Brought to you by William Pollak D.V.M.

and the Fairfield Animal Hospital.

Holistic medicines usually include unmolested, naturally occurring substances that are vehicles for healing. If processing of some kind is necessary, it is done minimally to gently keep the wholeness intact and enhance the healing intent of nature's product. This approach allows the beneficial effects on many of the patient's systems: mentally, emotionally and spiritually, as well as physically. The intact, whole remedy is a complete, natural package that encourages balance and the restoration of health, in a multidimensional way.

This natural healing is done through adding packets of raw love/intelligence and enabling the intertwined life functions of the living system to rebalance at a higher level of Wellness. As a by-product of rebalancing, disease is minimized. It is life, adding to life, exploding into greater life, which is greater Health.

Laboratory chemicals are partially modifying since they are only partially from nature. They are, but a quick fix. Medicinal use with this intent has its place (even in holistic medicine), but giving it more credence and power in enhancing the length and the quality of life is indeed entering shaky ground. It is the completeness of a natural remedy merging with the completeness of the patient that allows for the possibility of cure in the greatest sense.

Laboratory synthesized chemical medicines (drugs) add violence (agitation) to the living system mentally, emotionally, and physically. Adding stripped versions of nature with the intent of removing the "bad" symptoms of disease, but not their complex effects usually leads to further imbalances that localize elsewhere. Chemicals are great when needed as a quick fix. If this is the intent, fine. If the goal is so short-ranged and limited in context, it will be reached again and again, leaving in its wake greater disease outside the narrow definition of cure.

Continuing to treat disease and curing disease are two different things. Knowing the intent before action will make the action more fulfilling, no matter what camp you are in. But, do not try to make the two camps into one, for the goals inherent within the two camps are often seen as mutually exclusive. If there is a vested interest in treating disease, the cure is seen as a threat.

The therapeutic effects of chemicals are seen within a narrow context since they are created for particular effects. Within this narrow formulation and experimental justification, chemical effects usually modify living systems at the expense of greater well-being. This IS what a quick fix is. The newer chemical drugs are more sinister in their detrimental effects. Chemical medicines are usually crude (in their design and intent) compared to nature's products.
This crudeness added to life usually results in fragmented results of healing: one step up, one or two steps back, and so on.

Healing is different from symptom suppression. Chemicals can suppress symptoms very well, and in the narrow definition of disease (localized and limited to some bodily organ or part) it might appear the "disease" is gone. But, disease is as flexible as thought; it can move through the body with an agility beyond the structure of the nerve or the blood vessel and appear beyond the myriad forms seen under the microscope.

The present-day high use of chemical medicines reflects a preferred safety in the "known" of human manufacturing as opposed to the "unknown" of nature's wisdom.

Intent continually expresses itself in the results of our actions, whether it is the treating or the curing of disease. If the intent is the respite from symptoms (suppression of symptoms) or the expansion of the wholeness of life (cure of dis-ease), then so be it. Each has its place, but know it is the place we assign to each.