Transylvania Times
May 2008

Center Has More Than One Solution for Healing

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.

"Among the many things which we learned in medical school were to be observant as possible, listen very carefully to what our patients told us, base our approaches on scientific evidence, and do no harm to the patient.

In my practice of medicine, I've always tried to listen to my patients, and over the years, I heard more and more of them saying they preferred to do things naturally or perhaps they would say they didn't want to take patented drugs," Lefler said.

So, over time, Lefler has expanded his practice and staff of practitioners to include not only the standard approaches taught at the University of North Carolina medical school, but also a growing number of alternative approaches, both new and old.

His business partner, Juli Stempel is a true believer. She is a licensed massage therapist and helps run the business side of the practice. She has found in some cases that alternative medicine has helped her and others where standard medical practices involving medication weren't getting the job done.

She has had three serious health issues during the last 20 years. One, trigeminal neuralgia, is a neuropathic disorder of the trigeminal nerve that causes episodes of intense pain in the eyes, lips, nose, scalp, forehead, and jaw. An estimated 1 in 15,000 people suffer from trigeminal neuralgia, although numbers may be significantly higher due to frequent misdiagnosis. It usually develops after the age of 40, although there have been cases with patients being as young as three years of age.

The condition can bring about stabbing, mind-numbing, electric shock-like pain from just a light wind or a finger's glance of the cheek. It is believed to be among the most severe types of pain known to humanity.

Stempel said, "I spent two and a half years in hell. Conventional medicine said there was treatment, no cure. A nutritionist had me pain tree in 10 days. I lived off steamed vegetables and lean meat for two years, then went back on a normal diet." Stempel had to eliminate caffeine, alcohol, sugar, and mold, or aged cheese, from her routine. Also, she had a raging case of acid reflux and chronic sinus problems, which cleared up after she learned to eat according to her blood type. Before she got better, she used to have trouble just walking the stairs, she said. "I literally cried," she said.

After regaining her health, she resumed working and is a licensed massage therapist. Most people don't know it, but there are at least 200 specific techniques in the massage field, she said. Relaxation, improved circulation, and removal of waste products from the body are all among the positive benefits of massage, she said.

She had opened a wellness center in town, and said she found she was a parallel path with Lefler. The two decided to join forces. " Stempel said as the community grows and attracts more residents, many of them older and retired, it is now more feasible to offer non-traditional and sometimes non-insured services to those who have the interest and ability to participate, she said.

"There are times when drugs are required. But sometimes drugs can be replaced with other therapies with excellent results," said Stempel.

"Traditional medicine is wonderful. But it doesn't cure everything. Alternative treatments are low cost, many times, and they successfully address things conventional medicine cannot. We need to support the natural abilities that the body has to heal," she said.

According to Lefler, the New England Journal of Medicine defines alternative medicine as any medicine which did not originate in a medical school or is currently not taught and practiced in most medical schools.

Using that definition, many of the currently accepted practices of medicine were originally alternative, such as radiology, radiation medicine, hypnotherapy and anesthesia, he said, adding that he believes in the significance of spirituality in healing.

"Over the years, many patients got better without taking conventional pharmaceuticals. Many medications that we were told were great were withdrawn from the market. Many published articles were followed by other articles purporting to contradict the previous article by learned professionals. In short, there was a lot of information to be weighed and sifted to try and determine what was right or wrong," he said.

"I found that the more my patients realized that I wasn't judging them for their interest in non-conventional approaches to health and healing, the more they told me about what they had done, or wanted to do, or were afraid to do in the case of conventional medicine," Lefler said.

"In medical school at the University of North Carolina, I believe that I got a tremendous background in conventional medicine, but I also believe that I was educated to think for myself, observe carefully and to care for patients as fellow human beings to be loved and assisted in their endeavors to maintain health or return to health. I was not taught to treat people as widgets to be managed," he said.

"I try to listen to each patient who comes to me and ascertain what they want, how they want to pursue their goals and what knowledge I can make available to them that they may not already have. I have many patients who wish totally conventional approaches to health and health care, and I am prepared to do that as a board certified internist. But I also have many patients who want to know what I think about some non-conventional approach to health or healing," Lefler said.

"Finally, I have many patients, perhaps most of my patients, who want to blend the conventional and the non-conventional. I try to help with my current knowledge and many times I have to tell them that I'll just have to do some research about their question.

There are many developing technologies that are still considered alternative and some experimental," he said.

Audiovisual entrainment (AVE) is such a technology, Lefler said. David Siever has developed several devices that are based in the knowledge of neuro-physiology and electrical engineering.

This technology is being used quite widely around the United States and Canada to do such things as improving sleep, decrease symptoms of migraine and Fibromyalgia, (which includes chronic fatigue and pain) among other things. It has been used by professional athletes to enhance performance by decreasing tension and anxiety associated with performance, said Lefler.

Lefler said it has been used in Canada in school settings to dramatically impact the educational capabilities of children with Attention Deficit Disorder.

In what he said might be a bit of oversimplification, Lefler compared the treatment to an orchestra playing a specific piece of music. "Each player is playing according to the music in front of her or him. The intensity, louder, softer, etc. is affected by the conductor. In my view, each part of the brain knows what it is supposed to do, or so it thinks. It has learned reaction patterns and pattern think," he said.

"I like to think of AVE as reminding the brain that it can follow the conductor to produce a somewhat different musical outcome than the pattern that it routinely follows such as to have a migraine in response to certain environmental stimuli," said Lefler.

Brain Wave Technology (BST) is another developing approach to allow an individual's brain to realize that it can train its own programming, Lefler said.

"Although the data are small at this point, it is nonetheless impressive for the brains of people with diverse problems in achieving dramatic improvements in physical conditions," he said.

"At this point, this is clearly alternative and clearly lacking in large bodies of data. However, it is something that is well thought out, has good scientific basis and has been producing results, which are being collected and will be published. Thus even though I would consider it experimental, I think that certain individuals may want to try this new modality (treatment) just as someone may participate in a protocol at a university for the treatment of some disease, a protocol which is clearly experimental but felt to be potentially helpful by professionals," he said.

Jennifer Bailey, a therapist who works at the center, said the whole process is easy and painless for the patient, who sits back in an easy chair and relaxes while a few electrodes are placed on his or her head.

"The brain trains itself, most of the work being done subconsciously. In fact the less the "try," the more successful the outcome, in my experience. It really is a process of letting go and releasing old patterns and thought structure to embrace a clearer, more peaceful experience," she said.

Unlike more traditional therapies, this one is not covered by insurance as yet.