DRUGS
"... the answers are not in a sack of pills" (from EscapeFire on CNN).
"If there's one thing that I would love to see you begin to implement in your own practice and teach others about, it's to try to change this mindset that has so completely taken hold in our culture on the part of both doctors and patients that drugs are the only legitimate way to treat disease. I mean, where did that idea come from?" (Dr. Andrew Weil, CNN Transcript of Escape Fire: The Fight to Save American Health Care).
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“Ultimately, if we want to fix American medicine we will need skeptical and smart patients to dominate,” he said. “They will need to ask the hard questions, because much of medicine is just plain old logic. So I am out there trying to persuade people to be those patients. And that often means telling them what the establishment doesn’t want them to hear: that their answers are not the only answers, and their medicine is not the only medicine.” (Dr. Oz, The New Yorker)
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MIND/BODY
"Our attitude, our mind, our consciousness has tremendous power over our health." (Dr. Eben Alexander, Huffington Post article by Ingrid Peschke)
“Can changing how you think about stress make you healthier? ...here the science says, ‘Yes.’ When you change your mind about stress, you can change your body’s response to stress.” (Stanford University psychologist and stress expert, Kelly McGonigal quoted in Washington Times article by Eric Nelson.)
"Can the mind really heal the body? - Yes" (Dr. Lissa Rankin, PBS special on her book, Mind Over Medicine)
MAINSTREAM
“One of the biggest misconceptions in health care is that mind-body-spirit care is not mainstream." (Dr. Charles Denham, Wall Street Journal)
"When you say 'alternative medicine' you are potentially raising fears of 'otherness' and implying that the patient and caregiver are going out on a limb, forgoing established medical protocols for something dangerous. This is a dichotomy—and a misconception—that many patients and clinical providers do not find useful." (Dr. Kathleen Potempa, dean of the University of Michigan School of Nursing, Wall Street Journal)
"It's time that our health care system takes an integrative approach … whether conventional or alternative." (Senator Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, MEDCityNews)
Bob Cummings writes about how consciousness and spirituality benefit health and serves as the media and legislative spokesperson for Christian Science in Michigan. He is a life-long Michigander now living in Milford. See more on his website, A Look At Spirituality and Health, follow him on Twitter@CSinMichigan, or email him at michigan@compub.org.
(Photo courtesy of ©GlowImages/Stock Photo)
