This Week's End note is coming late, I am sorry! I think the idea that I would like to comminicate this week is this: The journey towards wellness sometimes is limited by one's own open mindedness. We were speaking with visiotrs from out of the country the other night and one of the people has had a chronic pain problem for several years now. She has seen every doctor imaginable where she lives--both Western and alternative with no success. My husband and I were speaking to her and her husband about the concepts of internal imbalances creating "external" pain syndromes. In this case, it is the ear and surrounding nerve tissue. We spoke to her about diet, alcohol, smoking, etc..... Her diet is poor, filled with  a plentiful amount of sugar and excessive amounts of coffee and alcohol and cigarettes go along with those habits. Being introduced to the concept of internal inflammation occuring as a consequence of internal imbalance and affecting the ear is not something that was well understood in that conversation. I did not even engage deeply into many of my own thoughts and explanations because the basic ideas that my husband was interjecting were already a lot to digest for this person. If I had endeavored to explain the concepts of healing crisis, I think that we would have lost them completely. To make matters worse, all of these doctors that they have visited promised she would be well from their treatments and she is still so bad off that she does not believe anything any more.

At the end of a very long winded hours long conversation, the ideas of health began to set in and she began to undertand what we were saying to some extent. The next day she said she started to change her habits by dropping out sugar as a first step. This is a start--a good one. My hope for this person is that she will hear the message that we gave her and little by little open her mind further to the ideas that we endeavored to comminucate and benefit from them. Because, no matter what help anything else she is doing may offer, not changing thos habits will repeatedly cycle back the pain and perpetuate the underlying cause of the problem and the problem itself.

It is really difficult, no matter what your belief system is to open your mind to something that is foreign to you, especially when the ideas do not fall under the comfort zone of what you have been accustomed to believing your entire life.

I believe the more I know, the more I realize I don't know. I try my best to stay humble and remember that. So, when I come across information that is outside my own comfort zone, I can try to take it into my repretoire of information and assimilate it and perhaps even apply it to an area of my life that may be useful.

I hope for this person, and for all of the other people pertaining to the multiple conversations I had with people this week regarding relatives or friends that were not ready to look at their diets or consider walking along the path of alternative medicine to find their wellness--a change of heart and mind and an openess to new ideas. My wish to each of you is that no matter what or where it is, you find YOUR road to recovery.

Oh-and one last thought. I spoke to many people this week who have had fantastic beginnings, meaning, they have not experienced the low pain levels that they were reporting since before they had become ill--years! I also spoke to a couple people who I have not spoken to for ages who have been completely symptom free for ages--one who also had a baby during that time. If you read this, please sign up and tell your story on a post or in a sentence or two on the site. Send it to us and we will post it if you dont have time to spend. People want to hear from you!

Dr.B