Is the Existing Model of Health Care Enough?

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We are starting to get the message. Many of us are finally waking up to the fact that something has to change with our current model of health care. In the realm of health care, we are beginning to implement the idea of prevention by eating better foods, exercising more and cutting out harmful lifestyle activities. But is this enough to create sustainable change? Will this modest shift in perspective create the necessary change to allow all of us to regain power over our bodies and live whole, … [Read more...]

Children’s Hospitals: A national leader in integrative medicine

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Last in a series on integrative healing in the Twin Cities Dr. Tim Culbert, director of Integrative Medicine at Children's Hospitals, is a nationally recognized leader in integrative medicine and currently heads up the longest running pediatrics program in North America. Early on in his training, Dr. Culbert had the opportunity to work with Dr. Karen Olness, a renowned pioneer who documented and implemented an approach to help children with chronic pain and illness through self-regulation … [Read more...]

Woodwinds Health Campus supports Integrative Care

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Fourth of a series on integrative healing in the Twin Cities Woodwinds Health Campus is the brainchild of the HealthEast Care System organization. It is an 86-bed, full-service, acute-care community hospital that opened its doors in August of 2000 as an unprecedented healing environment that blends the best of traditional allopathic medicine supported by natural approaches to wellness and health through integrative services. Woodwinds was just named one of the top 100 hospitals in the … [Read more...]

A Vision of Future Health Care

Our Featured Topic: Envisioning the Future of Health Care

"Of all the self-fulfilling prophecies in our culture, the assumption that aging means a decline and poor health is probably the deadliest." - Aquarian Conspiracy I complained to a friend of mine about my aching back the other day and she joked that we were just getting old. I had a strong reaction to that statement - not because I am one of those people who are afraid or upset about my age, but because I don't think my body "falling apart" has to happen just because I am older. … [Read more...]

Integrative Medicine: The Future Of Medicine

Our Featured Topic: Envisioning the Future of Health Care

There is a new medical catch-phrase on the horizon in America. This new movement is driven by consumers and it's getting the attention of health care facilities across the country. Exactly what is this new movement? It is called Integrative Medicine. How important is this movement? In 1998, the American Medical Association reported that 42 percent of Americans were using alternative methods of healing as complements to conventional healing. Americans were making about 200 million more visits … [Read more...]

Treat the Person, not the Disease

Our Featured Topic: Envisioning the Future of Health Care

Often in the everyday stream of things, we enjoy comfortable assumptions that allow us to float on the river of life. Sometimes facing reefs of regret or butting against the banks of negativity, we nonetheless continue on our voyage. We see that we cannot travel backwards upstream since that path existed in the past, yet our future most certainly contains steady waters as well as rocky rapids. When challenges of the body appear, we face the depths of our humanity when we no longer separate … [Read more...]

An Open Letter to President Obama

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There has been tremendous hoopla even before the caucuses about whose plan or what approach is best to "solve" the "health care crisis" facing our country. Unfortunately, none of them really address the issue because all of them are too limited in perspective. We are approaching a four-dimensional problem with a one-dimensional solution. It is like playing a four-dimensional chess game on only the first level when your opponent understands the bigger game. You might appear to be making … [Read more...]

Healing news

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SIMPLY RAW: Reversing Diabetes in 30 Days DVD chronicles six diabetics taking the raw food challenge for reversing diabetes naturally & documents remarkable results A fascinating, independent film follows the remarkable journeys of six diabetics (Type 1 and 2) for 30 days as they take the “Raw Challenge” to reverse their disease naturally without prescription drugs by eating only organic, vegan, uncooked, “raw foods” despite the American Medical Association’s claim that … [Read more...]

Elsewhere…

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WASHINGTON, D.C. Capitol Climate Action: A national coalition of more than 40 environmental, public health, labor, social justice, faith-based and other advocacy groups plan to engage in civil disobedience at the Capitol Power Plant on the afternoon of March 2. The Capitol Climate Action, the largest mass mobilization on global warming in the country's history, reflects the growing public demand for bold action to address the climate and energy crises. Wendell Berry, poet laureate and … [Read more...]

Earl Bakken still challenges how we view health care

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Minnesotan finds more than sunshine in land of Rainbows -- An Edge Interview Forty-five years ago, Earl Bakken developed the first battery-powered, transistorized pacemaker and co-founded Medtronic Inc. The company, still developing ever-improving pacemakers and many other high-tech products for cardiac and neurologic health, now employs 10,000 people worldwide. Bakken has been called the "father of high-tech medicine," and he is considered a motivating force behind Medical Alley, Minnesota's … [Read more...]