I first wrote my manifesto while preparing a vendor’s table for my clinic at the first Sunfest–a fair in New Hampshire that celebrates sustainable living and alternative healthcare.
I was thinking about the correlation between the two, and was inspired to write down some ideas that had been in my head for some time. I came up with a simple document I called the “Ecological Medicine Manifesto” with twenty defining points. Right after I wrote it, I did a search online to find out whether the term “ecological medicine” was in use already, since as far as I knew, I had invented it that evening. To my surprise and delight, I saw that there was actually an ecological medicine movement, spearheaded by the Bioneers and the Science and Environmental Health Network, and a truly wonderful book by the same name—a collection of lectures at the Bioneers conference.
Spurred on by knowing there was a movement behind me, I handed out hundreds of copies of my manifesto at the fair, and spoke to many people about the idea of “Ecological Medicine.” Most were slightly baffled at the term, but liked what I had written.
I spent the winter rewriting parts of it, and thinking about why, after many years of being directly involved in alternative medicine and sustainable living, I had never heard of ecological medicine. Why had the term not caught on in the general public? The time seemed so ripe. I came to the conclusion that the term itself was not self-explanatory enough, and that people assumed “Ecological Medicine” was a type of medicine, such as “Naturopathic Medicine” or a general term such as “natural medicine” and didn’t bother to ask more.
Yet ecological medicine, or sustainable medicine, as I have come to call it, is not a type of medicine, rather, it is a concept against which one can (more…)
A recent article by Dr. Molly Punzo, M.D., shows that homeopathy may well be our best bet for treatment of Swine Flu , H1-N1. Historically, homeopathy has an excellent track record in treating epidemic illness, without the side effects of anti-viral medicines and vaccines–which are also slow to develop and unable to keep up with the brilliant mutations of ever-changing viruses.
Upper Valley Life Magazine Featured the Center for Sustainable Medicine and the philosophy of Didi Pershouse in their March of 2008 issue. Click here to download and read the article:
Mothers and fathers are the first line of care for most children’s health issues. It is up to parents to decide when to call the doctor, and what to do at home. Homeopathy is well suited to home care as it is safe, easy to use, inexpensive, and environmentally sound. It is used extensively in Europe and India, where it is practiced by MDs. Clinical trials have shown homeopathy to be very effective in treating a wide range of conditions. Children respond quickly to homeopathic care even with difficult to treat conditions such as tracheal malacia, RSV, allergies, nightmares, and behavior issues (though these should be treated by a professional homeopath.
In this class you will learn the basic principles of homeopathy: what it is, how it works, and how you can safely treat many of your family’s short-term health problems such as bee stings, fevers, colds, coughs, headaches, bruises, indigestion, poison-ivy, and more with the use of inexpensive homeopathic remedies.You will also learn when such conditions should be referred to a pediatrician or other health care professional.
Saturday, February 21st12-4 pm$40
Thetford Center, Vermont (see directions page)
To sign up or for more information call (802) 785-2503
The community acupuncture days are working beautifully here in Thetford Center. Word has spread like wildfire that people can get acupuncture for $20-$45, and the phone is ringing and the emails are coming in (the current going rate in the Upper Valley is $70-$125 for a private session.) This is clearly the right business model for the new economy. Alternative health care just has to become affordable, whether or not it is covered by insurance. For acupuncture to really work, people usually need to come at least once a week, and sometimes twice, and the treatments usually need to be continued for at least a couple of months. That means the treatments have to be affordable.
I found that when I was only offering private sessions at $75 an hour, or even back when they were $45, $50 or $60 an hour (I’ve been doing acupuncture for 15 years), people often came with the hope and expectation that one or two sessions should cure them. That’s fine if you are a healthy unmedicated person who has an acute shovelling injury (that’s what we get around here in the early winter when we are out of practice). But if you are coming with allergies, infertility, digestive problems, fatigue, depression, arthritis or any other chronic condition, chances are you are going to need weekly or biweekly treatment for at least a couple of months. When I was only offering private sessions, I was often hesitant to even let people know that they needed to come for longer, knowing how hard it would be on their finances. So I would say “Come for a few sessions, and then we’ll talk.”
Community acupuncture makes it possible for people to get the treatment they need, for as long as they need it. It also means people can stay and relax for as long as they like, since I am not trying to free up the treatment room at the end of every hour, there are extra spots available, so no one has to rush out.
I have two tables set up in one room, and a couch and two big comfy chairs in the next room. I am currently scheduling a new person every 20 minutes. Many community acupucture clinics schedule a new person every 10 minutes, and can drop their rates even lower. I am not that streamlined yet, nor am I sure that I want to be. I think 15-20 minutes of personal attention gives a little time to remember we are human and have some fun together.
To schedule an appointment, call 802-785-2503 or email me through the contact page.
I have a friend who brings me raw, unpasteurized milk, homemade yogurt, butter, and sour cream—all from cows feeding exclusively on grass, summer and winter.It all tastes incredible, and even better knowing that it comes directly from someone I know and like.
He is in excellent health, only needing a tune-up when he falls off a tractor or works a little too hard. At those times, I give him acupuncture, or a homeopathic remedy, a little hands on healing, and a bowl of soup, when we have time. During his visits to my clinic, he can lie down, go to a deep place of relaxation, and feel his energy being balanced out.
Essentially, we are doing each other the same favor—he is giving me food that is deeply nourishing, I am giving him health care that is deeply nourishing. Neither of us is harming the planet as we do it, and there is nothing in our work that is anything but positive, no side effects or toxins downstream. We both enjoy our own work, and benefit from each other’s. We trust each other’s work, knowing full well that only the best intentions go into it.
There is something very satisfying about the fact that his food gives me the energy to do my work, and my work gives him the energy to produce his food. It is just another cycle of nature, and one that has been going on for thousands and thousands and thousands of years, all over the world—the healer heals the community, the community feeds the healer, (since the healer doesn’t always have time to milk the cows.)
If I was practicing pharmaceutical medicine, and he was practicing chemical agribusiness, my “care” would be very different. I wouldn’t know him very well because he would be rushed in and out of his office visits. There certainly wouldn’t be time for a bowl of soup or casual conversation. Most of the drugs I gave him would be masking the symptoms but not actually balancing out his body, and often would create long term side effects which I would then treat with more drugs, without ever actually solving the initial problem. According to the American Medical Association Journal, he would have a substantial chance of dying from the drugs I gave him, and an even higher chance of developing serious complications. Adverse drug reactions to drugs properly administered are estimated to be somewhere between the fourth and sixth leading cause of death in the United States.[1] Standard medicine as a whole–if you take into account medical and pharmaceutical errors, adverse side effects, bedsores, and hospital-acquired infections—is the number one cause of death in the U.S. Higher than heart attacks, car accidents, cancer, and all the rest.[2]
His cows, meanwhile, would be eating pesticides, herbicides, genetically engineered products, growth hormones, antibiotics, and other strange non-grass items like leftover cakes and cookies, and blood of other animals. If he brought me the milk and meat from those cows, I would be absorbing little if any calcium, my gut would be off balance from having pasteurized milk without any living enzymes, and further imbalanced by the antibiotics, which kill off the good flora necessary to maintain good health. The hormones fed to the cows would be interfering with my own hormones, making me more susceptible to certain cancers. Essentially, I would be slowly accumulating the residue of all the chemicals that the cow’s “food” was grown with (to kill off every bug, weed, and microbe around it) and all the medicines given to the cows to make up for the cow’s poor nutrition and housing.
At the same time, we both would be creating a nasty stream of waste from our practices, which, combined with all the other agribusiness and pharmaceutical industries would kill off whole landscapes, rivers, and parts of the coastline, leaving large dead zones in which nothing good can flourish.
This also is a cycle, a short but nasty cycle that has been going on for less than 100 years. An unnatural cycle, that just barely arrived, and yet it threatens to ruin everything: our planet, our health, our historical way of life, and even our happiness.
To turn this cycle around doesn’t actually take that much, except a commitment to return to ways that have already been proven sound–sustainable agriculture and medicine. It also requires a commitment to stop being threatened by the fearful voices that say the only safety from germs is to create sterility. A sterile world is a dead world. A fertile world lives and thrives on interrelatedness and interdependence.
[1] Incidence of adverse drug reactions in hospitalized patients: a meta-analyses of prospective studies Lazarou J, Pomeranz BH, Corey PN.
JAMA 1998 Apr 15;279(15):1200-5.
This study analyzed 39 prospective U.S. studies to determine the incidence of serious and fatal adverse drug reactions (ADRs). Serious ADRs were defined as those requiring hospitalization or resulting in permanent damage. Only ADRs requiring hospital admission or occurring in the hospital were included in the analysis. Overall, the incidence of serious ADRs was 6.7 per 100 patients and that of fatal ADRs was 0.32 per 100 patients. Extrapolation of these data to the entire U.S. population revealed that in 1994 alone, over 2.2 million patients experienced a serious ADR and 106,000 died from this complication. These figures place ADRs between the fourth and sixth leading cause of death in the U.S. These are conservative estimates, since they don’t take in consideration possible ADRs, errors in drug administration, patient non-compliance, overdose, drug abuse, therapeutic failures and injuries and deaths occurring in nursing home patients.
Well, I’ve gone and done it, something I’ve been considering for years. I have rented out my house in the woods to the new teacher at the high school, and moved into the old house that holds the Two Rivers Clinic and Center for Sustainable Medicine. One of my colleagues had moved out and another was looking for a shared space with his sweetie, so I said “This is it: an opportunity to try truly sustainable living as a health care provider.” Yes, we’re all here–kids, medical dog and all. The chickens are on their way as soon as I get a fence up. Not all amenities are quite in place yet, but it’s amazing what a localvore can cook up on a single electric burner when friends are coming for dinner, and lucky for me I have several close friends with showers and the best secret swimming hole just a minute’s walk away, since a claw foot bathtub turns out to be a lot more expensive to install than I thought.
My old office is now my bedroom and writing space, and the office next door is back to its original use as the boy’s bedroom. Henry and Alden asked me if they could spray paint (more…)
I have just returned from a workshop on Community Acupuncture put on by a group called “Working Class Acupuncture” in Portland, Oregon.
I have been toying with the idea of low-cost group treatments for some time now, and this workshop has convinced me that Community Acupuncture is the way to go. In August I will start offering group treatments at the Two Rivers Clinic in Thetford Center, Vermont for a sliding scale of $20-45 per treatment (you decide where you fit on the scale). For an appointment, call 802-785-2503, or email me through the contact page.
If we look at the Sustainable Medicine Manifesto, Community Acupuncture is a good example of sustainable medicine in many ways:
1. It is financially affordable, for both clients and practitioners, making acupuncture available to all who need it, rather than limiting it to those who can afford it.
2. It is non-toxic, to clients and to the earth, creating less waste per treatment than a single can of soda.
3. It is slow medicine—clients are allowed to relax and stay for as long as they like.
4. It builds and restores community connections by encouraging people to relax in a meditative environment with their neighbors.
5. It is pattern-based and proactive—treating the underlying cause of the illness based on whole body diagnosis.
6. The only thing sterile about Community Acupuncture are the needles. Community Acupuncture creates a healthy fertile environment in which people can grow and change.
Julian Winston, (1941-2005) was one of our best scholars and historians of Homeopathy. His article about homeopathy in the treatment of epidemics has been widely republished. I include it here as it is becoming more relevant each year as global warming and antibiotic-resistant bacteria create new generations of epidemic illness that standard pharmaceutical medicine is unprepared for.
Homeopathy, on the other hand, is far more flexible than pharmaceutical medicine, and is routinely used to treat epidemics in India and other countries.
Some History of the Treatment of Epidemics with Homeopathy
by Julian Winston
From its earliest days, homeopathy has been able to treat epidemic diseases with a substantial rate of success, when compared to conventional treatments. It was these successes that placed the practice of homeopathy so firmly in the consciousness of people world-wide. (more…)
This very important collaborative statement was written in February 2002 by the Science and Environmental Health Network. I first found it soon after writing the Sustainable Medicine Manifesto, and was amazed and delighted to find that I was in such good company.
Ecological Medicine: A Call for Inquiry and Action
Ecological Medicine is a new field of inquiry and action to reconcile the care and health of ecosystems, populations, communities, and individuals.
The health of Earth’s ecosystem is the foundation of all health. Human impact in the form of population pressure, resource abuse, economic self-interest, and inappropriate technologies is rapidly degrading the environment. This impact, in turn, is creating new patterns of human and ecosystem poverty and disease. The tension among ecosystem health, public health, and individual health is reaching a breaking point at the beginning of the Twenty-First Century.
Public health measures, education, and medical advances have significantly reduced death and disease in many parts of the world, but some advances come at considerable cost, and the benefits are not equally distributed. (more…)