Freedom of choice in health care decisions

    Written by Tim Mitchinson

    Happy Fourth of July!  This is a great time of year: fireworks, parades, family gatherings – all celebrating the wonderful freedom we have as citizens of this great country.  We can also give thought to the freedom of choice that is important in making health care decisions.  

    Access to alternative therapies for the treatment of disease is an increasing concern for a growing number of people.   Troubled about the side effects of drugs and the growing cost of allopathic medicine, interest in various non-traditional approaches to health and well-being is growing.

    Numerous groups are raising concern over the conflicts in the healthcare system today.  One such group is the HealthKeepers Alliance, which sponsors Health Freedom Expo’s around the US.  They recently held their 9th Annual Expo at the Renaissance Schaumburg Hotel and Convention Center.  Speakers included Patch Adams, MD; author Joan Borysenko, PhD; television newsman Bill Kurtis; and radio personality Robert Scott Bell.

    “Our overall goal is for you to become an informed health care consumer,” stated Julie Whitman Kline, CEO of The Health Freedom Expo.  “We believe you have the right to make informed choices and we support your right to have the freedom to know what those choices are”, Kline continued.  Attendance at the Expo has increased 5% each year, showing what other researchers have found – that interest in a wide variety of methods to care for our health is on the rise.

    Accessing state legislators and lobbying to “stop restrictive and monopolistic state licensing bills that negatively impact access to natural health care practitioners” was the message of Diane M. Miller, Legal and Policy Director of the National Health Freedom Coalition.  She also stressed the importance of “learning about other licensing bills that contain safe harbor exemptions and protections for many natural health practitioners.”

    Various workshop facilitators and exhibitors told their own stories of how their health was improved by choosing treatments outside of allopathic care – sometimes in lieu of and sometimes in conjunction with.   Dr. Joel Wallach, a veterinarian and naturopathic physician shared this:  “When I was four years old, I began showing symptoms of what today would be called Tourette Syndrome.  By the time I was nine, my friends began calling me “possessed”. As Wallach shared it in an interview, a series of events led him to consider the possibility that the illness was due to a mineral – calcium specifically - deficiency in his diet. He began eating pellets used on the farm for livestock that included a calcium supplement.  In three days the illness was completely gone.   

     “I began to read labels on all sorts of animal feed.  I wondered why we spent so much energy giving nutrients to animals, but not to humans.” Since that early experience, Wallach (www.wallachonline.com) has gone on to develop a growing practice around helping people get the right minerals into their diet. The author of Dead Doctors Don’t Lie, his practice involves plant minerals and liquid vitamins in the treatment of lupus, diabetes, cystic fibrosis, fibromyalgia and arthritis.   “None of which are genetic, just simple nutritional deficiencies,” Wallach argues.   

    Other vendors, such as EKANKAR and Dr. John Ashley’s Regenerative Lifestyles, offered ways to change one’s thinking as a way to change one’s life-style, and thus gain better health.  

Three themes seemed to run throughout the Expo:

• The importance of individuals having both access to information and the freedom to act on that information;

• The idea that finding health is a unique journey and there is no “one size fits all” solution;

• Mental and spiritual wellbeing are key components.

    Author, lecturer and Harvard trained Joan Borysenko, PhD, shared the moment in her life that set her on a path to explore the role spirituality plays in our health.  When she was ten, she saw a frightening movie and became traumatized.   She became psychotic and began to hallucinate.  “I had excessive compulsive disorder” she stated in an interview.  “I had to turn my reading upside down and read backwards.  There was no treatment for this.”

    So she prayed.  What happened after that will be shared in our next blog.  Don’t miss it!       

Thomas (Tim) Mitchinson is a self-syndicated columnist writing on the relationship between thought, spirituality and health, and trends in that field.  He is also the media spokesman for Christian Science in Illinois