he very word "patient" implies passivity and powerlessness. Me-teacher-you-dumbbell, or me-doctor-you-patient, or me-politician-you-voter, or any other paternalistic or maternalistic stay-in-your-place tradition will not pass muster with me.

It is a distinguishing feature of natural therapies that they are straightforward and reliable enough to safely do on your own, at home.

If you are well educated, and especially if you are a health professional, you will have to unlearn much of what you've been taught and start afresh with the rather disruptive thought that natural healing may actually work.

We need total health more than medically approved health. Our wellness should not be limited to our doctor's experience, but enhanced by our own experience.

Use vitamins in place of drugs. This takes some moxie to do, for we have been taught to be consumers of medicine. We have been taught that anything cheap and safe cannot possibly be effective.

Healing is too big a topic for any one person to know it all.

It's unreasonable to expect medical doctors and pharmaceutical companies to tell you how to avoid their services by trying the alternatives.