Deepak Chopra: December 2008 Archives

Deepak Chopra, MD Andrew Weil, MD and Rustum Roy, PhD

On December 26, 2008, the Wall Street Journal published "The Touch that Doesn't Heal," an article by Steve Salerno. Without discernible professional credentials in health reportage, the writer opened his piece by pledging allegiance to "scientifically proven, evidence-based medicine." He next declared opposition to integrative medicine, and characterized as "gurus" two proponents of integrative medicine, Deepak Chopra and Andrew Weil, choosing to overlook that we both are highly trained MDs with almost 40 years of clinical-experience. Joining us in our response is Rustum Roy, an internationally known scientist, and member of five major National Academies of Science Engineering, who has spent ten years researching a wide range of health technologies, both ancient and modern. We predict that while they may try to dismiss us, the Wall Street Journal writer and editors will find they can't dismiss a burgeoning field of medicine currently saving and improving millions of lives worldwide.

We believe that Salerno's piece is the opening salvo from the right aiming to influence the incoming administration as it strategically allocates resources for improving the U.S. health and wellness system. Fortunately, Tom Daschle, the upcoming Health and Human Services Secretary is better informed than either the WSJ writer or those who dictate WSJ editorial policy. The co-author (along with Jeanne Lambrew) of "Critical: What We Can Do About the Health Care Crises," Daschle names the principal challenge to true reform, "[S]pecial interests are especially numerous and influential in the health-care system. Health care comprises one-sixth of our economy...since cutting costs is tantamount to cutting profits for many of these special interests, it is reasonable to expect (an) all-out war to defeat reform."

As in Mr. Salerno's article, this war extends to advancing ill-informed pseudo-scientific arguments to discredit effective low-cost health care options precisely because they compete with the current high-cost system.

"There are many factors driving up health care costs," writes Daschle. "One problem is that 'supply side' forces exist in our health-care system. Physicians both diagnose and treat illness - in economic terms, they create and satisfy demand. . . . Conditions such as 'restless leg syndrome' weren't conditions until drugs were developed to treat them."

In his article Mr. Salerno acknowledged several factors in America's present health care crisis: "disenchantment" over spiraling costs, a bloated bureaucracy, and ''possible drug side effects."
While these clearly demand attention, he overlooks the crisis' principal cause: The poor results of the present health care system. Numerous surveys show that for all its bank-breaking expense, the American medical system lags behind the rest of the developed world in most health indicators.

Nor does it sustain a doctor's sworn duty to "first do no harm." Abundant evidence uncovers high-tech medicine, with its powerful drugs, as a major, possibly the leading, cause of death in this country. The National Academy's data attributes 100,000 deaths per year to physicians' errors, added to well over 100,000 deaths due to severe drug interactions and another 100,000 fatalities from hospital-based-infections. (For a detailed analysis, see Death By Medicine, by Gary S. Null, et al.)

Why is the allegedly "scientifically proven" health care that the WSJ writer champions so dangerous to health? The blind allegiance to "evidence-based medicine" overlooks how readily this form of research can be manipulated. It was first developed to isolate patentable agents for drug formulations. In scientific arenas outside of mainstream medicine, this "statistics-based medicine" is regarded as dubious science at best. Narrowly confining itself to costly, selectively published, industry-sponsored clinical trials, to promote pharmaceutical products, "evidence based medicine" is the marketing "icon" used by the current system to squelch lower cost competitors.

Science's only gold standard are facts derived from reproducible results, however unpalatable those facts are to current theory. When theories fail to explain the facts, they lose viability. The spectacular failures of "evidence based" medical theories include the millions spent on ineffective AIDS vaccines, the collapse of interferon as the wonder drug for cancer, and the marginal decrease in cancer deaths despite billions wasted during decades of fruitless research. Many once-standard treatments devised via this theoretical model now stand discredited, like the use of Thalidomide and Thorazine.

As Mr. Salerno and his editors stand bullish on the persistent investment of health care dollars into a model with runaway costs, poor results, lack of available personnel, and questionable science, we are convinced America can do better. Over the last three decades, millions of Americans, and a dedicated group of physicians and practitioners have front-line, hands-on experience with integrative health care. Via concerted research and clinical practice, international scientists and practitioners, have progressively uncovered the root causes and the most effective treatments for health maintenance and restoration. This is science's cutting edge.
Yet like both the mainstream medicine and media, Salerno remains stubbornly ignorant of this vast field, which Daschle and the Obama Administration will undoubtedly consider before allocating billions more to the present, failed, high-cost medical system.

One sine qua non for any future sustainable U.S. health system is the necessity to empower, rather than undercut each citizen's right to choose health care and take responsibility for his/her own wellness. Countless chronic diseases result from the neglect of basic wellness measures. The blame for underutilizing such proactive, cost-saving approaches lies directly with the official policy of blind reliance on drugs and surgery, whatever the cost. The public has been lulled into medical apathy on the false assumption that if something goes wrong, fix-it mechanics will tune up your body the way a garage tunes up your car.

A new integrative medicine system would marry the superb options of high tech emergency care, its brilliant surgical achievements, the tried and least harmful pharmaceuticals, by empowering and educating its citizens to maintain wellness and prevent disease, through improved nutrition, exercise, stress-management, and a wide range of other proven integrative approaches. Sadly, mainstream medicine largely ignores these viable health approaches, because they're not financially lucrative.

To increase competition, reduce costs, and improve outcomes, we recommend that Daschle and his team move toward a more humane, sustainable, and effective health system through the wider adoption of integrative health options. And we invite the Wall Street Journal and its staff writers to board the lifeboat of integrative health, rather than go down with the Titanic, in yet another failing business sector--healthcare.

From an early age we are told forgiveness is an important virtue we should practice, but we are only told to forgive, we are not shown how to forgive and mean it. In the Lord's Prayer we ask God to "forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them that trespass against us," But I don't think forgiveness should be regarded as prescriptive morality. Prescriptive morality never works and is frequently a form a self- righteousness in disguise--a mask for the ego.

The best way to understand forgiveness is to realize that to forgive and to ask for forgiveness is the best use of one's energy and also one of the most important paths to self-healing. The absence of forgiveness is holding a grievance or resentment and also a subtle desire to seek vengeance. In short it is hostility. Many studies have shown that although anger can be a healthy release of pent up energy, hostility is not healthy, and it is the number one emotional risk factor for premature death from cardiovascular accident (stroke and heat attack).

Hostility is an inflammatory emotion and causes physical inflammations as well, which can result in inflammatory cardiovascular episodes and is also linked to autoimmune disorders. It is more than remembered pain; it is also rumination over a past hurt. If you kick a dog and hurt it, it will remember that and if you encounter the dog many years later it may attack you in the interest of self-preservation. However, unlike a human being, the dog will not plan for years on how to get even. Because human beings ruminate over past hurts and have the ability to imagine and plan the future they are capable of enormous violence against themselves and their fellow beings. This is one good reason to learn to forgive.

Learning how to let go of toxic emotions such as hostility is the essence of learning how to forgive, because forgiveness is basically releasing your attachment or identification with the conditioned response. There are a few well-developed psychological techniques for releasing a toxic emotions that are based on the premise of gaining objectivity and clarity on the emotion before one can release and forgive.

Here is a 7-step process that is known to work:
1 Taking responsibility for your emotion
2 Witnessing the emotion
3 Defining or labeling the emotion
4 Expressing the emotion
5 Sharing the emotion
6 Releasing the emotion through ritual
7 Celebrating the release and moving on

If you are holding on to a grievance or resentment and feel hostility toward someone, here's what you can do.
Close your eyes and recall the episodes that caused you to feel this way. Recall the experience in full sensory mode, noting the voices , gestures and setting. As you visualize it, feel the sensations accompanying the experience. You will usually feel a tightness or discomfort in the area of your stomach or your heart. At this point remind yourself that these are your emotions but they are not you. You are responsible for creating them and you have the power to heal them.

Once you have located the discomfort in your body, feel it for several minutes. Ask yourself, Who is most damaged by holding on to this toxic energy?
The answer of course is obvious--you are hurting yourself more than you are hurting another. Nelson Mandela once said, " Holding a resentment is like drinking poison and hoping it will kill your enemy." Having located and experienced the discomfort for several minutes, and having realized its damaging effect on you, give it a label. Define it. Is it hostility, anger, sadness, guilt, fear or a combination of all of the above?

These are the first 3 steps, taking responsibility, physically feeling it and then defining it. The fourth step is to express what you are feeling in writing. It is suggested that you do this from three different perspectives. First, as you recall the experience, express in writing what you are feeling in the first person. Having done that, express it in the second person, pretending you are the other person in the conflict. And finally, express it in the third person as a neutral observer. When you express the conflict or emotion accompanying the conflict from three different perspectives you will find the toxic energy accompanying the emotion will begin to dissipate. In fact there are studies that show that when you express your emotions in writing in this way, your immune system gets an immediate boost. Immunoglobulins or IgE levels in the saliva show an immediate rise. The fifth step is to share this experience with a loved one. It could even be the person with whom you had the conflict. During the sharing you could also say that you feel ready to forgive and be forgiven. The sixth step is to release the emotion through a ritual. You could burn the paper on which you have written these feelings and offer the ashes to the winds, to the Virgin Mary or to any deity. Ritual action is a way of trapping energy and releasing it effectively and bringing things to closure.

Having released the emotion, celebrate and do something fun, Go out exercise, see a movie, go dancing, whatever makes you happy. Although this seems like an elaborate procedure once you get in the habit of feeling your body, identifying what's going on, seeing it from different perspectives and releasing it, it becomes quite a natural process. It doesn't mean you will never feel resentful or angry, but over time, you will start to feel energy flowing freely through your body as the time period of your holding on to resentments will decrease. The lingering effects of the emotions will be no more than a line drawn in water, instead of a line etched into stone as before. As you become adept at releasing toxic emotions in the moment, some people find they can locate their silent witness within and easily go through the release and forgiveness process with a few conscious breaths.

If you look at what's happing in the world right now, we see it is our inability to forgive and ask for forgiveness that is the cause of all conflicts, personal, social and even international.

Ultimately forgiving another is forgiving oneself. In forgiving we release the false sense of identity with which we have attached to a story about an event. When we release an attachment to a toxic emotion, we are freeing ourself from that false sense of self. As we free ourself from the illusion, we are really forgiving ourself in the deepest sense. What we think we are forgiving in another is an act of freedom for our own soul. Every situation that calls for forgiveness is a step in our own evolution to higher consciousness.

You have been elected by the first anti-war constituency since 1952, when Eisenhower was elected after promising to end the Korean War. But ending a war isn't the same as bringing peace. America has been on a war footing since the day after Pearl Harbor, sixty-seven years ago. We spend more on our military than the next sixteen countries combined. If you have a vision of change that goes to the heart of this country's deep problems, ending our dependence on war is far more important than ending our dependency on foreign oil.
Read the rest of the article here in Tikkun Magazine

In the spirit of President-elect Obama's call for unity, the present divide between opponents and supporters of the war in Iraq needs to be healed. On one side, as represented by President Bush in his exit interviews, the war is seen, post-surge, as a key success in the war on terror. On the other side, as voiced by peace advocates, the war has been a dismal, shameful failure that did nothing to lessen the threat of terror around the world.

Continue reading the rest of this article in the San Francisco Chronicle

Since God didn't vote for President, why should he get a seat on the inauguration platform? In the midst of controversy over picking Rick Warren to offer an invocation, it's been overlooked that reality is shifting in America. We are a largely secular society where the vast majority of people do not attend church. When religion enters the picture, we are a pluralistic society, not a Christian one. The right wing may posture as if Christianity deserves special privilege and pride of place. Their posturing has convinced a lot of people for the past twenty years, but it's high time we threw the whole charade out the window.

Barack Obama got in trouble with Jeremiah Wright and now he's in more trouble with Rick Warren. He should take this as a lager lesson. Anyone he chooses to invoke God at his inauguration will be divisive, either overtly or covertly. For two generations Billy Graham seemed safe enough for any President to touch without getting shocked. But if all of Billy Graham's private views were aired publicly, I doubt that many non-Christians would feel welcomed by him, and probably not a great many Catholics and Jews. The essence of evangelism is to save the lost and fallen, which means every person in the world who doesn't adhere to your (usually narrow) conception of God.

If Obama can't bring himself to do the right thing and keep God away on Jan. 20, he should be as ecumenical as those moving services at Yankee Stadium in the wake of 9/11. They were ecumenical because when the going really gets rough, petty differences about God fade away. Aren't we in crisis mode now? Everyone seems to think so. I understand Obama's justification for inviting Warren -- it's a gesture of non-divisiveness, a chance to pull right-wing Christians closer to the center. Maybe that outweighs the wounded feelings of gay Americans, who looked to Obama (even though he opposed gay marriage himself during the campaign). But the larger point, I think, is that religion has been a toxic element in U.S. politics for so long that it would be a relief to clean house and reinstate this country's secular virtues, chief among them being tolerance for all. Even God might be grateful.

This article appeared in the Washington Post On Faith section

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