The Medicalisation of Women's Health
By Denice Finnegan (Page 3)
To help a woman restore balance to her menstrual cycle, we need to know: does she feel disconnected from her body, or distrustful of the messages her own body gives her? How does she experience her body, her cycle? Does she perceive menstruation in a negative light? Does she have ‘the curse? How much attention does she give her feelings, observations and intuition regarding her body? Balance occurs on many levels, and only when we consider emotional, mental and physical balance together can we say we are working wholistically. Our herbal and other medicines are one aspect of our treatments, just as the physical body is one aspect of a human being.
If a client is to take a more active role in her health, she needs to learn some skills. Encourage your clients to get their own essential oils and experiment with making creams and massage rubs, baths and inhalations. Show her how to make a lavender compress for headache or earache. Showing her how to work with simple massage techniques and energy-work on her own body, and on her children. It is very empowering to relieve period pain, or headache by massaging. Let her know old remedies for dealing with the nausea of pregnancy using teas, food and nutrients. Encourage her to act preventatively for her own and her daughters menstrual health, by plotting her cycle, being aware of her ovulation, and finding out information. Knowing the factors that influence PMS, cervical dysplasia, osteoporosis, menstrual headaches, dysmenorrhea, endometriosis, and vaginal discharges.
But in working in these ways, your relationship with your client is crucial. There is power in being an observer of your clients process. Many experiments have shown that the act of observation influences what the eyes are looking at. If we look with disdain, judgment or criticism, we will influence a different outcome than if we observe with compassion, encouragement and support.
Natural Therapists must be aware of the social power we hold over our clients. Natural Therapists can legitimise or sanction illness, because behaviour or symptoms that have a medical reason or ‘cause are seen as excusable, acceptable. Take the emotional swings of menopause or PMS, or the craving for chocolate, or the depression. If we label them as ‘valid medical symptoms, we are medicalising these behaviours. We need to acknowledge the societal pressures for women to keep performing even when their hormones are giving them hell. Acknowledge the gender issue, that many women have learnt to hate their bodies, and to look to food for comfort.
For a woman to be active in the creation of her own health, she must develop power from within. Power from within is the power of ability, of choice, of action. As a practitioner, enabling empowerment in your clients is a truly wholistic goal. It brings out the best she can be on all levels. Having power with your client rather than power over her, means giving up the role of expert who knows best, it is a working partnership. It is a creative, dynamic and symbiotic relationship, which requires you to be present, attend to her reality, and reflect on your own beliefs and values. It requires you to assume your client is capable, intelligent, and in control of her health and her treatment.
We must develop an attitude and a language which reflects a sense of empowerment, self direction, trust in the body's ability to achieve wholeness, balance and health. When we use this language with our clients, we kindle the flames of power from within.
Redefining The Condition / Redefining Health
We can redefine the condition to recognize its emotional and energetic aspects. As Natural Therapists, we can sometimes treat only the physical body, ignoring intuition, self awareness, the needs of the spirit and emotional issues. Our thoughts, emotions and physical bodies are interlinked. Many believe emotions lie at the root of illness and disease. Bach was a herbalist, who emphasized the energetic qualities of the plants he used as medicines. His flower remedies help people change their habitual emotional patterns, so they can address their health issues from a different perspective. Herbal remedies, especially the nervines, as some of the hormonal normalisers, can have a stabilizing influence on emotions. Your client is then in a much better emotional state to do something about the causes of their unwellness.
As Natural Therapists, we can support our clients in their life changes, in emotionally intense times, so they can make a choice that does not lead to being medicated into numbness. However, as a practitioner, you need to have explored your own emotional terrain. How do you really feel about your body? Can you feel where emotion sits in your body? Are you familiar with the emotional patterns that precede illness in your body? Only when you have experienced how emotions are linked to illness in your own body, can you work with your clients on these levels. We must act in our own lives in a wholistic way before we can work with our clients wholistically. For whatever is left out of the whole picture for you on a personal level, you will leave out of your clients treatment.
Most importantly, does a Natural Therapist treat a person who is sick, or support good health in that person? Often as a herbalist, we can do much more to address health imbalances by supporting our clients nervous system, or immune system, as well as, or even instead of the presenting symptoms of illness. Sometimes we need to perceive the issue as one of blockage and congestion, and use our herbal remedies to clear out and de-toxify. Sometimes we might see the condition as one of lack, where much support, strengthening and nurturance is needed. Here again, our herbal remedies can provide this.
Redefining the Role of The Natural Therapist
What if, tomorrow, we lost access to all the products, all the manufactured medicines? We know this is very possible. What would our roles as Natural Therapists entail?
Our role can be about access. In the Natural Therapists clinic, supplying independent accessible materials on health for clients, which challenges information derived from direct to consumer advertising. Even more importantly, we can access our clients to their own bodies. This means helping the client to develop an awareness of, and knowledge about, their physical, mental and emotional selves. Ayurvedic and yogic texts are available to us now, to reclaim this lost wisdom, that has always been superior to even the most advanced technology. We can spread knowledge about self help and prevention. This may mean teaching our clients skills such as stress management, meditation, visualization, goal setting, journaling, managing thoughts and emotions. Or maybe discussing a support plan for the nervous system, or the immune system. Or it may mean referring them to someone else.
As Natural Therapists, we can start to help our clients see links between their health and the social beliefs, expectations and norms thrust upon them by the media. We can remind our clients that political and social problems require political and social solutions, not medical ones. We can keep linking the mind, body and spirit in our discussions with clients as to how to work with illness and health. We can start to link cause and effect, especially the effect of a polluted environment on their health and well-being, so they can make different choices, like consuming organic food and reducing xenoestrogens in their surroundings, food and water. This is the politicization of health, where knowledge gives power and choice.
Drawing your clients attention to the ways food causes certain problems, such as bread gluing up the intestines, and the effects of sugar in depression. When your client knows the basics of good nutrition, she cannot be fooled by clever advertising gimmicks. When she knows the physiological reasons behind sugar cravings, and how to prevent them through diet, she is less likely to indulge in self hatred about eating habits. The client gains the power to make different choices around food. Those choices may mean she will start growing herbs and vegetables (chemical free) for juicing and eating. Some chamomile or peppermint, some dandelion leaf, fennel, parsley, or lemon balm, and wheatgrass are all easy to grow and simple to use as food or teas.
Encourage the process of regular detoxification and juice fasting. Highlight the issues related to organic foods, biodynamic foods, genetically modified foods, the patenting and control of food and seeds. Talk about foods that contain certain nutrients, such as calcium or iron, rather than automatically recommending supplements. Educate the client that depletion of nutrients can occur through stress, heavy periods, pregnancy and childbirth, and environmental pollutants. Talk about foods that exacerbate health problems. Next Page >>