A recent cover story in a struggling news magazine, under the title "Crazy Talk:" accuses Oprah Winfrey of spreading "dubious advice" in a wide range of health issues from menopause and hormone replacement therapy to autism, cancer, aging, and weight loss. The tone of the article was the same tiresome blend of gotcha journalism and selective fact-reporting that fills tabloid coffers.
The story failed to gain traction for obvious reasons. Oprah has aired innumerable shows on health, of which the controversial ones are a tiny minority. Her intention to improve women’s lives on all fronts is so obvious as to be almost above criticism. The credibility for women’s well-being and welfare she has earned day after day over the past two decades will not be undone with a story that cherry-picks the guests who can be made easy targets of ridicule by the medical establishment. And the fact that she has celebrity guests who have causes and crusades in the area of health, such as Jenny McCarthy or Suzanne Somers, is not the same as Oprah herself endorsing what they say.
The criticism the medical establishment is directing at Oprah through this article only exposes their own frustration in having squandered their credibility with the public. They hope that if they can successfully attack the Oprah’s immense credibility, then they can magically get some of that credibility back for themselves. However, if people still trusted the health care industry to act in their best interest the way they did decades ago, then it would be unnecessary to brand Oprah for "crazy talk" simply because she occasionally provides a forum for ideas outside of mainstream medicine.
The medical profession is burdened with a host of problems that Oprah addresses with more candor and force than the AMA. She promotes wellness and prevention, two areas that drastically need improvement. She brings up creative solutions to problems that medical science is baffled by, such as the healing response itself and the role of subjectivity in patient response. These are issues that few M.D.s are willing to explore, yet she has done so for decades.
Instead, we got a response from an oncologist in Canada repeating the establishment position: alternative treatments of cancer are bogus, subjectivity has no place in science, "soul talk" about illness is rubbish. This is exactly the kind of dismissive arrogance that drives millions of people away from conventional doctors. Every illness has a subjective component — after all, to be sick is to change your moods and emotions, and severe illness causes one to examine primal issues like life and death and the meaning of existence. Do these subjective changes affect healing? Obviously they do, or we wouldn’t have the placebo effect, which comes into play at least 30% of the time in illness.
Scientific medicine by and large ignores wellness, prevention, and alternative medicine in general. On a daily basis doctors don’t deal in these things; few take courses in medical school centered on them. That’s why a massive movement has arisen driven by patients themselves. Oprah serves as a public outlet for a conversation that needs to be ongoing. As long as official medicine, backed by huge pharmaceutical companies, denies the existence of the problem, much less alternative solutions, the movement will remain patient-centered and the attitude toward alternative medicine will be one of unfounded disdain, suspicion, and ignorance on the part of physicians.
Denial also plays a huge part in this story. Mainstream medicine continues to downplay the enormous drawbacks of a health-care system that is addicted to drugs and surgery as the two constant drumbeats of treatment. This lopsided emphasis has created dilemmas that official medicine hasn’t remotely solved:
* In Seattle a recent study of 638 patients with chronic lower back pain were given either some sort of acupuncture or standard treatment with anti-inflammatory drugs and massage. On average, the acupuncture patients received twice as much benefit as those on standard treatment. The kicker is that some of the patients received fake acupuncture — they were pricked superficially with toothpicks — and received the same relief.
* Iatrogenic disease, roughly defined as illness that results as a complication from a doctor’s care, leads to between 230,000 to 284,000 deaths every year, making it the third leading cause of fatality in the country.
* A survey of 1,249 health care professionals found that 81% had taken dietary supplements like vitamins and minerals. This, despite the fact that mainstream doctors frequently tell their patients that the only benefit of such supplements is "expensive urine."
* Two of the most frequently performed surgeries, heart bypass grafts and balloon angioplasty, became fashionable without serious testing (the government approves drugs but not surgical procedures). They continue to be used in the face of perennial findings that neither procedure increases life expectancy. Besides relieving symptoms, which of course can be very troubling to the patient, both procedures carry serious risks. (The most recent finding showed that diabetics with stable heart disease do not survive longer if given heart surgery.)
* In the past, such common procedures as hysterectomies and radical mastectomies were widely performed without testing their efficacy. Not until European results revealed that lumpectomies were often just as effective did American surgeons question the staunch support of mastectomies. One might also consider that surgeons were very slow to perform cosmetic breast replacement for women who faced devastating psychological fallout from their mastectomies — a typical neglect of any patient’s subjective response to illness.
* The benefit of lifestyle changes has been grossly underestimated and underused. Coronary heart disease, prostate cancer/breast cancer, diabetes, and obesity account for 75% of health care costs, yet the progression of these diseases may often be stopped or even reversed by making intensive lifestyle changes. The most recent findings show that such changes actually cause beneficial alterations at the genetic level, affecting up to 400 genes through such measures as improved diet, exercise, and meditation.
* Overall, this country’s health care system is actually a "sick care" system. In 2006, $2.1 trillion were spent in the U.S. on medical care, 95% of which was spent to treat disease after it had already occurred.
We’re just scratching the surface here. Yet even if these massive problems didn’t exist, the Oprah affair raises the question of sins by omission. It’s one thing for official medicine to decry alternative medicine and hurl accusations of quackery, not just at the non-M.D.s who work as health practitioners but at licensed, highly educated and qualified physicians who are creative enough to explore new avenues of treatment. Their own lack of curiosity and creative thinking is disturbing. Does the most brilliant researcher in the world know why cancer sometimes spontaneously disappears? Why a patient with obsessive-compulsive disorder or depression can respond equally well to talk therapy and drugs — that is, why talk is as effective as chemicals in altering the brain? Or how the body’s healing system is influenced by outside forces?
The answer is no. Which means that mysteries remain to be solved, and creative solutions have every chance of arising from unexpected quarters. Scientific medicine is leery of so-called anecdotal evidence, that is, individual stories of disease and cure. Their skepticism is rational and well-founded. We all agree that without impartial studies, the advance of knowledge becomes chaotic and untrustworthy. But Oprah is letting individuals tell their stories for other, positive reasons: to share their pain, to reach out to others in the same circumstance, to provide hope.
Official medicine falls short on these fronts far too often. It would be laughable if it weren’t so sad that the typical TV ad for drugs paints glossy pictures of happy patients running through flowery meadows, ending with a list of every imaginable side effect, including death. The article sneers at the popular movement linking autism with childhood vaccination, yet current understanding looks at autism as a complex, multi-factorial condition in which some cases could be influenced by an outside factor like a vaccine. It’s all too easy for medicine to disdain that possibility and cry foul against guests on Oprah’s show, raising a smokescreen for the countless irresponsible prescriptions written, especially for elderly patients, by doctors every day.
One fears that all of these arguments will fall on deaf ears, because the schism between official and alternative medicine runs deep — deep enough that the average physician doesn’t bother even to skim the thousands of studies that bolster alternative claims. So let me offer a typical finding that comes from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, among other official sources. It concerns the effect of child abuse and other adverse circumstances on later health. Is it "soul talk" to believe that a child raised around parents who abuse substances, who suffer from mental illness, or who outright abuse the child will suffer health risks later in life?
According to the CDC study, covering 15,000 HMO members in San Diego between 1995-97, the risk of contracting an autoimmune disease as an adult is increased from 70% to 100% if you happened to be abused as a child or grow up with adverse home conditions. This finding isn’t isolated. Autoimmune diseases are one in which the body’s immune system attacks the body itself. There are few known causes; it is baffling to grasp why the body’s chief defender against illness should turn around and become the cause of illness. This study suggests a human connection rather than a biological one. Or rather, human distress leads to biological distress. Doctors don’t officially believe that; millions of ordinary citizens do. Earlier studies had already correlated adverse childhood conditions with the risk of inflammatory conditions. In the little picture, a new finding has been added to the long list of mind-body links for illness and aging. In the bigger picture, the fact that we don’t fully understand the mind-body connection, much less use it for healing in official medicine, comes into glaring relief.
What this tells me is that medicine needs Oprah and other patient advocates who are demanding that official medicine heal itself. To accuse them of lacking medial credibility is a red herring. Patients aren’t supposed to know more than their physicians. The fact that they often do, at least insofar as alternative treatment goes, is both a sign of hope and cause for distress.
Thank You Deepak,
The sick industry knows its days are numbered and will act in increasingly desperate ways to support the status quo. Their suppression of new information and abusive practices will cost millions their lives this year. They are murderers for profit and sanctioned by government, their partners in crime. If we would push back, we would support the Health Revolution Movement and sign their petition. I did.
http://www.HealthRevolutionPetition.org/index.html?ID=23892
(To multiply the following blessing, read aloud.)
Let us daily increase in: wisdom, love, gratitude, reverence, healing, peace, joy, happiness, laughter and prosperity.
Blessings X 10,
Ed
Hear Hear!!!
Thank you Dr. Chopra. You have addressed a complex issue and I appreciate you taking the time to look at it in a complex way. This is one of those articles to save and forward to others.
Send peace and love to the Earth until it is full.
This is enlightening to hear from a Doctor. This is the reason Deepak, everybody loves you.
Love
Rajesh
http://rajeshmsharma.blogspot.com
What the medical industry fears the most is that we will find out that we all have the power to heal ourselves. They are afraid that people like Oprah and Deepak Chopra will get us thinking for ourselves regarding our health care and we will escape the clutches of organized medicine.
Regarding mind-body links for illness, my experience is that whenever I get a bad dream during sleep, I know that I will have to correct myself or I may fall sick. I get indications that I am going to get sore throat or catch cold at least 15 days earlier, when I start getting bad dreams. (Normally I don't dream during sleep)
Once I knew this is happening, I start taking natural corrective measures immediately when I have bad dream.
Yes ill health start in mind and covers body many hours or days or years after.
Love
Rajesh
http://rajeshmsharma.blogspot.com
It seems like "alternative"(more and more mainstream) medicine is equivalent
to the 1500s thesis that the earth spins around the Sun. Everybody knows
"diseases" and "illnesses" are traits, that are destroyed when their opposite
traits are built, through training. But the old dogmas need time to die off.
New ideas only have their ways when all the defenders of old ideas have died
out. I am not in a hurry.
Yes she did, thankfully the people who realise this are reaching a critical mass. Every single one of us is a healer because we're already whole, we've just forgotten. This is the journey HOME.
Jean yes you said the truth.
Love
Rajesh
http://rajeshmsharma.blogspot.com
Dearest Deepak-
I humbly respect doctors, I wouldn't be alive today without the their skills.
As a soon to be 29 year survivor of metastatic malignant melanoma,
I know I would not be alive today without the gifts of both Allopathic and
Eastern Medicine. As is was preparing to die, I also explored the unproven
theory of quantum healing as discussed in Deepak's book and various other
authors aligned to the possibility of healing from the inside out.
With respect to the education of all my most skilled physicians, I experienced
IL2-with gamma interferon, or BCG Melanoma antigens, numerous invasive
surgeries, chemo, and radiation at various stages of dis-ease. However,
my gut intuition, my sense of spirit, believed in part the power of love,
be it self love, love of life, universal love; I progressed into my own unique
combination of allopathic with Eastern views on survivorship.
Though I was diagnosed in 1980 and given the scientific stats of survival,
accepting my fate, my family's immediate disapproval of a search for
spontaneous remission; I drank up all information I could find in my sedated
state of being. I am here to tell you that the probability of curing a disease is
possible just by opening up your mind and spirit. Choosing to live a quality
of life, regardless of the outcome will also change the navigated course
of the scientific statistics for survival rate any given dis-ease.
In my saturated state of toxic treatment; I learned to become a patient
active as I listened to tape after tape on the power of thought. Even
during surgeries I insisted on picking the music that would be played
in the background, I changed rooms if I did like the scenery. I learned
to improve the quality of my life, and I followed my deepest desires to
re-navigate the course of my treatment. I actually read on one of my
medical charts that I was an extremely difficult patient. Interesting
perspective, but I will tell you that I am alive today because of my will.
I am here today because of people like yourself, Oprah, Sally Jesse,
Bernie Siegal, Harold Benjamin, and so many other's who have
opened their minds to the probability of expanding fated life with
alternative, holistic approaches to life inclusive but not exclusive
to Western medicine.
As Harold J. Benjamin so simply stated to me back in the 80's
when I couldn't wrap my mind around quantum physics, "Improve
the quality of your life and you just may enhance the probability
of remission-who knows even a cure." I am a firm believer in the
power of spirit-and am grateful to those medical professionals who
did not turn their back on the possibility of spontaneous remission.
Thank you for extending your education and theories, they guided me
to improve the quality of my life to embrace the power of my spirit.
I am so very grateful for listening to the power of my spirit, all I had to do
was to have the intention to hear other world views. Thank you Oprah
thank you Deepak for aiding in her defense of cynicism. I am a living
testimony of the power of Intention, Desire, Will and Destiny.
My deepest love to all of my teachers, sages, shamans, doctors, channelers,
and my deepest love to my self – for allowing my spirit to return.
A soon to be Seven Spiritual Laws of Yoga Instructor.
See it-Feel it-Believe it-We are the Change!
-yoginideborah
For chronological story, and healing references,
http://www.deborahshemesh.com.
Dearest Deepak-
I humbly respect doctors, I wouldn’t be alive today without the their skills.
As a soon to be 29 year survivor of metastatic malignant melanoma,
I know I would not be alive today without the gifts of both Allopathic and
Eastern Medicine. As is was preparing to die, I also explored the unproven
theory of quantum healing as discussed in Deepak’s book and various other
authors aligned to the possibility of healing from the inside out.
With respect to the education of all my most skilled physicians, I experienced
IL2-with gamma interferon, or BCG Melanoma antigens, numerous invasive
surgeries, chemo, and radiation at various stages of dis-ease. However,
my gut intuition, my sense of spirit, believed in part the power of love,
be it self love, love of life, universal love; I progressed into my own unique
combination of allopathic with Eastern views on survivorship.
Though I was diagnosed in 1980 and given the scientific stats of survival,
accepting my fate, my family’s immediate disapproval of a search for
spontaneous remission; I drank up all information I could find in my sedated
state of being. I am here to tell you that the probability of curing a disease is
possible just by opening up your mind and spirit. Choosing to live a quality
of life, regardless of the outcome will also change the navigated course
of the scientific statistics for survival rate any given dis-ease.
In my saturated state of toxic treatment; I learned to become a patient
active as I listened to tape after tape on the power of thought. Even
during surgeries I insisted on picking the music that would be played
in the background, I choose the rooms if I did like the scenery. I learned
to improve the quality of my life, and I followed my deepest desires to
re-navigate the course of my treatment. I actually read on one of my
medical charts that I was an extremely difficult patient. Interesting
perspective, but I will tell you that I am alive today because of my will.
I am here today because of people like yourself, Oprah, Sally Jesse,
Bernie Siegal, Harold Benjamin, and so many other’s who have
opened their minds to the probability of expanding fated life with
alternative, holistic approaches to life inclusive but not exclusive
to Western medicine.
As Harold J. Benjamin so simply stated to me back in the 80′s
when I couldn’t wrap my mind around quantum physics, “Improve
the quality of your life and you just may enhance the probability
of remission-who knows even a cure.” I am a firm believer in the
power of spirit-and am grateful to those medical professionals who
did not turn there back on the possibility of spontaneous remission.
Thank you for extending your education and theories, they guided me
to improve the quality of my life to embrace the power of my spirit.
I am so very grateful for listening to the power of my spirit, all I had to do
was to have the intention to hear other world views. Thank you Oprah
thank you Deepak for aiding in her defense of cynicism. I am a living
testimony of the power of Intention, Desire, Will and Destiny.
My deepest love to all of my teachers, sages, shamans, doctors, channelers,
and my deepest love to my self – for allowing my spirit to return.
A soon to be Seven Spiritual Laws of Yoga Instructor.
See it-Feel it-Believe it-We are the Change!
-yoginideborah
For chronological story, and healing references,
http://www.deborahshemesh.com.
Dear Deepak,
Now is the time for the healing arts !!!
This is very very VERY interesting! Am glad to have seen this now.
Thank you, Deepak, for writing this. God bless you for the work that you do.
Thank you Dr. Chopra. This article is going to my Mom, as she has been trying 'alternative' medicines since the 1970's and she was/is such a radical (though she thinks of herself as old fashioned). She will be so encouraged by your words, and a bit furious too (by society, not you). She lives the change and now her daughters do as well. Again my thanks, Namaste, Teena
"Be the change you want to see in the world" Mahatma Gandhi
Dear DEEPAK being a witness of the futility of alopatic tratments in my mother; she died at fouty four, my father at fifty one, myself I almost died at nineteen and recently in 2004 when Formal medicine told my wife and I that the kidney, arteries wouldn't regenerate made search for alternative medicine. The good news that I was able by mere hance to discover that I, lile most of us, possesed healing hands. Nowadays having been a reliable channel for God's healing attributes by using distant healingte chniques.here in MEXICO MANY DOCTORS NOW UNDERSTANDING THEIR LIMITS BT USING FORMAL MEDICINE SUGGEST THEIR PATIENTS TO LOOK FOR ALTERNATIVE MEDICINE.
tHANK YOU!
Ezequiel
Someone who has an immense fraternal love for you.
Wellness and prevention is how to practice medicine. Thank you Deepak for a beautiful article. Our western medical schools need to teach alternative medicine in depth to its students.
Namaste
Thank you very much for supporting Oprah. she has done more for this country than 10 government agencies together could ever dream about.
thank you again,
Sanita