Medical body recommends no routine testing for prostate cancer - is this wise?

A recently published article in the Globe & Mail entitled "Unnecessary medical treatments can hurt budgets and patients too" listed fifteen tests or procedures that the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) now deems unnecessary or potentially harmful.

Among them is the routine prostate exam. The AAFP now recommends that physicians should not "routinely screen for prostate cancer using the prostate-specific antigen test or digital rectal exam [as] evidence shows that routine testing results in more harm than good."

This is a huge change in the course of medical practice. Does it mean that men are now supposed to wait for testing until signs of prostate trouble show up? Wouldn't it be preferable to continue testing but then to watch and wait rather than opt for aggressive intervention? Isn't stopping routine testing a bit like throwing the baby out with the bathwater?

In the best of all possible worlds, doctors would continue screening and then send patients for treatment with the Domancic Method of energy healing, which has a protocol that can lower PSA counts. If anyone would like to do double-blind testing on this, Domancic practitioners await your call.

A plea for integrative medicine

I recently read several scathing blog posts lambasting the University of Toronto for allowing integrative medicine into the hallowed halls of its schools of pharmacy and medicine. Judging by the tone of these blogs, you would think the end of world is coming. But to patients who use the medical system every day, it is, in fact, good news.

The Consortium of Academic Health Centers for Integrative Medicine (and Wikipedia) describes "integrative medicine" as

the practice of medicine that reaffirms the importance of the relationship between practitioner and patient, focuses on the whole person, is informed by evidence, and makes use of all appropriate therapeutic approaches, healthcare professionals and disciplines to achieve optimal health and healing.

Sounds eminently desirable. But to some purists defending the status quo it represents nothing less than a tainting of conventional medicine because it allows "quackery" such as acupuncture, TCM, Reiki or biofeedback through the door. This exclusionary stance is as arrogant as arrogant can be in that it assumes conventional medicine to be the one and only option. If medicine can't help you, the reasoning goes, nothing will.

I will present a case here that shows how much integrative medicine is needed right now to help people who have come to the end of their tether with conventional medicine.

I will call the patient Robert. Two years ago Robert had a bypass. This is the kind of intervention modern medicine excels at, and everyone was glad to see Robert get his pink complexion back after years of looking ashen.The good news, however, didn't last. Robert developed debilitating heart arrythmia. His heart would start racing, and keep racing, for no apparent reason. Robert is not alone in this; many people with bypasses share his problem. He has made numerous trips to the ER and has had further tests and further surgery. He is on medication. All to limited effect. He is getting increasingly frustrated with the medical profession and with what he calls the arrogance of doctors. To me it also sounds like the medical profession is getting increasingly frustrated with him. They've done everything they could and it wasn't enough. Now there is little more they can offer and he serves only as a reminder of their limits.

This is where integrative medicine comes in, or rather could come in, if it were allowed to. Instead of waiting for 45 minutes for a doctor who then sees him for seven minutes, spending 5 of those 7 minutes on the phone, Robert could be sent to someone who would listen to his problem and offer him some comfort. He could be sent for counselling, for meditation training, for Reiki, for biofeedback, for massage or acupuncture, some or all of which would help him at the very least to feel better, or even to take control of his problem. But to the doctors who are treating Robert, these options are not even on the radar.

Stress and a feeling of lack of control are large components in heart disease, so Robert is not being helped and is perhaps even being harmed by the status quo. In effect, his doctors are harming him by keeping him waiting and treating him with what he sees as disrespect. He would very much benefit from a type of medicine that treats the whole person and focuses on the relationship between doctor and patient.

I wonder how many of us know a Robert, or are Roberts ourselves. Kudos to the University of Toronto and to all the other forward-looking and courageous medical schools, hospitals, and treatments centers that recognize the importance of integrative medicine.

Eli Lilly announces drug breakthrough for stage-4 lung cancer

Eli Lilly has announced that its new cancer drug for non-small-cell (squamous-cell) lung carcinoma has shown promise in trials for extending the life of patients in advanced stages for this form of cancer, when used in combination with conventional chemotherapy.

This is good news, yes? But nowhere in the article announcing this great news did I see any reference to a time factor. By how long was the life of patients extended? A few weeks? A few months? A few years? In fact the great news seemed to be that Eli Lilly's shares rose in trading as a result of the announcement, which is of little consequence to lung cancer patients, unless they happen to own shares in Eli Lilly.

Reported side effects included a rash (which could be severe) and possible blood clots, including pulmonary embolism. The side effects of the conventional chemotherapy in conjunction with which this drug is to be used are legion. The website collating side effects reports nine deaths directly related to the use of the drug.

I would like to see studies comparing the effectiveness of this drug and its cousins in treating stage-4 cancer against the effectiveness of the Domancic Method, the Bengston Method, and Kurt Peterson's cancer treatments, with respect to both longevity and quality of life.

Buyer Beware

A few years ago I took a Level II workshop in the Domancic Method in Sarasota with Zoran Hochstatter. The workshop took place in the context of a clinic. It was there that I met Alex, who at the time was helping Zoran. Alex was a quiet young man with a flamboyant healing style. He seemed to especially enjoy "psychokinesis", which is a method Domancic practitioners use to demonstrate the practitioner's ability to affect the patient's body by causing it to bend using only energy. This is something all Domancic students learn on the first day of their Level I workshop.

Alex has a website that recently came to my attention called "Energy Healing for Cancer". He offers private in-person treatments and blocks of long-distance treatments costing thousands of dollars. He also teaches "simple yet powerful techniques" of energy healing, involving protocols, so there is no "guessing work or confusion" -- in short, something very much like the Domancic method.

The private in-person treatments sound quite similar to the ones offered on Kurt Peterson's Cancer Touch website, right down to the price. There is a schedule of cities where treatments will be offered, just like on Kurt Peterson's website. The success rate that is claimed is better than Kurt Peterson's at 80 to 90%, but "These statistics can change due to many causes. There is nothings (sic) that is always fixed."

It may be that Alex is indeed an extraordinary healer. There are a number of testimonials by people who say they have been cured by him on the website, but they all look very similar to me in expression and grammatical structure, as if they had all been written by the same person. It could be Alex recalling individual cases, with endorsement or permission from the individuals involved. But I wondered as I read the site where Alex's statistics came from, and whether he has kept meticulous records, as Kurt Peterson says he does of his own cases. I also note that Alex was likely fresh out of primary school when Kurt Peterson began to work as a healer.

I encourage patients and their loved ones to ask many, many questions from healers whose websites they find on the internet. I have seen what energy  healing can do, and in the hands of a gifted and competent practitioner it can indeed do amazing things. But there are charlatans out there and there are also misguided people who see themselves as more competent than they really are. This is not to say Alex is either, but only to point out that when you encounter someone on a website, you cannot know whether they are the genuine article. So you owe it to yourself to ask many questions before you sign up, even to the extent of asking for references or proof of the claims being made by the healer. It is not a plus in their favour, in my humble opinion, if their website, the services they offer, and their pricing structure mimic someone else's.

The sad truth is that desperate people will go with the practitioner who offers them the most hope and sounds the most certain of the efficacy of his method, as if that somehow guaranteed success. And that is true not only of alternative therapies but also of mainstream ones. In all these cases, alternative and allopathic, there is little downside for the practitioner, who will collect his or her money no matter what happens to the patient. The patient is the one who lives (or dies) with the consequences.

Postscript November 11th 2015: And I note that Kurt Peterson's own website has now gone blank, with only the comment that he is not available for appointments. It is my understanding that Mr. Peterson was involved in a serious accident in the summer.

How to be a wise consumer of bioenergy healing workshops

A friend recently had lunch with a young woman from out west who had just taken a 2-day workshop on bioenergy healing which set her back a whopping $1500. After completing the workshop she and her fellow students were told that they would not be allowed to charge for treatments as practitioners until they took the second level workshop, which would cost a further $6000. However, if they acted fast, they could sign up for the second workshop at the (cheap) early-bird rate of $3500.

After I picked my jaw up off the floor I betook myself to my computer, where I googled this workshop provider, a certain Michael D'Alton of Michael D'Alton's School of Bio-Energy Healing. Mr. D'Alton's bio tells us that he learned bioenergy healing at Plexus Bio-Energy in Ireland. If you follow bioenergy healing trends and modalities as I do, you will know that the folks from Plexus Bio-Energy studied the Domancic Bioenergy Healing Method with Zdenko Domancic. They took the Domancic Method back to Ireland and are enthusiastic participants in a movie on Mr. Domancic entitled "Think About It", which can be viewed on YouTube.

Mr. D'Alton offers a series of bio-energy healing courses, for which no price appears on his website. They are, in order of appearance,

• Level 1 Bio-Inspired
• Level 2 Bio Body/Mind/Spirit and or Bio-Pro
• Level 3 Bio-Advanced trainings workshops
• Level 4a Bio-Teacher L1 training
• Level 4 Bio-Teacher L2 training
• Level 5 Bio-Jedi

In my humble opinion, bolstered by 14 years of experience both teaching and learning bioenergy healing, three levels ought to be sufficient to teach any energy healing method. Some enterprising Reiki masters manage to break up the three levels of Reiki into seven, with the price going ever higher with each level, ostensibly to give the student time to absorb and practice the teachings. In my humble opinion, again, that is just not necessary. Bioenergy healing is not that difficult to teach. The student may need time and practice to absorb the teachings, and may need some mentoring, but not to the tune of six or seven levels of the same method, and certainly not to the tune of thousands of dollars.

I perused Mr. D'Alton's website some more. I looked at the testimonials, which were very nice, but not anything terribly special in the world of energy healing, and certainly nothing beyond the capabilities of many talented and diligent Level 1 practitioners of Quantum Touch, the Domancic Method or the Bengston Method. I now have about 20 energy healing workshops of different stripes under my belt and my attitude to anyone who wanted to charge me the kinds of money Mr. D'Alton is charging would be to ask, only half tongue-in-cheek, whether he was proposing to teach me how to raise the dead in his workshops.

Some comparison shopping

There are three types of teachers in the business of energy healing instruction. The first are the founders or "originators", the people to whom the ability to heal came spontaneously and who then developed a system for teaching their method. The second type are their authorized instructors, the people whom they train and appoint to teach their system. The third type are the "aggregators", who learn one or more methods and then proceed to fashion them into something of their own (some of them add "personal development" to the mix as filler, though one could reasonably ask how much personal development one can fit into a weekend dedicated to learning energy healing). I would say that in my experience each method is strongest at the source, so one's best bet is always to learn it from the founder. At this point I wouldn't take a course from an "aggregator" for the very simple reason that by now I may know more than they do. But if you are new to energy healing, and just want to get your feet wet, an "aggregator" could be a perfectly fine choice for you. The question that remains is how much you want to pay.

So with that in mind, let's see what is out there that is comparable to Mr. D'Alton's $1500 two-day workshop.

Level 1 of the Domancic Method, taught in North America by Zoran Hochstatter, now called PureBioenergy, will set you back about $600 for a 3-day workshop. Level 2 will cost you $800.

The Bengston Method, taught by Dr. Bengston (who has healed mice of cancer in laboratory studies), will cost you $300-$350 for a 2-day workshop.

Matrix Energetics, taught by Richard Bartlett, the originator, costs $600 for levels 1 and 2 combined, which is another 3-day workshop.

Quantum Touch, taught by authorized representatives, will cost you $350-$400 for level 1, and $450 for level 2. Or you can learn it on-line with videos of the founder for $67.

Reconnective Healing, levels 1 and 2, taught by founder Eric Pearl and "the Reconnection teaching team", will cost you $657 for a 3-day workshop in the U.S., more in Europe.

And I note that Mr. D'Alton's own teachers in Ireland only charge 350 and 425 euros respectively (approx. $480 and $585) for levels 1 and 2 of their own program. Why is Mr. D'Alton's program so much pricier?

In terms of value, for the amount of money that it costs you to take a 2-day workshop with Michael D'Alton ($1500), you could do two levels of the Domancic Method with Zdenko Domancic's authorized instructor, Zoran Hochstatter; or, you could take level 1 of the Domancic Method and levels 1 and 2 of Matrix Energetics, and throw in a weekend with Dr. Bengston to learn his method; or you could do levels 1 and 2 of Reconnective Healing and Matrix Energetics and still have money left over to do the online course in Quantum Touch.

For the amount of money that it would cost you to take levels 1 and 2 of Michael D'Alton's method, you could probably fly to Slovenia and learn the Domancic Method from the master himself, Zdenko (750 euros for level 1, and 980 euros for level 2), with money left over to do a bit of traveling around Europe.

All these workshops are worthwhile investments, singly or in combination. The different price tags are a reminder that in learning energy healing, as in any other consumer endeavour, it pays to shop around.

Postscript: Recently it was pointed out to me that Mr. D'Alton's method in fact has a lot in common with Pranic Healing, which I hadn't mentioned in this post. Something else to research! For the purposes of this post it is sufficient to note that their healer certification program costs $350, also well short of Mr. D'Alton's $1497.

Some thoughts on Roger Ebert "losing his battle to cancer"

I found this extremely thought-provoking post through Twitter. It was written by Michael A. Wosniak, a cancer researcher, who points out the absurdity of the phrase "lost his battle to cancer". No one is said to lose a battle to heart disease after they die of a heart attack, he points out. When his mother died of respiratory complications from H1N1, no one said she lost her battle to a virus.

I agree one hundred per cent with Dr. Wosniak. This metaphor of cancer as a war that is waged between the disease and the patient has got to go. It does nothing but harm. In a war, there are battlegrounds; in the war against cancer, the battleground is the patient. In a war, anything goes in order to kill the enemy, regardless of collateral damage; in the war against cancer, the collateral damage is to the patient.

We need to find a more useful metaphor, one that gives us new ways of looking at this disease, that will perhaps trigger different, and less harmful, treatments. How about the alternative where we look at the cancer cell as confused? A cell that has lost its connection to the whole that could perhaps be taught to return to normal. A cell that forms in response to environmental stress in an effort to try to ensure the continuity of the organism that could perhaps be taught to die. Any other suggestions?

(BTW I've covered this ground before, in a post called "Is fighting cancer the right strategy?")

Dr. Lissa Rankin interviewed on healing yourself with the power of your mind

TEDx speaker and inspirational doctor Lissa Rankin is interviewed by Lewis Howes about her experience with illness and healing and about the scientific evidence for self-healing.



There is some interesting stuff about the "nocebo" effect starting at 29:30 and how the nocebo and placebo effects work starting at 32:50.