Articles

Center Has More Than One Solution for Healing
Transylvania Times, May 2008
by Mark Todd

If you suffer from chronic fatigue, depression, pain, and many other illnesses, there are a variety of ways to get better. The choice of solutions continues to grow, according to Dr. Charles Lefler, who leads Brevard's Center For Integrated Health and Healing next door to Transylvania Community Hospital.

"Since I was interested in natural healing before getting to medical school, I guess you might say I've had a long term interest in alternative healing methods," Lefler said.

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Natural Approaches to the Problem of Chronic Pain
Transylvania Times, February 28, 2008
Medical Supplement

Perhaps the most significant problems of life is experiencing pain. We long to avoid it, and yet we must remember that without it we could not live normal lives.  Lepers, for instance, damage their bodies because the disease causes them to lose the sensation of pain. Pain warns us to draw back from fire, to shift our grip on a tool if we are getting a blister, to change our gait if a muscle feels stressed. When pain becomes chronic, it has gone beyond functioning as an early warning device. Chronic pain necessitates methods of relief that do not create additional risks and problems.

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Restoring the Self on the Road to Good Health
The Center for Integrated Health and Healing
by Suzanne Comer Bell
Smoky Mountain Living  Summer 2006
Part 2 of 2 parts

Searching for the right health care can be like a search through the mountains for water, light, warmth, and safe footing. But the trail is long, winding, and full of challenges. It seems to lead to light and rest, then you decide you’re off the trail. Back to the clearing, cross the creek. Now, try this path. Here are smooth rocks, already walked by hundreds of seekers. Nice, trusty, but not my own path. I’ll use it, but it’s not all the healing I need. Your eye catches something up ahead, off in the distance—intriguing, but how to get there? You’ll have to cross a fallen log, a natural bridge, and balance, balance, balance (wow, I haven’t done that in years! you think). Then you discover a broad place opens, a high mountain hillside, where rocks lie in patches of grass and berry bushes, mingled with cool breezes and warm sun. (Was this made perfect just for me?) Home at last, you bury yourself in a nest of grass, lean against the solid weight of quartz and granite, and let the medicines of wild adventure, private discovery, and open sky take you like a foamy bath. Overhead is the soundtrack of hawks and a sporadic, whistling wind. Time is endless, and so are the depths of healing in this simple but bravely taken experiment.

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Innovations in Medicine Take Us Back to the Future
The Center for Integrated Health and Healing
by Suzanne Comer Bell
Smoky Mountain Living  Spring 2006
Part 1 of 2 parts

In an earlier day, the medical crisis in the mountains revolved around the availability of basic health care. Doctors and medicine were in short supply, and a midwife was usually the only resource for the traumas of childbirth, pneumonia, or farm injuries. During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, wealthy lowlanders discovered the mountains were a cool escape from sweltering heat and mosquito-borne malaria.

Jump to the twenty-first century, and we find a dizzying array of options for health and healing. The Western traditions of surgery, prescription drugs, and over-the-counter remedies have been entrenched for decades. Now alternative therapies, treatments, and supplements grab for our attention. People have begun to question the reaches of conventional medicine, but it’s opened the gates for a flood of health options, some ancient and others newly conceived. Where does one turn for help among the myriad choices?

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Center for Integrated Health and Healing Opens in Brevard
Transylvania Times, February 2006

A new sign is coming to Medical Park Drive at the hospital: "The Center for Integrated Health and Healing," at the office of Dr. Charles Lefler.

This sign announces the integration of conventional and alternative healing approaches into a complementary healing practice on the campus of Transylvania Community Hospital. Dr. Lefler who is a board certified Internal Medicine specialist with a life long interest in integrated medicine directs the center. The Center for Integrated Health and Healing brings together under one roof Internal and Integrated Medicine, Clinical Psychology, Stress Management, Acupuncture, Reiki, Massage, Nutritional counseling, Reflexology, Feng Shui consultation, Yoga, Scenar TENS and healing touch, and art for health.

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