scholarly journals Clinical Holistic Medicine: The Dean Ornish Program (“Opening the Heart”) in Cardiovascular Disease

2006 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 1977-1984 ◽  
Author(s):  
Søren Ventegodt ◽  
Efrat Merrick ◽  
Joav Merrick
Keyword(s):  
Holistic Health ◽  
Exercise Stress ◽  
Holistic Medicine ◽  
Complex Treatment ◽  
Allocation Of Resources ◽  
Medicine Research ◽  
Holistic Treatment ◽  
Heart Patients ◽  
Medical Theory ◽  
Whole Foods

Dean Ornish of the Preventive Medicine Research Institute in Sausalito, California has created an intensive holistic treatment for coronary heart patients with improved diet (low fat, whole foods, plant based), exercise, stress management, and social support that has proven to be efficient. In this paper, we analyze the rationale behind his cure in relation to contemporary holistic medical theory. In spite of a complex treatment program, the principles seem to be simple and in accordance with holistic medical theories, like the Antonovsky concept of rehabilitating the sense of coherence and the life mission theory for holistic medicine. We believe there is a need for the allocation of resources for further research into the aspects of holistic health and its methods, where positive and significant results have been proven and reproduced at several sites.

scholarly journals Clinical Holistic Health: Advanced Tools for Holistic Medicine

2006 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 2048-2065 ◽  
Author(s):  
Søren Ventegodt ◽  
Birgitte Clausen ◽  
May Lyck Nielsen ◽  
Joav Merrick
Keyword(s):  
Spiritual Healing ◽  
Holistic Health ◽  
The Body ◽  
Holistic Medicine ◽  
Dark Side ◽  
Chronic Patients ◽  
Patient Will ◽  
Medical Theory ◽  
The Will ◽  
The Many

According to holistic medical theory, the patient will heal when old painful moments, the traumatic events of life that are often called “gestalts”, are integrated in the present “now”. The advanced holistic physician’s expanded toolbox has many different tools to induce this healing, some that are more dangerous and potentially traumatic than others. The more intense the therapeutic technique, the more emotional energy will be released and contained in the session, but the higher also is the risk for the therapist to lose control of the session and lose the patient to his or her own dark side. To avoid harming the patient must be the highest priority in holistic existential therapy, making sufficient education and training an issue of highest importance. The concept of “stepping up” the therapy by using more and more “dramatic” methods to get access to repressed emotions and events has led us to a “therapeutic staircase” with ten steps: (1) establishing the relationship; (2) establishing intimacy, trust, and confidentiality; (3) giving support and holding; (4) taking the patient into the process of physical, emotional, and mental healing; (5) social healing of being in the family; (6) spiritual healing — returning to the abstract wholeness of the soul; (7) healing the informational layer of the body; (8) healing the three fundamental dimensions of existence: love, power, and sexuality in a direct way using, among other techniques, “controlled violence” and “acupressure through the vagina”; (9) mind-expanding and consciousness-transformative techniques like psychotropic drugs; and (10) techniques transgressing the patient's borders and, therefore, often traumatizing (for instance, the use of force against the will of the patient).We believe that the systematic use of the staircase will greatly improve the power and efficiency of holistic medicine for the patient and we invite a broad cooperation in scientifically testing the efficiency of the advanced holistic medical toolbox on the many chronic patients in need of a cure. The level-8 tools can traumatize the patient if used incorrectly. Some of the level 9 tools and most of the level-10 tools can be severely traumatising for the patient, even when used correctly, so there must be compelling reasons for using them, and the patient must know, understand, and accept the risk before the onset of treatment.

scholarly journals Rationality and Irrationality in Ryke Geerd Hamer's System for Holistic Treatment of Metastatic Cancer

2005 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 93-102 ◽  
Author(s):  
Søren Ventegodt ◽  
Niels Jørgen Andersen ◽  
Joav Merrick
Keyword(s):  
Cancer Metastasis ◽  
Metastatic Cancer ◽  
Evolutionary Process ◽  
Subsequent Development ◽  
Holistic Medicine ◽  
Medical Community ◽  
Holistic Treatment ◽  
Medical Theory ◽  
Medicine Today ◽  
German Physician

The aim of this paper is to examine if the “medical laws” found by the German physician Ryke Geerd Hamer are substantiated by contemporary holistic medical theory. He developed a psychosomatic theory after a personal emotional trauma that he believed resulted in his subsequent development of a testicular cancer. From our analysis, it is clear that the two most fundamental principles of Hamer's work, the psychosomatic “iron law of cancer” (Hamer's first “law”) and the principle of pathogenesis being reversed into salutogenesis (Hamer's second “law”), are well-established principles of holistic medicine today. Hamer's understanding of symbols in medicine, virus and bacteria, and the evolutionary process itself (Hamer's third, fourth, and fifth “law”) differs a great deal from both traditional and contemporary holistic medical theory and we did not find them substantiated. Hamer's understanding of cancer metastasis was built on these failing principles and therefore not substantiated either. Altogether, it seems that Hamer's thinking was basically sound as the most fundamental principles of his work were built on an understanding very similar to holistic medical thinkers of today. We found his postulate that metastatic cancer patients can be healed or their health improved by using his system of holistic medicine likely to be true, at least for some motivated patients. This must be tested scientifically, however, before being accepted. His presentation of his system and work has been idiosyncratic and highly provocative, which has alienated him from the whole medical community.

scholarly journals Clinical Holistic Health: Advanced Tools for Holistic Medicine

2006 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 84-101 ◽  
Author(s):  
Søren Ventegodt ◽  
Birgitte Clausen ◽  
May Lyck Nielsen ◽  
Joav Merrick
Keyword(s):  
Holistic Health ◽  
Holistic Medicine

scholarly journals Clinical Holistic Medicine: Holistic Treatment of Mental Disorders

2005 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 427-445 ◽  
Author(s):  
Søren Ventegodt ◽  
Niels Jørgen Andersen ◽  
Shimshon Neikrug ◽  
Isack Kandel ◽  
Joav Merrick
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Mentally Ill ◽  
Holistic Medicine ◽  
Attitudes And Beliefs ◽  
Clinical Experiences ◽  
Negative Attitudes ◽  
Holistic Treatment ◽  
The Core ◽  
Death Denial ◽  
Responsibility Scale

We believe that holistic medicine can be used for patient's with mental health disorders. With holistic psychiatry, it is possible to help the mentally ill patient to heal existentially. As in holistic medicine, the methods are love or intense care, winning the trust of the patient, getting permission to give support and holding, and daring to be fully at the patient's service. Our clinical experiences have led us to believe that mental health patient's can heal if only you can make him or her feel the existential pain at its full depth, understand what the message of the suffering is, and let go of all the negative attitudes and beliefs connected with the disease. Many mentally ill young people would benefit from a few hours of existential holistic processing in order to confront the core existential pains. To help the mentally ill patient, you must understand the level of responsibility and help process the old traumas that made the patient escape responsibility for his or her own life and destiny. To guide the work, we have developed a responsibility scale going from (1) free perception over (2) emotional pain to (3) psychic death (denial of life purpose) further down to (4) escape and (5) denial to (6) destruction of own perception and (7) hallucination further down to (8) coma, suicide, and unconsciousness. This scale seems to be a valuable tool to understand the state of consciousness and the nature of the process of healing that the patient must go through.

scholarly journals Clinical Holistic Medicine: Holistic Adolescent Medicine

2004 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
pp. 551-561 ◽  
Author(s):  
Søren Ventegodt ◽  
Mohammed Morad ◽  
Joseph Press ◽  
Joav Merrick ◽  
Daniel T.L. Shek
Keyword(s):  
Quality Of Life ◽  
Personal Development ◽  
Muscle Tension ◽  
Young Person ◽  
Holistic Medicine ◽  
Adolescent Medicine ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Holistic Treatment ◽  
Negative Beliefs

The holistic medical approach seems to be efficient and can also be used in adolescent medicine. Supporting the teenager to grow and develop is extremely important in order to prevent many of the problems they can carry into adulthood. The simple consciousness-based, holistic medicine — giving love, winning trust, giving holding, and getting permission to help the patient feel, understand, and let go of negative beliefs — is easy for the physician interested in this kind of practice and it requires little previous training for the physician to be able to care for his/her patient. A deeper insight into the principles of holistic treatment and a thorough understanding of our fellow human beings are making it work even better. Holistic medicine is not a miracle cure, but rather a means by which the empathic physician can support the patient in improving his/her future life in respect to quality of life, health, and functional capacity — through coaching the patient to work on him/herself in a hard and disciplined manner. When the patient is young, this work is so much easier. During our lifetime, we have several emotional traumas arranged in the subconscious mind with the smallest at the top, and it is normal for the person to work on a large number of traumatic events that have been processed to varying degrees. Some traumas have been acknowledged, some are still being explored by the person, and yet others are still preconscious, which can be seen for example in the form of muscle tension. Sometimes the young dysfunctional patient carries severe traumas of a violent or sexual nature, but the physician skilled in the holistic medical toolbox can help the patient on his/her way to an excellent quality of life, full self-expression, a love and sex life, and a realization of his/her talents — all that a young patient is typically dreaming about. Biomedicine is not necessary or even recommended when the physical or mental symptoms are caused by disturbances in the personal development that can be corrected with love and understanding. If possible, biomedicine must be avoided, even if this means suffering for the young person, who needs to confront the tough realities of life in order to grow into an able and sound adult.

The Holistic Alternative to Scientific Medicine: History and Analysis

1980 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 133-147 ◽  
Author(s):  
Howard S. Berliner ◽  
J. Warren Salmon
Keyword(s):  
Care Delivery ◽  
Modern Medicine ◽  
Holistic Health ◽  
Holistic Medicine ◽  
Present System ◽  
Scientific Medicine ◽  
Health Movement ◽  
Medicine History ◽  
Consumer Dissatisfaction ◽  
The Relationship

The resurgence of the holistic health movement in the 1970s can be in part attributed to increasing consumer dissatisfaction with the present system of medical care delivery. This article traces the rise and decline of modern medicine by analyzing the assumption of hegemony by scientific medicine and its practitioners. Then it describes the challenges that holistic medicine's theories and therapies currently pose to scientific medicine's organizational form and practical content. Holistic medicine is assessed in terms of its organizational and conceptual basis, and the relationship between holistic medicine and the needs of advanced capitalist society is discussed.

scholarly journals Clinical Holistic Medicine: Holistic Treatment of Rape and Incest Trauma

2005 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 288-297 ◽  
Author(s):  
Søren Ventegodt ◽  
Isack Kandel ◽  
Shimshon Neikrug ◽  
Joav Merric
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Abuse ◽  
Life Events ◽  
Severe Trauma ◽  
Holistic Medicine ◽  
Emotional Life ◽  
Female Population ◽  
Holistic Treatment ◽  
Patient Will ◽  
Based Medicine

Studies indicate that at least 15% of the female population in western countries has experienced sexual abuse and severe sexual traumas. This paper explains how even serious sexual abuse and trauma can be healed when care and resources encourage the patient to return to the painful life events. When the physician cares and receives the trust of the patient, emotional holding and processing will follow quite naturally. Spontaneous regression seems to be an almost pain-free way of integrating the severe traumas from earlier experiences of rape and incest. This technique is a recommended alternative to classical timeline therapy using therapeutic commands. When traumatized patients distance themselves from their soul (feelings, sexuality, and existential depth), they often lose their energy and enjoyment of life. However, this does not mean that they are lost to life. Although it may seem paradoxical, a severe trauma may be a unique opportunity to regain enjoyment of life. The patient will often be richly rewarded for the extensive work of clearing and sorting out in order to experience a new depth in his or her existence and emotional life, with a new ability to understand life in general and other people in particular. So what may look like a tragedy can be transformed into a unique gift; if the patient gets sufficient support, there is the possibility of healing and learning. Consciousness-based medicine seems to provide severely traumatized patients with the quality of support and care needed for their soul to heal.

scholarly journals Clinical Holistic Medicine: Factors Influencing The Therapeutic Decision-Making. From Academic Knowledge to Emotional Intelligence and Spiritual “Crazy” Wisdom

2007 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 1932-1949 ◽  
Author(s):  
Søren Ventegodt ◽  
Isack Kandel ◽  
Joav Merrick
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Success Rate ◽  
Holistic Medicine ◽  
Truth Telling ◽  
Academic Knowledge ◽  
Healing Power ◽  
Medical Theory ◽  
Therapeutic Behavior ◽  
Therapeutic Decision Making ◽  
The Mind

Scientific holistic medicine is built on holistic medical theory, on therapeutic and ethical principles. The rationale is that the therapist can take the patient into a state of salutogenesis, or existential healing, using his skills and knowledge. But how ever much we want to make therapy a science it remains partly an art, and the more developed the therapist becomes, the more of his/her decisions will be based on intuition, feeling and even inspiration that is more based on love and human concern and other spiritual motivations than on mental reason and rationality in a simple sense of the word. The provocative and paradoxal medieval western concept of the “truth telling clown”, or the eastern concepts of “crazy wisdom” and “holy madness” seems highly relevant here. The problem is how we can ethically justify this kind of highly “irrational” therapeutic behavior in the rational setting of a medical institution. We argue here that holistic therapy has a very high success rate and is doing no harm to the patient, and encourage therapists, psychiatrists, psychologist and other academically trained “helpers” to constantly measure their own success-rate. This paper discusses many of the important factors that influence clinical holistic decision-making. Sexuality could, as many psychoanalysts from Freud to Reich and Searles have believed, be the most healing power that exists and also the most difficult for the mind to comprehend, and thus the most “crazy-wise” tool of therapy.

scholarly journals Clinical Holistic Medicine: Chronic Infections and Autoimmune Diseases

2005 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 155-164 ◽  
Author(s):  
Søren Ventegodt ◽  
Joav Merrick
Keyword(s):  
Immune System ◽  
Rapid Development ◽  
Immune Defense ◽  
The Body ◽  
Holistic Medicine ◽  
Medical Community ◽  
Chronic Infections ◽  
Holistic Treatment ◽  
Important Challenge ◽  
Intercellular Communications

The consciousness-based (holistic) medical toolbox might be useful in general practice and in cases of recurrent infections and chronic infection or inflammation. From our clinical experiences, there is hope for improvement from a number of diseases caused by disorders affecting the regulation of the immune system when the physician includes the holistic medical approach.Our scientific understanding of the connection between consciousness and cellular order is still limited. Consciousness-based holistic medicine removes (as explained by the holistic process theory of healing) the “blockages” in the tissues of the body and facilitates function and informational exchange of the cells of the body. Many blockages and repressed feelings in an area would imply “noise and disturbances”” on the level of intercellular communications, which in turn means major difficulties for the cells of the immune system. For this they are totally dependent on the body information system, which the holistic treatment aims to recover. Processing the blockages increases the coherence of the cells and organism, thus increasing the intercellular flow of information in the area and thus strengthening the immune defense and healing the disease. The area of clinical holistic medicine is going through a rapid development and the toolbox of consciousness-based medicine is available for dealing with many diseases arising from disturbances in the regulation of the immune system. Holistic medicine has yet to be better explained scientifically and our proposed holistic cures have yet to be documented clinically. We invite the medical community to cooperate on this important challenge.

scholarly journals Clinical Holistic Medicine: Holistic Treatment of Children

2004 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
pp. 581-588 ◽  
Author(s):  
Søren Ventegodt ◽  
Mohammed Morad ◽  
Gideon Vardi ◽  
Joav Merrick
Keyword(s):  
Children And Adolescents ◽  
Holistic Approach ◽  
Chronically Ill ◽  
Health Problems ◽  
Holistic Medicine ◽  
Childhood And Adolescence ◽  
Holistic Treatment ◽  
The Family ◽  
Based Medicine

We believe a holistic approach to problems in childhood and adolescence will benefit the child, adolescent, and the whole family. As a rule, children have far less to say in the family than their parents. Therefore, it is the parents who set the agenda and decide how things are done at home and in relation to the child. Most often, it is also the parents who have a problem when the child is not thriving. The child thus acts as the thermometer of the family. When children are not feeling well or are sick, the parents are not doing well either. Most problems arising from dysfunctional patterns are almost impossible for the parents to solve on their own, but with help and support from the holistically oriented physician, we believe that many problems can be discovered and solved. Not only can health problems be addressed, but also problems of poor thriving in the family in general. With the physician in the role of a coach, the family can be provided with relevant exercises that will change the patterns of dysfunction. Consciousness-based medicine also seems to be efficient with children and adolescents, who are much more sensitive to the psychosocial dimensions than adults. Five needs seem to be essential for the thriving and health of the child: attention, respect, love, acceptance (touch), and acknowledgment. The physician should be able to see if the child lacks fulfillment in one or more of these needs, and he can then demonstrate to the parents how these needs should be handled. This should be followed by simple instructions and exercises for the parents in the spirit of coaching. This approach is especially relevant when the child is chronically ill.

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