Having trained and worked in the NHS for over thirteen years I have come across more than my fair share of illness. For several years I worked on an acute admissions ward and a Coronary Care Unit (CCU). During that time I have read and studied much around the subject of potential causes for heart disease.



My initial training taught me that heart disease is caused by atherosclerosis (the building up of fatty deposits in the arteries) and that this was a progressively degenerative condition. The process can be slowed down with certain surgical and pharmaceutical interventions but once you have it - it's there to stay.

Not surprisingly, when patients had just had a heart attack, or acute Myocardial Infarction (MI) as the doctors like to call it, they want to know what has caused it. I became quite proficient at reeling off the list of physiological causes for the disease - laying blame on many factors that the patient had, apparently, no control over. Things like hypertension, diabetes, high cholesterol, with genetic predisposition being the primary cause. Smoking and diet could be controlled but the rest was down to luck. At least that was what the research at the time indicated.

For years I accepted this system of relaying blame elsewhere and helping my patients to become dependent on drugs and surgery for their longevity as this was what I had been taught to do. This created an environment where victims were born - blaming everyone and everything else for what had happened to them.

It was only when my mother's partner, Joe, had his second major heart attack that I realised I needed to find out about some alternative healing methods. I decided to do a course in Reiki as I'd heard that it was a great healing method.

I was advised after my Reiki course that I treated myself daily and abstained from alcohol for at least three weeks. Such was my desire to find out what Reiki could do I treated myself daily for the next six weeks. During this time I also treated Joe.

I soon started developing my own chest pain. Fortunately, the symptoms were not the same as angina. Since I was working in CCU at the time I was in a good place to know this. I thought that I had somehow transferred Joe's heart problems onto myself. Consequently, I stopped treating him and continued treating myself.

After six weeks I had the insight that the ache in my chest was the result of unhealed issues with my family and certain friends. I'd held grudges from numerous issues in the past, which were unresolved. At the time I had great physical fitness but my mindset was none too healthy. Reiki had brought all of this to the surface for me.

I went on to address all of the issues that came to the surface during this period and, eventually, the chest pain went. From that day forward my dealings with patients who wanted to know what caused them to have a heart attack changed. Whilst I realised that many were not ready for my new views on the cause of illness - several were.

A heart attack never happens completely out of the blue - there are always warnings. Sharp pains in the chest will always precede a heart attack, usually over months or even years. Because the pains come and go so quickly, they can be just as quickly dismissed as not important by many. This is the body's warning system - if the message is not taken on board then it needs to make the call more obvious.

One patient in my care had just had a heart attack and all he wanted to know was when he could get back to work. This was a common occurrence during my time in the NHS. I established that his job was highly stressful and he had spent most of his time in work and away from his family.

I told him that he could go back to work as soon as he was discharged but he would be back with us within a few months, if he was lucky. I suggested that a new job would be preferable if he valued his life. I advised this to many people during my years as a nurse, without knowing whether it had made any difference.

With this man I walked in the ward the next day to be hugged by his wife. He had decided to leave his job, retire early and spend some quality time with his family, since I had scared him so badly. When an acute MI doesn't prompt a change in thought process - something big needs to happen or the next step may well be death.

The body is a complex, bio-feedback system and nothing that it does is by chance. The work of Deepak Chopra, Caroline Myss and Louise Hay has thrown an interesting slant on my health care studies.

Like most ideas on the subject - this is just a different model of health. If it resonates for you, find out more. If not, you will have lost nothing by reading this, except a little time. From my own experience I have come to know that health is much more sustainable when individuals realise that their bodies are attempting to help and communicate with them. Our response-ability to these signs and symptoms is a choice.