Posted by gary g (209.187.112.133) on August 05, 1999 at 11:07:31:
In Reply to: Edgar Cayce Readings posted by Donald on August 05, 1999 at 02:57:58:
The last thing I want to do is start a huge debate on contrived belief systems - which is what the Cayce stuff is all about - NOT medicine or science
whatever tradition/religion/conviction you want to pursue, by all means do so
just be REAL CLEAR on what the difference is between science & marketing; between medicine & quackery
BUT !!!!!!
I DO want to be sure that any poor suffering CH victim understands the who/what/where of the suggested readings before they subject themselves to more of the same old runaround.
IF you know what you're getting into, and it APPEALS to you GREAT - GO FOR IT !!!!!!!!!Just PLEASE - don't confuse those readings with any legitimate proven medical reference/research
From 1880 to the Great Depression there was a HUGE trend, fashion - call it what you may - toward what amounted to mass-marketed quackery in the health care trade. This amounted mostly to creating and then pandering to a one "belief system" or another, with "sanitoriums", physiological spas, hot spring & mineral water resorts, mailorder electric gadgets, etc..
(the electric quackery field is actually quite fascinating, and eventually adopted exposure to radioactivity, once Curie came on the scene with radium technology)
for a really entertaining, but substantial, presentation of this era, read "The Road To Wellville", by T.C. Boyle (but don't waste your time on the movie by the same name)
the fun there is seeing how nothing really changes - and how the same thing goes on now, just with slicker marketing and more sophisticated methods of end-running the FDA
one of the major historical premises was that the bowels controlled every aspect of health -
this was the heyday of the therapeutic enema (now known in California and other trendy-bendy centers, as the "high colonic")- often several times a day, and with the weirdest array of concoctions you could dream of
as far as headache goes - there is SOME validity in SOME aspects concerning SOME types of headache - but nothing more than some people are sensitive to some foodstuffs, and one of their allergic responses is headache -
this could possibly relate to migraines, in some cases, because there are APPARENTLY well-established food triggers in some M patients
STOP RIGHT HERE !
what Donald probably doesn't realize yet, is that the BIGGEST PROBLEM CH patients have suffered is the nearly-automatic linkage between migraine & cluster headache that has prevailed throughout this century - that has led to untold agony for most of us, as we've been passed around the "circuit" while DRs INSISTED that whatever their pet cure was for migraine, should/would fix us, or it was somehow OUR fault-
that is EXACTLY what the pitch was in the spa/trendy cure/rest home era - if the "cure" didn't work it was only because the patient wasn't being cooperative and willing to improve(translation: hadn't spent enough money yet)
FURTHER -
the distinction between migraine and cluster headache has been slowly building in medical consciousness for the last 20 years, but is now advancing at light-speed, with internet info exchange and a large number of recent research findings
perhaps the single most important thing to understand is that Cluster Headache is now shown, ALMOST indisputably, to NOT be a vascular headache in primary cause and physiology - - the "puzzle pieces" are coming together fast, showing CH to be a very discrete biomechanical neurological malfunction that then leads to a secondary and contributing vascular disturbance
INCREDIBLY important understanding
SO - re: the reading references
Cayce was a major figure in this healthfakir movement who later became much more well known as a spiritualist, medium and self-annointed expert on what we now call parapsychology.
Like all figures in that BUSINESS, he had (has) his supporters and detractors.
If you are into Jeanne Dixon, Nostradamus, healing crystals, UFOs, etc - by all means chase down these readings -
If you are SERIOUS about getting ahead with relief/answers to the cluster headache challenge, do your own searches and look for material that is ORIGINAL research and documentation from the late '90s - - NOT the sameold-sameold rehashed, which hasn't helped anyone for nearly a century now, but HAS led to the medical bullying and abuse of countles CH patients
if you've had CH for a decade or more you know what I mean -
if you're newly arrived in this dubious fraternity PLEASE spare yourself a lot of agony and do some heavyduty homework FAST, focussing on legitimate MODERN information
you NEED to become the world's leading expert on YOUR case of Cluster Headache, because 95 of 100 Drs you run into still don't have a clue