Weed began to group healing techniques and remedies based on the likelihood of a technique or remedy harming or even killing her. In her books, including Wise Woman Herbal for the Childbearing Years and The New Menopausal Years the Wise Woman Way, she describes The Six Steps of Healing, which outline a way to increase health and decrease harm. The Six Steps encourage us to connect with our body’s wisdom and healing mechanisms and to address problems at their root.

If you suffer from menstrual cramps, mild depression or acne, or are wanting to get pregnant, consider Weed’s six steps as an alternative to taking the Pill. Here they are applied in the context of menstrual cramps:

Step 0: Do nothing. Weed describes this as “a vital, invisible step.” She explains, “You must actively do no-thing.” Essentially, Step 0 is about taking time for yourself. Unplugging your phone and your TV, meditating and resting are included in Step 0.

Step 1: Collect information. Talk with friends and health care providers, read, search the internet. Learn Fertility Awareness and chart your fertility signals—your waking temperature and cervical fluid. Keep a record of your questions and observations (e.g., Does eating less sugar affect my menstrual cramps?).

Step 2: Engage the energy. Notice what emotions come up around menstruation. Attend to your dreams. Write out a conversation between your period and you. Find out what it wants; find out what you want from your period and see whether there’s a happy medium. Take a bath or try a homeopathic remedy. Give thanks for your interest in your own wellness. Pick one remedy from Step 2, and set a time limit for working with it. Weed says it’s vital to set time limits for every step. If your problem worsens, try another Step 2 remedy, or go on to Step 3.

Step 3: Nourish and tonify. Feed yourself well. Replace processed, sugary fast-foods and drinks with freshly made, nutrient-rich meals. Prepare herbal infusions (which you can learn about from books or an herbalist). Keep your body and mind toned with regular physical activity. Take a yoga class. Grow some of your own food. Take a daily for a walk. If your problem worsens or is not relieved within your time limit, add another Step 3 or go on to Step 4.

Step 4: Sedate and stimulate. Acupuncture, chiropractic, Swedish massage, and most herbal tinctures fall into this category. Susun Weed cautions that “There is always risk of developing dependence on Step 4 remedies. Be aware of the frequency, dosage and duration of your treatments—and your time limits.”

Step 5-A: Use supplements. In this step, Weed includes all concentrated, extracted, and synthesized substances—including vitamin and mineral supplements, standardized herbal tinctures and all herbs in capsules. (Supplements can be synthesized or, if made from foods grown with pesticides, include concentrations of pesticides.)

Step 5-B: Use drugs. Over-the-counter and prescription drugs as well as all hormonal medications (including progesterone creams) are included in this step.

Step 6: Break and enter. Besides surgery, Weed includes psychotropic drugs, “fear-inspiring language,” shots, diagnostic tests such as laparoscopy and surgery in Step 6. “If all other steps fail and you are a woman with severe menstrual cramps,” she says, “a hysterectomy is a reasonable choice.”

Susun further explains, “When you do nothing, collect information, engage the energy, and nourish and tonify (Steps 0-3), then functioning and joy increase: you build health. True healing takes place in these early steps. Whether your problem is chronic or acute, Steps 0-3 (along with realistic expectations of the time healing takes) are worthy of your attention.

“Although the impulse in our culture is to jump to Step 4 or 5, each step up increases the possibility of severe side effects. While healing can and does take place with the aid of drugs and surgery, once you get to Step 5, you can damage or destroy health. Drugs might get rid of menstrual cramps, but they don’t address the cause or nourish your body. Drugs mask symptoms. Even common over-the-counter drugs like aspirin can injure health. In the Wise Woman Tradition, symptoms are not enemies to be destroyed but cherished messengers who encourage us to take good care of ourselves.”
Life in all its Fullness

All women want to enjoy good health, loving relationships and, if they choose, healthy offspring. The medical model proposes drugs that disrupt natural processes as a way to achieving these goals. Others in the western world understood that fulfillment can only be achieved by working with natural processes, not suppressing them. Francis Bacon (1561-1626) put it this way: Nature is not to be governed except through obeying her. Similarly, Weston A. Price (1870-1948) told those who wish a long and meaningful life: Life in all its fullness is Mother Nature obeyed. These words take on enhanced meaning for women facing decisions about how to have healthy children and achieve long-term reproductive health.

Menstrual cycle by menstrual cycle, Fertility Awareness provides women and men a way to work in concert with nature and their bodies—whether they aim to conceive or to prevent pregnancy. Further, Fertility Awareness does no harm to a woman’s hormonal system or her nutrient stores. The method does take time and effort to learn—just like cooking nutrient-dense meals. And, like knowing how to cook, it is a basic life skill worth passing on to the next generation.

Katie Singer is the author of The Garden of Fertility. She will present a seminar on Fertility Awareness at our 6th Annual Conference, November 11-13.

Resources

Singer, Katie, The Garden of Fertility: A Guide to Charting Your Fertility Signals to Prevent or Achieve Pregnancy—Naturally—and to Gauge Reproductive Health, Avery/Penguin, 2004. Includes chapters on breastfeeding, food and reproductive health, night-lighting, and healing childbearing losses. www.GardenofFertility.com includes fertility charts that can be downloaded for free.

The Fertility Awareness Network. PO Box 1190, New York, NY 10009; 800.597.6267; 212.475.4490. Provides a Fertility Awareness resource packet (for a suggested donation of $5) that includes a list of teachers who offer classes and private consultations with a secular orientation. Offers The Garden of Fertility for people who don’t use credit cards. www.FertAware.com.

The Couple To Couple League. POB 111184, Cincinnati, OH 45211; 800.745.8252. Offers classes and literature about Natural Family Planning with a Catholic orientation. www.ccli.org.

Gladstar, Rosemary, Herbal Healing for Women, Fireside, 1993. Describes how to prepare herbs that address PMS, skin problems, endometriosis, vaginal infections, pregnancy and menopause.

Weed, Susun, Wise Woman Herbal for the Childbearing Year, Ash Tree Publishing, 1985. A classic.

Weed, Susun, The New Menopausal Years the Wise Woman Way: Alternative Approaches for Women 30 - 90, Ash Tree Publishing, 2002. Presents remedies for menstrual cramps, thyroid problems, vaginal dryness, fertility after forty and more.

REFERENCES

1. Marx, Theresa, MD and A Mehta, MD. Polycystic ovary syndrome: Pathogenesis and treatment over the short and long term. Cleveland Clinic Journal of Medicine, January, 2003;70:1, 31-45.

2. Turiel, Judith Steinberg, Beyond Second Opinions: Making Choices About Fertility Treatment, University of California Press, 1998, p.18.

3. Barr Laboratories SEASONALE Conference Call, Sept. 8, 2003, transcript 090803ak.772.

4. Billings, Evelyn, MD, The Billings Method, Penguin Books Australia, 2000, p. 164-165.

5. Hatcher, RA and others. Hormonal Overview. Contraceptive Technology, 14th Ed, Irvington, 191-192.

6. Larimore, MD, Walter, and Joseph Stanford, MD, MSPH. Postfertilization Effects of Oral Contraceptives and Their Relationship to Informed Consent. Arch Fam Med, Feb 2000;9(23).

7. Moreno, Victor and others. Effect of Oral Contraceptives on Risk of Cervical Cancer in Women with Human Papilloma Virus Infection: The IARC Multicentric Case-Control Study. Lancet, 2002;359:1085-92.

8. Lidegaard, O. Oral contraceptives, pregnancy, and the risk of cerebral thromboembolism: the influence of diabetes, hypertension, migraine and previous thrombotic disease. Br J Obstet Gynaecol 1995;102(2): 153-59.

9. Thorogood, M, J Mann and others. Is oral contraceptive use still associated with an increased risk of fatal myocardial infarction? Report of a case-control study. Br J Obstet Gynaecol 1991;98:1245-1253.

10. Thorogood, M. and M Vessey. An epidemiologic survey of cardiovascular disease in women taking oral contraceptives. Am J Obstet Gyn, 1990;163(1) pt. 2:274-281.

11. Researchers, including Dr. Merethe Kumle of Community Medicine in Tromso, Norway, followed 103,027 women between the ages of 30 to 49 from 1991-1999, and reported their findings at the Third European Breast Cancer Conference, 2002.

12. Caruso S, C Grillo and others. A Prospective Study Evidencing Rhinomanumetric and Olfactometric Outcomes in Women Taking Oral Contraceptives. Human Reproduction, 16 Oct. 2001;11:2288-94.

13. Diamanti-Kandarakis, Evanthia and others. A modern medical quandry: Polycyctic ovary syndrome, insulin resistance and oral cnotraceptive pills. Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism 2003;88(5):1927-1932.

14. Scholes, D, AZ LaCroix and others. Bone mineral density in women using depot medroxyprogesterone acetate for contraception. Obstet Gynecol 1999;93(2):233-38.; Cromer, BA, JM Blair and others. A prospective comparison of bone density in adolescent girls receiving depot medroxyprogesterone acetate (Depo-Provera), levonorgestrel (Norplant), or oral contraceptives. J Pediatr 1996;129(5):671-76.

15. Skegg, DCG, EA Noonan and others. Depot medroxprogesterone acetate and breast cancer: A pooled analysis of the World Health Organization and New Zealand studies. JAMA, 1995 Mar 8:10:799-804.

16. Whittemore A and others. Characteristics relating to ovarian cancer risk; collaborative analysis of twelve U.S. case-controlled studies. American Journal of Epidemiology 136(10):1175-1220.

17. Rossing, Daling and Weiss. Ovarian tumors in a cohort of infertile women. New England Journal of Medicine, 1994;331:(12)771-6.

18. Anteby IE and others. Ocular manifestations in children born after in vitro fertilization. Arch Opthalmol, Oct. 2001;119(10):1525-9. Ocular anomalies (eye problems) were frequently observed in this cohort of offspring born after in vitro fertilization.

19. Hansen M and others. The risk of major birth defects after intracytoplasmic sperm injection and in vitro fertilization. N Engl J Med, 2002 Oct 31;347(18):1449-51. Infants conceived with use of intracytoplasmic sperm injection or in vitro fertilization have twice as high a risk of a major birth defect as naturally conceived infants.

20. Koivurova S and others. Neonatal outcome and congenital malformations in children born after in vitro fertilization. Hum Reprod, May 2002;17(5):1391-8. Neonatal outcome after IVF is worse than in the general population with similar maternal age, parity and social standing, mainly due to the large proportion of multiple births after IVF. The higher prevalence of heart malformations does not solely arise from multiplicity but from other causes.

21. Weschler, Toni, Taking Charge of Your Fertility, Revised Edition, Quill, 2001.

22. Wynn V. Vitamins and oral contraceptive use. The Lancet, March 8, 1975.

23. Langer, Stephen E, MD and James F Scheer. Solved: The Riddle of Illness. Keats Publishing, 2000.

24. Grant, E, MD. Sexual Chemistry: Understanding Our Hormones, the Pill and HRT. Cedar Press, 1994.

25. Shannon, Marilyn M. Fertility, Cycles & Nutrition, 3rd Edition. Couple to Couple League, 2001.
The Pill and Nutritional Deficiencies

Taking oral contraceptives depletes users of key nutrients including folic acid, vitamins B2, B6, B12 and vitamin C.22 These nutrients are critical for the development of the baby, including the optimization of baby’s intelligence. Thyroid hormones are also depleted by the Pill;23 they are crucial to optimal development of intelligence in the fetus. Drug companies include a warning statement in their handouts about the Pill that women should avoid conceiving within six months of discontinuing it.

To ensure a healthy baby (and a healthy mother), women who have taken the Pill need to favor foods rich in vitamins A and E, B vitamins, essential fatty acids, magnesium and zinc.23,24 Foods containing iodine and vitamin D are also recommended. We have constantly urged that for six months or longer before trying to conceive, parents-to-be should eat liberally of superfoods like cod liver oil, butter from grass-fed cows, raw milk, liver, eggs from pastured chickens and wild seafood. This advice is especially important for women who have been on the Pill.
How to Research Studies About Drugs and Medical Procedures

To research the hazards of a pharmaceutical drug or medical procedure, go to www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov.

You might also access The Medline database—the National Library of Medicine’s electronic bibliography, which indexes thousands of articles and abstracts from medical and scientific journals each month. There can be a charge for a Medline search if you’re not affiliated with a doctor, university or hospital that provides access.

Many hospitals have a medical library that is open to the public. Check out The Physician’s Desk Reference (PDR), which pharmacists and libraries keep on hand, for information about prescription drugs.

Source: http://www.westonaprice.org/women/reprod-health.html