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Interview with Linda Page, N.D., Ph.D. |
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by Lyle Hurd, editor
Linda Page, N.D., Ph.D.
Her Journey to Healthy Healing
For the past year Linda Page, N.D., Ph.D., has been a regular contributor to totalhealth magazine. A prolific author and educator, Dr. Page has sold over a million books including Healthy Healing, Cooking For Healthy Healing, How To Be Your Own Herbal Pharmacist, Party Lights, Detoxification and a popular series of 20 library books which address specific healing therapies for topics like menopause, male and female energy, colds and flu and cancer. Healthy Healing is a textbook for courses at UCLA, The Institute of Educational Therapy and Clayton College of Natural Health. Dr. Page also formulates over 250 herbal formulas for Crystal Star Herbal Nutrition of Earth City, Missouri. She received one of the first herbal patents in the United States for her formulas that help balance hormones to ease menopausal symptoms.
Dr. Page is an adjunct professor at Clayton College of Natural Health. She has appeared weekly on a television station with a report on natural healing; she has been featured with fitness reporter Bonnie Kaye on national CBS television; she is a principal speaker at national health symposiums and conventions; she is featured regularly in national magazines; she appears on hundreds of radio and television programs. Dr. Page is featured on the television program, “The World of Healthy Healing” which has aired on PBS television and is currently available on videotape.
In her introduction to Healthy Healing, Dr. Page states her approach to natural healing as follows:
We need to expand our horizons about health care. There is far more to healing than a lab test or a doctor’s diagnosis or the newest drug, which may be very limited. Even today we are watching super germs overcome the latest antibiotics.
If you think about it for a moment, nutrition isn’t the alternative healing system. Drugs are the alternative system—far from natural.
Drugs are really a patching up system of medicine. There is no such thing as an essential drug. A drug doesn’t combine with your body to restore and revitalize. At worst, especially long term, drugs hit your body with a powerful hammer that overwhelms body systems, never allowing your own immune response to do its job and in the end, so imbalances body processes that you never really normalize.
I believe drugs are at best a short-term method that can arrest a harmful organism and stabilize body systems to the point where your own individual immune system can take over and reestablish health.
I believe we should have access to all types of healing. We should honor drugs for all of the lives they have saved. I never say to throw away your doctor’s phone number.
But, I also believe that today’s medicine has nothing to do with the quality of life. By contrast, natural healing gives people the chance to live well—better than they could without it. Natural healers never give up. They know you can improve your life no matter what state your health is in. With natural healing, days turn into months and then into years after a ‘death sentence’ from modern medicine.
You are really your own best healer. I believe that there is a powerful, spiritual aspect of healing that is available to each of us. It is unique to each of us because it accesses our own divine healing energy. I have seen this phenomenon too many times to doubt it.
Never forget—there is always something more.
About 70 years ago, Albert Schweitzer said, ‘The doctor of the future will be oneself.’
I see that coming true almost every day as people become more knowledgeable and take more responsibility for themselves.
If we are the doctor, what is our medicine?”
Our medicine is all around us. Our food is our pharmacy.
Herbs are our medicine. The oceans are our healers.
Our very breathing can bring us real health.
These things are truly healthy healing.
They do not need pages of warnings and lists of dangers.
Everyone can use them.
TH: Linda, can you tell us how you started your journey in alternative medicine and natural health?
LP: The beginning of this journey really started in the 1970s when I wanted to lose weight, so I went on a long-term detox. I went too far; in fact, I almost died. But there was no information available. If I had had the information, clearly I would not have done such a stupid thing. The only real information?available at that time was old, anecdotal information—there never was a clear program. The reason I wrote Healthy Healing was to give meaningful, comprehensive health regimens that readers could follow and get real results. My first printing was only about 250 copies and it has grown since then; I’ve sold over one million books.
After the third edition it was clear that enough health stores were picking up my book. I saw that people really did need and want the information. This was just about the time when the FDA lost the case against having books in health food stores. In fact, I knew one of the activists back then who was integral in making that happen—she helped win the case under the first amendment (free speech).
I chose Clayton College of Natural Health in Birmingham, Alabama to get my degrees, which was the perfect choice for me. By the way, I am now an adjunct professor at Clayton College and we are starting educational tours in 2002. They have a wonderful, expanded program that includes certification programs.
TH: You have been in the industry for over 25 years. You are considered one of the real pioneers and visionaries in the area of natural health. How has it changed over that time and what do you see for it in the future?
LP: With the passing of DSHEA, especially in the herbal industry, I think the natural health industry went from a paradigm shift to a dichotomy in that a lot of the industry went from standardized herbs and tried to pseudo access the medical world. In fact, the very definition of a naturopath has changed to accommodate the changes. There has also been an entry of drug companies, chemical companies, cosmetic companies and spa companies into which was at one time just a natural health business with health food stores. And the natural world branched out into even more natural healing; for example, into Ayurvedic, Chinese medicine, Native American, etc. So the whole industry has expanded.
I consider that I’m in the middle because I believe that all people deserve to have access to all ways of healing. Along with this comes responsibility—getting the knowledge—and making the choice. But even today the natural world is still taking hits from the medical world. There is still the issue of the problems of the side-effects that were created as they made “natural drugs” and they saw that single herbs do not work so well, so people stopped taking them and the investment did not pan out. I think once again the pendulum will swing to the middle, not in the past but in the hope for the future, so we can take the best of what has been researched and developed, coupled with the knowledge of the ancients and offer the superior combination. Remember that herbs can stand up to clinical tests, especially herbs in their whole form. I believe in using herbs in their whole form so the body can use them as foods. I have many recipes using herbs for healing in my new books.
TH: Healthy Healing is in its 11th printing. Considered a groundbreaking book in the field of holistic medicine and used as a text book in many classrooms, including Clayton College of Natural Health, it almost did not get published. Can you talk about the book?
LP: I think that one thing that we need to keep in mind, that since its conception, Healthy Healing has been an alternative healing reference for everyone. Back then no publisher wanted to look at it. So I became a self-published company and have not looked back since.
TH: Your new cookbooks are coming out shortly. Your goal is to change an individual’s perception on the way they think about and consume food. What are some of the principles?
LP: My new cookbook set helps people understand that they can do something good for themselves and their families every time they eat. People will gain the know how to target whatever they want to with every meal—from healing and boosting immunity—to sculpting their bodies—to maintaining superior health. I find it an interesting point that our children are formed from, and become, the nutrients (or poisons) within us. I believe we can change history from one of disease to one of health by changing our diets, and I know these books will help.
I see that we are harking back to a time of ancient traditions, particularly from India and China, where people used every meal for wellness—most of their medicine was taken in through spices, soup and drinks. Today we are adding more nutrient value to foods, especially with herbs. I believe that people, by becoming more conscious of the healing qualities of food, will develop a deeper awareness so that their bodies can become even more receptive to healing from food. It generally takes about 30 days to start seeing results from a healthy healing program using food, so the sooner they start, the faster they will feel better and look better. It is also important to start children on the “heal with every meal” program as soon as possible, and of course to stay with the program for maintained wellness throughout life. Remember the old phrase, “You are what you eat?” Well, I take that even further and say, “You can heal with every meal.”
TH: Looking forward, can you discuss where your time and energy will be focused?
LP: Along with authoring new books, public speaking and television appearances, I will be leading exciting educational healing travel tours in conjunction with Clayton College of Natural Health. In fact, we have an exciting schedule for 2002: April—Southwest, July—Alaska and November—Hawaii. We will be exploring the Native American ceremonial and healing traditions. You know we went to China last year and it was just fantastic. We are planning worldwide tours in the future too. I hope that many of your readers will join me.
TH: Linda, thank you for sharing your time with us. I'm sure our readers enjoy the opportunity to become better acquainted with the woman behind Healthy Living.
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