Hello all!
I am honored to introduce you to Charlotte MacFarlane, a Veterinarian, Acupuncturist and amazing energy worker.
Charlotte has added to her tool bag the BRAIN system methods we have been studying this year. In our last blog Charlotte shared a few stories about her work with animals. Her extensive background , training and writing ability prompted me to ask her to share her insights and knowledge more intimately with you. I think many of you will be surprised to learn just how reliable blood tests are in showing organ strength. Of, course that is why I use biofeedback and why Charlotte uses Traditional Chinese Medicine. Be sure to comment below. We love to hear from you!
Charlotte Shares The 3 Levels of Disease and Ill-Health
I am very fortunate in my life to be able to practice the gamut of healing modalities on animals. I use techniques ranging from the Western medical world of x-rays and steroids all the way in to the soul level world of energies and emotions. Animals are fantastic to work on because they are open and sensitive to gentle therapies, and because things move quickly in their bodies.
Doing what I do and working in such a broad spectrum has given me a unique perspective on health and on disease. I want to share it with you now, in hopes that it might help you in your journey.
The 3 Levels of Disease and Ill-Health
For the purpose of this article, I am going to use the word “disease” with the intention that it means any ailment from a sore throat or tweaked muscle all the way to major things like cancer or kidney failure.
Physical
Physical ailments are the most easily recognized disturbances. The Physical level of disease has physical symptoms that we can easily see with our eyes or feel with our hands. Examples might be a palpable mass, abnormal readings on blood work, a skin rash, or symptoms such as diarrhea or coughing.
This is the level that many of us think of when we think of ill-health, and is often what we wait for before seeking treatment. Unfortunately, the physical level is also the last and most exterior layer of disease.
Did you know that for organ disease (like kidney disease) to be detectable on blood work, it takes 75% loss of function in that organ? It takes more than 85% loss of function in some organs to see outward clinical signs (especially in animals). Our bodies are so strong and have a lot of built-in redundancy — we can take damage and keep going. But it also means that 60% of your kidneys could be nothing but scar tissue, and a medical doctor would not be able to see changes in your lab work. And depending how in-tune you are with your body, you may not have noticeable symptoms until those kidneys are 85% scar tissue.
Sadly, in my practice, this is often the stage where I see patients for the first time. Even if they have just been diagnosed, and maybe it is said to be ‘caught early’ and ‘mild’, I don’t consider the disease to be early or mild. Why? Because this is the third and last level of disease. The other levels have been out of balance for a long time, building and worsening for sometimes decades.
Energetic
So what comes before? This is the level I call Energetic Imbalance, and it is the level I treat primarily with Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) and similar modalities. TCM works on the principle of Qi moving through the body on meridians, which are like energy highways criss-crossing the entire body. In my mind, they are similar to blood vessels and nerves, but while those things are physical, meridians are energetic — they don’t have a physical, visible pathway, and they carry Qi-energy instead of a physical substance like blood.
In TCM, pain or disease is caused by improper flow of Qi energy through the meridians. A mass, at an energetic level, is caused by a stagnation and build-up of Qi. I like to compare Qi Stagnation to a car accident, in keeping with the highway analogy:
Imagine a busy highway where all the cars (Qi) are moving along nicely. There is a minor fender-bender, and two cars pull over to the side. The rest of the cars still flow freely.
Now, a driver is distracted by the already pulled over cars and they collide with another car. Maybe it’s more serious and now they are blocking a lane. No problem, the other cars will just use the remaining lanes to keep going where they need to.
Now the flow is slowed down, cars (energy) are not passing through as fast as they need to and are not getting to the places further down the road as much as they should. Cars behind the accident are backing up and congesting the road and places behind. (More on these scenarios later.)
Imagine now, as our car-energy accident turns into a mass, drivers try to keep going by the scene — there’s another accident and another and another. Suddenly there is a twenty-car pile up and no one is going anywhere. Cars keep arriving and they are being squished onto the pile up by the cars from behind.
You can picture it in your mind as the pile of cars just keeps growing and growing. Suddenly, what started as a little finder-bender has turned into a disaster visible from outer space!
The same thing can happen in our body, where a little glitch in energy flow, left unchecked, has the potential to build and worsen. Over time, a little glitch can turn into a tumour.
Or we can have problems of Qi deficiency (past the accident, where the cars are not getting to go as fast as they need to) — which is frequently seen in things like kidney disease. Or problems of congestion and too much Qi in an area (behind the accident, where the cars are building up and moving too slow), which can be the case in things like skin rashes.
But imagine if we could go in with a tow-truck and pull out the first fender-bender before there were any more accidents. We can! This is the level of energetic disease, and this is what we are doing with TCM ( Traditional Chinese Medicine)
Of course, when we really get to thinking about it, what caused the fender-bender in the first place?
Tune in next week for Part 2 of The 3 Levels of Disease and Ill-Health.