I really liked the ten 'highest in personal existence' points (read them several times), and I can see my mind still needs to catch up to the bodies natural rhythm, as well as me paying attention to my body's voice. Thanks Deepak!

Love, Char

"Even as alternative medicine becomes more popular, it faces a huge challenge. Can it reliably replace or enhance conventional medicine?"

"What we're looking for is complementarity."

This is from NeuroLogica blog... talks about CAM(Complementary and Alternative Medicine) with the evolution analogy:

Alternative Medicine and the Evolution Analogy
Published by Steven Novella
Nov 13, 2007

Martin Rundkvist at Aardvarchaeology wrote an interesting blog entry looking at the cultural phenomenon of CAM (complementary and alternative medicine) from the point of view of Darwinian selective pressures. He argues that CAM modalities are under two types of negative selective pressures - to minimize harm and to avoid being co-opted by mainstream medicine, and that these two selective pressures produce CAM modalities that are optimized for zero-effect.

The notion of CAM as a cultural meme that evolves is very apt - an evolutionary analogy I have used myself. Culture and ideas certainly evolve, and it is a very useful exercise to think about the selective pressures that drive this evolution. The marketplace is also a system that evolves, and CAM very much exists within the market system.

I think Rundkvist has hit upon two real pressures, but we can take this evolutionary analysis much further. Orac has also blogged about Rundkvist’s original entry, arguing that these two negative selective pressures are not very important because CAM modalities never go extinct - they persist even if they are harmful or versions of them become scientific.

Orac has a point, but I think he is looking at the evolutionary analogy too narrowly. Even though few CAM modalities go extinct, their popularity waxes and wanes. Some modalities become more widespread while others become increasingly marginalized. Also, cultural evolution does not require extinction - a CAM species can itself change over time. Also, even though modalities rarely vanish, new ones do appear - usually variations on old ideas, but better adapted to the CAM market.

What are the dominant market pressures affecting CAM? I think Rundkvist and Orac are both correct in implying that CAM modalities are NOT under pressure to actually work. Rather they are selected to be user friendly, they are optimized for customer service in those aspects that customers can readily perceive. Therefore CAM practitioners spend time with their clients, they use treatments that are not intimidating or frightening, that do not involve discomfort, that may even be pleasant. They also tell their clients what they want to hear: your problem is simple and I can fix it without risk.

CAM modalities have evolved toward these features because they are not constrained by reality. They don’t have to work, they don’t have to be based upon science or evidence, and they don’t have to be honest.

CAM also reveals the weakness of evolutionary pressures in the market place of medicine. The problem is that customers (patients) are mostly not able to perceive the quality of the medicine that is actually being delivered. This is because of two things mainly. The first is that the practice of medicine is highly complex and specialized, so unless you have a significant amount of medical training it is very difficult to judge the clinical decision making and knowledge base of your provider. You can use proxies - like certification and reputation - but this is imperfect. The evidence shows that patient perception of the quality of the medical care delivered to them correlates with bedside manner - and not quality.

But even more important than this is that biological systems and disease processes are too complex and chaotic to assess the outcome of interventions anecdotally. The placebo effect, confirmation bias, assumption of cause and effect, and a host of other psychological factors confound any attempt to decide from personal experience if any intervention was effective or not. The best medical intervention available can still result in a bad outcome, and ineffective treatments will not prevent a self-limiting illness from getting better on its own.

Admittedly, this is overstating the case. If you have acute appendicitis and you get treated by an acupuncturist or homeopath, you will likely die. If you go to a mainstream doctor you will get a simple surgical procedure and be fine. Some illnesses and outcomes are obvious enough to perceive and drive behavior. We have to think of CAM and evolutionary pressures also in the context of niche. CAM has filled those niches (an evolutionary phenomenon called habitat tracking) where it is most difficult to perceive outcomes: with chronic and common complaints that tend to wax and wane over time but are largely benign, or with self-limiting illnesses that will get better on their own. The notion of complementary medicine itself is an attempt to expand the niche of CAM by piggybacking onto scientific medicine. You will get an appendectomy so you won’t die from a ruptured appendix, and then get completely worthless therapeutic touch in recovery.

In the niches CAM has filled, CAM modalities are largely unhinged from scientific reality and the constraints of professionalism. So they evolve under the selective pressures of the marketplace, which drive service, feel-good interventions, wishful thinking, and profit for its practitioners - but not effectiveness. Selective pressures for effectiveness, in environmental niches where it can be reasonably perceived, strongly favor scientific medicine, and so scientific medicine has dominated there.

Also, the evolutionary environment of CAM is the marketplace, but this marketplace is not completely free. It is constrained by regulation that is designed to establish a standard of care and protect the public from fraud, deception, harmful treatments, or just worthless treatments. CAM does not like regulation, because regulation constrains its evolutionary choices. This is precisely why CAM proponents are pushing for “healthcare freedom.” What they really want is a free marketplace for medicine, or at least CAM (they have no problem with a double standard).

A completely free CAM marketplace, free from any constraints of regulation, allows CAM to evolve toward optimality for service and profit. So while CAM is evolving under the above pressures, CAM practitioners are trying to actually alter the environment in which CAM lives. This is like a species changing its environment rather than adapting to it. Man is the quintessential example of this, but there are others - like beavers building dams.

All of this is exactly why scientific ethical medicine requires regulation. Selective pressures of scientific plausibility and evidence for safety and effectiveness need to be imposed upon medicine. History has clearly shown that consumers do not impose these pressures by the choices they make. That is why CAM continues to survive.

www.theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php?p=48

Interesting...

Keep up the good work...

Wisdom of several traditions tells that Prayer is an effective tool to heal.

Apache Prayer

A Prayer Addressed To The Mountain Spirits

Mountain Spirit, leader of the Mountain Spirits, your body is holy.
By means of it, make him well again.
Make his body like your own.
Make him strong again.

He wants to get up with all of his body.
For that reason, he is performing this ceremony,
Do that which he has asked of you.

Long ago, it seems you restored someone's legs and eyes for them.
This has been said.
In the same way, make him free again from disease.
That is why I am speaking to you.

Slager,

"Old age, body
empty, all libido fled
to mind. What medicine?"

"10. You see all change, including birth and death, against the background of immortality. Whatever is unchanging is most real to you"

Alchemy, then, is the Great Work of nature that perfects this chaotic matter, whether it be expressed as the metals, the cosmos, the body, or the substance of our souls - Carl Jung

"10. Cells come and go by the billions, but the body as a whole is sustained. The invisible blueprint of life outlives individual cells."

Beautiful example to me: the Universe itself.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y8KCSSlRJCI

As wide as all reality, the mind can fly wherever it wants to and the sphere of the forever young is at your fingertips :)

Mieke

Deepak,

Your crystal clear affirmations peak Truth of our sacred Body. "Hallelujah" response comes to mind and out this intentBlog mouth via arms and fingertips.

Agreement has an underground effect like music on the body. Agreement goes to the heart of matter and draws forth that which is golden. Agreement lines up matter core to core. Agreement is lazer like beaming as a two-edged sword. Agreement is a sword of peace in a New Humanity.

Trish~~

Nice linkage between cellular level and the level of personal identity.

A good overall viewpoint to explore. The whole approach feels like a very natural, life-affirming way to move through one's existence.

I like the way each item in the personal identity level corresponds to a similarly numbered item at the cellular level.

Like I have often said, you are amazing when you speak inside your area of expertise. This is the kind of material that made you famous in the first place.

You said that human beings need an overall vision for inspiration and purpose. A Buddhist precept that I find so worthwhile is : A philosophy that embraces all of knowledge is indispenable.

I know that you have met with Ram Dass. He used to say that people can get stuck. Unless we have the words in our head and an habitual practise of acting on them, we may not get unstuck. I assume that is what a talk therapist tries to do.

Many years ago I heard on the news about an 8 year old boy that committed suicide. I assume he had no words in his head to rise above that level or the habit of acting on those words. Of course though, such a dark hole can be bigger than anyone. I wrote my first little novel called the Dark Woods in response to that tragedy. In the novel, my young hero finds his spiritual preceptor. He never goes home to his valley again.

Dear Mr. Chopra,
You got me thinking. How do you reconcile aspiration with well being?
I saw adocumentary on some men climbing the Himalayas. One was almost to the top but he had a broken ankle and no more supplies. His base camp radioed him to come back. They said he would kill his guides if he continued. They should not have to carry him. But he said he was so close. Well it went to commercial and I don't know the ending. But everyone in the base camp got on the radion individually to plead with him. He just kept saying he could make it.

I really could not think of any questions, but I did see Mike needing a hot stone message, that might just straighten him right up!
Also Monica is so well spoken, it was wonderful to here of all the amazing things, going on... in your world!
*******************************

Your Brother has a hot voice to, but not as sweet as yours.

Love

I think the future of the body lies with its full connection with mind. I do not mean physical connection through neck that we already have, I mean it at much deeper levels of understanding of spirituality as holistic.

Hello Deepak,

Cells, proccess of evolution of living bodies started from cell to cell. Earth was the victim of dangerous natural calamites so the the living elements on the earth too. and as you said is highly important i.e.
"Cells don't struggle to remain alive. They exist in the flow and rhythm of Nature. "

"Cells come and go by the billions, but the body as a whole is sustained. The invisible blueprint of life outlives individual cells."

What I think that, Mind is capable of releasing and forming new cells when the mind wants. when we have more new cells everyday then body will Stay younger than than the age and cheerfulness is graceful than the age.

Yoga, meditation or say tuning the mind n body for the betterment - is itself an way of releasing the old and forming the new cells.

thanks for the future body
Nilesh Gore.

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/12

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/12

Excellent video on cancer

Deepak, interesting blog. But I think people generally are not prepared to appreciate the insight of the alternative medicine healers. This reminded me of the following koan like piece by the Slovenian poet Tomas Salamun, translated by Charles Simic -

Emptiness! my bride!
Who whistles? who listens?