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Whether you call it holistic, alternative or complementary, for Dr. Paul Bergquist, who is on staff at Vernon Memorial Healthcare in Viroqua, it doesn't matter as long as patients have more options available to them that can help them.
“Ten or 20 years ago the term that was in vogue was 'holistic' medicine," Bergquist said. "I think that people wanted to get away from that in standard settings because it had a ring of maybe being a little too New Age. The next term that came into use was alternative therapies, then the term that came into use was complementary, and now the buzzword is integrated medicine... Ultimately family medicine is all of those things.”
Bergquist sees even more changes in medicine, but it has been a long path from the days when anything outside of traditional medicine was looked at with a raised eyebrow.
"There were two of us doing acupuncture when we first started out and this was way before it was seen as anything but this weird Chinese thing and we were told by our department to stand down, because there was no evidence that it was helpful," Bergquist said. "We produced all kinds of studies that it did work and we refused, because what they were asking us was to withdraw effective treatment. They would laugh at us in the doctor's lounge back then.”
Searching for a new way
Bergquist began thinking about alternative therapies in his early 20s when a high school friend was dying of testicular cancer and his grandmother was dying of colon cancer.
"I watched them go through these chemotherapy and radiation treatments that were just inhuman and I thought 'Gee the cure is worse than the disease,’" Bergquist said. "At that time I was trying to suggest to my friend some alternative approaches, he thought that was all quackery and didn't go that route and died shortly after that. So, I was interested then and that was before I was interested in medicine."
Bergquist carried that curiosity on with him to medical school some years later and began looking into some alternative methods of treating patients. What he calls "old-fashioned" approaches.
Bergquist would eventually study with a homeopath while in medical school and continue to read about alternative treatments. During his residency Bergquist did a rotation in pharmacognosy, which is how Bergquist began his training in herbal medicine.
Bergquist added another tool to his toolbox by learning acupuncture from a neurologist while working at the Hennepin County (Minn.) Medical Center.
But the actual use of those skills came slowly, around 1991 while working in Soldiers Grove Bergquist had a patient with asthma who could not clean her basement because of the reaction to the dust. She asked if there was anything she could try because she had tried everything and nothing had worked. Bergquist prescribed a homeopathic remedy from a flower that grows along the Mississippi and within six months she was completely off medication.
"We have repeated that with countless asthma patients since then," Bergquist said.
Today Bergquist has incorporated acupuncture, herbal medicines and homeopathy in his practice while also using "traditional" approaches. The ability to pull any of those approaches from his medical bag has made Bergquist a popular choice for patients locally and increasingly from the region. This approach is slightly different than other alternatives that tend to reject traditional (allopathic) methods outright. Bergquist said he sees no reason to throw the "baby out with the bath water" by totally rejecting traditional medicine, but is reluctant to use it before trying other less invasive methods.
"We don't jump as quickly to the big guns," Bergquist said. "If I can use an herb for depression first, I will use it. If it doesn't work I can go to a pill. We prevent overuse of antibiotics this way and we also give the body a chance to heal itself."
Bergquist also knows there are some things that alternative approach just can't treat.
"If a patient has meningitis or a broken arm or a burst appendix you are not going to treat these people with anything other than allopathic medicine, you just cannot," Bergquist said.
Options abound in county
"There are options in town that are way more out into the integrated medicine area than we are, the spiritual aspects," Bergquist said. "We are doing that but we are also saying sometimes I am going to write a prescription for an antibiotic or I am going to send you to see the surgeon today. So, it's really truly a mix of trying to bring that aspect of the holistic or integrative and the hard science stuff."
"We tend to be bewitched by the hard science," Bergquist said. "We think just because it has been studied it is must be good. The answer to that is… wrong."
Bergquist points out that common sense can also lead us to answers.
"I talked to a group once and asked them what prunes are good for," Bergquist said. "They all knew what they were good for, but I asked if there are any studies that prove that. There aren't any studies, but we all know what they are good for."
Complimentary medicine is high profile in Vernon County.
In addition to being offered at Vernon Memorial Healthcare, there is a myriad of choices available outside a traditional setting.
Massage therapy, acupuncture, chiropractic care, Chinese herbal medicine, Western herbal medicine, tai chi, yoga, reiki, essential oils, breathwork, meditation and Qi gong are usually considered complimentary medicine along with many other modalities.
Viroqua chiropractor Paul Grenier and his wife, Paula, offer residents of the area another model of health care that they prefer to call "wellness care" or "helping express your full health potential."
Paul Grenier said too often people look to someone else to provide answers to their health and wellness issues when they should focus on helping their own body that has the ability to heal itself.
"We are born with 100 percent life force potential or 100 percent potential health," Grenier said. "If we are not expressing that 100 percent potential then we are less than we can be. So, the purpose of wellness care or true holistic health care is to help people express that full potential.
"Sometimes that means we don't feel too good," Grenier continued. "A dead person doesn't throw up, doesn't have a fever, doesn't have diarrhea. And those are normal ways for your body to detox from normal situations that we run into in our world. It is sometimes viewed as sickness, but it can really be healthy. Sometimes if a person is too toxic their bodies don't even have the ability to recognize they need to get rid of something. So, a holistic model from a true sense looks at the body not necessarily from a symptomatic stand point but from a standpoint of is their body expressing their full potential. And how can I do that?"
Grenier said his approach to helping patients focuses on the body's nervous system and it is not uncommon to have patients experience negative reactions before they start to see improvements.
"Its like cleaning your house and remodeling," Grenier said. "It is messy at times when you are going through the process but you have a goal that you want a more beautified house and you have to go through those stages to get there. So my job is not necessarily to take away symptoms it is to get the body at full balance and full flexibility and adaptability so it can express itself."
Grenier agreed with the idea from others in the alternative community that the traditional medical model that we are used to in our culture is the newcomers, and most alternative approaches are the ones that have more evidence behind them that they work because they have stood up to the test of time.
"Most of these things have been around for thousands of years," Grenier said. "It is the western world that is far behind in the process. We are so fast food, quick fix, get rid of this right now type of world. The true life care is getting back to being aware of our own bodies and being aware of the expression of that."
Grenier said the traditional medicine in the United States is more about "disease care" rather than looking at the care of the whole person or body.
"It is not health care, it is purely 'make me feel good and I don't care what the consequences of that are'," Grenier said.
Good for the body
In addition to chiropractic, there are many kinds of massage therapy; deep-muscle therapy, applied pressure, Tui Na, Chinese medical massage, Tai massage, connective tissue massage and the Raindrop method using essential oils. Massage therapists in the area are trained and hold a license from the state of Wisconsin.
The goal of massage is to balance the energy in the body to allow the fluids in the body to flow freely and address tightness in the muscles or chronic pain.
“One of the main things that massage does is working with circulation, breaking up the stagnation in places where things just aren’t moving or flowing and really increasing the circulation of the blood, the flow of fluids in the body,” said Kathy Doerfer, BSN, practicing at the Viroqua Healing Arts Center.
“When places are tight, there’s stagnation in the blood and that can cause pain,” said Jen Shepard, massage therapist, also at the Healing Arts Center. “So massage really helps with pain relief and range of motion.”
Another complimentary modality available in the area is acupuncture and Chinese herbal medicine.
“We become out of balance from various factors such as lifestyle, diet, lack of exercise and environment; the body can’t do it [heal] on its own. Acupuncture stimulates the body to remember to work properly,” said Ellen Arndorfer, Viroqua Healing Arts Center.
Arndorfer is also qualified to practice Chinese herbal medicine (CHM). It is several thousand years old and is a “form of noninvasive therapeutic intervention” with herbal prescriptions that targets the “imbalance in the body,” not the infection.
“The body has an innate ability to heal itself. This life force energy (chi) flows through everything and there are various ways to manipulate the chi. Chinese herbal medicine works by stimulating the body itself to heal,” said Arndorfer.
Along with acupuncture, chinese herbal medicine and massage, there is also other modalities that address the movement of energy (chi) throughout the body to again bring balance to the systems of the body.
‘Meditation in motion’
One of these modalities is tai chi, taught by Lyrea Crawford of Hillsboro. She studied under a grand master and other tai chi instructors. She also was trained in other practices at the Windemere Institute of Healing Arts in Decorah, Iowa.
She is currently an instructor and has taken additional training. Lyrea teaches about allowing the life force (chi) to come fully into the body and to be balanced and harmonized in the body.
This is done with an ancient Chinese exercise discipline characterized by graceful flowing movements done slowly with weight shifts from side to side. Tai chi is often called “meditation in motion.”
“Most people are going through life with too much energy stuck in one area of the body. They’ve overused something, injured something and then there are some areas where there is not enough energy or force flowing,” said Crawford.
It is a process of balancing all the energy forces in the body but it is not a “substitute for good common sense and good medical care.” Yoga, massage therapy, tai chi, reiki and other forms of complimentary medicine are all good for maintenance of the body and health.
Vernon County has many complimentary medicine options available, probably more than other areas this size. There seems to be almost a magnet that attracts alternative practitioners to the area.
“I think the land and the way of living here draws people with a certain sort of awareness,” said Crawford.
“Having Dr. Bergquist has opened up people to alternative medicine,” said Arndorfer. “I think he was the start of it. Like attracts like.”
“I believe that places attract people,” said Shepard. “[Also] there’s a core of independence and people are desiring to take hold of their health in that way.”
More and more people are searching out complimentary medicine and it has become high profile, even making its way into TV shows like “The Martha Stewart Show”.
“It is important for people to understand that complimentary medicine is not something that you can casually do,” said Arndorfer. “They need to find someone who has been trained, who can find the right formula for the problem and each is different for each person.”
“Complimentary medicine can help along side western medicine,” said Shepard. “It can support them [patients] along with western medicine. It’s an adjunct to western medicine.”
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