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by Helene B. Leonetti, M.D.
Confessions of a Recovering Doctor
 ere I am standing, firmly
entrenched, each foot
planted in different
worlds. The familiar part
of me, Western medical
doctor trained in surgical
procedures, obstetrics and
gynecology and use of pharmaceuticals, now
glances across the chasm at the spiritual healer.
This metamorphosis, once daunting and
schizoid, is now becoming more comfortable.
I blame it all on Deepak Chopra. His autobiography,
Return of the Rishi, gave me courage
to come out of the closet as a holistic physician
combining the issues tugging at the soul and the
emotions impacting on the physical body. Now
this continues to be difficult for a scientifically
trained physician who learns multiple disease
entities, their physical (and now, gratefully,
environmental) causes and the biochemical/
surgical antidote for their treatment. In spite of
the compelling evidence, we still teach our medical
students tragically a token thumb full of
nutrition, rarely emotional causes, and except in
occasional venues, the spiritual remains uncomfortably
out of our domain. In fact, we are the
only culture that attempts to separate mind,
body and spirit.
The mind is “referred” to the psychiatrist,
the body to one of us, and the soul to the cleric.
Only we, despite 5,000 years in the Eastern and
Middle Eastern traditions, refuse to acknowledge
that without unity of mind-body-spirit, we
cannot be whole.
This separateness has prevented true healing
because we continue to look outside ourselves
for the gift of healing that is right in our midst.
Rather than keeping patients as victims and
physicians as their saviors, why not enter into
the marvelous adventure of health promotion
and maintenance as partners, each of us doing
our part? This becomes a win-win situation as
the patient learns responsibility for his/her own
actions and the physician is relieved to know
that s/he is not a godlike creature that can
accomplish impossible odds.
My 40-plus year odyssey from there to here
started in 1961 when dutifully I succumbed to
my high school guidance counselor’s career recommendation:
“Helene, you are a woman. You
can become a teacher or a nurse.” Not a
chemist, astrophysicist, lawyer, doctor and
naval pilot: nurse or teacher, that was it. After
being brainwashed that women were second
class citizens and living that reality as I witnessed
fellow travelers walking 10 paces behind,
aborting their female fetuses to avoid rejection
and often death, and getting the vote a mere 80
years ago, I didn’t question my lack of options.
Nursing school and nearly 20 years of practice
followed.
Being 36 years old and applying to medical
school brought even greater opportunities for
feeling defeated. While working on my master’s
degree in nursing education at Columbia
University, the premed advisor (who looked like
Bella Abzug without her hat) told me that I was
not medical school material as my age, grades
and gender held little promise for success.
Medical school in Mexico provided its own
challenge. My experience in living with a
Mexican family solidified my bilingual gifts;
being deficient in the 26 credits of basic science
for my transitional year at Rutgers forced my
creativity by providing me the energy and focus
to fly back and forth between New Jersey and
Tampico, simultaneously registered at
Montclair State or William Paterson University,
taking inorganic science, biochemistry and
physics while attending courses in histology,
epidemiology and the like south of the border.
Finally, finishing four years plus the
fifth rotating internship at Rutgers, I being a
41-year-old female, applied to multiple obstetrics
and gynecology programs only to be
reminded that I was too old to withstand the
rigors of an obstetrical residency. Ah, tenacity!
After doing a year in general surgery, I was
finally accepted to a four-year OB-GYN residency
at Jersey City Medical Center, 25 years
after completing my nursing training in that
very hospital.
Through quantum leaps I arrived home in
Bethlehem, PA, where for the last 10 years I have
been practicing holistic medicine, primarily as a
menopausal specialist. A two-year course with
master herbalist, David Winston, with continued
postgraduate courses and board certification
in holistic medicine through the American
Holistic Medical Association has provided me
the experience to address my patients’ needs on
multiple levels.
My own tumultuous menopause
gave me vision to look beyond
the pharmaceutical band-aids
given to millions of women and
catalyzed my meeting with my mentor, John
R. Lee, M.D. His two decades of work and
studies with natural transdermal progesterone
fashioned my passion to perform placebo-controlled
studies to give credibility to this incredible
hormone. Published in Obstetrics and
Gynecology (August 1999) we proved an 83 percent
improvement in hot flashes while only 19
percent in the placebo group. Come January
2003 our latest research proving uterine protectiveness
when using estrogen along with
progesterone cream will be featured in the
journal Fertility and Sterility. Later next year
our very important study comparing synthetic
estrogen and synthetic progestin with the same
estrogen and natural transdermal progesterone
will finally lay any fears to rest regarding the
safety on uterine lining, because both groups
are demonstrating equal protection.
What a timely revelation, especially in view
of the incredible cessation of the $600 million
Women’s Health Initiative, three years premature
because of unacceptably high numbers of
breast cancer, heart disease, blood clots and
strokes. Sadly, millions of women went off
their hormone replacement therapy cold
turkey, giving them multiple physical and
emotional symptoms. What is even more
tragic is that mainstream medicine is giving
these women few choices other than to grin
and bear it or to take pharmaceuticals such as
clonidine (a blood pressure medicine) or bellergal
(a drug containing the habit forming
barbiturate phenobarbital).
What about herbs? What about stress
reduction techniques such as meditation,
yoga, massage? What about walking? What
about drinking pure water instead of diet
colas, Snapple and liters of sugary fruit drinks?
What about cleaning up our diets to include
fresh, organic vegetables, fruit, meat, poultry
and fish? And essential fatty acids, minerals
and vitamins?
Enter my free monthly lecture for the past
10 years, once called “The Good News about
Menopause” and now called “How to Achieve
Perfect Health in the Twenty-first Century.” It
is receiving excellent attendance, some 80–100
per month, including 10 –15 percent men.
My passion is to teach women selfempowerment:
to practice self-love before
caring for all others. I call my patients
“mother martyrs,” reminding them that
menopause is a magnificent time that forces
us to care for our needs on all levels. My
recently published book, Menopause: A
Spiritual Renaissance, chronicles my personal
journey, my work and research with natural
transdermal progesterone, and the practical,
down-to-earth teaching that reflects our
magnificent potential for healing. Some of
the chapter titles: The Dance of Depression,
Sexuality 101, Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow,
Love Yourself and Nurture Your Breasts, The
Elusive Self-Esteem Gene, and Opening the
Soul—The Hidden Cure.
Each chapter is headed by a wise aphorism
left to us by noted teachers. My favorite is by
Dr. Albert Schweitzer: “The doctor is sent to
entertain the patient while God does the
healing.”
Bottom line on my book: women need to
hear that they are beautiful, precious, powerful
beings who can—with knowledge—take their
power back and be the best that they can be.
Menopause is, indeed, a spiritual renaissance.
Dr. Leonetti’s is the author of Menopause A Spiritual
Renaissance published by Bridger House Publishers, Inc.
P.O. Box 2208 Carson City, Nevada.
1-800-729-4131
ISBN: 1-893157-08-3
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