About the Womens' Medicine Bowl
Introducing the Founder/President of WMB | Panel of Experts
"I am an experiment of one with any medicine I take, and I'm the only one that matters."
Beverly A. Jensen, Ph.D., President, WomensMedicineBowl, Inc.
y own journey has included growing up with healthcare outside the healthcare establishment, learning how to overcome or manage chronic illnesses, and living abroad where I learned other healthcare practices. Perhaps being tied to the obstetrics bed under protest was a factor in Mom seeking natural health care practices. I grew up with healthcare practices always about 20 years ahead of what the AMA would deign as "legitimate" healthcare. This began with chiropractic care at age ten after being thrown through an auto windshield. When Linus Pauling discovered the value of vitamin C in the early 1970s, I was living in central Missouri, suffering a cold every month all winter long that lasted 10 days, landing me in bed 4-5 days a month. Searching for a solution, I added vitamin C to my diet and the colds were reduced to 2-3 a season, lasting 4-5 days and never requiring bed rest. In my early 20s my reading materials included Prevention magazine, and book purchases were largely on wellness.
In 1991, I developed symptoms similar to the flu, but the affliction could last 24 hours or three weeks. After six months and several thousand dollars in tests, my(excellent) HMO diagnosed the problem as Irritable Bowel Syndrome; the MDs advised me that they had no treatment-take OTC meds for the headache and diarrhea, i.e. "learn to live with it." I did cope with it for months until, in the company of other women on an environmental camping trip with our children's school, a friend introduced me to homeopathy. I made an appointment with a homeopathic physician, was diagnosed and administered one dose of a homeopathic mineral remedy; I didn't experience another symptom of IBS for five years. (After using a camphor balm for achy muscles, and since camphor cancels the effects of homeopathic medicines, I needed a second dosage in 1996.) I soon purchased a guidebook to using homeopathy and a kit of homeopathic medicines. When in 1993, I moved with my three young daughters to Egypt, the book and the kit became our primary medical treatment for every manner of illness, ordinary injuries, and emergencies (none were life-threatening).
At the end of the decade, after a year both emotionally stressful and environmentally taxing, I crashed in 1998 with yet another unknown ailment. Every test known to the AMA was done, and consultations done with MDs of many specialties. Like blind men trying to describe an elephant, the specialists only know their area of the body. After two years the ailment was diagnosed as fibromyalgia, and like every other "new disease" that primarily effects women, it was largely believed to be "all in your head." In year 2000, M.D.s still maintained that there is no such disease as fibromyalgia.
Finally having a diagnosis that this was not a "catastrophic" illness (meaning I was expected to keep breathing even if I was in too much pain many days to get out of bed), I returned to the homeopathic physician. But even with constitutional treatments, homeopathic remedies did not alleviate the symptoms. For a few months I paused, not knowing where to turn for healing, then a chance conversation with a neighbor woman reminded me of a medical system I had been aware of since growing up on Okinawa, Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM).
Trained as a Naturopath in the US and a practitioner of traditional Chinese medicine for 25 years, my new physician listened to my symptoms. Then he added to the list symptoms I'd forgotten! After two years I'd found a physician who understood the whole body's systems and knew what was not working for me to have these symptoms. I wept with joy and relief. With seven days of a tea brew of roots and bark and another two weeks of herbal pills, I was well enough to travel to Europe for a consulting project and a holiday. While this illness hasn't yet proven to be cured, it is managed, and the Naturopath has become the whole family's primary care physician.
While my health has required continuous exploration and experimentation, my professional career has always involved education and communication. From an initial post-baccalaureate position in educational public relations (for a women's college), my career has evolved to social marketing and, in recent years, behavioral change communication. A doctorate in international communication was earned in Seattle between the births of three children.
Communication can contribute to a better quality of healthcare in America by educating women to take charge of healthcare for ourselves and our families. An imminent panel of natural healthcare practitioners will aid me in facilitating our "gathering at the well." Healthcare is self-care.
Salud!
Beverly A. Jensen, Ph.D.
See also: Panel of Experts
