Volume 14 • Issue 2 Summer 201 7 JOURNAL OF holistic healthcare Re-imagining healthcare Breast cancer journey Breast screening? Birth doulas Vaginal health Fiona Hamilton Rewiring to pleasure Women doctors’ suicide Frontline NHS Self care – herbs A remarkable woman Research Reviews Women’s health JOURNAL OF holistic healthcare About the BHMA marker of good practice through policy, training and good management. We have a historical duty to pay In the heady days of 1983 while the Greenham Common special attention to deprived and excluded groups, Women’s Camp was being born, a group of doctors especially those who are poor, mentally ill, disabled and formed the British Holistic Medical Association (BHMA). elderly. Planning compassionate healthcare organisations They too were full of idealism. They wanted to halt the calls for social and economic creativity. More literally, relentless slide of mainstream healthcare towards the wider use of the arts and artistic therapies can help industrialised monoculture. They wanted medicine to create more humane healing spaces and may elevate the understand the world in all its fuzzy complexity, and to clinical encounter so that the art of healthcare can take embrace health and healing; healing that involves body, its place alongside appropriately applied medical science. mind and spirit. They wanted to free medicine from the grip of old institutions, from over-reliance on drugs and Integrating complementary therapies to explore the potential of other therapies. They wanted practitioners to care for themselves, understanding that Because holistic healthcare is patient-centred and practitioners who cannot care for their own bodies and concerned about patient choice, it must be open to feelings will be so much less able to care for others. the possibility that forms of treatment other than The motto, ‘Physician heal thyself’ is a rallying call conventional medicine might benefit a patient. It is not for the healing of individuals and communities; a unscientific to consider that certain complementary reminder to all humankind that we cannot rely on those therapies might be integrated into mainstream practice. in power to solve all our problems. And this motto is There is already some evidence to support its use in the even more relevant now than it was in 1983. Since then, care and management of relapsing long-term illness and the BHMA has worked to promote holism in medicine, chronic disease where pharmaceutics have relatively evolving to embrace new challenges, particularly the little to offer. A collaborative approach based on mutual over-arching issue of sustainability of vital NHS human respect informed by critical openness and honest and social capital, as well as ecological and economic evaluation of outcomes should encourage more systems, and to understand how they are intertwined . widespread co-operation between ‘orthodox’ and The BHMA now stands for five linked and overlap ping complementary clinicians. dimensions of holistic healthcare: Sustainability Whole person medicine Climate change is the biggest threat to the health of Whole person healthcare seeks to understand the human and the other-than-human species on planet complex influences – from the genome to the ozone Earth. The science is clear enough: what builds health layer – that build up or break down the body–mind: and wellbeing is better diet, more exercise, less what promotes vitality adaptation and repair, what loneliness, more access to green spaces, breathing clean undermines them? Practitioners are interested not just air and drinking uncontaminated water. If the seeds of in the biochemistry and pathology of disease but in the mental ill-health are often planted in an over-stressed lived body, emotions and beliefs, experiences and childhood, this is less likely in supportive communities relationships, the impact of the family, community and where life feels meaningful. Wars are bad for people, and the physical environment. As well as treating illness disastrous for the biosphere. In so many ways what is and disease, whole person medicine aims to create good for the planet is good for people too. resilience and wellbeing. Its practitioners strive to work Medical science now has very effective ways of compassionately while recognising that they too have rescuing people from end-stage disease. But if limitations and vulnerabilities of their own. healthcare is to become sustainable it must begin to do more than just repair bodies and minds damaged by an Self-care unsustainable culture. Holistic healthcare practitioners can help people lead healthier lives, and take the lead All practitioners need to be aware that the medical and in developing more sustainable communities, creating nursing professions are at higher risk of poor mental more appropriate models of healthcare, and living health and burnout. Difficult and demanding work, more sustainable ways of life. If the earth is to sustain sometimes in toxic organisations, can foster defensive us, inaction is not a choice. cynicism, ‘presenteeism’ or burnout. Healthcare workers have to understand the origins of health, and must learn to attend to their wellbeing. Certain core skills can help “The Journal of Holistic Healthcare… us, yet our resilience will often depend greatly on a great resource for the integration-minded, support from family and colleagues, and on the culture and what a bargain!” of the organisations in which we work. Dr Michael Dixon Humane care Compassion must become a core value for healthcare and be affirmed and fully supported as an essential Three issues each year – £48 for full BHMA members. On-line members £25/year including access to all past issues. JOURNAL OF holistic healthcare Contents ISSN 1743-9493 Published by British Holistic Medical Association Editorial . 2 West Barn, Chewton Keynsham BRISTOL BS31 2SR Update . 3 [email protected] Resilience and realistic hope for women with breast cancer . 4 www.bhma.org Catherine Zollman Reg. Charity No. 289459 Breast cancer screening – an informed choice? . 8 Antonia Wrigley Editor-in-chief David Peters What really happens during birth and how can a doula help? . 14 [email protected] Sophie Brigstocke Editorial Board The superhero in your vagina . 17 Ian Henghes Kendall Powell Dr William House (Chair) Professor David Peters Odyssey . 23 Dr Thuli Whitehouse Fiona Hamilton Dr Antonia Wrigley Rewiring our body to pleasure . 24 Production editor Kalindi Jordan Edwina Rowling [email protected] ‘Dying to help’ : female doctor suicide and the NHS workforce crisis . 28 Advertising Rates Angharad Natalie de Cates, Gareth Knott, Alys Cole-King and Melanie Jones 1/4 page £130; 1/2 page £210; full page £400; loose inserts £140. Modern times Rates are exclusive of origination A true parable from the frontline of the NHS . 36 where applicable. To advertise David Zigmond email [email protected] Herbs for women’s health . 40 Products and services offered by Zoe Hawes advertisers in these pages are not necessarily endorsed by the BHMA. Resilience in holistic care: learning from a remarkable woman: Alice Herz-Sommer . 44 Design Tamar Witztum www.karenhobden.com William House . 47 Cover illustration Research . 48 Theo Peters Reviews . 49 Printing Spinnaker Print Ltd Unless otherwise stated, material is copyright BHMA and reproduction for educational, non-profit purposes is welcomed. However we do ask that you credit the journal. With this exception n o part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any other means – graphically, electronically, or mechanically, including photocopying, recording, taping or informa tion storage and retrieval systems – without the prior written permission from the British Holistic Medical Association. Every effort is made to ensure the accuracy of material published in the Journal of Volume 14 G Issue 2 Holistic Healthcare . However, the publishers will not be liable for any inaccuracies. The Summer 2017 views expressed by contributors are not necessarily those of the editor or publisher. 1 Editorial Thuli Whitehouse Antonia Wrigley Guest editor Guest editor Being a woman in the modern age menopause showing promise for both fennel and acupunture. The piece on the vaginal microbiome and Concepts of femininity are in a state of flux. What it means bacterial vaginosis is reminiscent of Eve Ensler’s mono - to be a woman is a subject open for debate. The widely logues in its call for the issue of vaginal health to be more publicised statement made by Germaine Greer, that talked about, celebrated and researched. Catherine trans-women were not ‘real women’ received much Zollman, Medical Director at Bristol’s pioneering Penny criticism; but does she have a point – can a biologically Brohn Centre, describes some core issues in women’s born man who transitions in adulthood really understand breast cancer journeys and the techniques used to help the female lived experience? them live well during this time; the central tenet is an The journey a woman takes – from womb to infancy, individualised and flexible approach. through childhood and adolescence to sexual awakening David Zigmond eloquently highlights the dehumanis ing and into adulthood and beyond – is unique and power - effects of industrialised healthcare and how a woman’s fully gendered; this extends far beyond that concerned mental health recovery depended on the healing power with the female form. While the conditioning imprinted by of relationship, continuity of care and simply being given society through