by Manon Bolliger, facilitator & retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice | About Your Health, Addressing Your Pain
Probably one of the most troubling presentations is the patient who is experiencing signs and symptoms of illness and is seeking a label to explain their discomfort, but is turned away by medical experts who give the patient a clean bill of health. The approach of...
by Manon Bolliger, facilitator & retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice | About Your Health, Addressing Your Pain
In a previous post, I discussed one of the consequences of the war on symptoms: the over-reliance on cortisone shots, which create a false sense of security often leading to a “re-injury” of the original problem. Though really it’s more of an aggravation of the...
by Manon Bolliger, facilitator & retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice | About Your Health, Addressing Your Pain
The last couple posts have been telling the story of my experience as a patient and how I learned firsthand that pain is more than just its symptoms. After getting a variety of conflicting advice, I finally made myself the doctor of my own treatment and came to...
by Manon Bolliger, facilitator & retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice | Addressing Your Pain
In the last post I introduced you to a personal experience I had of subluxation of my right shoulder during a holiday in Paris. A trip to the hospital got me a sling and some drugs that either didn’t work or made me feel ill. What was to be done? The pain grew...
by Manon Bolliger, facilitator & retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice | About Your Health
In recent posts I explained the limitations of popular current ideas of health as merely the absence of symptoms. Do doctors have a role in expanding the expectations of what is considered health? Can we broaden patients’ views on health or are we merely technicians...
by Manon Bolliger, facilitator & retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice | About Your Health
In my last post I contrasted mainstream health institutions’ attitude to health with the definition of the World Health Organization: “complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.” It is evident that patients with...
by Manon Bolliger, facilitator & retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice | About Your Health
Understanding the patient’s purpose in coming to you is paramount for a doctor. The Latin root of “doctor” means “to educate,” but this often falls short of the mandate. We must educate patients about their symptoms, as well as the possible causes and all the options...
by Manon Bolliger, facilitator & retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice | About Your Health
In my last post I made the point that doctors who allowed their assumption of detached objectivity to blind them to the meaning of their patients’ objectives and objections were missing out on a valuable venue for recovering health. The patients’ objections define the...
by Manon Bolliger, facilitator & retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice | About Your Health
In recent posts I’ve established that patients have their objectives or agendas in their illness, which is revealed in the meaning they attach to symptoms, uncovered in their descriptions. In light of the objectives and objections of the patient, what is the role of...
by Manon Bolliger, facilitator & retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice | About Your Health
I have spent my last several posts discussing the shortcoming of standard approaches to the subjective dimension of the SOAP formula. In the next series of post I’ll address the “O”: objective! The doctor’s task conventionally is noting the patient’s subjective vision...
by Manon Bolliger, facilitator & retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice | About Your Health
My last post recounted an experience with an MS patient who seemed to prefer her disease to being cured because of the greater attentiveness and intimacy she felt it stirred in her husband. Not all patients will be so clear about their unconscious driving forces, but...
by Manon Bolliger, facilitator & retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice | About Your Health
Early in my practice, I saw a patient, a psychologist, who had developed MS six months prior. She arrived in a wheelchair, guided in by her husband, who was also a patient of mine. I conducted a 2-hour interview and felt fairly certain of the treatment. A mere six...
by Manon Bolliger, facilitator & retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice | About Your Health
In my last post I introduced two patients with sequelae of polio. A male patient was looking to improve his condition so as to care for his wife who developed Alzheimer’s and a female patient want to improve her conditions so that she would not be compelled to settle...
by Manon Bolliger, facilitator & retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice | About Your Health
For a second illustration of how important is a patient’s subjective meaning of their symptoms, I want to compare two different patients affected with the sequelae of polio. Both received the same treatment. I treated them both with a technique called BowenFirst™, a...
by Manon Bolliger, facilitator & retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice | Addressing Your Pain
In my last post I discussed how understanding the mind-body connection enables doctor’s to better LISTEN to symptoms. Toward the end I cited the case of pain as an illustration. Today I want to explore that topic a little more deeply. Consider the experience of pain:...
by Manon Bolliger, facilitator & retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice | About Your Health
The term “prescription” requires exploring the patient-doctor relationship. It should reaffirm the doctor’s purpose, opening up the healing dialogue. My conviction is that the body’s symptoms call upon us to LISTEN: they’re trying to say something. This is true of...
by Manon Bolliger, facilitator & retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice | About Your Health
Having considered the subjective and objective aspect of the SOAP process, today I want to discuss the last two parts of that acronym: the assessment and plan steps. I’ll lean on current research in psychoneuroimmunology and pain to illustrate that the...
by Manon Bolliger, facilitator & retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice | About Your Health
The new paradigm in healthcare that I’ve been discussing in this series of blog posts is sometimes mistaken for simply alternative modalities of practice. The choice of modality is not unimportant, but neither is it a panacea for sound practice. Valuable as was my...
