MANY INSIST HEALING GETS MINDFUL HELP; `ALTERNATIVE' STEPS UTILIZED IN MEDICINE

Branding acupuncture, visualization techniques, herbal medicines, meditation and like-minded therapies with the name "alternative medicine" does a great disservice, says Dr. Roy Meyer, a chiropractor who prescribes some of the above for his patients.

They are considered alternative only because they are outside the wall traditional Western medicine has erected around itself, Meyer says.

"If it's not a medical or surgical situation, it's termed `"alternative.'"

He is not alone in that belief, and some of his fellow believers are smack in the middle of the medical profession itself.

The National Institutes of Health, for instance, recently established a new Office of Alternative Medicine for the purpose of exploring the merits of alternative therapies.

Meanwhile, at least one Cape Girardeau physician is employing acupuncture in his practice.

Holistic and wholistic approaches to healing are becoming the accepted models though some physicians insist they always have been.

Today at 8 p.m., Bill Moyers begins a five-part series on PBS titled "Healing and the Mind." For the first program, titled "The Mystery of Chi," Moyers travels to China with Dr. David Eisenberg, an internist at Beth Israel Hospital in Boston and an instructor at Harvard Medical School.

There, at hospitals in Beijing and Shanghai, they learn how Chinese doctors heal by manipulating the energy force they call "chi."

On subsequent nights, the series will explore mind-body techniques that help hospitalized patients get well, how group psychotherapy can improve the health of women with advanced breast cancer, the biological and molecular underpinnings of mind-body connections, and the effects of diet, exercise and stress reduction on heart disease.

Moyers also looks at how meditation and other mind-centered approaches can help people who have serious illnesses.

Meditation and visualization are part of the therapy used in the Pain Management Center at St. Francis Medical Center. "It's used for some people just to teach them how to relax," says Dr. Donald Hinnant, the center's director.

Biofeedback techniques also are employed to give the patient tools to manage pain. Hinnant stresses that therapeutic exercise, education and pain medications also are important ingredients of the therapy. But he says biofeedback is useful.

"There are a lot of quacks out there. They've given biofeedback a bad name."

In biofeedback, electrodes placed on the surface of the skin feed information about muscle activity to the physician's instrumentation. By visualization for instance, holding an image of warmth or sunshine in the mind the patient can learn to increase the activity and retrain the muscles.

That healing of the body occurs in the mind.

"You're using your mind to influence your physiology," the center's director says. "You're truly changing things like blood flow."

"... This actually occurs. There is no hocus-pocus to this," says Hinnant, whose doctorate is in rehabilitation counseling and behavioral medicine.

Judy Stricker, who runs the hospital's Stress Management Program, also employs meditation and visualization along with biofeedback and breathing exercises.

"When a person gets under stress they tend to breath shallowly," she says. Simply slowing down and deepening the breathing can reduce the stress.

Patients are taught a "relaxation response," a method of unstressing.

They also are taught coping techniques such as speaking their minds and learning acceptance. These techniques do have a medical connection. "Forty to 60 percent of the things that bring people to family physicians are stress-related," Stricker said.

Dr. Meyer uses acupuncture to work with a variety of conditions, from carpal tunnel syndrome to addictions to simply creating the condition called homeostasis, or balance within the body. Acupuncturists elsewhere have had success treating the symptoms of AIDS.

Meyer became a certified acupunturist only after more than 100 hours of study. The acupuncturist has a map of the meridians that the body's electrical impulses flow along, and inserts needles so that these acupuncture points can be stimulated.

Not everything is understood about why these techniques work, he said.

"(The Chinese) have been utilizing it for 4,000-5,000 years. "We've been doing this since '72."

He referred to the Western discovery of acupuncture when one of President Nixon's aides had to undergo emergency surgery while on a trip to China.

Meyer reiterates that these remedies always are employed in addition to and not instead of conventional medical techniques.

At Southeast Missouri Hospital, Chaplain Ray Otto is in charge of bringing the spiritual side into play in the healing process of turning holistic into wholistic. Those in the hospital's clinical pastoral education program encourage patients to talk about the negative feelings that arise during illness.

"As the feelings come to the surface and the patient begins to acknowledge the feelings, he comes to a sense of self-acceptance of them," Otto said.

Physical symptoms can result in patients who are burdened by grief, he said.

"When they come to some resolve that a loved one is gone ... they work through to the point where they begin to rebuild their lives again."

Often that process only can begin in an acute care hospital.

Dr. Stanley Sides, chief of the medical staff at St. Francis Medical Center, is not a believer in techniques that purport to help the patient heal himself or herself through the power of the mind.

"Today I have seen 20 patients who would love to use the power of positive thinking, yet their tumors continue to grow," said Sides, an oncologist.

"... There is obviously a mind-body connection. The problem is exploiting it therapeutically."

He maintains that acupuncture only proves that the placebo effect works. "For those who don't believe in it, it never works."

But Sides acknowledges the benefits when patients maintain a positive attitude. "It clearly helps to not be depressed and to be always working on getting yourself better," he said.

Though he does not use acupuncture to reduce pain in patients, Dr. Hinnant does not dismiss it. He points out that acupuncture has been successfully used by veterinarians working with animals.

"Whether it's a placebo or not is a moot point," Hinnant said.