away studying with him in the Neverthelands this coming week (from March 29 until April 2). I look forward to sharing what I will have learned upon my return. For more information about Dr. Smits approach please view his website:

http://www.cease-autism.com/3842/autism.aspx

Posted on March 24th, 2010 by Jerry Kantor
Under: Health | No Comments »

Posing and Then Answering the Right Question in the Health Care Debate

The business model of our health care system is a jackal. If you grind down its teeth you neither shrink the jackal’s ravenous appetite nor curb his predatory bent. So why persist in seeking to reform this beast? Rather than profit health care should be designed to reward prevention, efficiency and safety. It is time to euthanize the jackal.

* The wrong question to ask:

How can we curb spending and control health care costs?

* The right question to ask:

How can we eliminate perverse incentives?

Simply put: Since each and every one of us is at risk to becoming sick or growing old and infirm, health care and long term care ought to be viewed as utilities rather market frontiers. Indeed, this is as it sensibly is much the world over. We do not scream “Socialism!” when government bodies construct roads, schools or sewage systems that benefit everyone. An outcry against socialism might be appropriate where the government attempts an incursion into beliefs and activities that are genuinely private and personal such as religious expression, the creation of art, or sexual activity.

The following is but a partial iteration of all too common examples of perverse incentives within our health care system:

· Acupuncture, a modality is known to be a safe, inexpensive, preventive, and powerful means of care for numerous conditions. It succeeds by alleviating pain and suffering while also addressing a condition’s root causes and connecting the dots between seemingly unrelated ailments. Rather than rewarding acupuncture’s broad based, holistic effects, conventional medical research not only ignores acupuncture’s broad benefits but actually punishes this blessed modality for the broad range of its clinical effects. This is because drug research erroneously validates only reductionist hypotheses and explanations.

· Our Drug Culture demanding new pharmaceuticals annually is at the root of numerous evils. New marketplace drugs are no improvements on the old, but merely serve to renew patent ownerships, thus building in escalating costs. Additional evils include a bias against holistically oriented medical research, a perverse incentive to addict multitudes of individuals to potentially harmful vaccines, and hormonally based drugs, drugs for dubious conditions such as Attention Deficit Disorder and meaningless conditions such as shyness. The drug culture promotes an idiocy that our immune system is at odds with our well being as in the inculcated fear of fever, which means only that the body has mobilized against a pathogen. It promotes a view that drugs rather than an active lifestyle, sound nutrition and stress reducing activities are indispensable to health. Most perversely of all, the general public ultimately is obligated to subsidize the advertising costs attendant to its own brainwashing as these are passed along to the health care consumer.

· Insurance cannot be reformed given our health care system’s dependence on profit. Don’t get me started! There are no profits attached to reimbursing for the future benefits attached to preventive medicine, or securing the needs of individuals with “preexisting” conditions. Insurance incentives are to accept premiums from healthy individuals and avoid the currently or potentially sick except at extortionist rates. Because insurance executives and physicians sit on the boards of insurance companies insurers persist in economically irresponsible behaviors such as not reimbursing for safer and less expensive modalities s such as acupuncture and homeopathy while pushing people into more dangerous interventions such as surgery and its necessary aftercare.

· The Demise of Public Health. Growing up in New York City I still recall the existence of public health infirmaries in various neighborhoods. One by one these vanished for much the same reason that the auto industry succeeded in destroying New York’s efficient and energy-clean public transportation trolley car system. At various times in our history the American Medical Association has gone to court in order cripple public health medicine, meaning the appropriation of public monies for one-on-one health care. As a result, American public health care has remained dwarfed: it covers only vaccinations and quarantines. In other countries such as Great Britain, public health care has grown until it has finally formed the foundation of a national health care system. This allows doctors to treat in hospitals and public settings where because they are on government salary they need not be pharmaceutical industry puppets and remain freer to practice sensibly.

· Long Term Care. Because our system rewards the delusional belief that none of us will ever grow old, or that the elderly are always someone else’s burden we are incented to become taxation misers, asset hiders, government and social service agency despisers, and poverty-stricken family member impersonators. Treating long term care as a utility would cost each of us pennies on the dollar a month. It would properly remunerate and adequately train the hardworking caregivers in whom we trust the desperate needs of our infirm parents and relatives. This change in perspective would serve to humanize our culture while restoring its economic and moral sanity.

Posted on March 18th, 2010 by Jerry Kantor
Under: Acupuncture, Health, Perspective, Vaccination | No Comments »

Underlying every chronic illness condition and its matching homeopathic remedy state is a vortex. The engine running the vortex’s cycle is a circular argument that eventuates in a self-fulfilling prophecy. In my clinical work I model illness chronicity as a radical disjunct between what for an individual constitutes a normal need and its associated satisfaction. This relationship becomes disharmonized as a result of physical, emotional or mental trauma. The usual satisfaction then not only fails to reconcile itself with the normal demand, but worsens matters, thus engendering persistent symptoms. As an example, the desperate need to be validated often degenerates into a hopeless search for validation. Consequent behaviors reflect a failed strategy that is subconsciously designed to confirm the individual’s non-acceptability. What we thus have is tautology, a dog chasing its tail, a spiral into illness—a negative vortex.

But if chronicity is a negative vortex then it is reasonable to suppose that movement into health and spiritual growth is its inverse, a positive vortex. Hence my interest in Sedona, Arizona.

Although no photograph, even if taken by Ansel Adams can do it justice, Sedona, Arizona contains some of the most beautiful landscapes on earth. On visiting this past October, I was surprised, even stunned to discover this truth for myself, and how the presence of a site influences and overrides one’s visual perception.

Remarkable and bewildering, Sedona’s red rock formations emanate a serenity disturbingly at odds with the violent forces that shaped the area over hundreds of millions of years. These include volcanic activity, tectonic shifts, oceanic and aquifer formation, sedimentation, oxidation effects and every variety of transformative erosive force. One stands dumbfounded before the product: these peculiar and suggestively shaped buttes, spires, mesas and one vast canyon that God in his infancy appears to have playfully created in his sandbox.

Hiking about one encounters the area’s contorted juniper trees whose twisted branches suggest ecstatic possession by an ancient Tai Chi master but which local lore indicates proximity to a spiritually powerful vortex site.

By the way, unless one is drawn to typically commercial venues the towns of Sedona and also nearby Oak Creek as well are forgettable. My recommendation instead is to visit nearby Jerome, once a thriving mining town that nearly became a ghostly dive once the copper went bust. Jerome remains lively, funky and with a bit of its original frontier roughness. Carved into the side of a picturesque mountain one can espy Sedona’s red rocks in the distance.

My venture to Sedona was certainly for the purpose of heightening my intuitive powers as a homeopath and for spiritual development. Apart from awe, wonder and the obvious benefits of relaxation, it is difficult to say that I was immediately struck by spirit of Sedona’s vortex energy. In the week’s time spent there I took six splendid hikes of which the most notable was the Little Horse to Broken Arrow trail. I also meditated at the foot of Bell Rock and climbed to its summit where I managed to get festooned with cactus spikes (homeopathic Ledum by the way, immediately alleviated the inflammation incurred from a one and a half inch thorn). Oak Canyon was a splendid, windy and stunning delight.

But Sedona’s effects were visited on me later.

In the two months since my return I note that my perceptions are sharper while my emotions more intense. I also detect an increase in personal compassion. Though not every day is the same the overall resultant change is enduring. I feel more alive and appreciative of life. My suspicion is that I have undergone the effect of a positive vortex wherein positive ideas within the subconscious are heightened and cyclically set in motion.

Of course, I hope to return to Sedona again sometime soon.

An idea to explore with regard to my homeopathic practice: undertake a trituration proving of a sampling of Sedona’s red rocks. I cannot imagine a more promising investigation or use of a weekend.

Posted on December 24th, 2009 by Jerry Kantor
Under: Health, Perspective | No Comments »

One of NCCAM’s challenges appears to be: While resisting enmeshment with unfamiliar and scientifically questionable mode of knowing, how to evaluate or substantiate desired benefits attending established though non-conventional modalities? My intention here is to argue against acceptance of solely quantifiable data and rejection of soundly derived intuitive knowledge.

But how is the validity of long-established but non-conventional means of knowing best established? The answer: by means of our introducing the appropriate conceptual framework and rationale.

Within the Western intellectual tradition a sturdy framework happens to exist. It is a conceptual bridge by means of which the gleaming techno-city of biomedical science and its cross-river neighbor, the old-world city of non-conventional medicine may be linked. Our methodology not only shields the scientific enterprise from undisciplined applications of the intuitive method such as found in poorly formulated versions of the Doctrine of Signatures, but assists Integrative Medicine in coming to terms with problematic, holistic means of knowing.

Acupuncture is better known now in 2009 than when first introduced to the American public in 1972. At that time NY Times writer James Reston reported that acupuncture treatments he received in China relieved pain he was experiencing following abdominal surgery. Traditional Chinese Medicine’s mode of diagnosis, relying on the appearance of the tongue, palpated qualities of the pulse, and use of unfamiliar concepts such as stagnant qi, hyperactive Yang and deficient Yin served to alienate acupuncture from western medicine. Conventional medicine authorities thus viewing acupuncture as non-scientific distanced themselves from its mode of knowing.

Though endemic to American medicine, homeopathy has received much the same treatment. This has to do with homeopathic medicine’s non-scientific sounding insistence that symptoms represent the expression of an energetic entity known as the vital force.  As we shall see, the fact that qi and vital force are essentially qualitative as opposed to quantitative entities continues to pose a problem for conventional biomedicine.

This desire for distance is expressed in the terms  “alternative” and “complementary” that are attached to “Alternative Medicine,” and then more recently, “Complementary and Alternative Medicine” (CAM). A fly in the ointment is the fact that acupuncturists and homeopaths credit these very same questionable-appearing modes of knowing with their achieving what are more often than not, remarkable treatment outcomes.

Phenomenology Defined:

Phenomenology concerns theoretical approaches toward understanding how people experience the world they live in and create. It has also been defined as an analysis of human existence without prior assumptions by the term’s originator, the early 20th century philosopher, Edmund Husserl. Phenomenology helps us with the question: can we possibly analyze human existence without presuppositions? Its literature reflects the study of human experience and consciousness in everyday life, as well as the idea of ‘”being,” rooted in physical and social space.

Advantageous Features:

Phenomenology can be thought of as intuition subjected to rigorous discipline. In practical terms its application utilizes inductive reasoning, or the building of an overwhelming case of circumstantial evidence. The following features characteristic of phenomenological investigation serve to provide a legitimizing context for culture-specific, and dialectically oriented schools of medicine.

Bracketing off of prior assumptions

Phenomenology is perhaps the first formal, academic discipline not only to make a point of sequestering or bracketing off the investigator’s own ideological, cultural, and even, “investigator-related” bias, but to study of the difficulties attached to doing so. The methodology has proven foundational within the social sciences and especially within homeopathy and psychotherapy, wherein failure to recognize the impact of one’s own role, as in transference reactions, or self-investment in a particular outcome undermines a clinician’s effectiveness.

Envisioning a phenomenon in its unity before its components

In 1988 a Royal Society of Medicine study in regard to an acupuncture point, Pericardium 6 detailed the latter’s effectiveness in treating a specific symptom, emesis of pregnancy. In 1998, many eyebrows were raised when studies indicated that moxibustion (heat) stimulation to the acupuncture point Urinary Bladder 67 was effective in provoking a fetus in the breach position to alter its fetal position in the womb. Whereas medical journal publication of these CAM outcomes was hailed as a triumph of evidence-based methodology, what also came to light is a glaring deficiency within the prevailing paradigm:

Despite thousands of years of supportive clinical research in China, the greater acupuncture meridian system to which the acu-points P6 and UB 67 belong has yet to be entirel validated in the west. Within the currently standard investigative model, a potential 367 years’ years of documentation concerning individual acu-points would still fail to reveal what the Chinese have long ceased to question, that the meridian system of qi circulation is real.

An antidote to Common Sense Realism

As opposed to Common Sense Realism (CSR) a view unequivocally accepting of direct observation, phenomenology provides us with a more reasonable perspective on what we think of as evidence. It offers a safe haven to rational doubt, as in questioning whether adoption of an external perspective in regard to our humaneness is at all possible. This matters when: we seek to enter the perceptual world of another species of life, or, when accepting data merely because it is quantitative, we fail to examine prior assumptions at play in a dataset’s creation, or the fact that data-gathering instruments merely extend the reach of our own faulty sense receptors.

A disturbing example of CSR is found in the writings of the renowned Daniel Dennett, a neurological investigator unable to recognize, much less question his own bias in favor of a heavily culture-bound notion: that the brain is a computer. In consequence, for Dennett, the world of human consciousness is a trivial matter, the mere hum of machine!

Other CSR biases:

–Biomedical research’s rejection of the reality of qi within TCM or of Vital Force within homeopathy. This is due to a paradigm-specific belief that force fields must be both quantifiable and NOT subjectively experienced. Thus, despite detectable electrical potential levels measurable at the surface of the skin that offer quantifiable evidence of its activity, qi’s characteristic feature, that it is subjectively experienced effectively disqualifies this mode of energy from scientific investigation. The same is true of homeopathy’s vital force, which expresses itself via subjectively experienced symptoms.

–The distinction between “anecdotal evidence,” on the basis of which a report to the effect that an acupuncture treatment effectively reduces pain or enhances function is pejorative; while  “evidence-based,” a term for exactly the same idea bathes a physician’s perception of an unusual therapy’s effectiveness in the warm glow of acceptance.

Though we must admit that one of our most highly esteemed sciences, physics is rooted in common sense realism its founder, Isaac Newton was himself a product of a world in which a more phenomenological approach, Natural Philosophy, ruled the sciences. Newton’s introduction of mass, force and gravity was initially resisted as these novel concepts at that time suggested unnatural, magical entities. Nor, since the meaning of his equations had first to be interpreted, were any of Newton’s precise calculations alone, sufficient to cement the case for gravity. At a time when philosophical questions suggested by scientific investigations were still viewed as honorable, Newton once having succeeded in his quest for truth remained thereafter committed to alchemy and spiritual pursuits.

Curiously enough, with the modern advent of String and Superstring theory whose core assumptions persist in defying empirical verification, the physical sciences have themselves, come full circle with Natural Philosophy: In the absence of confirmatory data, we are left with no choice but to compare the aesthetic merits of interpretative models of subatomic activity.

Conceding biomedicine’s deliberate obtuseness with regard to natural philosophy (resistance to accepting the benefit of breast feeding a child, or the desirability of good nutrition, both examples of common sense wisdom that no Randomized Double Blind Study has yet managed to validate) we might infer that the demise of Natural Philosophy has hurt as well as advanced biomedicine.

Recognize emergent natural phenomena

Emergent phenomena because they express creativity, exceed rather than equal the sum of their parts. Thus, the relation that creative phenomena hold in to their constituent (or more accurately, antecedent) elements is almost impossible to explain.

The physicist, Werner Heisenberg’s famous “Indeterminacy Principle,” gave a theoretical limit to the precision with which a particle’s momentum and position could be simultaneously measured. This struck a blow against the belief that the more we reduce phenomena to their smallest components, the more accurately we predict the movement of atomic and sub-atomic particles.  Deprived of this certitude we are left with only the jumbled and unpredictable “phenomena” themselves to discuss.

Likewise, the Scottish philosopher David Hume discovered a dirty truth about cause and effect explanation: We are never able to satisfactorily demonstrate that one phenomenon is actually the cause of another. When speaking in cause and effect terms, Hume found, we are instead postulating an association between two unrelated phenomena. Since cause and effect do not exist, the best we can manage to do is model relationships between phenomena. Models sound flimsier than fundamental laws but they are more reliable and durable when it comes to explaining what takes place in the universe.

Whether we like it or not, we know scarcely the first thing about the greatest “whole” of all, organic life, at least not with regard to the mysterious and sublime events at work during embryological development. For all our talk about incremental evolution and an organism’s seeking of evolutionary advantage, little that is meaningful can be said concerning the engine in charge of life, consciousness; why living things even bother to seek evolutionary advantage; or the fact that organic life is explosively and spontaneously creative.

Excavate levels of meaning in language

How is it that some of our most powerful myths such as those of Greek antiquity perfectly describe subconsciously experienced illness processes? Why do we say, “he went blind with rage,” as opposed to ‘deaf with rage,” or “lost his sense of smell with rage”? Why is the expression, “Go with the flow….” associated with the 1960s? What is the reason that in moments of illumination we report hearing the voice of God as opposed to seeing God?

Myths do not endure in culture, nor do metaphors entrench themselves within language unless they embody an enduring truth. This holds true especially in homeopathy where a patient’s pet expressions reveal much about the nature of his or her inner reality. Homeopathy in fact, can be viewed as the land where metaphorical expression is literal.

A chief proponent of phenomenological language excavation was Martin Heidegger, the philosopher responsible for characterizing language as the house of Being. While shaping phenomenology to my own purposes, my forthcoming book, Interpreting Chronic Illness, the Convergence of Acupuncture, Homeopathy and Biomedicine (to be published by the American Association of Integrative Medicine) provides answers to the questions I have posed, above, as well as a general method for interpreting the inner meaning of symptoms experienced by individuals afflicted by chronic illness.

Posted on November 18th, 2009 by Jerry Kantor
Under: Perspective | 1 Comment »

Acupuncture a Powerful Integrative Oncology Tool

The following article submitted to Homeopathic Wisdom by Jack Bleeker, a Research Coordinator at mesothelioma.com is a welcome reminder of the relevance of acupuncture with regard to problematic disease conditions, in this case mesothelioma:
Integrative Oncology is the combination of “mainstream” care and evidenced-based complimentary therapies to control cancer-related pain and symptoms [source: Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center Integrative Medicine]. Complementary therapies, while not given the attention that more traditional cancer therapies may receive, are perhaps equally important while undergoing treatment for certain types of cancer. Patients diagnosed with difficult to treat malignancies will often use these types of therapies in conjunction with traditional treatment options, which include surgery, chemotherapy, or radiology, to form a more comprehensive and effective treatment regimen. Among the most effective alternative therapies utilized by those diagnosed with cancer is acupuncture.
Acupuncture has long been utilized as a general pain reduction method for thousands of years, originating in the Far East and gradually being utilized throughout the world. Effective cancer treatment often depends on the patient’s ability to not only defeat the cancer through various methods but to also maintain their health and mental spirit throughout the course of treatment.
Often, the symptoms and effects of the cancer itself on the body are insignificant compared to the pain and other side effects of chemotherapy and radiation. Patients undergoing chemotherapy and radiation are often fatigued, experience a lack of appetite and weight loss, and may become depressed.  For cancer patients experiencing these and other side effects, acupuncture is extremely beneficial. According to the ancient theories of Chinese medicine, “qi,” or “life energy,” flows through energy channels within the body known as meridians. These channels connect the body’s internal organs, and if these meridians become “blocked,” or an individual’s qi cannot flow properly, disease will set in. Acupuncture is said to relieve blockages and restore the natural flow of qi, and ultimately restoring one’s health.
Cancers such as mesothelioma, which are often unable to be removed by surgical means, are often treated with some combination of chemotherapy and radiation [the combination of chemo drug Alimta® and anti-cancer drug Cisplatin® is a popular mesothelioma treatment method]. While these potent drugs can be effective in eliminating some of the tumor mass and growth, they also profoundly affect the health of the surrounding tissue. Symptoms experienced by those undergoing mainstream cancer treatments include fever, nausea, and debilitating pain.
Patients who undergo acupuncture in conjunction with mainstream cancer therapies have experienced dramatic reductions in pain and feel that their energy and mental wellbeing was restored. Cancer patients who feel energized, are pain-free and have a solid state of mind are more likely to withstand traditional methods of cancer treatment and have an increased survival rate.
Acupuncture is said to be so effective, in fact, that the World Health Organization [WHO] has recognized acupuncture as a successful intervention for adverse reactions to radiation and chemotherapy. The National Institute of Health [NIH] also agreed that acupuncture may relieve nausea and pain experienced by cancer sufferers, and the organization supports acupuncture clinical trials.
While this ancient method of therapy may be extremely effective for some, acupuncture may not be recommended for all cancer patients. Those who have a history of endocarditis, neutropenia or thrombocytopenia should not undergo acupuncture. Individuals with lymphedema or those who have a pacemaker should speak with a physician before beginning any course of acupuncture therapy.
While oncologists like Dr. Valerie Rusch of the Cancer Center at Memorial Sloan-Kettering in New York City continue to work towards a cure, those who practice the ancient art of acupuncture will be working to help cancer sufferers experience a better quality of life and an increased rate of survival.

Information about the benefits of acupuncture for <a href=”http://www.mesothelioma.com”>mesothelioma</a> patients from Mesothelioma.com

Posted on June 30th, 2009 by Jerry Kantor
Under: Acupuncture, Health | 1 Comment »