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Growing
up, Angie Johnson never enjoyed winter. She couldn’t go
outside and build a snowman, sled down a snow-covered hill or ice
skate on a frozen pond.
Instead,
she was stuck in bed, incapacitated by bronchitis, sinus infections, pneumonia and asthma attacks. Throughout her childhood, Johnson went through countless antibiotics, steroids and asthma inhalers. Often she would have to be rushed to the doctor or emergency room for a breathing treatment. And, because of the steroids she took for
bronchitis, her immune system was low, making it difficult to absorb vitamins, minerals and protein. “I didn’t have any kind of energy, and I hadn’t gained any weight since I was 12 or 13,” said Johnson, 21, a student at Kansas State University in Salina. “My small intestine wasn’t absorbing what I ate, and I had
high metabolism that was off the chart.”
In other words, Johnson was a physical mess. That is, until this past October when she hooked herself up to a BodyScan
2010.
“I
couldn’t believe it. I stopped taking allergy medicine two
weeks after being scanned (by the BodyScan 2010),” she said. “I haven’t used my asthma
inhaler or had breathing treatments or any steroids since then.”
What exactly is this miracle machine that scanned Johnson and helped her regain control of her health and life?
The BodyScan
2010 is a small, metal black box about the size of a car battery that, according to its promotional brochure, “taps into the body’s own communication pathways by monitoring the body’s response to electrical impulse ... it assists the treatment protocol to bring the body back into balance.” In other words, by scanning electrical impulses in the body, the BodyScan
2010 can point out stresses, which are imbalances in one’s system, that are believed to lead to chronic illnesses such as arthritis, heart disease, diabetes, multiple sclerosis and fibromyalgia.
“Everything you come into contact with changes your body composition,” said
Jack Talbert, assistant director of the Phoenix Research Institute, a
nonprofit health organization in Abilene that owns and operates the
BodyScan
2010.
“Every time you eat something, or come in contact with light and smell, your body absorbs it, it becomes part of your physical composition. The machine directly queries the body and shows us these elements the body may be lacking or having stress reactions to,” he said.
Barbara Stewart, executive director of the institute, said the machine looks at what substances are affecting the body’s immune system.
“Sometimes we find the immune system is breaking down to a point where normal forms of treatment aren’t working as well,” she said.
Based
on the BodyScan’s analysis, a homeopathic-based treatment is suggested to the customer. Talbert defined homeopathic medicine as, “a vaccination against the stress of everyday living.” Webster’s Dictionary defines it as “treatment made from natural elements that would produce in a healthy person symptoms similar to those of the
disease, in order to build up the immune system.”
A Leap Of Faith
Talbert said that the majority of BodyScan
customers have chronic allergies that cause everything from nasal congestion to complete physical lethargy. Others have joint pain, or several of Stewart and Talbert’s customers have suffered from more serious ailments.
Dr. Randy Hassler, a urologist at Salina Urology Associates, 501 S. Santa Fe, was diagnosed with laryngital cancer last year. Hassler found that traditional chemotherapy wasn’t effective for his type of illness.
"I was faced with having a total laryngectomy, which would have left me with no voice at all," he said.
"That was not an option, so I looked for an alternative
treatment."
Hassler had been trained in conventional medicine, so he said it was a leap of faith for him to take a chance on a homeopathic treatment. Yet, he had studied such treatments and thought it had merit as an alternative. He was introduced to Stewart by a mutual friend, and Hassler decided to give it a try. After being scanned, he was put on a homeopathic plan. It seems to be working so far, he said.
"I don’t understand it at all, but the proof’s in the pudding," he said. "I see improvement in my condition without the side effects of chemo. The cancer is in remission now, although I still have to monitor it closely.”
Talbert said that homeopathic treatments are available for every illness, including cancer, but he stresses that such devastating diseases should be treated alongside more conventional medicine, including chemotherapy.
“There is a lot of long-term emotional stress and toxic burden with cancer, so we like to work with the medical community in helping the patient,” Talbert said.
Hassler said alternative medicine probably would become more accepted in the traditional medical community if more scientific tests were conducted to prove its lasting value.
“When
I prescribe medicine, the diagnosis has to be based on solid, scientific data. That’s the world I live in,” he said. “Before I can convince my colleagues that alternative therapies work, there has to be more tests, more experimental documentation. As soon as they
start doing these studies, they’ll get more money to finance these types of treatments.”
Trained
and Certified
The
Phoenix Research Institute is a division of Serenity Cove Pain
Management Center, 207 N. Cedar, opened by Stewart and Talbert in 1994
as a holistic medicine and massage therapy center. “We’re centrally located and draw business from Salina, Manhattan and Wichita,” Talbert said.
Both Stewart and Talbert have been trained and certified to use the BodyScan
2010 by the machine’s manufacturer, Phazx Corp., of Colorado Springs, Colo. Stewart has 15 years of training in massage, herbology,
acupressure and hypnotherapy. Talbert is a massage therapist and reflexologist.
Detecting imbalances
Johnson’s illness was evaluated by Stewart for a $75.00 fee. A web of electrodes
were attached to her fingers, wrists, ankles and head. A computer screen, which is attached to the black box, began to record a series
of squiggly vertical lines (similar to a lie detector), that represented stresses and imbalances in her body.
“The (machine) will test the body in 52 different categories,” Stewart said. “The machine records 144 substances every two seconds
through eight cycles.” Stewart said it takes about 15 minutes for a basic, comprehensive scan, and one to two hours to analyze the results. A follow-up scan, which usually costs $35.00, is recommended six to 10 weeks later to see if the body is reacting properly to treatment and to devise a new plan of action if it isn’t, Stewart said. “The immune system is bombarded with so many things during the year that we have to keep a periodic check on the system to track all the chemical changes,” she said.
Homeopathic treatments are recommended to BodyScan customers to help bring their bodies back into balance. These range from vitamins and minerals, to enzyme pills (for the digestive system), to scented oils (to strengthen the immune system), to a treatment that is exclusive to homeopathic medicine: the recipe bottle.
“For all diseases, there is a comparable homeopathic element,” Talbert said. “There are thousands of pre-prepared homeopathic combinations to fight about every ailment.”
Recipe bottles
Talbert pointed to shelves lined with small, individually marked eyedropper bottles that contain homeopathic chemicals to treat chronic illnesses such as sinus infections, parasites, intestinal dysfunctions, headaches and even bloody noses. “According to the FDA, homeopathic recipes are the only things that can be marked to treat specific functions,” Talbert said. The bottles can be placed on BodyScan 2010and the machine, through sound and electrical impulses, will attune the chemical frequency of the bottle’s contents to the chemical frequency of the patient’s body. The process is called “imprinting,” Talbert said. “The machine helps create a harmonic resonance between the medicine and your body,” he said. “Basically, imprinting helps the body accept and absorb the (homeopathic) medication faster and easier.”
Imprinted bottles run about $14. If a particular recipe is not available, it usually can be custom-made for the patient by the homeopathic manufacturer, Talbert said. Homeopathic supplements should be a regular part of a person’s diet, much like vitamins are, Talbert said. "I have yet to meet someone who has a diet so fine they do n’t need supplements,” he said. Johnson regularly spends about $30.00 to $50.00 on her imprinted bottle and a host of enzymes and minerals.
Natural health background
Testing the body’s energy through an electro-vibrational system, classified in medical journals as “biofeedback” (a method that measures reactions of the body and feeds information back through a device that records and analyzes bodily reactions), was pioneered by Dr. Reinhold Voll in Germany in the late 1940s.
There are about 700 practitioners of BodyScan 2010 in 29 states and five foreign countries who share their data and research on Phazx’s Website.
“This type of testing is fairly new in the U.S., although it’s been done a long time in Europe,” Talbert said.
The BodyScan2010 machine costs around $30,000. Most of the funds to purchase the one in Abilene were generated by word-of-mouth after Stewart described the benefits of the machines to her customers.
“My staff had used the machine in Colorado and were on homeopathic treatments. Our customers had seen the differences in their energy and well-being,” she said. “I also have a large client base, and when they found out how much it cost and knew we were going to be nonprofit and use it to help others, many people became generous contributors.”
The Phoenix Research Institute, which is one of only four places in Kansas that owns and operates a BodyScan machine (others are in Goodland, Eureka and Lawrence), now has a long waiting list of customers eager to be hooked up and scanned.
“Another great thing about the machine is that it’s portable, so we can take it to clinics and natural health
practitioners throughout the state and scan patients right in their offices,” Stewart said.
Potentially Dangerous Trend
Dr.
Dirk Hutchinson, M.D., a doctor of internal medicine at the Salina Clinic, 501 E. Santa Fe, and a friend of Dr. Hassler, believes there is a place for alternative therapy, but it also can lead to a potentially dangerous trend.
“What I don’t condone is that you may have untrained people recommending an alternative therapy in place of regular medication,” he said. “If someone gives up their heart medicine, or a diabetic their insulin, that would not be a good thing.”
Hutchinson said that many doctors, along with the National Institutes of Health, are doing scientific research on alternative medicine, and as doctors learn more, they probably will incorporate some of it into their treatments.
“Some of the problems we run across is that many chronic diseases, such as arthritis, can get better or worse on its own. It’s hard to do research on something like that,” he said. “That’s why we still must use alternative treatments to complement, not replace, conventional medicine.
Areata
Hofmann, Clay Center, doesn’t need proof that alternative therapy works for her. A longtime sufferer of fibromyalgia, a painful disease of the muscles and ligaments, she found that conventional doctors couldn’t offer her anything better than anti-inflammatory medication, which she said “can upset your stomach.”
She was scanned last November and found “my thyroid and pituitary glands weren’t functioning well, and my lymph system had toxins built up in it,” she said. “I started taking enzyme pills and a formula for my fibromyalgia, and now I don’t have as much pain and
discomfort.”
Hofmann plans a follow-up scan in early March to track her improvement. She said that while many people may be skeptical about the reliability of something like the BodyScan it’s well worth taking a chance on.
“If
you’re really hurting and nothing else has helped, this can be a very good alternative,” she said.
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