Dr. Eric Herman of Liberty Chiropractic and Wellness Center is pleased to announce his participation in BioVeda Health and Wellness Centers, featuring Bax 3000 Neurological Stress Reduction Therapy for conditions such as Allergies, Asthma, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Irritable Bowel Syndrome, Eczema and other conditions. Please look for continued updates to our blog including patient testimonials, feature videos and case studies! www.biovedawellness.com
About the Technology
The BAX 3000™, introduced by BioVeda Technologies, formerly BioAllergenix, has been rapidly accepted into the alternative health care industry based on its dramatic success rates in reducing and eliminating a myriad of chronic symptoms. Through the use of Neurological Stress Reduction Therapy or NSRTSM, the BAX 3000, provides a much needed alternative to help patients’ symptoms associated with common ailments such as allergies, asthma, migraines, IBS, CFS, food sensitivities and chronic skin conditions.
NSRT is achieved by measuring increases in neurological stress levels associated with specific environmental substances and coupling these environmental stressors with a positive stimulus conditioning the body to react normally during real world exposure. This is done using a proprietary and patented LASERSM or light and sound energy relaxation technique which stimulates nerve bundles located on acupuncture points and along the spine triggering the brain to release endorphins and enkephalins which calm the nervous system, thus breaking the previous negative association. Rather than releasing histamine during future real world exposure, the brain elicits a neutral reaction.
The BAX 3000 provides a fast, fully-automated, painless, non-invasive and effective methodology to address the suffering of millions of people who previously had few options for relief.
I visited an acupuncturist the other day. A traditionalist with the Chinese meridians and whatnot. I didn’t realize those trained in the East had a “schtick”. Do you hear my amazement? Schtick, I tell you. First, he looks at my hands. Nails, fingers, general robustness. Palms next, then he takes my pulse. Not heart rate. Pulse. Then there’s my tongue– stick it out and try not to look silly. There’s other things, but I’ll skip to the schtick. He looks at me very sternly and says I have a conflict in my body. There’s an imbalance between my head and my constitution. I think too much, I read too much. My mind races at night. I don’t sleep well and I spend too much of my time indoors. He says this imbalance doesn’t affect me so much now because I’m young and healthy, but in ten years, watch out. I’m going to have trouble peeing, guaranteed. And that’s just the start. My qi (chi) is bad right around my middle. All that thinking is bad. All that jogging I had been doing was bad. Weightlifting is bad. Plus, I don’t drink enough water or the right kind of water. WHAT?
If I were going to persuade someone to hinge their future health on a fringe modality, then I would take the tack used by this man. And when I say fringe, I mean it. If you believe in acupuncture and its effectiveness, then great. It’ll probably work for you, but that’s the thing. You have to believe in it. I think the efficacy studies show that benefit rates rival that of placebo which is to say 1 out of 3 will find relief. 2 out of 3 won’t. When drugs are put through trial, they have to better this placebo rate in order to make it to market. Otherwise, you might as well take a sugar pill.
It’s a little frustrating. I like acupuncture. I like the idea of it. I’m not sure it wouldn’t work given the right condition, the right patient, the right doc. It all depends. Just because you have a herniated disc doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have surgery. Same thing here. Acupuncture could have helped me. Could have. But not this guy. Too many red flags. Not enough to walk out, but just enough to cancel after a good night’s sleep. Plus, a quick review with the boyfriend confirming the goofiness didn’t hurt.
Sometimes a good barometer of an interaction is how they qualify it. My thoughts on his theory were delivered with honest skepticism. I countered his claim that I didn’t sleep well. I sleep great. Especially when I’m not in pain (hint, hint). He seemed to think my attitude was a result of having presented all his facts in a way that overwhelmed me. He had confused me.
Ohhh, I was confused– What is going on? I was confused all right. I thought paternalism was a Western attribute. If you’re puncturing tissues in the meridian, wouldn’t it behoove you to know a little about the underlying structures and tissues? Their names at least? Maybe having more than a superficial knowledge of the more allopathic therapies?
I’m snarking on the man, I am. I have to say I don’t think that kind of certitude is usually present in a healer. There’s something to be said for doubt, for exploration, for listening to the patient. To put forth a position, but heed the contraindications. I had wanted to impress upon him the benefits I had gotten from trigger point injections but he appeared impatient. Trigger points, BTW, are not exactly allopathic. If anything, they’re more fringe than acupuncture. But it worked for me and that’s the thing. If my direct experience demonstates a significant and positive effect, I have to revise my doubt. It’s called proof. When I find proof, I like to air it. It’s called discourse.
I don’t think he was much a fan of discourse. He patiently bore me out, interrupting only a couple times, and then deciding that my inability to embrace his view was a result of having given me too much too soon. It was too Eastern for me. Clearly, I was a Westerner. How could I comprehend the holistic gestalt of a culture so ancient, so wise, so mystical practically? My ignorance was understandable.
After all of it, an unkind thought occurred to me. I thought, isn’t that a passive-aggressive move? To claim my comprehension falls short implies that his logic could still hold water. It’s a point of sophistry ably demonstrated in the film Thank You For Smoking. Dad and son take a hypothetical argument. Which is the better flavor: Vanilla or chocolate? Son takes vanilla. Dad argues chocolate is the best, but people should have choices. What about strawberry? So the son cogently points out he hasn’t proved chocolate is better than vanilla. Dad says, that’s not the point. You win the audience, you win the argument. And that’s what old Mr. Acupuncture did. Except I was the audience. Telling me his Eastern logic is too lofty for the scrutiny of Western intelligence doesn’t exactly win me over.
If your name is Maurits or Moritz, then today is your day!
Autumn arrives today at 418pm (my time). And it sure feels like autumn. It is only 58F here now at noon & it has been raining lightly. I was freezing so I turned on our portable heater. Feeling better. The skies look the same to day as yesterday. We had half an inch of rain yesterday morning. Friends near us had an inch, but near McPherson I saw fields that were flooded. Must have dumped rain there. And in McPherson I saw a tree whose leaves are just starting to change. Cool!
Yesterday was a full day. I had errands at 2 banks and my pharmacy. Then off to acupuncture. After my treatment I got so dizzy. I felt ok sitting and driving but when standing was light-headed. I think I just had not drank enough before my treatment. After eating supper and drinking lots of coke, I was fine.
I owed Sally some money for an upcoming trip so we had a nice visit and with one of her workmates. And while there found out there is a problem with some insurance that goes with Willie’s medicare. We supposedly had this coverage for 2 years and now they are saying WE cancelled it 2 years ago. Sooo. I just called and got someone with a strong accent I could not understand. She asked for info from our card that was labeled totally different than what was there. *I* could not ask about my own husband without his permission. He had to verbally give it. What if he had a stroke and could not talk? Well, we have the official card and at no time were we notified it was not valid. What an idiotic way to run a business. And proceeded to tell her so. She said she will forward this info to the enrollment department. I told her we will be lucky if we hear from them within 2 years or ever. I am sooo pi$$ed off.
Yesterday evening I met Eric for supper at Jalisco’s and then we went to class. It was a night of discussion and movie clips. Good evening.
Yesterday I had to order some flower arrangements for Swedish group this friday. I took a wonderful photo inside the flower shop and also of the winery window.
Today is a quiet day with no plans.
Louise Beal: “Love thy neighbour as yourself, but choose your neighbourhood.“
In the same office as the acupuncturist is a woman who does massage. This isn’t any massage this is The Arvigo Technique of Maya Abdominal Massage. It helps the flow of blood , it moves the chi energy and so much more. I was excited to make my appointment. Whatever it takes to increase my chances of getting pregnant.
It’s a two hour appointment. First thirty minutes for intake and talk about your goals. The next is for the massage. She told me during the intake that she can help with breaking up the cyst inside of me from the Endometriosis. Which endometriosis can cause low fertility. I haven’t been checked recently for the cysts but I was diagnosis and had surgery in 2003. The doctor said they would come back. I figured they have since my flow is back to the same as 2003. After the massage, she showed me some simple self techniques. My body will have better results with daily maintenance.
I’ve finally got far enough through processing my last week that once again I can think in vaguely grammatically correct and possibly even coherent sentences. So here goes…
In the words of that famous Chinese curse/blessing, I’ve been living in interesting times on a very personal level. ‘Stuff’ of a serious nature has been happening to/with/for me on both the physical and metaphysical levels. I’ll deal with the physical first, so those of you who aren’t into the metaphysical can escape gracefully! Although if you’re squeamish you may want to leave right now…
Right.
For those of you still here, I shall continue.
The Physical.
A few years ago I was diagnosed with endometriosis. About 18 months later I had my innards scraped out (the posh term is ‘laprascopy’), a relatively straightforward procedure greatly complicated by me getting fluid in my lungs from the anaesthetic process. Apparently I was full of endo and they weren’t able to scrape it all out (when the consultant gynacologist told me it was a ‘hard operation’, I chose to believe him!). I won a couple of months of pain relief and then it was back to normal.
For the last 18 months or so, I’ve been back and forth to the specialist – it takes a while because I’m using our public health system and the appointments are approximately six-monthly. My six-monthly follow up for my December ‘08 appointment was last week (do the maths!).
After a discussion with a wonderful registrar (not at all sarcastic here), it seems likely that, as well as the endo, I also have adenomyosis, a diagnosis they cannot formally confirm without removing my womb.
So my options for further treatment in the Western medical sytem appear to consist of having a hysterectomy (which may or may not fix the endo) or leaving it alone and taking large quantities of painkillers for a week each month while lying in bed whimpering until I hit menopause. Strangely, I find neither of these options terribly attractive.
So, I thought I would see what Oriental medicine has to offer me.
On Friday, I went for my first ever acupuncture appointment. To paraphrase the diagnosis, I’m a stagnating pond! That is, excessively damp and rather blocked up. I really appreciated having my whole body/person considered, rather than just bits. I’m also extremely happy, because I haven’t taken antihistamine since the appointment and I’m not having any of my usual hayfever/sinus issues (although Friday evening was VERY soggy – I’m guessing that was the excessive dampness leaving!). I have my fingers crossed for a similar result for the rest of my body. I have my next appointment on Thursday. I’ll let you know how it goes.
We’ll now move onto the metaphysical. Those readers not into this may like to visit this website instead.
The Metaphysical.
I’ve been reading Ann Drake’s book “Healing of the Soul”, which is on shamanism and psychotherapy. As a shaman studying counselling theory, it seemed a logical read!
As well as having some of the clearest descriptions of shamanic work for a Western audience that I have read, reading the book also challenged me to apply some of the techniques to my own life/spirit. This is something that, like most humans, I try to avoid because I don’t really enjoy confronting my ’stuff’. Helping others is so much easier!
This particular work involves checking one’s chakra systems for blockages then sorting out the blockages. It was pointed out to me fairly strongly by my spirit colleagues that if I was going to do this for others I needed to do it for myself. Cowardice was not to be an option, alas!
I was expecting to find a few blockages, especially around my second chakra – given my issues with endo. What I found was serious blockages round all but three chakras. My root, third eye and crown chakras were the only unblocked ones. So, I set to work trying to clear the blockages. I was expecting to confront stuff from my current life as I know I have had issues in all the affected areas – and this certainly happened. What I really wasn’t expecting was to be thrown into very strong traumatic memories from previous lives (especially as I’m still not intellectually sure how I feel about the ‘past life’ stuff). I now know where my deep-to-the-point-of-being-irrational fears of rape and dying through violence come from (I always accepted there were rational fears about these things, but my fears were on a different level again). Hopefully I can now heal properly. Certainly it feels like my energy is flowing more freely – and I’m sure the acupuncture will only help this.
So, onwards and upwards now, I hope. And I trust you now understand why blogging last week was a bit tricky!
Eastern medicine was frequently looked at with a dubious eye by most practitioners in the West. One element of easter medicine, acupuncturist, is changing this. That has been slowly, but surely, changing over a period of time. Acupuncture has been with us for over five thousand years. It is believed to have originated in China over 5,000 years ago. To give you some point of view, consider the fact that the US is only some 230 plus years old. London, the capital of England, is only two thousand years of age. Rome is one of the oldest cities in the West and is only 2,700 and years old. Acupuncture has been around nearly twice as long!
When the pathways for this energy get out of strike, the body suffers and produces symptoms. The practice of acupuncture is focused on removing any inhibitors to the energy flow. Once this is done, the symptoms vanish. The energy is understood in Chinese medicine as’Qi’, but is mostly called’Chi’ in the West.
the character of acupuncture is commonly overtaken by a simple tool used – needles. Nobody truly likes needles because they associate them with discomfort. The picture of a child in the doctor’s office getting an immunization with a big needle is a nightmare we all experienced as youngsters. Well, acupuncture needles are a wholly different matter. Blockages in these flow lines are identified by practitioners. The needles are then inserted along these lines in strategic places to get rid of the blockages.
What can acupuncture do for you? Well, it clearly depends on the problem you suffer from. The treatment is understood to be highly useful with low back stiffness, headaches, sciatica, sinusitis and even weight loss. Fresh research at the University of Texas has exposed acupuncture is also beneficial in relieving the side effects of chemo treatment for certain cancers. This is not the case. Don’t hesitate to look into possible acupuncture treatments that could be available for your condition.
Appt with RE #3 was today, and Bobby and I agree that this is guy we’re sticking with. Things I like: he has a private practice, his office staff is super-nice and helpful, and he has pictures of baby successes EVERYwhere. During the consultation, I mentioned that it was Day 3 of this cycle… didn’t think it would matter since we’re waiting until November, right? Wrong. Within the next 5 minutes, I’ve got a needle in my arm, filling up 11 — yes, ELEVEN — vials of blood.
Miscarriage panel (includes Factor V Leiden, Prothrombin II, MTHFR mutations, anticardiolipin antibodies, lupus anticoagulant)
I have an appt Friday for an HSG to check for physical blockages, and Bobby has an appt next week for an SDFA (advanced semen analysis that tests for DNA fragmentation). We’ll meet with #3 in two weeks to go over the test results.
#3 mentioned genetic karotyping, but didn’t even blink when I told him that Bobby & I aren’t interested in doing genetics until we ensure that the issue isn’t hormonal &/or physical.
And today was my 4th acupuncture appt. So I really enjoy acupuncture, and feel like I’m benefitting hugely from it. However, it is astronomically expensive… The sessions are individually pricey. The evaluation sessions are extra. But the herbs & supplements?! Wow. Walked out with $180 worth of Chinese herbs today. Holy mother, that’s some expensive shit, and it smells like dirt and I’m supposed to put it in warm water and drink it 3 times/day. Blech.
But despite my Chinese herb sticker-shock, today felt like a gigantic step in the right direction. I feel like we’ve found the guy who’s going to help us figure things out. And you know what? Maybe it’ll be our baby’s picture on his bulletin board next year… wouldn’t that be lovely?
