HAPPY WEEKEND

Gina Dizon
What is effective works

SAGADA Mountain Province -- I met Tom Coghill at Saint Theodore’s Hospital one Saturday morning, through the Rev Fr. Moreno Tuguinay. I was then to take Fr Tuguinay’s written article talking about juice fasting which got him well from a chronic stage of diabetes and hypertension to wellness and vitality. Fr Tuguinay’s story will be featured next issue.

And so I came to know that an integrative medicine program is going on at Saint Theodore’s Hospital with the directorship of Tom Coghill, an author of five fasting and wellness books and an owner of a popular website fasting.ws with 30,000 visitors a month. He comes from Great Britain.

The next Saturday, I visited Coghill at his office at STHS and also met his program partner, Patrick O’Connor who had been in the field of wellness and supplementation program for 17 years in North America.

The integrative medicine program office with pine walled panels and glass windows overlooks the pine clad gardens of the hospital- a perfect combination of what integrative means.

It didn’t stop there. Really overwhelming are all the improvements going on at the hospital. The old wooden boards gave way to pine-paneled walls with disabled –friendly passageway elevated to the second floor of the building. Dr Clare Lalwet, STH Medical Administrator said that physical improvements of the hospital worth P20 million comes in tranches donated by St Luke’s Hospital. The said amount will also be used to renovate the dilapidated Girls and Boys Dormitories.
Really, the innovations at the hospital are overwhelming. Its not only the physical looks of the building that has improved. Quality programs with clear and practical results are going on from a wellness program now termed integrative medicine to organic farming to a mini university of teaching young people how to do database, web site development to writing good stories.

My impression of the relatively reserved Saint Theodore’s Hospital with all its physical improvements through the years has done a leap of saving a life in the person of a cancer patient, Juan Lisweg and another patient in the person of Fr Moreno Tuguinay who is now up and about having saved thousands of money by drinking fruit juices instead of taking in expensive synthetic medicines.

Our conversations which has jumped from integrative medicine to website development and organic farming was interrupted with the coming of Dr Clare Lalwet and Engr Rufino Bomasang, consultant of national and international energy and mining- based institutions. Currently, engineer Bomasang sits as a member of the STHS board of directors, and also with the Board of Trustees of Saint Mary School. He came along with Engr Virgilio Bucat, a graduate of St Mary School.

They just visited Dr Dennis Faustino, principal of St Mary School for the construction of the second phase of the school gymnasium. The conversation went on with integrative medicine to renewable energy and environmental recycling of wastes in Sagada. But that is another story. Back to integrative medicine when Bomasang and engineer Bucat and Dr Clare Lalwet went off to visit other features of the hospital.

So what is organic farming doing in integrative medicine? Tom and Patrick now went about saying that organic farming is a basic standpoint in keeping a life of wellness and wellbeing. It starts with worms which keeps the soil healthy with nutrients able to be digested by plants and fruits of plants to be finally eaten and digested by the human being.

Now what is the difference with all other organic farming programs that is being done? Integrative medicine now carefully looks at the state of the soil to composting to the content of the fruit which then enters the body, and how the body is responding to the fruit or plant taken from the organically raised food . How nutritionally healthy is the plant being grown?

How organic is organic farming? How healthy now is the human system? You may want to ask more questions by visiting the website http://sagadahospital.com or posting your questions to sth.holistic@gmail.com This, and a lot more of integrative medicine in the coming issues.