Chizhevskiy A.L.
Nowadays these issues have been extensively studied by hundreds of scientists all over the world and do not longer cause such controversy as in Chizhevskiy’s time. Ideas of the rhythmic of life in all its manifestations – from an individual person’s cycles of activity, such as neurohumoral and endocrine processes, to the macro scale rhythms of the society – have permeated all layers of society and received public recognition. All the more, we have increasing understanding that those rhythms are directly related to our everyday life and health.
Fundamental trends of medicine of the XXI century
It is becoming obvious that the XXI century calls for a new medical paradigm, a new approach towards health and treatment.
Many physicians and researchers have been developing the principles of this new approach; in particular, these principles are described in the book Logic of Health by the Moscow physician Anatoly Volkov, who based his book on years of medical practice and treatment of hundreds of patients saved from the most serious illnesses.
•“Health is an optimal state of the organism that implies adequate reaction of the organism towards any kind of external stimuli.
•A human organism is a self-regulating system that may be corrected just a little, but must never be regulated from outside.
•An organism that provides an adequate response to external stimuli does not need any drugs. Therefore, medicines and drugs should only be used for emergency medical treatments.
•Any treatment should aim at restoring the natural level of the organism’s adaptability to external stimuli, except when some functions of the organism have been irreversibly lost. “
We can see that these ideas have a lot in common with the views of great ancient physicians, from Hippocrates, Galen and Roger Bacon to the Eastern philosophers – Israeli, Chinese, Korean and Indian.
What is happening today in the modern European world is a gradual return to those ideas, to a wider understanding of the nature of human beings and our place in the Universe.
In the Western industrial countries this process has led to the creation of new medical trends that still have not been properly structured and sometimes do not even have a universal name.
ALTERNATIVE MEDICINE
COMPLEMENTARY MEDICINE
INTEGRATIVE MEDICINE
ENERGY MEDICINE
HOLISTIC MEDICINE
SYSTEMIC MEDICINE
These titles can be seen in journal captions, in names of professional communities, in lectures at international conferences. Although there is still some confusion about the name of the trend, the trend itself has already grown mature, has manifested itself and proved its right to exist. This “novel” medicine employs an overwhelming variety of methods: from acupuncture, homeopathy, electric and magnetic therapy, to psychosocial and informational stimulations. All these different approaches are united by the one main principle – the idea of a human as a unified system, and the concept of influencing the whole hierarchy of processes uniting the material body, mind and soul.
A human being is neither a machine, nor a computer, nor a chemical laboratory – it is God’s creation, the summit of evolution of biological life on Earth.
This changes the whole goal setting of medicine as a practical discipline. The main purpose of contemporary Occidental Allopathic medicine is to cure diseases. At the same time, all physicians understand that terminating a malignant process at an early stage is much easier than doing so during acute manifestations of pathology. Many people could have been saved from heart attacks or strokes if underlying corresponding processes had been secured and understood prior to clinical manifestations. The majority of tumours discovered at early stages can be successfully treated with contemporary methods.
Therefore, one of the main tasks of the XXI century medicine is the creation of a system of early diagnostics and disease prevention, in other worlds – the transition to individual preventive medicine, a medicine of health. Preventing diseases rather than treating them – this is the goal of the ‘new’ medicine.
Everything new is old again, the saying goes. The concept of prevention has always been the foundation stone of the Eastern medicines. In ancient China, a family physician received payment only as long as all family members were healthy. Whenever someone fell ill, the payment stopped. No wonder that physicians went to great pains to preserve health of their patients. In contrast, in the Occidental Allopathic medicine we pay physicians when we are ill and consequently… (one does not wish to draw offending conclusions). Part of the Eastern health system consists of meditation techniques, relaxation exercises, massage and hydrotherapeutic procedures – our contemporary medicine has only started to approach this. A whole complex of procedures had been developed for ensuring a healthy life in old age, whereas we have only started assimilation of such methods. Another important thing is that the methods of systemic, integrative, alternative medicine employ only natural ingredients.
Modern synthetic drugs prove effective in the vast majority of cases, especially when saving the life of a patient or turning the tide of a health crisis. Not to mention such drugs as Viagra. Contemporary medicine is a battlefield, when one has to save a patient’s life, without giving much thought to possible secondary consequences.
Natural medicines operate in a much milder way. As a rule, they do not provide an immediate intense effect; they do their job over time, slowly but persistently and successfully. Plant-based medicines can cure chronic illnesses or prevent them from arising in the first place. Small doses of such medicines do not cause addiction or dependence, while functioning in an efficient manner over long-term periods. Apparently, natural substances have something that chemists just cannot synthesize. It might be the systemacity, the complexity of microcomposition that disappears after they isolate the apparently active element.
We have conducted a large series of experiments, comparing the glow of natural aromatic oils against their synthetic analogues with identical mass spectra, i.e. having virtually identical chemical composition. In the majority of cases the glow dynamics of natural oils and their synthetic analogues differed. Therefore, natural products do contain some elusive element that chemists cannot determine, that gives the natural apple its flavour and provides flagrance to the blossoming rose. Maybe it is a good thing chemists cannot find it. Or we would be eating paper smelling like steak. Having McDonald’s everywhere is already quite enough, thank you very much.
So, the first stage of treatment in integrative medicine is the assessment of the health condition. It must include several elements:
•Biochemical blood assay;
•Genetic status;
•Cardiac monitoring, preferably under load;
•Blood pressure monitoring;
Analysis of the biological energy emanations by means of the EPI method, with assessment of the psychological state and the level of stress.
Depending on the result of these analyses, the physician may then prescribe a systemic treatment or recommend detailed examination of particular organs or systems.
The concept of a biological field
The issue of instrumental analysis is even more urgent in the field of psychophysiology. The developed methods of instrumental methods to study of an individual’s psychophysiological state have a long ago started to appeal to researchers’ history. After the first experiments of Gustav Fechner, it became obvious that psychology is inextricably linked with physiology, that body and soul form a continuous