Energy Medicine

How can energy medicine principles help you and your child?

In my experience, the simple answer is that energy medicine can enhance your understanding of your child. As doctors, one of our primary jobs is to educate our patients and their families. I used to practice pediatrics in the conventional way, and while I enjoyed it very much I recall how I used to say things like "Oh, he'll grow out of it" and "There's a bug going around" and "She'll be fine, don't worry about it". While I know I made these comments to provide reassurance to concerned parents, I also know it was because many times I didn't have any other answers that made sense.

After several years of continued learning about the energy medicine philosophy, I have found a much better way to describe and account for those symptoms and problems that kids can have that don't fit into any diagnosis or condition. In fact, labeling and diagnosing is far less important to me, now that I can evaluate my patients from an energy based perspective.

Energy medicine principles are flexible, and they allow for the individual variation that is present in all populations, including your own family members. It is this very sense of freedom that I would like to convey to you throughout this site.

This is a vast subject, but I am up for the challenge, as I know the impact and results for you and your child will be well worth it. You are the main teacher and model for your child. No doctor or any other type of practitioner could ever come close to having the influence that you have with them. I encourage you to learn as much as you can on these pages, and feel free to ask questions or make comments as they will likely benefit others as well.

How can we bridge the gap between conventional and alternative medicine?

I believe an integrated approach is best. That means you should use conventional treatments when required, and use alternative or complementary modalities when they are able to meet your individual child's needs. I believe they are both valid. It has been very satisfying to see the balanced utilization of conventional and alternative treatments working well for children and sometimes for their whole families.

The details on how this is done is quite variable and depends on your own comfort level as well as who you can find as a practitioner in your local area. It is unlikely you will find very many pediatricians like me who have gone the route of completely changing their practices to alternative medicine only. However, I see nothing wrong with selecting several practitioners who can work together to provide the various modalities that may be beneficial for your child. For example, I have patients in common with chiropractors, massage therapists, physical therapists, craniosacral therapists, primary care doctors, naturopaths, etc.

It is logical to me that each child will require an individualized approach and will likely need several different practitioners to provide treatments for them. Of course, it makes sense to seek out and find those who have the most experience in treating kids.

I will just add that the merging of conventional and alternative medicine is definitely happening now. However, I would not wait for some sort of blanket acceptance of the many energy modalities by the medical establishment or insurance companies. This is unlikely to happen for many decades and by then your kids will all be grown up!

Is evidence based medicine really relevant to your child and family?

I have nothing against evidence based medicine, which seeks to identify those approaches which can be "proven" by science to work and demonstrate efficacy. I do have a problem with the underlying assumptions that lead to current recommendations for children.

I have never seen two kids who are exactly the same. This should be obvious to anyone. They are all different and unique, requiring individualized approaches for almost everything. To begin a statement by saying "All kids should..." is a mistake, in my opinion, and leads to problems and undue stress on both parents and their children.

Commercials on TV and the media in general are blatant in this regard and I believe some balancing of the scales is in order. Who among you would base decisions solely on the medical research and not on your child's individual strengths and weaknesses or challenges? Let's use some common sense and be practical about how far we go in categorizing and expecting all kids to conform to some standard.

My experience as a physician tells me this is far down on the list when it comes to relevance for your child. I think it is prudent to take into account the basic findings of the evidence based approach. But specific decisions for your child should be made after a more all-encompassing evaluation. This should include, in my opinion, an energy medicine interpretation and perspective.

What should all parents know about energy medicine?

I would like all parents to know that energy medicine is completely compatible with every other form of medicine. There is no conflict between systems of medicine or schools of thought, rather they are additive and contribute to our overall understanding.

There is no contraindication from a religious or spiritual perspective, I believe we are simply energetic human beings made up of physical, mental, emotional and spiritual components.

My experience is that energy medicine fills in many of the gaps left unanswered when a limited conventional mindset is all that is used in the evaluation and treatment of children.

I hope more of you will explore this area of medicine to benefit your kids, and thereby enhance their health and wellbeing.