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These days, surgeries
and medications are the solutions readily given for most problems.
Snoring? Cut out excess tissues in the throat. Overweight?
Staple the stomach. Ear infections? Insert tubes in the ears.
Is your child hyper? Give them Ritalin. Feeling anxious or
worrying? Take an antidepressant. The list, and the practice
of it, goes on and on with little regard to other, less invasive
options.
There is much media
attention given to the overuse of medications by health care
practitioners. What is often left unsaid is that these same
medical professionals are overusing surgery at the same rate,
if not greater, as that of medication.
The unnecessary
use of surgery has been called an epidemic, one of barbaric
proportions, which needlessly maims and kills patients. Most
have heard the horror stories of doctors mistakenly operating
on the wrong person or body part; mishaps like these are inevitable.
However, it is not these types of events that make up the
epidemic. It is the commonly practiced, "routine"
surgeries that constitute the problem. Often times these procedures
are not only unnecessary, but expensive, stressful, and dangerous
as well. And, though they succeed in padding doctor’s
wallets and raising health care costs, they often do not solve
patients’ problems.
For example, studies
show that many patients who have surgery for cataracts report
that their eyesight is worse after the surgery. Moreover,
reports indicate that as many as five out of six hysterectomies
performed each year are unnecessary. More shocking still are
data suggesting that 50 percent of mastectomies (the removal
of a breast as a treatment for cancer) could have been prevented
by using other treatment options.
Other procedures
that are consistently performed in excessive numbers despite
other options include gall bladder removal, prostate gland
removal, cataract removal and removal of a damaged disc in
the spine; low-back surgery, surgery for jaw pain and arthroscopic
knee surgery; cesarean section; and total hip replacement.
Medical literature
has warned that a high percentage of surgeries do not benefit
the patients who receive them. The safeguards in place to
prevent this type of epidemic, namely medical associations
that are supposed to monitor ethics and guidelines, are not
doing their job. So why are all of these surgeries being performed?
Knee
Surgery
Earlier this year,
the New England Journal of Medicine published a study on a
knee scooping surgery for arthritis that exposes how 3
billion dollars a year is being wasted on this procedure,
which relieves the problem no more than a placebo.
The operation,
known as arthroscopic surgery, for pain and stiffness caused
by osteoarthritis is performed on about 650,000 people in
the U.S. every year, at a cost of about $5,000 per procedure.
As mentioned above,
studies show that placebos had the same affect as the surgery,
and placebos are a lot cheaper than $5,000 operations.
So what other options
are there?
It is important
to recognize that while the arthritis scooping did work for
many people, so did the placebo. This is amazing testimony
to the power your brain has at inducing healing changes in
your body. The central question is how to harness this power
without expensive medications or dangerous surgery.
Remember that whatever
you focus your conscious attention on in the real world will
typically be achieved. That is precisely what happened with
this study. The patients truly believed that this expensive,
invasive procedure would fix their problem, and superficially
it appeared to do just that. The same thing happened, though,
with those who received the placebo -- a placebo unknown to
them, of course. What really healed their bodies were their
own minds.
So here you have
a real world study, published in a respected journal, providing
the theoretical underpinnings of why EFT works. You can easily
begin to harness the power of EFT by reviewing my free
manual or for more in-depth knowledge you can purchase
my EFT Series on DVD or
VHS. There are also EFT
clinicians who can help you to learn the methods individually.
There are, however,
structural problems that can, at times, limit EFT from working.
When this happens, following the eating
plan and paying special attention to the fish
oil recommendation will help the inflammation that accompanies
arthritis.
The above study
was only for knee arthritis, but the surgery referred to,
arthroscopy, is also used for knee problems other than arthritis.
In my office, instead of surgery, we employ a gentle massage
technique from Australia called NST,
which has proved highly effective for nearly all knee problems,
including traumatic injury. We have rarely needed to refer
patients with knee pain for surgical intervention.
NST helps the body
actually repair and recover the damaged tissue. If you are
interested in this procedure, please refer to our list
of NST practitioners. Health care professionals should
consider attending one of our NST training
courses.
To conclude, here
is what one of the leading EFT practitioners in the U.S.,
Dr. Patricia Carrington, recently wrote to me about her experiences
with NST:
I want to thank
you for steering me to NST via your website. I have now
had three treatments of it (and will take more) and am finding
it extraordinary, but in unexpected ways. I went to an advanced
practitioner listed on your site who fortunately works only
30 minutes from me.
I had scheduled
the session because of a hiatus hernia which is quite troublesome
for me, but the results came in other areas. Even after
the first session my fingers loosened up so much that I
am literally typing twice as fast at the keyboard, and using
ALL of my fingers on it for the first time in my life actually
-- a real joy -- and my walking is so improved
But the most
impressive thing, other than the gratifying sense of balance
between left and right sides of my body that it has given
me, is its mood elevating effect. I feel light and wonderfully
happy even under stressful circumstances in what I can only
describe as a "new" way.
Dr. Patricia
Carrington
Appendectomy
An appendectomy
can save your life if you need it, but unnecessary surgery
is clearly something that needs to be avoided. How do you
know when your appendix might be a problem?
The following are
three major clues:
- You have absolutely
no appetite, even for your most favorite foods.
- You have pain
that started around your belly button and has moved to your
lower right abdominal area.
- You have pain
when jumping up and down. Try to gently jump up and down.
If there is no pain, try jumping even higher. This will
move your peritoneal cavity and if it is irritated with
an inflamed appendix, you will be in miserable pain.
If you have all
of the above symptoms you will want to be evaluated at the
nearest emergency room.
However, women
tend to benefit from receiving a CT scan or ultrasound before
surgery. The information below will lower a woman’s risk
of having her appendix removed by 400 percent, so please remember
these things:
Make sure the doctor
does some type of imaging study such as a CT scan or Ultrasound
prior to going to surgery.
A recent study
with nearly 500 patients who underwent appendectomy determined
that in women if a CT scan or ultrasound was done before the
surgery, a healthy appendix was removed 7 percent of the time
compared to 28 percent if a scan was not done. However, this
lowered rate did not hold up in men or children.
Radiology
October 2002;225(1):131-6
Hysterectomy
It is widely recognized
that many
hysterectomies are unnecessary. Well over half of them
are done for uterine fibroids. Obstet Gynecol February 2000;95(2):199-205.
This is usually due to estrogen excess, which can be balanced
by a number of simple strategies including the following:
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