Whole Person Health: The Role of Advocacy.

The U.S. healthcare system is naturally evolving toward integrative, whole-person health. Optimal health is not just absence of disease-it is holistic in nature (physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual) including a person's sense of purpose and meaning in their lives. Through the efforts of groups such as the Integrative Health Policy Consortium (www.ihpc.org ) and several others, Congress and many other stakeholder groups became aware that we need to focus on all aspects of health including environmental considerations. Currently, the U.S. healthcare system is in the process of embracing whole-person health with its focus on wellness and well-being in addition to the treatment of clinical disorders. The Veterans Administration Whole Health Program is one such example, where they are shifting the healthcare paradigm from "What's the matter with you?" to "What matters to you?" On the Hill, we are seeing growth in the Congressional Caucus on Integrative Health and Wellness as well as the Social Determinants of Health Caucus.

Assessing biophysical energy transfer mechanisms in living systems: the basis of life processes.

OBJECTIVE: To explain the energetic physiologic basis for acupuncture electroconductance effects and for gas discharge visualization (GDV) assessment methods, using a quantum biophysical model of entropy and information flows. DESCRIPTION: The main reservoir of free energy in biologic processes is electron-excited states of complex molecular systems. Communities of delocalized excited pi-electrons in protein macromolecules are the basis of this energy reservoir. Specific structural-protein complexes within the mass of the skin provide channels of heightened electron conductivity, measured at acupuncture points on the surface. Stimulated impulse emissions from the skin are also developed mainly by transport of delocalized pi-electrons. Stimulated by high voltage impulses, optical emissions, with amplification in gaseous discharge, are registered by optical sensors (GDV). This quantum model supports an argument that GDV techniques provide indirect judgment about the level of energy resources at the molecular level of functioning in structural-protein complexes. Several years of GDV research have provided clinical correlations with well-accepted physiologic parameters. For example, postsurgery recovery progress is correlated with GDV parameters and GDV assessments provide independent diagnostic measures of psychophysical reserves in athletes. CONCLUSION: GDV methods for investigating human functional states, by assessing electro-optical parameters of the skin, are based on the registration of physical processes emerging from electron components of tissue conductivity.