ASK THE EXPERT
GLADYS McGAREY
orn and raised in India to medical missionaries, Gladys
McGarey knew at two years old that she was a doctor.
“And it wasn’t that I was going to become a doctor, I
was one,” she says. Now a family physician, McGarey also cofounded the American Holistic Medical Association once she
realized that medicine focused too much on death and not
enough on life. This thought brought her even beyond “holistic” and sparked the concept of “living medicine,” the idea that
within our own bodies lies the power to heal.
B
PULSE: At what point in your medical practice did you
first embrace the concept of holistic medicine?
McGarey: It was probably in the mid-70s. One night while
working in the hospital with a woman who was having her
baby, a friend of mine, a physician, said to me, “You know, the
problem with medicine is that the fun has all gone out of medicine.” And when I heard that, I pondered about that for a long
time because I knew what he was talking about. He was
talking about why we went into medicine. People I know who
are doctors went in because they wanted to help people and
that’s what they had to do, and all along something had been
missing. I realized that what was really missing was that our
focus was on killing and on getting rid of diseases, not helping
the living person, and in the process of doing that, the person
was lost. I then began thinking we had to come up with something and look at what we have by way of living medicine. I
moved into that concept, along with holistic medicine.
P: What does the philosophy of living medicine entail?
M: Within our own being is the ability to heal. A surgeon can do
a beautiful job of patching up a situation or even removing something, but they don’t do the healing. The person himself does the
healing. It’s not the disease that’s central to this—we think it is,
but we have to identify a disease and then work with it. No two
people have the same disease the same way. If you are focusing
on disease—and all the medicine we are taught is focusing on
the disease—the problem with that whole focus is that the
disease is not the issue.
P: You said we can heal a disease but not cure a person.
How can those in the business of wellness, like spa professionals, help support a patient’s own healing?
M: Spas do this beautifully because you treat people, you don’t
treat diseases. We in the medical field think that we have to treat
diseases. Even support groups support diseases instead of the
person—we have cancer support groups and epilepsy support
groups. Where’s the person in that? The work that spas do is
essential to reclaiming the whole process of healing that people
can do—which they have to do for themselves, or it’s not done.
P: You wrote several books, the latest of which is The
World Needs Old Ladies. Can you share with us at least
three insights readers can get from your latest book?
M: I’m tired of older ladies thinking of themselves as obsolete.
We’ve had experiences and we know stuff that nobody else
knows. If we don’t share that with people nobody else is going to
know it. For whatever we’re doing, we’ve experienced things and
we’re still relevant in this world. I think it’s important for us to
reclaim and not allow ourselves to just shift into the background.
I’m calling it “aging into health.” People are so afraid of getting
old that they’re trying to reclaim their youth, and in the process
of trying to reclaim their youth they forget to enjoy what it is as
they’re growing older. I’m having a blast. I love being this age.
Why should we be shoved in the background? Women need to
re-look at who they are and go to a spa and do some of the things
that keep them not young, but healthy. Keep them aging into
health.
(CONTINUED ON PAGE 52)
50 PULSE
n
A ugust 2015