Holistic Credibility Suffers in Steve Jobs Saga
Holistic Treatments have Helped Many Recover Their Health
By Janet Gangl
What really ended the life of Steve Jobs?
Was it his own decision to refuse for nine months the cancer surgery and chemotherapy that may have prolonged his life, a decision he told his biographer he later regretted?
Was it the “alternative” therapy he chose in an attempt to cure his cancer, a macrobiotic diet therapy of eating grains and vegetables that has helped many, but that one online detractor called trying to treat the often fatal pancreatic cancer with "woo rather than with medicine"?
Pancreatic cancer ultimately ended the life of Steve Jobs, and once again the media paints holistic practitioners with the broad brush of bias that equates "holistic" with “quacks” or “woo.”
Walter Isaacson, author of the new book Steve Jobs, said recently on CBS' 60 Minutes: “He tries to treat it with diet. He goes to spiritualists. He goes to various ways of doing it macrobiotically, and he doesn't get an operation….”
In addition, ABC News reported that Jobs “believed in alternative herbal treatments.” An Associated Press report stated that Jobs used “acupuncture, herbal treatments and other treatments he found online….”
Media reports such as this contribute to stereotypes of holistic healing therapies as misguided theories unproven by science and untested in laboratories. Yet the modalities, products and services that the holistic and alternative healing community offers are based on knowledge and principles known to many civilizations over thousands of years. Holistic treatments and remedies for physical and mental illnesses have helped millions recover their health. However, many of these recoveries would not be documented since people who refuse allopathic treatments are not in the records of medical journals. The time-honored philosophy that mental and spiritual beliefs can be as powerful against diseases as allopathic medicine and western science is an integral part of holism and has gained credence in the allopathic community.
Moreover, treatments in the past that were considered quackery by the establishment medical authorities include naturopathy, chiropractic, and meditation. Today, insurance companies pay for naturopathic treatments, and chiropractic treatments to align bones; and laboratory tests show meditation produces physiological changes in the body and mind that reduce stress, and stress is the precursor to many diseases. What is labeled woo today may be tomorrow's medical breakthrough.
At the Arizona Holistic Chamber of Commerce, we believe in promoting healthier lifestyles to prevent disease, as opposed to what has become in America a culture of ignoring healthy protocols. Many Americans eat what they have been brain-washed to believe is a “normal diet” with disastrous effects. They would rather watch TV than go out for a walk. They are inundated with chaotic, over-stimulating, stress-inducing media messaging all day and over-medicated when they can’t sleep or need energy or don’t feel good. Instead of a good diet, rest, exercise, and meditation, a large majority of Americans habitually sabotage their health and then look to their doctors to “fix it” with prescription drugs and surgery.
Alternative medicine begins with a return to preventing the damage up front. And when disease occurs, alternative medicine moves not to treat the symptom, but to bring the entire being back into balance, physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually, so that the body’s own healing process can function with as little resistance as possible. This is often a gradual process, just as the imbalance came into being gradually, and it is also often successful.
Wisdom comes in knowing when a health threat is acute enough to warrant allopathic intervention and just how much of that attention to receive in conjunction with holistic healing. It is a deeply personal choice. Perhaps if Steve Jobs had chosen to have the tumors removed early, and then used alternative and holistic treatments to recover and rebalance, he might be living today.
Other than removing the tumor, it is scientific fact that there is no known allopathic cure for pancreatic cancer. Barring that procedure, Steve Jobs had as good a chance with alternative protocols as he did with western techniques. One surgeon wrote on the blog Respectful Insolence on ScienceBlogs, “…accepting that Jobs' choice probably decreased somewhat his chances of surviving his cancer is a very different thing than concluding that ‘alternative medicine killed Steve Jobs.’”
In the end, the visionary Steve Jobs succumbed at 56 to the same destiny that all humans will one day face: the biological death of our bodies. We at the Chamber believe it does a disservice to his legacy and memory to claim that he died because he used alternative therapies to try to heal.
Janet Gangl is the president of the Arizona Holistic Chamber of Commerce.
About the Arizona Holistic Chamber of Commerce
The AZHCC was founded in 2005 as a chamber of commerce designed to serve the needs of the diverse holistic community in Arizona. The Chamber distributes a newsletter, hosts a monthly luncheon, and holds business events, breakfasts, and mixers throughout the Valley. The Chamber Website is www.azholisticchamber.com.
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