The comprehensive programs in the following chapters are designed for you to use as a guide for your own self-directed healing. They bring together basic Chinese medicine therapies along with other healing arts so you can maintain harmony and treat disharmony in your mind/body/spirit. They are offered to you as plans that you can follow or adopt to suit your personal needs.
Maria is a client who aggressively followed her own comprehensive program and created an enormous difference in her life. When she came to the clinic in June 1994, she was complaining of chest pain, incredible fatigue, and low-level depression. She was so incapacitated that she had to take a leave of absence from her job as a registered nurse.
After examining her, I suspected she might have hepatitis and suggested she go immediately for blood chemistry tests that would reveal the function of her liver. If the levels were abnormal, I needed to know liver enzyme levels along with other lab levels, and she would need to have them retested throughout our treatment.
This way, along with diagnosing her using the traditional Chinese diagnostic procedures, I could follow the reduction in liver inflammation and shape acupuncture therapy to address the changing symptoms of the disease. This is an example of how important it is for Chinese and Western medicine to work together. Each therapy helps the client forge the most effective treatment possible.
Maria’s blood work results showed she had elevated liver enzymes. We then tested her for hepatitis C, and the test came back positive for hepatitis C. Immediately she began searching the medical literature to find out about the disease and treatment options.
She said to me, “I’m in charge here. What I want are your suggestions.”
My first recommendation was that she consult a liver specialist. Again, it’s important that the client receive information about options from both Western and Eastern practitioners. The doctor said he could offer her only one possible remedy, interferon, which at that time had only a 10 to 20 percent success rate. It had many possible side effects, and often the virus returned after treatment.
Maria did not feel taking the medicine was worth the possible serious side effects. She refused Western treatment at that time. Her liver doctor agreed to monitor her while she pursued other therapies.
Maria started with a regular regime of herbs four times a day. She also had other herbs for use when certain symptoms would flare up. She received acupuncture twice a week and followed a strict self-care program of dietary therapy and moxibustion. In addition, she found she was beginning to examine her life from a spiritual side, seeking to eliminate high stress. She began practicing Qi Gong and meditating.
“I’ll follow the whole regime for the rest of my life,” Maria said. “It’s improved my liver and my spirit and mind. I’m clearer and more centered.”
When Maria had her initial blood work in June of 1994, two liver enzymes–ALT and AST—were high. After four months of herbal treatments and the full comprehensive program, she was retested.
“Those enzymes dropped forty-seven and fifty-nine units,” she recalls. (Normal enzyme levels should be in the teens.) “[My liver] doctor was very impressed. In fact, he tested me three times to make sure of the results. I had also stopped drinking alcohol during that time, and that might account for a ten-point drop but not fifty-nine points. And it’s only gotten better. The last time I had liver pain was March of 1995.
“If I met someone who was sick and couldn’t find a solution, I’d tell them to try Chinese medicine and other forms of alternative healing,” Maria added. “It doesn’t hurt, it’s not real expensive, and it’s working.”
As a follow-up, in 2014 Maria was still well. In the year 2000, she moved from San Francisco to rural Colorado. She continued to use all the modalities that she learned in 1994 and expanded her repertoire. She changed her career and has had a fabulous life.
However, with the advent in 2014 of new drug treatments for hepatitis C that do not include interferon and have much higher rates of success, Maria decided to add the Western drug treatment to her arsenal. By the end of 2014, she had cleared the virus from her body!
If you’re ready to follow Maria’s lead and try a comprehensive program, you may select from the following:
• A Comprehensive Program for Basic Good Health and a Strong Immune System (see page 223)
• A Comprehensive Program for Easing Stress, Anxiety, and Depression (see page 240)
• A Comprehensive Program for Gynecologic Health that includes special sections on PMS, menopausal symptoms, and fertility (see page 249)
• A Digestive Disorders Management Program (see page 288)
• A Comprehensive Program for Liver Support (see page 298)
• Cancer Support: A Comprehensive Approach from Diagnosis to Survivorship (see page 315)
Each comprehensive program contains a section on self-care therapies, including Chinese dietary therapy; Qi Gong exercise and meditation; acupressure, massage, and reflexology; and soaks and compresses. Each program also includes a section on assembling a healing team of health care providers, including Chinese medicine practitioners, standard Western doctors, and a variety of Eastern and Western healers.