Healing Arts Center combines
specialists in a "Mayo Clinic" of
Alternative Medicine
Source: The Spokesman-Review, Spokane, WA 6-8-99
Directors of Colville's year-old Healing Arts Center say their unique
"3-foot tool kit" is attracting patients from all around the
region with medical problems that defy traditional
treatment.
If modern Western medicine has a tool kit that's a foot long, then
the Healing Arts Center's kit may be
considered three times bigger with
the inclusion of traditional Eastern medicine and more
recently-developed "alternative" treatments.
Where pills and surgery won't do the trick, maybe
some biofeedback or acupuncture will help.
"Western medicine is terrific, and people who deny that have got
their head in the sand", said
George Carnie, the Center's co-founder and chief executive
officer. Nothing cures an infection like antibiotics, and
Carnie said Healing Arts Center doctors don't hesitate to prescribe
modern medicines when they're the best choice. But many people with
allergies, headaches, fatigue, pain, and other chronic problems get
little relief from conventional medicine. For them, Carnie said, the
Healing Arts Center has become a kind of Mayo Clinic; a place to go when
everything else has failed.
Carnie, a retired school administrator, was one of those people until
a few years ago. "I was born with allergies, and I traveled
everywhere in the country trying to figure out how to get rid of
them", Carnie said. Instead of getting rid of the allergies, Carnie
said doctors ridded him of foods that seemed to be causing his problems.
"I was down to eating about three or four foods".
Frustrated, Carnie's longtime family doctor, Colville physician Lon
Hatfield, skeptically told Carnie to find out what the local
naturopathic doctor could do for him. That turned out to be the
Nambudripad technique of focusing the patient's brain on the troublesome
allergens.
After identifying the sources of Carnie's allergies through muscle
strength testing, Dr. Randy Sandaine used "acupressure" to
stimulate nerve roots. The idea is that light pressure at certain points along the spine can restore normal energy flow through
acupuncture "meridians" that are believed to course around a
person's skin like invisible railroads.
Hatfield, 56, had a doctorate in biochemistry and had practiced
standard family medicine in Colville for 23 years, so he was pretty sure
Sandaine's approach wouldn't work. "When George got better, I knew
it couldn't be happening", Hatfield said. So I went down (to
Sandaine's office) to find out what was happening".
Hatfield said he has since received additional training that
convinces him of the validity of the Nambudripad allergy treatment and
other non-standard health care. He realizes other physicians are still
highly skeptical of many of the treatments he now prescribes. "I
think it's healthy for people to keep an open skepticism about things
they are not absolutely convinced about", Hatfield said.
For Carnie, the proof was French bread. Although he had avoided wheat
and dairy products for years because of his allergies, he was able to
enjoy French breads during a vacation to Tahiti after Sandaine treated
him. "Now, he said, "I feel like I have as much energy as when
I was a 16-year-old, and I'm 67".
With all that extra energy, he decided to team up with Hatfield to
open the Healing Arts Center in May 1998. Hatfield is medical director
while Carnie employs his administrative skills as chief executive
officer.
Before his 18 years as principal of Aster Elementary in Colville,
Carnie was superintendent of a number of school districts including 4
years at a couple of large districts in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and
in the Denver area.
The Healing Arts Center now employs about 2 dozen people including
17 medical practitioners, one of whom is Sandaine. Other care providers
include an osteopathic doctor, massage therapists, biofeedback
technicians, a couple of registered nurses, a hypnotherapist, and other
counselors. A Chinese medicine doctor has just been hired to replace an
acupuncturist who moved away. They come together in a new
10,000-square-foot, $700,000 building that's as free of
allergy-aggravating materials as its designers could make it. Everything
from the quilts on the wall to extra-comfortable furniture to special
mirrored skylights is designed to make patients feel comfortable.
Accommodations range from a small, dimly-lit meditation room with a
water-trickling fountain to a small gymnasium with a heated floor for
yoga, tai chi, and a preschool gymnastics class.
Hatfield believes the group is unique in the United States because of
its relatively large size and its breadth of services. Most alternative
medicine clinics tend to be small and to exclude standard Western
medicine, Hatfield said. Mixing the two is tricky, he said, because
alternative practitioners often are "long rangers", and standard
doctors often are more comfortable with large groups that can cope with
insurance paperwork and other complicated business problems.
Instead of bouncing patients from one specialist to another, the
entire Healing Arts Center Staff discusses treatments for each client.
Sometimes a variety of approaches will be suggested, and the patient
will be asked to choose. Patients take an active role in planning their
treatments, Hatfield said.
For retired elementary school teacher Ruth Forman, 76, biofeedback
was the solution to her sleeping difficulties. "When I first came
here, I wouldn't get to sleep before 2 or 3 in the morning", Forman
said. "After I started PacMan, now it only takes about a
half-hour". She referred to one of several biofeedback computer programs
that measure brain-wave frequencies with strap-on electrodes.
The programs encourage patients to shift their brain waves to
frequencies that are considered healthier.
Forman has moved on to more advanced programs, but she still favors
the one that rewards success by allowing PacMan to gobble up dots on the
computer screen.
"It's more of a letting go than a trying kind of
phenomenon", technician Fran Boring explained.
Whether dealing with sleep disorders, back pain, or high blood
pressure, Carnie said the various Healing Arts specialists agree on the
need to deal with mental and spiritual issues as well as physical
problems. "Research says that up to 85 percent of physical problems
begin with things like stress and emotional trauma", he said.
That's an explanation for the Center's successes that even skeptics
can embrace.
Source: The Spokesman-Review, Spokane, WA 6-8-99
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