Category: Integrated medicine

Grace Gawler's article in Wiley Interscience

Abstract – – reprints available from Grace

A Conversation with Grace Gawler (nee Adamson)

Abstract
Grace’s skills as a workshop leader span 35 years. She has presented workshops and lectures on supportive care for cancer patients and their families all over the world. Australian by birth, Grace’s experience as a carer of her partner diagnosed with bone cancer in 1974 was the inspiration for her work. 1976 saw her partner with extensive secondary cancer and given a two-week prognosis. Following his remission in 1978, she trained and qualified as a health professional specialising in natural therapies, counselling, supportive care and many other modalities.
She co-founded Australia’s first Cancer Support Group movement in the early eighties. Grace has now worked with more than 13,000 people as they have searched for life meaning, quality of life, and to use their illness as a positive turning point in their lives.
Grace’s work imparts the wisdom of life and professional experience thus helping people to live well with cancer. Her work with women with breast cancer resulted in the best selling book Women of Silence: The Emotional Healing of Breast Cancer (1994).
After dealing with separation and divorce in 1997, Grace began her own experience with an acquired, and at times life threatening, condition which resulted from routine surgery. Having experienced this life altering condition, which included ileostomies and colostomies, Grace teaches from a base of deep personal experience in how to effectively harness H.O.P.E -finding hope, seeking options, being practical and being empowered. She has four children between the ages of nineteen and twenty-four and has recently been happily re-united with her former PE teacher of 37 years ago.
Ruth Benor, a member of the editorial board, recorded this conversation in January 2003. Copyright © 2003 Whurr Publishers Ltd.

Full conversation available at …

http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/112545075/abstract

Grace Gawler’s article in Wiley Interscience

Abstract – – reprints available from Grace

A Conversation with Grace Gawler (nee Adamson)

Abstract
Grace’s skills as a workshop leader span 35 years. She has presented workshops and lectures on supportive care for cancer patients and their families all over the world. Australian by birth, Grace’s experience as a carer of her partner diagnosed with bone cancer in 1974 was the inspiration for her work. 1976 saw her partner with extensive secondary cancer and given a two-week prognosis. Following his remission in 1978, she trained and qualified as a health professional specialising in natural therapies, counselling, supportive care and many other modalities.
She co-founded Australia’s first Cancer Support Group movement in the early eighties. Grace has now worked with more than 13,000 people as they have searched for life meaning, quality of life, and to use their illness as a positive turning point in their lives.
Grace’s work imparts the wisdom of life and professional experience thus helping people to live well with cancer. Her work with women with breast cancer resulted in the best selling book Women of Silence: The Emotional Healing of Breast Cancer (1994).
After dealing with separation and divorce in 1997, Grace began her own experience with an acquired, and at times life threatening, condition which resulted from routine surgery. Having experienced this life altering condition, which included ileostomies and colostomies, Grace teaches from a base of deep personal experience in how to effectively harness H.O.P.E -finding hope, seeking options, being practical and being empowered. She has four children between the ages of nineteen and twenty-four and has recently been happily re-united with her former PE teacher of 37 years ago.
Ruth Benor, a member of the editorial board, recorded this conversation in January 2003. Copyright © 2003 Whurr Publishers Ltd.

Full conversation available at …

http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/112545075/abstract

COMMENTS ON BEATING THE BIG C – Grace Gawler

Having worked with people with cancer in a psychosocial support setting for 30 years, I applaud the implementation of the prevention principles outlined in “Beating the Big C” The Australian 9 July 2005.

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure so they say and it should be said that this is not new; naturopaths have been espousing the same principals for decades! Continue reading “COMMENTS ON BEATING THE BIG C – Grace Gawler”

Professor Karol Sikora – The Need for Integrated Medicine in Cancer Management

In 2003, after my bionic surgery in Rotterdam, I was asked to give the Penny Brohn Memorial Lecture for the Bristol Cancer Help Centre.  It was there I met Professor Karol Sikora and it was clear we had common aims in how an integrated system of medicine could better influence cancer patient outcomes.

Karol was the first professional whom I asked to make comment on my updated version of Women of Silence – the emotional healing of breast cancer. After reading the manuscript on the train he excitedly contacted me; writing the first accolade for the book.

This set a precedent soon to be followed by many other leading UK oncologists. Obligations to return to Australia, regrettably prevented me from accepting Karol’s invitation to be a part of his Harley Street practice.

We both hold the values of integrative medicine dear to our hearts. Interestingly, seven years on and continents away, we are both pioneering organisations that will train health care professionals in the delivery of both the art and science of medicine.

For more information see http://integratedhealthtrust.org/ and http://www.integratedmedicine.org.uk/index.php and my own site – read about the new Grace Gawler Trust – http://www.gracegawler.com/site/

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJQlJRTftVw&feature=player_embedded#!]

Cancer – the true picture

The true picture is expressed in the following paragraph with thanks to Issels Cancer Centre in California.

“At the time of diagnosis, cells will have been detaching themselves from the primary tumour, entering the blood supply and seeking to establish a ‘new’ colony. This process may have been going on for years before the first tumour is evident.

Therefore time is of the essence along with an effective treatment plan. Cancer is a systemic disease from the onset and the tumour its late stage symptom. It usually takes years for cancer cells to settle down at the site of least resistance and grow into a tumour. This can only happen, if the surrounding tissues allow it (as recent research at UCSD and NCI has shown). Cancer cells can only thrive in a specific internal bodily environment with an impaired immune system and impaired mechanisms of regulation and repair.”

The paragraph indicates the folly of following a trial and error approach to cancer healing when time is critical. Many patients are placing faith in dietary regimes and experimenting while neglecting conventional therapies. Concepts such as the ‘raw foodism’ are gaining ground among the mainstream but most are new to the such ideas and have not ‘time tested’ them in their own bodies.

Precious time can be wasted while experimenting with extreme diets and harm may be done on numerous levles.  In 35 years supporting cancer patients, Grace has never seen remissions due to natural diets alone, despite wanting it to be so. These observations have led her to advocate an integrative approach incorporating the best of all healing systems—like an each way bet.

Every cancer case is individual so healing programs must be carefully crafted to suit each person and that applies to dietary regimes. Acknowledging that diet is one way patients can be proactive,  Grace nevertheless, usually advocates non-extreme diets such as healthy Mediterranean, because she has seen many cancer patients, including her ex husband, Ian Gawler, become emaciated from extreme diets which purported to ‘starve’ the cancer. In most cases their immune system was ravaged from, not only the disease, but from the dietary regime as well. Individual response to diet is varied and begs a rewrite of ‘you are what you eat’ with a more appropriate version being ’you are what you can assimilate.’

The latter is of relevance to cancer patients who may have varying capacities to assimilate certain foods. Raw food fundamentalists may not realise some people can’t digest and therefore assimilate certain raw foods. In fact, some cultures tend to do poorly on raw food regimes; Asia for one. What’s more, Asia acknowledges a spiritual and psychological component to food while their practice of wok cooking greens retains nutrient density and taste and thus may be more appropriate for cancer patients.

There will be more ideas in future articles, meanwhile our advice is to adopt a sensible, middle-path approach to complementary modalities to assist cancer recovery.

Cancer Survival – Grace Gawler

Written by Pip Cornall
A not for profit trust – a centre for integrated cancer solutions – is finally close to fruition. This will enable Grace Gawler to deliver quality care to greater numbers of cancer patients.

Healing has been a lifelong passion for Grace. In a career that began when she was 15, working after school at the local veterinary clinic, Grace was soon diagnosing and assisting in surgeries on animals with cancer.
Six years later, at the tender age of 21, while working as a vet nurse, she became full time care giver, motivator and researcher  for one of Australia’s more famous cancer recovery cases, Ian Gawler. She defied family, friends and medical authorities by believing Ian could recover.

This unshakable resolve is a mainstay of her work with patients today!
As it was with Ian Gawler, Grace’s work with cancer patients is legendary. Her greatest asset is an uncanny ability to deliver advice, guidance and top quality care across many healing modalities – true holistic medicine. This enables her to design treatment plans which draw on the best the world has to offer in the fields of complementary and conventional medicine.

Another vital service Grace provides is to dialogue with doctors, oncologists, radiologists and other specialists, co-coordinating diagnostics, testing and treatment. In some cases, when required, Grace will attend appointments with the patients to ask those complex questions and interpret the answers they often have little understanding of.

As a trained naturopath and herbal medicine specialist, Grace offers the best of nutritional and herbal medicine support but her work goes much further. The jewel in the crown for treating the ‘whole’ person and not just the disease is her skill in body-psychotherapy, which has culminated in a discipline of healing she teaches to professionals in the healing industry. This method of body psychotherapy enables her to deliver support across the mind/body, emotional-psychological, spiritual and energetic healing levels.

Because of her reputation for ‘getting the worst cases through,’ Grace attracts a lot of ‘end stage’ cancer patients who have trialled all manner of ‘nature cure’ regimes, including extreme diets. Unfortunately many of these arrive emaciated, with compromised immune systems, and riddled with fast spreading tumour loads. Ironically, she is then cast in the role of designing a treatment plan that brings them back into mainstream medicine while retaining proven elements of complementary medicine. In other words, Grace acts as a bridge between the two fields of medicine.

A common statement I hear from her clients is – “I wish I had found you years ago – I had no idea you had so much wide expertise enabling you to support and guide me through all aspects of cancer recovery. I feel comforted knowing you are there for me and that I have found the best help possible for my particular cancer situation.”

If you need Cancer Help – even if you live overseas (Skype consultations available)  Please contact Grace through her website www.gracegawlerinstitute .com or call (61) 7  5577 2997

Be sure to scan her website, blogs and watch the videos so you are well prepared before you speak to Grace
I’ve been Grace’s assistant for 3 years and continue to be astounded at the high quality of supportive care medicine she delivers for patients.

I wish you success on your exploration and recovery – Pip Cornall

DNA-Healing is possible. Walk in the field of all possibilities
DNA-Healing is possible. Walk in the field of all possibilities
http://gracegawlermedia.wordpress.com/2009/03/30/cancer-survival-grace-gawler/