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Gluten and Its
Association With Illness
Vitamin D Importance
In Prevention and Treatment of Illness
Allergies & Sensitivities: LDA (Ultra Low
Dose Enzyme Activated Immunotherapy)
Post Traumatic Environmental Stress Disorder
Peace of Mind: Holistic
Approaches to Anxiety and ADD
Bipolar Disorder Can Be Treated With Medication
and Naturally
ALLERGY REDUCTION:
Improving Mood and Energy
Hidden Factors Behind Your
Persistent Illness
Adult
ADD:
To Medicate or Go Natural
Cancer
–
Finding Your Best Advisor
Overweight - The Risk and the Remedy
Loss
of Sexual Interest
Approaches in Helping Bipolar Sufferers
Help
for Panic and Anxiety Sufferer
Seasonal
Affective Disorder: The Winter Blues
Depression
Relief Speeds Health Recovery
Amino Acids
& Other Considerations in Depression Evaluation
Integrative
Medicine & Psychiatry
Blood
Pressure -
A Wake up Call
Addictions
- Breaking the Cycle
Suboxone: For Opiate Dependence
(for Western North Carolina Residents Only)
Spirituality:
The Core of
Healing in Integrative Psychiatry
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Cancer –
Finding Your Best Advisor
By
Ronald R. Parks, MD
One of the most traumatic messages or findings reported to you
by a health care professional is: “you have a cancer or a
tumor.” Depending on your emotional, psychological or
physical reserve or ability to cope with your worse fears or
perceived threats to your survival, will determine how you get
through next few moments or months. With whatever level of
knowledge you may already have about cancer and health
matters, one of the first thoughts is “Where do I go for the
most critical advice I have ever asked for in my life? Who or
where will I find the best source of unbiased information and
received necessary guidance in what choices to make?
Frequent places where people confronted with cancer go, or
consider in seeking help or counsel are: the traditional
family doctor, gynecologist, surgeon, internal medicine doctor
or medical doctors specializing in cancer treatment – the
oncologist; a trusted family member, a friend or family member
that has had cancer treatment, a clergy, the internet, books
or library, other cancer survivors or support groups, a
therapist; or an alternative, complementary or integrative
health care practitioner. All of these and many other choices
are available, but these avenues still are not your best
advisor.
Who then is your best advisor for direction and help with
cancer? Of course all of the above and others can play an
important role and may be a starting place in helping you
develop a reliable information base to help you make momentous
choices and decisions about your options and plans in being a
cancer survivor.
Your best advisor of course is the deep inner advisor that
needs to be found, unfettered, and allowed to become part of
your consciousness and encouraged to direct you towards more
discerning choices and decisions. To gain access to this most
powerful resource within ourselves means developing and
increasing the degree of moment to moment and day to day
awareness –“the being in the here and now”, and developing a
more open mindedness to new knowledge and learning and
objectively seeking new information relevant to our needs.
With more information, awareness, and development of our sense
of trust of our personal inner advisor, intuition and so
called “gut feeling,” we can move ahead as a survivor and not
a victim of our own prior mind set, prejudices, beliefs and
the blind following of authority and outside opinion. To
change any set in patterns of behavior and self defeating
beliefs, one needs to develop the art of mindfulness.
Mindfulness is the ability to not only become aware of what
our mind, emotional responses and repeating behavioral actions
are, but eventually to lead ourselves to better discrimination
and discernment in making better choices and re-directing our
thoughts, emotions and actions towards our overall betterment,
health, healing and wellbeing. In our developing awareness,
mindfulness, re-sourcing our inner guide or intuition, and
opening to new learning and information, and making discerning
choices, positive movement will be seen in shifting away from
cancer enhancing to recovery enhancing emotions, behaviors,
relationships, spiritual renewal and lifestyle changes.
Enhancing positive habits lead to healing through daily
exercise, radically positive nutrition, cleaning up our
personal environment, spiritual growth, meditation and
mindfulness practices, stress reduction and development of a
supportive community.
The Oriental notion of Karma and our understanding of advanced
quantum physics are helpful in understanding these concepts.
Karma is commonly explained as what goes around comes around
or simply if one does one thing it will influence some future
outcome. One might say that smoking is bad Karma as it is
linked with a markedly increase rate of lung cancer. Also one
could say that a positive diet high in fruits, vegetables,
antioxidants and low in saturated fats and refined
carbohydrates would be good Karma with much lower cancer risk
and rates. There are documented reports, for example, of
people changing lifestyle and adopting a healthy diet as a
macrobiotics diet and dramatically improving or going into
remission from a diagnosed cancer. A more sophisticated
understanding of Karma, as from a discovery in Quantum
Physics, is that we exist as very complex multilayer energy
fields, which as a composite, reflect who and where we are and
most likely what will be our destiny. As developing awareness
and imputing new choices and behaviors will create or add new
energy fields that will bring about future changes and alter
us from being on a fixed course.
As
brilliantly discussed by the very advanced scientist and
mystic David Hawkins, MD in his books, “Power vs Force”, and
“I”, human potential is unlimited as we free ourselves from
our ego driven “positionalities”, self-centerness and negative
emotions as pride, fear, anger, shame and shift to greater
integrity, compassion, love and spiritual awareness. In
terms of cancer, there are also many layers of contributing or
causative factors from genetics, chemical, environmental
factors and exposures; and how our genetically determined
detoxification systems work in clearing toxic insult, poor
nutrition, sedentary lifestyle, infections, stress,
concomitant physical illnesses to name a few. By awakening
our senses, sensibilities, awareness, learning capacities and
the inner guide and spirit, our chances of new responses and
life affirming attitudes, emotions, behaviors and healing can
and will influence a life enhancing direction and spiritual
awakening. To do this requires the will, the means, the
intention, motivation and new knowledge from being open to new
ideas and learning, positive sources of information and a
nurturing, affirming, supportive net work and community.
Beyond developing your discerning inner guide and advisor,
helpful learning and educational resources, appropriate health
care providers, oncologist and others as mentioned above, an
Integrative Medicine Practitioner can be a valuable part of
your treatment and recovery program. The term integrative is
preferred over the use of complementary or alternative when
referring to physicians who help individuals improve their
health using an eclectic approach from the best diagnostic and
treatment modalities from both conventional main stream
medicine and the best of alternative and natural medicine
approaches.
Dr. Parks is one of few specialists in the country who
combines both integrative medicine and psychiatry – addressing
the whole person’s body, mind, emotions and spirit and their
family and social support system. He keeps up to date with not
only traditional treatments, but also with some of the
innovative cutting edge treatments that appear promising, safe
and worth considering in developing a total treatment program.
Dr. Parks is known for his talents in doing helpful
evaluations and consultations to improve treatment and
recovery from physical or emotional problems that have not
responded to simple or conventional approaches.
He
offers both medication and non medication therapies with
natural complementary therapies. He is specialty trained in
Psychiatry, Internal, Family & Preventive Medicine, with a
background in nutrition, and other natural healing arts. He
acts as a bridge between the best of conventional Western
medicine and the innovative approaches of Integrative Medicine
and Psychiatry.
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lecturer, workshop leader, and consultant in areas of
health, nutrition, Integrative Medicine and Psychiatry
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M.D. from the University of Maryland, a Master's Degree in
Public Health and Health Services Research from UCLA,
specialty trained in Internal Medicine at George Washington
University, Preventive Medicine at UCLA, and Psychiatry at
the University of Maryland
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Past Assistant Skilled Professor at The Albany & University
of Miami Medical Schools, Chief of Internal Medicine at the
Homestead Air Force Base Hospital in Florida, & former
Director of the Center for Preventive and Nutritional Health
Care in Baltimore, MD
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Clinical Consultant for Doctor’s Data, Inc., a nationally
respected medical research and clinical laboratory
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Founder of MacroHealth Medicine - Dr. Parks' consulting and
treatment services in Asheville, NC.
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