1. Complementary Medicines & The FDA

Back in the mid 90’s, herbs & even vitamins supplements in this country were in real trouble. The FDA was cracking down on alternative supplements and even doing raids on natural practitioners. My husband & I are public access producers of several public advocacy TV shows. Our main weekly TV series that handled this kind of issue was P.E.A.C.E. (Planet Earth Alignment for Creative Evolution.) When it all started happening, we put together a 10-minute special to cover the latest aspects of what was happening and what people could do about it. It played on P.E.A.C.E. and quite a lot as a separate short, whenever the many Austin Access channels had 10 min. openings between shows.

In America, the land of the free… “Enterprise”, we repeatedly have seen all too often how the FDA seems to stand up for big money pharmaceutical companies and their latest new “well funded” drug that could be harmful to people, while they take away some helpful supplement off the shelves at health food stores. Most of the time, it’s taken off the shelves because it was used incorrectly and therefore caused bad results to a very small group of people, while it’s helped many more. Although, I have found myself just as frustrated by some natural health folks who push whatever they sell as the cure-all for whatever ails anyone - without much understanding of the healing process or how to really help someone to help themselves.

Since then, some good things have happened for the consumer out of all this FDA fuss. New labels came along that included all the ingredients and could only subtly suggest what “disease” it might be helpful for, along with disclaimers against healing any specific “disease”. Yet, often times when people take these kinds of supplements without the help of a trained herbalist, knowledgeable nutritionist, &/or learned healer - when no positive results occur quickly enough, they end up saying, “See that natural stuff doesn’t work!” Then they go back to their Doctors who say, “Not really sure, so I guess we could try this now!” advice. Although more Doctors are learning alternative ways, many more are indeed just “practicing” medicine and sometime the “cure” is worse than the disease.

I myself worked with a woman who developed a cancerous ovary. Unfortunately, it was her Doctor putting her on the pill to “melt” a tumor her ovaries that gave her the cancer in the first place. After only 1 session of chemotherapy, that her Doctor gave her so that the cancer would not spread, she decided to work with me- while the swelling was going down enough so he could remove the cancerous ovary. I told her to do it nature’s way, she had to: 1) quit smoking (her Doctor had not even checked to see if she smoked or not), 2) quit taking the pill (she was in a good relationship and I told her that getting pregnant would be better than cancer), and 3) do her best to follow through with eating healthy (she stopped eating junk foods & ate healthy meals) and taking all the supplements (ones for building up her immune system and female reproductive system and ones known to help against cancer) and treatments that could help her (once she was strong enough, she did colonics & some short term Master Cleanser fasting and I did acupressure and Reiki on her to build up her chi). My Reiki teacher and I taught her Reiki and I helped her to listen to her body’s needs. She worked with me everyday to do something. We went through 2 cycles of building, cleansing, and balancing while doing energy work and yoga stretching to activate her chi as her intuition guided her. (I taught her how to self-muscle test to monitor her intuition.) Everyone was surprised and overjoyed when she went into complete remission (thanks to Spirit) in 3 only weeks. No one was more surprised than her Doctor who had already scheduled the surgery. She and her partner ended up having a beautiful healthy baby girl a year later. This miracle (during my own miracle pregnancy after 10 years of marriage where we weren’t sure if we could conceive or not) changed my life forever and got me to write my books on the many levels of healing.

I am grateful to the FDA now, for making everyone give the people more information on both sides- health food supplements and pharmaceutical drugs alike. Especially when so many new pharmaceutical drugs having glamorous TV commercials. At least now, drug manufacturers are required at the end- to list all the side effects. Listening to these lists of horrors and complications sounds more like comedy bit on Saturday Night Live. Especially, to someone who knows that there are alternative choices available without side effects. I’m sure it has helped those who are curious about natural alternatives to come to understand that by following nature’s path, they are much less likely to make matters worse. Although, I must say that the way nature heals, there is often a healing crisis that can make symptoms worse before health is restored. A lot of folks don’t know this, and they turn from the natural methods of healing just as things are about to get better. Drugs may appear to help matters and then, only end up masking the symptoms and as these ads show, create other health problems. Natural healing at it’s best, heals the whole body so the side effects are weight balancing, vibrant health and vitality, as well as more insights and visions as to what really matters in life.

So for me, the real need is in a health education that brings about a complementary approach that looks at what is best for each person with their particular condition and what’s really possible for them to follow through on. I would like to help bring about an educational program in America that teaches people to make educated choices about their own health needs, and an understanding of what that entails. In China I hear that they use a complementary approach where if you get into an accident, they’ll sew you up, do energy healings, herbs, and even acupuncture, all in the same hospital. This is the vision I have for America. Whatever’s appropriate for each situation should be considered with the Doctor/Healer and client in an interdependent relationship, with the client taking responsibility for their own health and the Doctor/Healer communicating what they know - while remaining open to what the client finds in their own research and intuitions for what may help their body to heal.