There's something scary about drugs that concerns a growing number of physicians and should wobble the knees of every patient on the planet. It's obvious to any mathematician but somehow has escaped the general scrutiny of the health industry.

It has to do with combining meds.

Ever since I can remember I have been fed the perception that drugs are governmentally evaluated and thus are safe if taken under the guidance of competent physicians. However, even if we accept the presumed safety for the ingestion of one drug, we must ask ourselves how might that safety change if we take multiple drugs?

For safety assurances, proper testing should be done for every drug combination we are advised to take. If we take Prozac and Tylenol, for example, we should be presented with all the possible benefits and consequences before allowing these two foreign substances to mix with the chemicals our bodies already create. Same thing goes for combining Paxil with Viagra or Interferon with Lipitor.

The list of possible problems here is monstrously long because there are a b'zillion drugs and mega b'zillions of combinations. Nonetheless, I've never seen or heard of any studies that test any of these combinations ... have you?

Thus, if you take two drugs, the odds of their combination having been adequately tested for safety are skimpy at best. But if you take 3 or more drugs the danger possibilities multiply even faster.

Here's how the mathematics work: If you take 3 drugs then adequate safety testing of the various combinations require 7 separate tests. If you take 4 drugs the combinations require 25 separate tests. If you take 5 drugs it amounts to 121 tests. If you take 10 drugs the number of required safety tests total 362,881.

The conclusion here should be obvious. Namely, there is questionable safety testing if you take 2 drugs and nominal, if any, safety testing if you take 3. Beyond that you are clearly into the land of, "I have no idea what these combinations of drugs will do."

To me, this tosses our dedicated docs into a tenuous position. They have patients with problems who aren't willing to exercise, eat right, do EFT for emotional issues ( http://www.emofree.com/a/?2115 ) or much of anything else to help their own health. Instead, the patients hope the physicians will produce a magic pill (or pills) to make their problems go away.

I have met many patients who are on several drugs and take some drugs to counteract the effects of other drugs. As a non-physician I look at this with a shudder. These folks are being fed chemical cocktails with little or no safety testing behind the combinations. Maybe I need some help with my perceptions here but, to me, they are playing drug roulette.

I don't know if lawyers have picked up on the simple, but compelling, math here. But I do know that I wouldn't want to be a doctor in court facing these clear facts.

In the 15+ years I have been involved in the health field, I have had the good fortune to count many physicians as my personal friends. With few exceptions, they agree that it is our lifestyles, diets and emotional stresses that cause most of our health problems ... and ... the vast majority of these problems would vanish if people would live common sense lives. Yet patients repeatedly abuse their bodies and ask for more and more "miracle drugs" as the convenient solution. I don't envy the docs at all as I often hear them complain that this is a highway to NobodyWinsVille.

Maybe what we really need are good salespeople to persuade folks to take care of themselves. I suspect that, if truly persuasive, they would do more good than the ocean of drugs at our disposal.


Love, Gary

PS: The Free EFT Get Started Package ( http://www.emofree.com/a/?2115/1 ) can help any newcomer learn the valuable EFT process. If you want to save time and dive right in, get our low cost DVD Library ( http://www.emofree.com/a/?2115/2 )

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Emotional well-being and the Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT)

by Marcelle Pick, OB/GYN NP

At Women to Women, we talk a lot about supporting your core foundation of health. This foundation, much like a building's, must be rooted to four mainstays, or corners. Most of the time, it is easier to describe (and to understand) the first three: optimal nutrition, hormonal balance, and healthy lifestyle choices. But the fourth - emotional well-being - is equally important, or perhaps more so because it is so often overlooked.

Since first beginning my practice, I have tried to help my patients deal with all aspects of their health, including how their physiology relates to their emotional patterning. But up until ten years ago I couldn't provide them with any easily accessible tools of their own - only referrals. Then my father introduced me to an innovative therapy known as Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT). I have been recommending it to my patients ever since. The wonderful thing about EFT is that it can be done anywhere: on your own or - even better - with a trained practitioner.

For some women, EFT may be all they need to get a handle on how deeply their emotions are affecting their health. For others, it may be just the first step on a more intense journey that needs the guiding hand of a skilled professional.

Stress, anxiety and emotional ruts all manifest in the body in some way - that's why we always tell our patients that their biography becomes their biology. EFT is simple, affordable, practical self-help that targets this reality. So let's discuss why you should try it.

Stress and your health: the science of psychoneuroimmunology.

Stress is a given in our culture; but what's not so accepted is the idea that stress and emotional trauma have a physical manifestation.

While many people are familiar with the mind-body concept of Eastern and alternative medicine paradigms, psychoneuroimmunology (PNI) is applying Western scientific methodology to the study of how the central nervous system and the immune system interact. Specifically, how these two systems are influenced by non-biological factors: conditioning and stress. What these and other areas of documented study prove is that emotional experience is, in a figurative sense, embedded in our tissues and has clear physical manifestations that are unique to each woman and man, including anxiety, weight gain, depression, fatigue, diffuse pain and GI upset.

What this means for a vast majority of people is that to truly shift your physiology, you have to unlock your emotional baggage.

And this is often not easy to do - in the vast orchestra of your body, understanding your emotional patterning is like trying to identify one discordant instrument and tune it. Most people simply can't do this on their own without training - and unfortunately end up on antidepressant or anxiolytic medication that turns down the noise. While this can be somewhat beneficial in the short term, you can only press the mute button for so long.

In order to truly feel well, you have to listen and you have to do the work. And that's where EFT comes in.

What is Emotional Freedom Technique?

The philosophy behind EFT, according to its founder Gary Craig, is: "The cause of all negative emotions is a disruption in the body's energy system."

Eastern medicine has long recognized the importance of understanding and maintaining health by maintaining the proper and free flow of bodily energies. In the Ayurvedic medical community, life force (prana) flows through channels called the chakras. In Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) these channels are known as energy meridians, and these are the pathways used in the practice of acupuncture and acupressure. They also serve as the basis of other energy healing modalities, including EFT.

Emotional Freedom Technique came into being in the 1990's after Gary Craig completed extensive training with Dr. Roger Callahan, a cognitive psychologist. Dr. Callahan devised - almost by accident - a therapy system known as Thought Field Therapy (TFT), which is based in part on theories of energy kinesiology. He discovered TFT in the course of standard treatments for a patient with a severe phobia of water. Seeking more ways to offer help, he drew on his background in energy psychology and physical energy flow and successfully cured the patient's phobia. Gary Craig has taken Thought Field Therapy one step further.

I became familiar with Craig and EFT through my father's therapeutic work with victims of deep trauma and PTSD. Since then, EFT has become one of several popular initial therapies at Women to Women. I have seen many cases where EFT has worked for anxiety, phobias, pain management, weight loss, insomnia, and a range of other conditions. Many of my patients had no idea their emotions were contributing to their symptoms until they began EFT.

Remarkably, unlike many more conventional emotional and psychological therapies, EFT is entirely accessible, private, and quite inexpensive - free, if you can do it yourself. Even working with a trained EFT practitioner is typically less costly than similar visits to a traditional psychotherapist or counselor. Plus, the number of visits required is usually few - sometimes just one will accomplish what is needed, and occasionally a simple conversation with a trained practitioner can get you started. Unlike drugs, EFT has no side effects. It can be done almost anywhere (even by phone or tele-video sessions), and can be easily learned at home. EFT is genuine self-help and can be a springboard to profound emotional - and ultimately physical - change.

Craig calls EFT "a unique version of acupuncture, except you don't use needles. Instead, you stimulate well established energy meridian points on your body by tapping on them with your fingertips." EFT is grounded in thousands of years of therapeutic history. Energy meridians relate directly not only to TCM and acupuncture, but to other healing paradigms like shiatsu, t'ai chi, yoga, and so on. In all these practices - EFT included - a balance of body energies is fundamental to all other aspects of health.

Acupuncture, acupressure and EFT.

Over 5000 years ago, the Chinese discovered a primary energetic substance in the body that can't be seen. This energy, or Qi, is thought to be the essence and sustenance of all life in the universe. There can be no movement without this life force, which runs through the human body along twelve channels, or meridians. Like a circuit board, these energetic meridians map the body and are named for the life functions associated with them.

Meridians serve as pathways of positive and negative energies and communicate deep within the vital systems and organs of the body. The meeting points of positive and negative energies along meridians are acupuncture points. Acupuncture points are also where Qi from the outside environment enters the body. Five hundred acupuncture points have been measured and mapped by modern technological methods: electronically, thematically, and radioactively. By applying pressure or needles to these acupuncture points, trained doctors are able to diagnose disease, control pain, optimize health, and facilitate healing by restoring or maintaining the flow of Qi.

Although many Western practitioners don't officially recognize acupuncture and the concept of energetic meridians, it has proven to be so effective (and cost-effective) for pain management that many health insurance companies now cover the procedure. Even the skeptics are beginning to admit that there is something to this 5000-year-old practice. (It's about time!) And while you may not want or be able to access an acupuncturist, when you practice EFT you are working with the same principals. So just what is the technique? I'll do my best to explain.

The EFT process

In my experience, EFT is a wonderful first step in understanding the emotional roots of a health condition - but it is often just the beginning. In order to get the most out of EFT, it is best to work with a licensed psychologist or counselor trained in EFT. That being said, I can't think of any harm that could result trying EFT on your own.

Gary Craig has devised what he calls "The Basic Recipe," a sequence that can be used in just about any situation with minimal adaptation, as suits the patient or practitioner.

With this you are first guided (or will guide yourself) through identifying a specific pain, anxiety, or problem. This is an important part of the process and can make all the difference in some cases. It is my belief that EFT is generally only as effective as the practitioner asking you questions. The good news is that this can be done over the phone or in one or two brief sessions.

From that work, you'll develop a guiding phrase (Craig likes to refer to this as the "affirmation") that relates to an issue, sensation, concern, and emotion, based on this adaptable phrasing:

Even though I have this _____, I deeply and completely love and accept myself.

Practitioners urge that the guiding phrase be said with conviction, but even if you don't really feel it, just repeating the phrase with emphasis appears to be quite effective. This is one of the reasons why EFT works even when the person involved is a bit skeptical of the therapy.

Once you have established a phrase, you begin a series of tappings on specific points on the body that correlate to the various energy meridians. As you repeat your guiding phrase, you tap rhythmically about seven times in each place, though the exact number of taps isn't crucial.

The tapping sequence is as follows:

H - top of the head

EB - inner edge of the eyebrow

SE - side of the eye

UE - under the eye

UN - under the nose

CH - center of chin

CB - collarbone

UA - under the arm