Annapurna: a skeptic ventures into the mysteries of self-healing

Townsend Letter for Doctors and Patients,  May, 2005  by Betty Shafer

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Although I consider myself open-minded, when it comes to unconventional treatments I definitely have a "prove it to me" attitude. As a Registered Nurse, I know that I can easily access medical care and get a shot or pill or surgery to treat almost any ailment. And the concept of self-healing and the use of natural remedies, common to our grandparents and great-grandparents, are foreign to many of us today.

Alternative treatment methods are usually not researched by the medical or pharmaceutical companies: empirical data is rarely gathered. Pharmaceutical companies have a vested interest in marketing their patented pills, so they invest heavily in that kind of research instead. There's just no money to be made in methods they cannot patent.

So what if the pill or shot or surgery of conventional Western medicine doesn't work? This was my dilemma when I was led to Robin Sharan and the Annapurna Center for Self-Healing in Port Townsend, Washington.

I met Robin when I was visiting friends in Port Townsend. As we spoke, she asked if I had been having any medical problems. I knew my face was drawn, there were dark circles under my eyes, and I think that I looked as exhausted as I felt. I told her about stomach pain, bloating, and the protruding stomach that was so bad I couldn't fit into my clothes, heartburn, belching, and nausea. I mentioned difficulty breathing, especially on exertion, chronic back pain, an 18 pound weight gain the past 2 years, and constant fatigue. "It's gallbladder and liver stones," she said. Well, my gallbladder came out two years ago, I replied.

"Your liver," she said, "it's all the same. The stones come from the same place. Our diet today is terrible, full of sugar and animal fat, and the food we eat is contaminated by pesticides, antibiotics, and poor soil. Add to that, the stress of daily life, and you have a toxic liver full of stones. The liver gets congested and cannot do its job of cleansing the toxins from the body. Have you been under a lot of stress the last 6 months?"

I didn't really think so. I did have gallbladder surgery two years ago, which can cause stress and disruption of normal digestion. I realized that I hadn't felt "back to normal" since the surgery even though it had cured the intense pain of a gallbladder attack. My job as an emergency nurse could be considered stressful at times, but I had done this for 20 years.... A year and a half ago I moved from Los Angeles to the small mountain town of Packwood, Washington, moving close to a son and daughter-in-law but leaving behind two of my grown children, grandchildren, and many friends. But still, nothing unusual, I thought.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Robin then asked, "Don't you consider the pain and shortness of breath you have to be stressful?" I had to admit that it was. But I consider my diet to be pretty good. I buy organic when I can, I don't eat meat, but do eat fish occasionally. I drink lots of water and eat plenty of fruits and vegetables and whole grains. Sure, there's a bag of potato chips or a brownie occasionally but not too often. I do have a weakness for coffee, but don't drink sodas or concentrated fruit juices.

Robin showed me the anatomy of stone formation in the liver from a book, The Amazing Liver Cleanse by Andreas Moritz (available at 1st Books.com or any book store). She described how the stones are formed in the liver and gallbladder, referring to medical anatomy posters.

Perhaps "stones" are not the best way to describe these soft round bits of mostly cholesterol and bile that gather in the liver. They are encased in a harder shell, thus difficult to pass under normal circumstances. They drop into the gallbladder (when there is one) and eventually become the hardened stones the surgeon removes when they become painful. It seems that almost everyone has stones. The purpose of the liver/gallbladder flush is to take the pressure off the heart, the lungs, the liver, the eyes, the tissues and the joints of the body. The cleansing that is done at Annapurna, and other healing centers, is to remove these "stones" in a natural manner, before they require the surgeon's scalpel.

This I didn't learn in my medical training, but gallbladder/liver cleansing is part of Ayurvedic medicine, an ancient Eastern Indian discipline which has been around millennia before modern Western medicine. But it was difficult for me to accept, so I drove home to Packwood intending to see my physician for more testing. I had already had blood testing, chest X-ray, pulmonary function test, and an abdominal cat scan. Soft liver stones do not show up on imaging until the liver is inundated with stones, then the patient is told by his doctor that he has a "fatty liver" and that nothing can be done.

All my tests were negative, except the pulmonary function test which showed only 70% function. Also, I had learned that part of the treatment at Annapurna was colonics, (the washing out of the large intestine and the hydration of the entire body), something I have never done and have always resisted as unnecessary.