 |
Some of our readership have recently returned home from attending a "Mid-winter neural therapy retreat" at a country inn in the hills just north of Ottawa in Canada. The purpose of these "retreats", held every two or three years, is to allow experienced neural therapists an opportunity to meet and learn from each other in a relaxed and informal manner. This year our special guest was Dr. Carlos Chiriboga, an orthopaedic surgeon and experienced neural therapist from Guayaquil, Ecuador. As some of you are aware, there is little communication between those practicing neural therapy in the Spanish speaking countries and those in the English speaking world. However I was aware that neural therapy was practiced widely in South America and that large congresses are held from time to time. I had also heard (from a German correspondent) that South America is recognized by many as leading the world in neural therapy at this time. So South America is clearly a place to watch! One of the pleasures of writing these newsletters is to meet (over the internet) physicians from all over the world who share a passion for finding new ways to help their patients. This is how I came to meet Dr. Chiriboga. Dr Chiriboga spoke at the meeting and then spent two days with me in my own office. His knowledge and skills confirmed what my correspondent had told me. We have much to learn from the South Americans! A little example: When searching for interference fields, Dr Chiriboga uses a little specially-made mirror which he passes over the body while monitoring the patient's radial pulse. The mirror picks up subliminal energy emitted from the interference field and reflects it back, stimulating an autonomic response. This change in pulse is called VAS (or vascular autonomic response) and provides the same information as does change in strength of an indicator muscle. A variety of mirrors can be used to filter for different conditions affecting the interference field, e.g. allergy, metabolic problems, etc. Dr Chiriboga does use muscle strength testing for certain purposes, but rather than the shoulder flexor muscles (commonly used as indicators in autonomic response testing and applied kinesiology), he uses the Omura bi‐digital O‐ring test. Dr Chiriboga also uses a specially‐made laser for both diagnosis and treatment of interference fields and other problems. This "soft" laser emits a variety of ELF (extra low frequency) signals to match the patient's requirements. These tools were developed by Dr. Jorge Carvajal, a highly influential Columbian physician, teacher and author of numerous medical books. Dr Carvajal teaches a medical system called "Sintergetica medicine", a synthesis of Chinese, Tibetan, Ayurvedic, South American shamanistic and Western medicine. As a young man he received his medical training in Columbia, spent time with an Amazon jungle shaman, and went on to study in Belgium and France where he was heavily influenced by the physiologist Pischinger and the french physician Paul Nogier (the originator of auricular medicine). Physicians from all over South America go to Columbia to be trained by him and he also travels extensively to speak and teach. However, Dr Carvajal was not the one to introduce neural therapy to South America. The pioneers were Dr Julio César Payan and Dr Germán Duque, who both studied under the Huneke brothers in Germany. They founded the Los Robles Clinic in Columbia, which continues to this day as a teaching center for Sintergetica medicine and neural therapy. I was surprised to see variations of autonomic response testing to be practiced at such a high level and asked Dr Chiriboga how this had come to be introduced to South American neural therapy. His understanding is that Dr Duque was influenced by the work of George Goodheart DC (the originator of applied kinesiology). However he eventually learned and taught the Omura O-ring test as his preferred method for detecting autonomic response. There are many thousands of physicians in South America practicing neural therapy. I am honoured to have some of them subscribe to this newsletter and sometimes even to receive comments from them. A neural therapy "congress" is held in Latin America every two years and this year it will be in Guayaquil, Ecuador. The dates are March 11-14 and simultaneous translation into English will be available.http://www.neuraltherapybiennial.com/home.html. More on neural therapy in Latin America next month......... Sincerely, Robert F. Kidd, MD, CM |