Date: Fri, 16 Jun 2000 14:01:21 +1200

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From: USSW

Date: Sunday, 8 February 1998 17:03

Subject: Reversing Rheumatoid Arthritis - Muriel Hemingway

Features (issue 22)

Reversing Rheumatoid Arthritis

When it comes to the love of a physical challenge, actress Mariel Hemingway is a lot like her famous grandfather, Ernest Hemingway, the novelist. While his idea of a challenge was big-game hunting in africa or bullfighting in Spain, granddaughter Mariel's notion runs in a healthier, alternative channel.

For Mariel, snowboarding and running up mountains are worthy physical challenges, but even more so is keeping herself and her children healthy. Here she's relied on alternative medicine for years. It was a perplexing, chronic illness that first taught Mariel, now 36, to call on alternative modalities such as homeopathy, chiropractic, nutritional supplementation, and oxygen therapy, to restore and keep her health. The Core of Her Exhaustion 

Six years ago, Mariel was desperate to find a solution for what seemed to be chronic fatigue syndrome. At the time, she had good reason to be tired. The mother of two young children, Mariel was hard at work on films and the television series Civil Wars, in which she played-appropriately-a workaholic divorce attorney.

By 1991, Mariel, though increasingly fatigued, had amassed an impressive list of movie credits. Her film career had begun at the age of 13, when she costarred with her sister Margaux in Lipstick (for which she received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Newcomer). She soon became known to many as Woody Allen's sage teenage girlfriend in his movie Manhattan (her role garnered her an Oscar nomination) and then as doomed Playboy centerfold Dorothy Stratten in Star 80.

In Personal Best, Mariel played an athlete, a role for which she trained heavily. Her movie image of seemingly indefatigable physical prowess and the will to keep going soon became part of her public image and her self-image."Here I was, known to be healthy-working out, running up mountains," she recalls. "I'm supposed to be healthy. Everybody thinks I am, so I have to be. I made myself do it. I exercised during that time, but was not happy." And she had felt tired for the last five years.

That wasn't all. Mariel had recurrent sinus problems, severe eczema on her hands, and it seemed she was constantly fighting off yet another viral or bacterial infection. She had sought the help of alternative medicine practitioners and had gained some short-term benefit, but somehow the underlying cause of her mounting discomfort had not been pinned down.

Around the time Mariel was des-pairing of ever feeling consistently, deeply well again, she discovered a particular chiropractic technique called Sacro-Occipital Technique(tm) (S.O.T.). This approach was deveveloped by a Chiropractor to correct structural misalignment of bones and spinal vertebrae and improve the flow of the cerebrospinal fluid.

This is a fluid that surrounds the brain and flows up and down through the spinal cord; the dynamics of this fluid flow is the core of the discipline called osteopathy. Through S.O.T., Mariel learned that the root of her health problems was a structural misalignment.

It turns out Mariel had multiple ligament sprains in her hips. The various bones in the area-sacrum, hip, and pelvis-weren't connected right and were destabilizing her body's skeletal structure. This misalignment then interfered with the normal flow of cerebrospinal fluid which is supposed to flow up and down the spine in a natural rhythm, similar to reathing.

This flow is important to the well-being of the central nervous system and, in turn, the whole body. That's why disruption of this mechanism has far-reaching and diverse effects. In Mariel's case, the result was chronic fatigue, lowered immunity, constant infections, and eczema.

With the help of a chiropractor trained in S.O.T., Mariel was able to have her pelvic alignment corrected. Her physician used a special technique called blocking. For this, Mariel lay on her back on the treatment table; triangular, padded wedges of wood were placed under her body in such a way as to reposition her hipbones to restore them to their correct alignment. The positioning itself makes the adjustment.

The wedges were in place only for a few minutes, then Mariel went home and allowed her body's structural system to stabilize and integrate the corrections over the next three days.

Her chiropractor also made subtle adjustments to the bones (or plates) of her skull. The flexibility-or lack of it-of the cranium has an impact on the flow of cerebrospinal fluid. "People don't realize there is a lot of movement in the skull," Mariel says. "My head was very tight-'like a rock up there,' my doctor said." Additionally, Mariel's physician gave her homeopathic remedies to complement the S.O.T. work and facilitate Mariel's healing. It took about four months for all the structural changes to congeal and hold in place. During that time, Mariel's energy improved, she stopped getting every flu or bacterial bug that came her way, and her eczema cleared up completely.

"About 90% of my ailments disappeared when I got structurally stable," Mariel reports."When you're not stable, everything gets thrown. One day your knee hurts; the next you feel you have a cold." Lots of transient symptoms- "aches and pains"-and "feeling cranky"-can come up after a blocking, Mariel says. "It depends on how your sacrum went out. If the falling out was dramatic or painful, then usually coming back in is similar."

Mariel's "falling out" occurred in childhood from a combination of physical and emotional factors. She spent hours bouncing on a trampoline and hurt her neck at least once. She skied a lot, which involved falls; and there were emotional issues as well. For Mariel, the child of an alcoholic father and a mother with cancer, there were a lot of emotions going on. All of these factors affected Mariel's sacrum.

Health educator and author Louise Hay suggests that problems with the sacrum and pelvis are associated with family issues, and Mariel tends to agree. "If you are in an inflamed family environment, or you're worried, or there's a death in the family, these can cause your sacrum to go out as an emotional response to what's going on in your life.

Overall, it took Mariel several years of sacro-occipital treatment to retrain her body to keep the sacrum in its correct position. "Once I was stable, my life changed," she says. "I never used to feel good all the time. I was almost scared of it. I remember one day, waking up and saying, 'Oh, my God, I feel good all the time.

She began to see that restoring health is like peeling an onion. Some of the layers are emotions. "You heal slowly and you go deeper and deeper until you get to the core.

The successful chiropractic work allowed Mariel "to open myself up emotionally, to look at whatever it was from my childhood that made me angry or feel hurt."

In Mariel's case, it was deep fear. "My whole childhood I was afraid of getting sick because my mother had cancer most of my childhood. As an adult, here I was not feeling well all the time. Deep down I was terrified that I was going to get cancer.

One factor in Mariel's life was decidedly making her feel sicker as the years passed. It was chemical toxicity from silicone breast implants she got when she was 19. Thinking they might be contributing to her lowered immune function, Mariel had them removed three years after she began S.O.T. treatment. "Plus they were so contrary to who I am.

Removal revealed that the implants had ruptured and a blood test confirmed that a considerable amount of silicone had leaked from her implants into her blood. To deal with this dangerous source of toxicity, Mariel underwent hyperbaric oxygen therapy. The intense oxygen infusion of this approach would convert the silicone in her blood and tissues into silicon-citrate, a form that is easily eliminated from the body.

Mariel lay inside a sealed single-person oxygen chamber and was bathed in pure oxygen for two hours a session. She did this for five days in the space of a week. After that, her blood test was clear of silicone and her energy levels picked up.

"I think implants are bad news," Mariel says. "I enjoyed them for about a year, then from ages 20 to 32, I was asking, 'Why do I have these? I hate these.' They were not me, but I was afraid to take them out because I thought I might look deformed. But I was fine. Now I think implants are bizarre looking-and I'm happy I can say it."

The next step in her healing involved a new way of looking at her diet. For a long time already, Mariel had been eating healthfully. In response to her mother's cancer and her fear of becoming ill herself, she became a vegetarian at the age of 16. Then she learned about the dietary ideas of Rudolf Wiley, author of Biobalance: Using Acid-Alkaline Nutrition to Solve the Food-Mood-Health Puzzle (Life Sciences Press, 1988). After this, biobalance became the order of the day in her kitchen.

Biobalance, as applied to food, means eating to balance the acid-alkaline pH in your blood. Mariel kept a food diary, recording how she felt after eating different kinds of foods. From this, she learned that a vegetarian diet actually was not the best approach for her.

By making these observations, Mariel concluded that to achieve "biobalance" in her body chemistry, she needed to eat more protein and less carbohydrates-the opposite of what she had been doing. Her diet now is mainly fish, occasionally chicken, and lots of vegetables. "I think if everybody could be more aware of their body, they would find what works for them," she comments.

To augment her diet, Mariel takes numerous supplements. "Vitamin C, multiminerals, and pantothenic acid, together, help the adrenal glands," she says. "Since I don't eat a lot of carbohydrates, I find that I need extra potassium.

Mariel's well-informed and highly proactive approach to her health was a quality she developed at an early age, in a sense, under the negative influence of her mother's failing health. "The cancer 'cure' is what ultimately killed my mother because it broke down her lungs. She died of lung disease, not cancer," says Mariel. "She was in remission from the cancer, but the radiation and chemotherapy had destroyed her spine. It was horrible. Watching that, I knew I would never do it that way."

Mariel began reading about health and by the time she had her own children she knew not to give them antibiotics. "Antibiotics just cover up the symptom and then the symptom comes back again. If I feel a flu coming on, especially on a movie set, I'll take echinacea and goldenseal.

Mariel has learned how to prescribe homeopathic remedies for herself, husband Stephen Crisman, a documentary filmmaker, and their daughters, Langley, 8, and Dree, 10. That's why she keeps a large supply of homeopathic remedies on hand. When one of her children is sick, she usually knows what remedy to give them. If she isn't sure, she'll call her family doctor-the chiropractor who practices sacro-occipital technique and homeopathy-for advice.

"It's important to develop a great relationship with your holistic practitioner," Mariel says. "By working with you for a long time, the doctor can get a strong sense of who you are, know where your weaknesses are, and read yourbody better. '

Looking back, Mariel can see that her relationship with her practitioner and her experience with S.O.T. and homeopathy "totally changed my life." It also forged a deep commitment to maintaining her health on all levels. "Holistic medicine is about a circle of things you do for body, mind, and spirit," she says. "They all work in concert. And health is a process-it does not happen overnight." Part of that process is finding a healthy place to live and raise a family. Two years ago, in search of a healthier lifestyle, Mariel and her family moved from New York City to the little town of Ketchum in the Sawtip Mountains of Idaho, where grand- father Ernest Hemingway lived and died. Once installed in Ketchum, Mariel fulfilled a long-time dream by opening a yoga studio called The Sacred Cow. A yoga practitioner for many years, Mariel now teaches classes in this ancient art of body positions, breathing, and concentration.

With her health in sparkling condition, Mariel's acting career is going strong, with four new movies including Woody Allen's Deconstructing Harry and Little Men, based on the 19th century novel by Louisa May Alcott.

With her husband as producer, Mariel is about to make her directing debut. Fittingly, the project is an Arts & Entertainment network film of Ernest Hemingway's account of expatriate life in 1920s Paris, A Moveable Feast. It's the kind of physical-and artistic-challenge to which Mariel can give her personal best.

Sacro-Occipital Technique (S.O.T.), also known as craniopathy, is a branch of craniosacral therapy developed by chiropractor/osteopath B. DeJarnette, D.O., D.C. Craniosacral therapy, arising from cranial osteopathy, corrects imbalances in the relationship of the sacrum (the base of the backbone attached to the pelvis), the bones of the skull (cranium), especially the occiput (base of the skull), and the flow of the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) that bathes the brain and spinal cord (the central nervous system). The sacrum acts as a pump to propel CSF up the spine to the brain; the cranial bones contract and pump it back down. Health depends on a smoothly functioning sacro-occipital pump. Craniosacral therapy, as delivered by a chiropractor or other trained practitioner, is light-touch manipulation that restores the sacrum, cranial bones, and CSF to full motion and balance.

Hyperbaric oxygen therapy refers to pure oxygen delivered for 30-60 minutes to patients inside sealed chambers with high pressure (hence "hyperbaric" as in high barometric pressure), usually at 2.5 times higher than the atmospheric pressure at sea level. A monoplace chamber accommodates a single patientwho absorbs the concentrated oxygen through the skin as well as through inhalation. A multiplace chamber services several people at once; patients wear oxygen masks.

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