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Stephen T. Sinatra, M.D., F.A.C.C. |
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Stephen T. Sinatra, M.D., F.A.C.C.
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 Dr. Sinatra, is board certified in internal medicine and cardiology. He has special expertise in utilizing behavior modification and emotional release as tools for healthy living. Trained in Gestalt and bioenergetic psychotherapy, he is a certified bioenergetic analyst. Editor of the monthly Phillips’ HeartSense newsletter, Dr. Sinatra is a much-sought-after speaker for medical conventions and anti-aging conferences.
Dr. Sinatra is the author of numerous best-selling books on natural and preventative medicine, including Heartbreak and Heart Disease and The Coenzyme Q10 Phenomenon. In his groundbreaking book Optimum Health: A Natural Lifesaving Prescription for Your Body and Mind (Bantam) he offers an easy-to-follow prescription for lasting good health that takes advantage of the natural healing powers of both mind and body.
Dr. Sinatra writes: I have worked with many cases of heart disease but despite all the studies linking smoking, high levels of blood cholesterol, hypertension and adult diabetes to coronary atherosclerosis, I am convinced that these risk factors, although highly significant, do not fully explain the nature of this illness. These risk factors are significant variables in the relationship between lifestyle and cardiovascular disease but additional research studies have confirmed the dominant role of psychological, emotional and metabolic stress in the etiology of heart disease. Appreciating this relationship has become a major challenge for me. Is the heart just a pump to push blood around the body or does it represent something more? This investigation has been my life’s quest.
When considering any illness, diagnosis or treatment, I focus not only on the disease and the physical dysfunction created, but also on the human operational planes: the physical, the metabolic, the emotional, the mental and even the spiritual. I have developed an appreciation for conscious as well as unconscious drives. The more I learn, the more I realize that to be truly able to help my patients, I need to be more in touch with energy systems.
The health of the body begins to deteriorate when its physical, emotional and mental processes become disintegrated and fail to work in harmony. To establish health and balance within a person, his or her fragmented parts must be reintegrated. This requires a multidisciplinary approach. Such an approach may include elements of proper breathing, exercise, release of painful emotions and past trauma, energy enhancement, nutritional healing, reopening of the heart to love and the development of a spiritual connection.
Investigating all these concepts has been the focus of my personal journey.
Conventional medical care relies on acute crisis intervention, pharmacology and surgery when treating disease. For example, the cardiologist treats an acute heart attack with a multitude of drugs and invasive interventions. In an emergency, such traditional therapy is not only mandatory but also lifesaving for the patient. With life-threatening illness, you want the most highly-trained and experienced cardiologist at your bedside. In fact, for any acute catastrophic illness every individual would want the most qualified clinician.
In heart disease, the real healing needs to take place after the bypass or angioplasty has occurred. Although these treatments may buy time for the patient to heal, bypass and angioplasty procedures are not cures. In reality, they are only “aspirin for a headache.” Millions of American patients want something more than standard allopathic care. Over the last few years I have been seeing more and more patients who want to take responsibility for their own health and participate in their own healing.
Getting well requires that the physician and the patient share in the healing process as a team. We must remember what truly heals—nature, time and patience. Paracelsus, a physician during the reformation, stated, “Nature cures, the doctor only nurses.” Although patients have the power to enhance their healing, it is the role of the physician to help stimulate and nurture that power and mobilize the intrinsic forces in the patient that offer resistance to disease. A good physician is one who will assist patients to find and stimulate their own healing powers.
Healing, therefore, is a commitment between physician and the patient engaging the mind, body and spirit.
The problem with typical allopathic medicine is that it does not educate physicians to support balanced interactive relationships between themselves and their patients. For example, if the allopathic physician completely takes over, the patient’s inner healing ability will be stifled. I have seen many physicians completely take over a patient’s care, feeling that their remedies will “cure” the patient. Rigid over control can be the Achilles heel of the modern physician.
Although most of my colleagues have been exposed to complementary therapies, many of them have continued to maintain an arrogant and negative attitude toward them. Unfortunately this personal bias may block real healing. When a patient is being treated and there is a narcissistic need in a physician to completely take control, the patient’s own inner healer will remain unawakened. This is frequently the case in cardiac disease.
No cardiologist should confine himself or herself only to the physical processes of the heart. To do so is to ignore the fact that the heart is but one part of a total being that functions as a whole. There is no illness that is not physical and mental at the same time, since it is the whole person who is sick. We must recognize what is needed to provide an understanding of illness in terms of the whole person.
www.sinatramd.com
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