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It's been about a year since Mary* began her odyssey through the long halls of medical science. A tumor the size of a small orange had developed on her right elbow, and another tumor under her foot made it impossible for her to walk properly. Tumors in her lungs caused her so much trouble breathing that she couldn't complete a sentence without gasping for air. Her eyes were red and inflamed; she was aching all over and had continuous flu-like symptoms that left her feeling miserable.
A specialist diagnosed the tumors as a kind of gout and prescribed a drug to help halt their development. Another specialist diagnosed her eye condition as iritis and prescribed drugs to subdue the inflammation. Her aches and pains were diagnosed as rheumatism and she was prescribed drugs to help ease the pain.
Taking five different medicines and still getting little relief, Mary decided to go to the Ochsner Clinic in New Orleans to get an overall evaluation. There she received good news and bad news. The good news was that her condition finally was diagnosed as sarcoidosis, an immune system disorder in which the body's defense mechanisms go haywire and start disrupting normal bodily functions. The bad news was that there was no real treatment available for her disease. The doctors suggested steroids to control her symptoms but warned they could cause diabetes, among other potential side-effects. On the other hand, if she didn't take any medication, the tumors could continue to grow to the point where they would threaten her life.
A Different Route
Faced with such dismal alternatives, Mary opted for an entirely different route. She enrolled in a three-week in-residence treatment program at the Center for Chronic Disorders in Dallas, one of four such facilities that offers a wide-ranging treatment program based on the Maharishi Vedic Approach to Health.
Once her treatment was underway, Mary quickly felt better. "At first, I would go in for my treatments each morning aching and full of pain, almost unable to get up on the treatment table," recalls Mary. "Afterwards I felt tremendous. Every day this happened. And then I just started feeling better continuously. At that point, my symptoms started to drop off one by one. And to my relief, the tumors started to shrink."
After Mary returned home, she continued to follow a treatment program prescribed by her doctors. The tumor on her right elbow completely disappeared, the inflammation of her eyes diminished, and her lung problems cleared up.
"The effects really are like night and day," says Mary. "Before I had all these terrible problems, and now I just don't have them anymore. It was just remarkable. I could be dead if I hadn't had the opportunity to do this."
Mary was more fortunate than most. More than 100 million Americans--almost every second person in this country--suffer from a chronic disease, persistent, long-term health problems that in many cases render a person unable to work or live independently.
The Problem of Chronic Diseases
"Chronic diseases have reached epidemic proportions in our society," says Dr. Stuart Rothenberg, Director of the Dallas Center for Chronic Disorders. "The sad thing is that in spite of its significant advances, allopathic medicine has very little to offer many people with chronic diseases other than temporary relief from the often debilitating symptoms associated with these diseases."
The Centers for Chronic Disorders employ techniques from the Maharishi Vedic Approach to Health to treat chronic diseases from the most fundamental level of the mind and body--its inner intelligence. "These new treatment programs are of a completely different order of magnitude than anything we have ever done," says Dr. Rick Averbach of the Chicago Center for Chronic Disorders. "The way the treatments are applied, the way in which they are combined with each other, the intensity of the treatments, the supervision, and the herbal treatment--all of that, combined with new techniques that have not been available elsewhere, makes for an entirely new and remarkably beneficial treatment package."
The treatment programs at the Centers for Chronic Disorders are based on the pioneering work of neuroscientist Tony Nader, M.D., Ph.D., who, under the inspiration of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, found that the intelligence expressed in the Veda and Vedic Literature is reflected in the structure of the human body. The Centers' programs incorporate important new treatment techniques based on this discovery. The programs are also the culmination of more than 15 years of experience using the Maharishi Vedic Approach to Health.
Contrary to popular belief, chronic diseases affect not only the elderly but people of all age groups. They account for 8 out of 10 hospital stays and 7 out of 10 hospital admissions. The expense for the care of chronic disorders amounts to nearly 70 percent of the nation's annual personal health-care expenditures. In spite of the huge costs, the treatments that modern medicine offer for these conditions often give little promise of long-term relief and frequently produce harmful side-effects.
Harvard professor Lucien Leape, M.D., recently wrote in the Journal of the American Medical Association that, based on his calculations, "180,000 people die in the U.S. each year partly as a result of iatrogenic [doctor-caused] injury, the equivalent of three jumbo-jet crashes every two days." And these mortality rates do not account for the people who suffer from the side-effects from drugs prescribed to manage their condition.
Take the example of Sue,* another client of the Chronic Disease Centers, who, after 11 years with Parkinson's disease, had such severe side-effects from the prescribed medicine that she had difficulty walking. She decided to enroll at one of the Centers for Chronic Disorders.
"The results were more significant than anything I have ever tried," she says. "Because of the side-effects from my Western medicine, my legs were so spastic I couldn't walk, I was constantly losing my balance, and I felt a pressure on my eyes so bad I couldn't even touch them--all of that is completely gone. Overall, my symptoms improved about 40 to 50 percent, and I was able to reduce my medicine to half, something that is pretty much unheard of for people with Parkinson's disease."
Using the Body's Intelligence
Because allopathic medicine has made such significant advances over the past 50 years, its inability to cure chronic disease is particularly striking. The main reason is that the physiological imbalances at the root of chronic disease build up gradually, and by the time they finally show up as symptoms of disease, they are so deeply embedded in the mind-body system that they are difficult to eradicate.
Modern medicine generally treats chronic diseases by trying to manage or suppress the symptoms, but this really does nothing to remove the factors that triggered the disease.
"To address the problems of chronic diseases, it is necessary to focus on the deepest root causes," explains Dr. Steven Rector, Director of the Atlanta Center for Chronic Disorders. "From the perspective of the Maharishi Vedic Approach to Health, these causes are not necessarily even physical, because they originate in a breakdown in the body's inner intelligence. From the Vedic perspective, we know that the body is structured from intelligence, and only by enlivening the body's own inner intelligence can we eliminate the fundamental causes of chronic disease."
By enlivening the inner intelligence of the body, the treatments stimulate its immense inherent capacity for self-repair. The main principle is to treat the whole person, addressing not only physiologic abnormality but imbalances at the levels of consciousness, mind, body, and the near and distant environments. Each person's treatment program is highly individualized, but all include nutritional therapies, herbal food supplements, and Vedic purification therapies that help to eliminate impurities that have accumulated as a result of poor diet, stress, and other factors.
The Centers for Chronic Disorders also offer preventive services for people who want to optimize their chance of staying healthy throughout their lives. "It really is much easier to address physiological imbalances while these are still fairly innocuous," says Dr. Edwards Smith, Director of the Center for Chronic Disorders in Albuquerque. The Maharishi Vedic Approach to Health has a remarkable arsenal for both locating and eliminating subtle physiological disorders while these are still pre-clinical. This is yet another major strength of the programs that we offer."
***
For more information, please call The Center for Chronic Disorders in:
€ Albuquerque: (505) 830-0415. Medical Director: Dr. Edwards Smith.
€ Atlanta: (404) 352-3650. Medical Director: Dr. Steven Rector.
€ Chicago: (312) 922-4440. Medical Director: Dr. Rick Averbach.
€ Dallas: (214) 824-0027. Medical Director: Dr. Stuart Rothenberg.
***
Sidebar:
What Disorders are Treated? The Centers for Chronic Disorders offer programs for the following disorders:
Coronary heart disease, Chronic kidney disease, Chronic fatigue, Hypertension, Benign prostatic hyperplasia, Chronic back pain, Chronic bronchitis, Chronic liver disease, Overweight, Bronchial asthma, Gallstones, Psoriasis, Chronic sinusitis, Hyperacidity, Eczema, Chronic headache, Peptic ulcer, Insomnia, Rheumatoid arthritis, Irritable bowel syndrome, Hypothyroidism, Osteoarthritis, Inflammatory bowel disease, Hyperthyroidism, Menstrual problems, Diabetes (non-insulin dependent), Alzheimer's disease, Menopausal syndrome, Connective tissue diseases, Parkinson's disease, Depression, Chronic anxiety, Multiple sclerosis
