I can still remember those first years with MS and the changes that my body went through. Things that were so routine and easy to do, like running or even hand-writing a letter, were now becoming a chore. I was no longer the strong, stable person I once was. I felt lost. For years I lived in this limbo of a life. No longer the person I was and scared to death of the person I was about to become. I figured the chances of western medicine finding a cure for me were not that great and waiting for them to find my cure just made me feel helpless and out of control. I spent many years pondering a solution. I sent out my prayers to the universe asking for guidance with my problems.

Then one day out of nowhere I came across an article that changed my life. It discussed eastern medicine and it effects on MS. It was the catalyst for my seeking out an acupuncturist to help with my illness. Within the first few weeks of starting acupuncture I began to feel better. I now believe I had changed my probable reality. I was diagnosed with R/R MS back in 1995. Soon after that I became progressive and started losing functions in my body. I lived in this state of decline for many years until without explanation I found a different direction in treatment and started to recover. But why did this happen? What caused the chain of events in my life to change from disability to recovery?

The universe can hear ALL of our thoughts. I feel it can actually set up the scenarios to help your thoughts, wishes and dreams come into reality, but a lot depends on us. I have found that there is a specific way you need to think and even wish for the things you desire. And then to look for the signs of its manifestation.

It’s all in how you think about things. I have talked about this in the past, “Where the minds goes the body follows”. When you think about your desires in a positive way and only ask for what you want as opposed to what you don’t want, you increase your chances of getting what you desire. Let me give you an example.

There is this nasty cold going around your office and you’d really like to avoid that mess. One of the biggest mistakes we make is to say to ourselves, “I really don’t want to get that cold”. The problem is the universe doesn’t hear it that way. It doesn’t understand what you want or don’t want, it only hears the basic request. In other words It didn’t hear that you wanted to avoid that cold it just heard about the cold and assumes that’s what you want. So don’t ask not to get the cold but instead state that you ARE in perfect health. That’s another point, never ask for something in the future for example, “I really want that new job that’s opening up” or “I want to get rid of my MS someday”. In the universe time has no meaning, its infinite. The only place that uses time as a reference is here. So instead when asking for that new job you state, “I HAVE that job”. See yourself in your minds eye showing up to work there and successfully and happily doing the job. Or from a health standpoint visualize yourself perfectly healthy living your life in peace and joy.

We live in a world of energy. And we all have the ability to mold and change that energy to fit our needs and desires. Now, I am going to show you a simple and easy way to harness that energy.

You can do this either sitting or standing. Put your hands together with the fingers so they are almost touching and you create a ball with your hands.

Now stay like that quietly for about 30 seconds. You may begin to feel a slight tingling feeling inside your hands and around your fingers, if you don’t the first time don’t worry. In time with practice you will begin to feel it. But just because you can’t feel anything doesn’t mean this is not working. What you are doing is creating a ball of energy, the essence of ourselves and the universe. With this ball of energy in your hands place a wish or desire in it. Once you have that thought firmly in your energy ball toss it up into the sky for the universe to receive it.

I know it sounds a little kooky but with practice it can work for you. For me harnessing my energies acts more like a compass, pointing me in the right direction for what I want. Now when I look back on it, I feel that this was responsible for my finding my healing path. One thing that is important though is don’t put a time limit on it. I think it places undue stresses on you and can affect the outcome.

So don’t believe your life is set in stone because it’s not. If that were true I wouldn’t be able to type this blog today. So, go out and take control and make you own reality.

I remember hearing this a lot growing up, “You are what you eat”. I really didn’t think much of it at the time. When you’re young and healthy you can shove just about anything down your throat. But as we age, our health can begin to suffer and what we put into our bodies on a daily basis does effect our overall well being.

In the beginning of my recovery I dove head first into Eastern Medicine and acupuncture. I did daily Wuji Gong healing exercises, Healing Touch and I meditated. All the things you might expect, but I neglected one thing, diet. I really LOVED fast food and ate it quite a bit, 3 to 4 times a week. Even with this diet I felt really well and it seemed my recovery was progressing just fine. But little did I know that by just adding a healthy diet, that might be the kick I needed to go all the way.

The universe has a strange way of pointing you in the right direction if you only listen. One day out of seemingly nowhere I decided to find myself a new doctor. The one I had was very dismissive of Eastern Medicine. With the direction I was taking I felt he was no longer helpful in my healing journey. I found a new doctor who was a bit more supportive in my efforts. I went in for a routine physical. I couldn’t remember how long since my last one and I wanted a baseline on how I was doing. Along with the physical I also had complete blood work. The results of the blood tests were not great. All those years of eating fast food and general crap yielded the expected results–my cholesterol was way up. My new doctor wanted to immediately put me on statins along with a thyroid supplement. Not being a fan of drugs, I knew that filling that prescription was just not in the cards for me.

I took my blood test results to my acupuncturist to get her opinion. There was no way I was going to become a slave to prescription drugs for the rest of my life. She advised me to get on a low fat, low cholesterol diet to start clearing out those arteries. So I bid good bye to fast foods for a while and moved forward to my new lifestyle.

Surprisingly, I had found it not all that hard. I kept an eye on the fat contents of the foods I ate and avoided processed foods. I bought a juicer and now juice veggies in the morning. From that alone I noticed something incredible. The nagging pain I got in my thigh in the evenings or when it’s cold, for the most part had gone away. The slight, light-headed feeling that I invariable had seemed for the most part to go away.

Western Medicine makes recovery out to be this monumental task. Only by filling yourself full of drugs can you ever hope to have a near normal life. But I am here to tell you that’s just not the case. It’s the medical professionals that have made this out to be some Herculean task. Did you ever notice that in nature everything has a simple order, why should good health be any different?

Now I am not saying you have to give up the double-bacon cheeseburger all together but rather just do it once in a while. Good health should not be a chore. We can still make some fun food choices occasionally, and believe me, I do.

It’s the simple changes that make all the difference and to me it just makes sense. We are in essence all hunter-gatherers. That’s the type of diet we are all supposed to eat. Lots of fruits and vegetables, grass feed meats, and clean, clear water. So let’s get back to that and start feeling better. Sure you can have that greasy burger and fries once in awhile, but just remember, everything in moderation. You just might find out like I did that you don’t really feel like eating that stuff anymore. Recently I thought to myself, “Well, you’ve been a good boy for several weeks, maybe tomorrow you can have a burger”. When tomorrow came I really didn’t feel like a burger. I had a homemade tuna salad sandwich instead. So change might be easier than you think, especially when you see the results.

Good health and recovery from disease is all about balance. If you keep remembering that, you’ll do just fine.

Western Medicine has made great advances in the times of war. It was through these tragic and unfortunate circumstances that we saw some of the greatest advances in Western Medicine. Durning the Vietnam War, if you received a major head wound you stood only a 25% chance of survival. Fast forward a little over 30 years. The survival rate in the Afghan conflict for the same head wound rose to 75%, truly amazing. Western medicine is really a trauma or battlefield medicine. When it comes to chronic illness, it sadly lacks.

Western trained doctors, so skilled at acute conditions have neither the training nor time to successfully treat disease. With all the perks and incentives they receive from the pharmaceutical and for-profit health insurance industry they have been lulled into this fantasy that drugs cure disease when in fact that’s just not the case. Drugs provide a temporary easing of the symptoms only. You may feel better but you’re not getting better because the cause of your illness has never been addressed. Drugs only treat symptoms, PERIOD.

Let me give you a personal example. I went to my doctor the other day to get a physical. Something I haven’t done in years. I had the customary physical along with complete blood work. When the blood test results came back the doctor called me in with the results. All those years of eating fast food had finally caught up with me, my cholesterol was way up there. His solution? Start on the drugs. He wanted me to take 20 mgs of Lipitor followed by a prescription thyroid supplement. He told me I would most likely be on these drugs for the rest of my life. Strangely though, no real talk about diet changes other than “eat more fish”.

I’ve been doing this long enough now to know to always seek other opinions. As you know I am a strong supporter of Eastern Medicine. It’s made a night and day change for me when it comes to my MS. So I took a copy of my blood test results and the prescriptions to my acupuncturist to get her take on it. I gave her the materials and told her what the doctor suggested I do. She advised me to start a low fat, low cholesterol diet, and she put me on a dietary supplement. I was to take it twice a day before meals for 30 days. It would bring my cholesterol levels back to normal. For my thyroid problem she told me to take one tablespoon full of organic molasses. That was it. No drugs.

Sure, I have to make some lifestyle changes. I read food labels much more carefully now but I think it’s a small price to pay. If it means cutting back on my fast food consumption but leading a healthy life into my twilight years, Yea…sign me up. Since I’ve been doing this I already feel better and I have more energy and have lost some weight. It’s a bit of a challenge watching what I eat but I look at the alternative, a lifetime of drug dependence, well, that’s just not an option.

This needs to be said so I’ll be the one–drugs won’t cure disease. Even if they could it would never happen. For one thing, there is no money in cures. The drug companies make billions a year keeping you hooked on their “fish oil”. Who’s going to kill that cash cow? Second, disease is about balance or lack their of. A drug can’t get you back in balance. You need to get your own energies back in order. Keep your stresses under control, eat right, exercise. We’ve always been told to treat our bodies as temples and that’s right on.

Sadly, as long as Western Medicine is a business, consumed by profits, the patient will never be a priority. So it basically comes down to this, you need to take charge and become your own physician. Its up to you to gather the information needed to lead a healthy life. Is this easy? No, it’s not. It means you have to step up to the plate to become educated and informed. To eat healthy and get plenty of rest and exercise. To get yourself in balance.

So if you’re looking for that magic pill, you’ll never find it. Remember, it took years and years of bad behaviors on our part to get into this condition. It’s going to take time and commitment to get out. I was facing a lifetime of dwindling physical abilities as my MS continued to progress and ravage my body. But once I faced my challenges and found out what I had to do I now live a near normal life, I even take my dog out on daily long walks. According to Western Medicine this is not something someone with progressive MS for over 14 years should be able to do. These Western docs may think they are the only answer but they are not. YOU ARE THE ANSWER!

Those of us who are lucky, have wonderful memories of caring, loving parents — whether it was cheering us at a school assembly or running us to the doctor when we were sick. They were always there. But as we age, those roles can frequently reverse. The other day my dad had what we thought was a minor stroke. It turned out to be a blood infection that caused a small clot in his brain. He made a full recovery, but it involved several days of intense IV antibiotics in the hospital. My dad is 88 years old and my mom is 87. Needless to say, they are no longer at the top of their games. So, as I relied on them as a child, they now rely on me. It’s a strange role reversal. Now I was the one running a loved one to the doctor. When I was young it was my mom who always fixed the cuts and told me it would be all right. Now I am the one holding my mom’s hand telling her it would be fine. This is my Circle of Life.

So I have taken on the role of caretaker to my mom and dad. Making sure they are safe and secure. I frequently take my mom to the store or her doctor and keep an eye on the both of them — things they once did for me. I wonder what would have happened if I hadn’t found a solution to my own health problems? What if my MS had continued along the same path as it was when I was just using western medicine? If that were the case, there would be no way I could be doing for my parents the things I am doing now.

As it turned out, things evolved into this near perfect evolution of events for me. I think a lot of this has to do with the fact that I now let things fall into place and follow my intuition. This is not to say there are not bumps in the road, but that’s to be expected. It’s all part of the lessons we learn throughout our lives here. I kinda consider this my time to give back. My folks raised and took care of me to the best of their abilities. They were my rock growing up. They are a big reason I am the successful man that I am today. I owe them a lot. It not only seems fair but just the right thing to do in caring for them now in the sunset of their lives. My ability to help bring them a sense peace and security is my way of showing my love and appreciation for all the things they have done for me. It’s my turn now to look after them. The Circle of Life is complete.

The one thing about MS, it’s always filled with surprises. One surprise that hits me just about every year like clockwork is my MS backache. It is the most intense pain I had ever experienced–about a 10 on the 1 to 10 pain meter. It’s located in my lower back and pretty much knocks me out from just about any activity. Just walking from my family room to the bathroom can put me in agony. But by reasoning out the cause I’ve been able to make these attacks much less severe and shorter in duration.

My first challenge was to figure what the pain really was. The intense pain really had nothing to do with my back. It was a product of my MS attacking the nerves which produced the pain and that pain was just as real as if I had really thrown out my back. I had to remember, my back wasn’t really out. It was actually, “All in my head”. My nerves were misfiring causing the intense pain in my lower back. What was I to do? I thought about the energy in my body. To maintain good health we need to maintain a good, steady flow of energy. It seemed to me that perhaps my energy flow was restricted causing the nerves to misfire. I though I would try part of my Emei Qigong exercise that helps to unblock energy. I placed my left hand below my belly button and my right hand above my belly button and started to lightly shake my stomach up and down. Ladies, reverse your hands, right one below and left above. I did this for about 15 minutes. To my amazement the pain started to subside. I could actually slowly stand up and walk to the bathroom. By the next day I actually walked our dog and the best part, no drugs.

Right now I am still moving around carefully. But where it took me several days to just be able to move around the house and close to a week to completely recover, I hope to be back to my old self in a day or so, again with no drugs.

Sometimes our energy gets stuck or clogged. You need something like a plunger to get the flow started again. That’s what the shaking of my stomach was for. A good flow of energy is everything when it comes to good health.

This may seem all too simple and easy to really work. After all, our culture tends to lead us to believe that healing is complex and complicated. Maybe the key to good health is really quite simple and logical. We need to remember that everything in the universe is made of energy –including our bodies. We need to treat ourselves as energy beings not just mere frail mortals. I believe the key to health and happiness is living in balance and harmony within our energies. By understanding this and how it affects our bodies we can achieve a healthy state for a lifetime.

Happiness and balance in life can come down to one thing, your control of stress. I don’t really know any emotionally balanced people with a chronic illness. We seem to get sick when we are worn out, emotionally as well as physically. It’s a real challenge to keep our stress in check but it’s vital to maintain good health. I’ve seen people who work out frequently, eat well and live what would be considered a healthy lifestyle. After some years of constant stresses in their lives some came down with cancer or some other chronic illness.

You have to realize one important thing, it’s not the job or family situations that creates the stress, it is your perceptions of those events that create the stress. It’s important to train ourselves to step back and realize that stressing out over a particular event does not improve that event in anyway, in most cases it just makes things worse.

So what to do? I have a few suggestions that works for me and my friends. First, learn to meditate. I suggest Transcendental Meditation or TM. It can take as little as 20 minutes a day. It’s quite effective in calming the mind.

Take a walk. That stroll in the neighborhood can not only clear and calm your mind, its great for your body too.

Learn a form of yoga or Qi Gong. I do Emei Qi Gong first thing in the morning. It’s a 800 year old Chinese healing exercise. It calms my mind and actually strengthens the Immune system, and played a big part in my MS recovery.

Try Healing Touch. This will really relax and help to clear the mind as well. After a one hour session you practically float out of the treatment room.

Finally, just SLOW DOWN. We were not meant to live such a go go, light speed life. Take a deep breath and smell the roses once in a while.

Just by being in more control of our lifestyles and not sweating the small and even bigger obstacles we can go a long way to keeping and maintaining a healthy life.

For more information on the things I mentioned just check out the “Links” on my home page.

Now go out and have some fun!

Don’t settle for less, but that’s just what we do when confronted with disease. “Oh my Gawd, I just got a disease. The doctor said I’ll just have to live with it and make the best of the rest of my life”. To that I respond, “NUTS”. There are actually many opportunities for recovery from disease but you need to do your homework, be patient and move forward. For me it was Eastern medicine in its many forms. I tried many eastern modalities and some didn’t work all that well so I moved on to the next until I found the ones that worked for me, but I never gave up, I never settled.

Just because the Western doctors don’t have the answers does that mean there are no answers? I noticed my first MS symptoms a little over 15 years ago, so I understand what its like to have a progressive disease. About 10 years ago I went on vacation to Hawaii. At the time I was using one of the drugs prescribed to slow the progression of MS. Hawaii was a lovely place but I had a hard time enjoying it since I had real balance and walking and fatigue problems. I was for the most part restricted to the beach while the rest of my family took hikes into the island wilderness. Not soon after that we took a trip to Disneyland. While the kids were frolicking with Mickey and Goofy I was rolling around in my rented electric scooter. Now move to last week where my wife and I vacationed in Monterey, CA. I was about to walk the entire expanse of the Monterey Bay Aquarium. If you’ve ever been there you know it’s huge, takes all day just to see most of it. But I not only tackled the Aquarium I strolled Cannery Row as well that same day. But remember, I am still recovering. By the end of the day I was quite pooped and a bit shaky, but I pulled it off. I don’t think I was lucky that day. I think it happened because of the Eastern medicine techniques that I have been using.

I believe I was able to do this because I decided not to settle for less. I believed there had to be another way. Western doctors don’t have all the answers when it comes to chronic disease and often just offer some drug which just deadens the symptoms, never really addressing the cause, and that issue is key. But here’s the thing, drugs don’t cure disease, its up to YOU to do that. YOU are your doctor. Its up to you to find out what’s wrong and then seek a solution. You must be proactive. The tools are out there you just have to find them, pick them up and use them.

Nothing ever stays the same. Our lives are really one big roller coaster full of ups and downs. We live in a constantly changing and evolving life. No matter what your situation is right now be it good or bad it will evolve into a different scenario with different challenges as your life progresses. That’s what life is really all about, to experience and learn. You can’t learn or grow if you live in a stagnate life. I had a conversation with my Mom the other day, she lives a fairly harried life. She wondered when her life would finally calm down? I told her, “Never”. I don’t think we’re here just to skate in this life but rather to face the many challenges, and those challenges never end. By doing this we gain a better awareness of our very existence.

I have a theory, for what ever that’s worth. Perhaps this journey we do here in life is not a one time event. Our energy which is the essence of all of us lasts forever, this is a scientific fact. So it’s not logical to assume that an infinite being would only experience earthly life a single time. What would be the point? What would you learn? I think we are given a wide array of challenges and experiences throughout our very existence. There is free will in place so we can experience a wide range of possibilities. But the bottom line is to learn and experience. Now THAT’S the meaning of life.

So embrace the changes. Know that nothing ever stays the same. Something you least expect can appear in your life at any time that can change the whole dynamic, –Just be patient.

Perhaps you may have the fortune to meet someone who had a truly profound effect on your life. For me, one of those people was Daniel. Like me Daniel had MS, but unlike me, Daniel had a very progressive case of it. At the time we met I was pretty much in my full struggle with MS. I could still get around fairly well in that I could still drive, but my body was on that slow, steady decline. I had some trouble walking, my balance was off, I could barely write, and I was depressed,– life wasn’t much fun. Being stuck in the house and isolated only made my depression grow worse.

One day by chance I was flipping through the MS Society’s newsletter when I came across an article about the Angel’s program. This program sent volunteers to visit home or hospital bound MS patients and provide companionship. It got me to thinking, I may have MS but can still move around pretty well. May be I could provide a sympathetic ear for an MS patient since I can relate to what they are going through. I called the MS Society, got the sign up forms, interviewed with the person in charge of the program, went through a brief background check and then got my patient, Daniel. He was living at a board and care facility at the time. Located in a residential home, these homes care for around 5 to 8 mostly elderly patients. Daniel, being in his late 40′s at the time, was the youngest by about 25 years. Daniel was one of those rare individuals where very little seems to get him down. He had every right to be one really bitter person but always seemed to look at the bright side of things and had a smile on his face. Daniel had been an avid tennis player, did some world traveling, loved photography, and lived life. And now this was all taken away from him. If ever there was someone to feel bitter about life it was Daniel. But he took this all in stride, and made the best of each day.

We had been meeting weekly for several years when he showed me an interesting article about a man with progressive MS in Ireland. The article explained that the man used Eastern medicine and acupuncture to reverse, stabilize and eventually recover from MS. I thought this was quite interesting and I decided to follow up on this information. I bought the gentleman’s book found an acupuncturist and amazingly started my recovery from an incurable disease.

I will never be able to adequately express to Daniel the gift he gave me. I feel like I am getting my life returned to me but with many new gifts and lessons learned.

We tried acupuncture on Daniel to see if it could benefit him but sadly his MS was much to progressed for it to be of any real help. But even with that he still rolls along with a big smile on his face. Daniel had just spent over a month in the hospital fighting an infection,– he seems to get them quite frequently. He always fights the good fight and this one he successfully fought off too. More good news was to follow as the nursing facility that he had been trying to get into for so long finally accepted him. He was overjoyed to the point of tears. He now has his own room and the attention he so needs.

When ever I find myself walking with my dog or marveling at the major improvement in my pain or just jotting down a grocery list I always think of my friend Daniel. I thank God that our paths crossed so I could meet this man who helped me get my life back.

When had moping around, pissed off with the world, and just generally in a down, foul mood ever produced any positive results? NEVER. Yet I’d say many of us are consumed with this destructive mood. No one was more than me. I would scowl around all day hating the world and wishing I was anywhere then where I was. This job sucks, my boss is a moron, my personal life is boring. You name it, it pissed me off. In the end what did this attitude ever give me? It gave me a chronic illness.

Had you ever been able to turn around an unpleasant situation through negative thought? It can’t be done. Those who keep a balanced and positive approach to life seem to survive the many potholes pretty well. A lot of us have stressful lives and this can cause many problems not only for our minds but our bodies as well. One thing we must remember about stress, we create it ourselves. The job or situation doesn’t create the stress but rather how we react to it. You have a choice here. Remember what I said earlier — no amount of moping or negative thought changes anything for the better. I stopped thinking of situations in a good or bad frame but rather what can I learn from this challenge or experience. Perhaps that’s why were here in the first place, to learn and experience. If that’s the case it can’t be all ice cream and roses because, what would we learn? We need those challenges to make the lessons worthwhile — to help us learn something.
We should try to look at life like a challenging adventure. We make our choices, hopefully we learn from them, good and bad.