Fall 2005: Vol 2, Number 3

Healing at The Top Of The World

Two Bastyr faculty set out to bring back samples of indigenous Tibetan medicines but return with much more than a satchel full of herbs

The potential for discovering priceless botanical medicines deep in the Amazonian jungles is well known. But it may come as a surprise to many that a veritable treasure trove of natural, indigenous medicines lies high in the Himalayas just waiting for the West to recognize its value. Tibetan physicians and folk healers familiar with the healing potential of Himalayan fauna and flora have been putting these remedies to the test for centuries.

Now it may be Bastyr's turn. Last spring, Cynthia Wenner, PhD, research assistant professor in basic sciences, found herself facing a unique opportunity. Her friend and colleague, Trish Flaster, MS, Bastyr adjunct professor in botanical medicine, invited her to explore Tibetan healing firsthand by joining Tibetan Village Project representatives (www.tibetanvillageproject.org) on a tour of rural Tibetan village schools and clinics. Through a series of serendipitous events, Flaster had arranged to travel with a small TVP contingency exploring the feasibility of establishing a credible research project on Tibetan medicine.

Flaster, who lives in Boulder, Colorado, called Dr. Wenner to tell her about the trip, the places she'd be going and the information she'd be gathering. She also told her colleague how ideal it would be if Wenner could be there to contribute her own scientific knowledge and skill. Wenner soon found herself caught up in the excitement. "I said, 'Gee, I wish I could go.' And Trish said, 'So why don't you?'" Wenner admits it took awhile for the full impact of that exchange to hit. "The option of going myself just hadn't sunk in," she says, "because it seemed so far out of the realm of possibility."

It took some serious deliberation before Wenner decided to commit to the trip. The challenge of traveling so far away was daunting, and she hated the thought of separation from her two young children. Tibet was calling, but she wasn't sure she should answer.

"But Trish was so excited and hopeful," Wenner says, pointing out that Flaster has the ethnobotany training and experience in traditional medicine while she has the research background. Knowing a multidisciplinary team approach would be required to successfully implement a study of indigenous medicine, Wenner realized she had before her "an excellent opportunity to catalyze the project. It was the opportunity of a lifetime." She succumbed to the irresistible call of Tibet. "It was a difficult decision, but I felt compelled to go."

Underscoring that decision was a realization she had come to only recently. "I'd been asking myself, 'What do I want my life to mean? Where do my joys in life meet the needs of the world?' I realized the answer was to connect with and help others around the world in a personal and tangible way. Traveling to Tibet was one fantastic way of doing that."

Tibetan mountain high
In mid-June Wenner and Flaster arrived in the teeming Tibetan city of Lhasa. "My senses were overwhelmed!" says Wenner. "The colors, sounds, the rich and foreign scents, people on the streets at all hours, traffic continually weaving in and out. First thing in the morning I would hear the ceremonial Tibetan horns, the thungchen, being blown by the monks as part of their morning worship." Added to this heady brew of sights, sounds and odors was the ever-present challenge of breathing in an oxygen-thin atmosphere. "I was already suffering from jet lag, and then I had to adjust to the high altitude, the sense that you might faint if you climbed the stairs too quickly. We were at around 12,200 feet, and Mt. Rainier is only about 2,000 feet higher. This was an experience that literally took your breath away."

From mid-June to the end of the month, the two Bastyr faculty traveled with 10 others in the TVP minibus in a sweep of the Tibetan Autonomous Region surrounding Lhasa. Wenner reports that as they climbed high into the Himalayas, she traveled from a place of sensory overload to one of deep peace and stillness. Their travels took them up steep unpaved roads, across surging rivers, alongside precipitous drops and deep into tiny villages and sprawling monasteries. Throughout it all, they participated in TVP activities along with their own of interviewing Tibetan medical practitioners and assessing the feasibility of developing a Tibetan indigenous medicine study.

At the village schools, the students were often so grateful for the TVP's visit and its gifts of drawing paper, writing tablets, pencils and playground equipment they wouldn't stop clapping their welcome to the guests."Tashi delek!" ("greetings, good luck and happiness to you") they would keep shouting as they clapped until their teachers finally told them they could stop. Within this atmosphere of happy pandemonium, Wenner more than once found herself pressed into service as a guest teacher. "We'd brought some English picture books along to the villages. I ended up reading through the books with the village children. They thought that was quite a treat, and I think I enjoyed it as much as they did. Maybe more."

While disheartened to discover that the books in many of the remote village schools were severely tattered (children were using books that were ripped with only the top half of pages remaining), the classroom walls were covered with dirt and the tables were crude, she was encouraged by the children's eagerness to learn and the teachers' enthusiasm for teaching. "There was one teacher who was absolutely thrilled to receive a pack of simple alphabet cards from us," she says. "He went through each card with me, pronouncing the words and letters over several times, and he couldn't wait to share them with his students. They appreciate so much those things we completely take for granted."

Wenner recalls that the villagers were consistently warm and inviting, always concerned that the visitors' needs were being met. "For example," she says, "we were invited to eat in a small village home and were presented with one fantastic dish after another. There must have been 25 dishes or more. And, because we were guests, the family wouldn't eat until we'd finished. When I noticed their young boy hungrily eyeing the table, my mother's heart went out to him, and I motioned to his mother to ask if he could join us in eating. His mother nodded to him to go ahead, but he refused-I think because it just wouldn't be polite. These are amazingly gracious people!"

Thanks to such generosity with their food, Wenner became more adventurous in her eating. "I started out following the traveler's rule of thumb of not eating any fresh foods, but after a week I was trying new things, like sweet tea-cha nyarmo-similar to chai tea, toasted barley flour-sampa-a staple in Tibet, peeled wild rhubarb stalks, warm female yak-dri-milk and even yak 'jerky,'" she says. "One of the most common beverages was yak-butter tea made from, I believe, just butter, salt and water. It's soup-like and has a therapeutic benefit in that it keeps bodies internally moist in the high, cold, drying altitude."

The Tibetan road to health
Wenner and Flaster took every opportunity on their travels to talk with local people about Tibetan health-care remedies. "Tibetan medicine is thought to treat certain immune-related conditions particularly well," says Wenner. Since she has co-taught research-oriented classes in immunology and since most of her own Bastyr studies involve the same, she was particularly interested in Tibetan medicines used for maintaining a healthy immune system. "Trish and I met with a local traditional doctor-known as an Amchi-to ask him about immune-building remedies. But it was very difficult to communicate the concept of immunology. He kept referring to medicines necessary for a healthy gut. I realized then that the Tibetan view of strengthening the immune system may be similar to the naturopathic one that stresses the importance of supporting the integrity of the mucosal system in order to protect against infections. Trish pointed out that the digestive system is also at the core of the Ayurvedic approach to healing."

Tibetan medicine is comprised primarily of two systems of healing. Half of Tibetan medicine stems from the Ayurvedic tradition of India, which encourages individualized diets and lifestyles that support the health and balance of particular constitutional types. Tibetan healers believe that imbalances in individual constitutions show up as disease and distress. The other half is adapted from Chinese traditional medicine. One of the ways Tibetan medicine is differentiated from these other Eastern medical paradigms is that it uses its own unique diagnostic system to find root causes of health imbalances and disease.

Wenner and Flaster discovered the most common ailments among the rural villagers were those you'd expect to see in people living at the top of the world: joint pain, arthritic conditions and upper respiratory infections, including tuberculosis. "One Amchi that Trish and I met had four very complex herbal blends he used in combination to control TB. It was said to be very effective. It reminded me that some Western MDs use a four-drug approach to treating the same disease."

Two of the Amchi they interviewed talked about the painful joint problems many of their patients were experi-encing. Both doctors mentioned their belief that the water was too "heavy" and that the heaviness was accumulating in their patients' joints. Wenner and Flaster now are concerned about the increasing pollution of the local water. "Could this heaviness they refer to be heavy mineral deposits from contamination?" Wenner asks. "Maybe vitamin deficiencies?" As a direct result of these observations, TVP has since hired two health practitioners to give monthly lectures on hygiene to the rural villages and are working with other groups to test the water for contamination. "We're so grateful to groups like TVP who are working to support healthy communities and finding viable ways to solve these problems."

Fauna, flora and spirit
Traditional Tibetan medicine utilizes all manner of fauna and flora to bring about healing, no matter how unusual the ingredient may seem to Western minds. One perfect example of this is the Tibetan use of Cordyceps sinensis, a fungus that parasiticizes a caterpillar and is believed to be a powerful tonic for good health. By the time the fungus has taken over the majority of the unfortunate caterpillar, it's ready for harvesting. Locals dig for the Cordyceps, then sell them to Tibetan and Chinese medicine-making facilities. The worm-shaped fungi are either dried and ground into powder form or are dropped into bottles of alcohol and drunk as elixirs. "Yes, it is reminiscent of the worm at the bottom of the tequila bottle," laughs Wenner.

Concern now is growing over the over-harvesting of indigenous ingredients, such as the Cordyceps, which is in danger of extinction. "We met some locals who had spent the day foraging for Cordyceps and found only seven fungi, whereas their parents used to find over 300 Cordyceps in one outing in the same area several years ago," Wenner notes. "One of the goals of the TVP-and I know Trish feels particularly strongly about this-is to collaborate with interested villagers to establish sustainable phytopharmacies."

Wenner points out that one cannot discuss Tibetan medicine without discussing Tibetan spirituality. "Spirituality is imbedded in this culture. In fact," says Wenner, "when we interviewed Amchi Agon, a Tibetan doctor practicing for over 30 years, his first question to me was, 'How does Western medicine hope to treat patients when it doesn't recognize that spirit is an important component of one's health?' Tibetan healers acknowledge the spiritual aspect of a person, that it's integral to their overall health, their well-being and who they are as a whole person. He seemed relieved when I told him that people in the West are growing increasingly aware of the mind-body-spirit connection and are finding ways to integrate healing on all these levels into their lives."

Wenner and Flaster found signs of Tibetan spirituality everywhere: from the prayer flags waving in the mountain breezes, to spinning prayer wheels, the sounds of distant chanting, the familiar presence of brightly cloaked monks, and the continual offering up of prayers by Tibetan Buddhists walking around the monasteries from early morning light to the last rays of the setting sun. "There's a spiritual richness to this land that touched me deeply," says Wenner.

Many experiences, in fact, touched Wenner deeply. "As I connected with people and related to them in a very human way, I felt less foreign," she says. "I began to feel the excitement and anticipation you feel in going to meet family you've never met before. I was delighted by the way men would spontaneously break into song. They have so few material things, yet these are a people rich in spirit and love for one another."

Wenner speaks of a peacefulness in the mountains of Tibet that's nearly palpable, and she illustrates her point with a favorite memory. "We were camping alongside a ridge overlooking the Tidrum nunnery with mountains rising up over 15,000 feet around us. I stepped out of the tent late at night. I was alone. It had snowed, and there was a dusting of snow everywhere. I could see the prayer flags reflecting off what little light there was. The air was very fresh and brisk. I was surrounded by total silence and beauty. I felt as if the spirit of Tibet had always been a part of me. I realized how important those aspects of the Tibetan way of life were to me-acceptance and spiritual grace-and I reconnected with that sense of self. I felt at peace."

A changed life
When asked what she gained from her trip, Wenner speaks of both her academic life and her personal one. Because of the knowledge she gained, the connections she made and the botanical medicine samples she brought back to Bastyr, Wenner is hoping to conduct future trials to study traditional indigenous medicines known to be helpful to maintaining a healthy immune system. "We're very interested in studying the Tibetan remedy for tuberculosis," she says. She and Flaster are also eager to begin writing a concept proposal for a grant from the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine at the National Institutes of Health to explore the value of Tibetan medicine in maintaining immune health.

"My personal gains are so many, it's hard to put them all into words," Wenner says. "Through my interactions with the villagers, I feel more connected to the rest of the world, and I realize we're all a part of the web holding life together on this planet. My short time in Tibet helped reinforce the journey I'm on of acknowledging and learning more about the importance of the mind-body-spirit connection in healing. And finally," she adds, though one suspects these thoughts aren't final at all, "to me the trip speaks directly to Bastyr's mission and vision of being a world leader. We can't be a leader in the world unless we're out in it learning about those societies that have natural healing and spiritual wellness so deeply imbedded in their culture. How rich a society is when the wealth of spirit, family and community is woven so finely into its fabric!"