Fertile ground

A natural approach to difficulty conceiving is finding favour with growing numbers of woman

She was the brightest of the bright in her medical class, began studying medicine at 16, graduated top of her year and was all set for a glittering career as an orthopaedic surgeon.
But ask Dr Morella Lascurain what former medical colleagues would make of her work now and she laughs: “They’d think I was mad!”

Born and raised in Venezuela, Morella’s family were all academics – her father a Harvard-trained engineer. She excelled at school and medicine was the expected outcome.

But by age 29, Morella was burnt out from the unrelenting work, the 24-hour shifts, the single monthly weekend off and stress levels that gave her a peptic ulcer at 21.

She threw it all in and travelled to Paris to spend two years training in filmmaking. Then, just as she was finishing her course she met a handsome big rugby-playing Kiwi in a bar. “Destiny had a big hand in that,” smiles the vivacious, curly-haired brunette.

Settling in Auckland, Morella decided against further medical training and instead took up a position tutoring pathology at the Wellpark College of Natural Therapies. Twenty hours a week quickly turned into a fulltime role as Head of Faculty in Medical Science.

But Morella’s life had a lot more change in store.

First it was her students; she heard them debating vaccination issues. “I wondered what they were talking about ... I’d never heard such a thing! Every single child in Venezuela is vaccinated!” says Morella.

And then there were all those students cured of chronic and even life-threatening illnesses using natural methods. “One woman had been symptom-free from lupus for eight years! Another had primary pulmonary hypertension (which is usually a death-sentence) and was still alive after 18 years. Another had completely recovered from rheumatoid arthritis.”
Morella began reading books her students were talking about and then found that a change of diet – as suggested by Ayurvedic medicine (an ancient Indian form of healing) – cured 16 years of stomach pains and misery.

“I’d always had dyspepsia,” she says. “I had constant stomach pains. I had to watch what I ate all the time. I had four endoscopies but nothing showed up – they were all ‘normal’. But by stopping eating ‘cold’ and ‘dry’ foods as prescribed by my Ayurvedic body-type, I was totally healed. I could not believe it!”

Still more was in store. Eight hours into labour with her first child, Morella was in trouble. She was only two centimetres dilated and was screaming in agony; the child lay posterior;
“The midwife was about to organise getting me to hospital when she remembered that I worked at Wellpark (www.wellpark.co.nz). She gave me one homeopathic remedy under my tongue and put two acupuncture needles on my toes.

“She left the room for 10 minutes and by the time she returned I was ready to push ... the baby had turned around and I was 10 centimetres dilated! If we had gone to hospital, it would have been a caesarean section for sure.”

Stunned at what she had seen natural medicine do for herself and others, Morella decided to start a practice that brought a multi-disciplinary range of natural therapists together to focus on family wellbeing.

Today, that business has become Mother-Well: based in Auckland it has 16 natural practitioners specialising in fertility, women’s and children’s health.

“Infertility makes up about a third of our work,” explains Morella who divides her time between Wellpark, Mother-Well, raising daughters Alessandra, 6 and Sophia, 5, and marriage to entrepreneur Martin.

“One thing we see a lot of is a genetic combination leading to a diminished capacity to activate folic acid. If a woman carries these genes, there is a predisposition to recurrent miscarriages. There is a simple lab test to discover this – but most doctors don’t know about it.

“Another thing we commonly see is men with lots of tattoos who have heavy metal toxicity from the high levels of lead in their body – that decreases sperm number, mobility and quality.”

Explains Morella, “Natural medicine has its basis in understanding that health symptoms are like the warning light on the dashboard of a car: it is the body trying to warn you that something deeper is going on.

“Medicine works by suppressing those symptoms ... switching the warning light off, without ever learning what is going on in the car motor.”

One thing Morella knows for sure is that she is the happiest of all her former medical colleagues.

“My best friend is a very influential medical specialist in Boston, but when she and others talk to me, they are always saying how over medicine they are ... they are tired of the 15-minute consultations and the inability to really help people.”

These days, Morella’s skills are no longer to do with the prescription pad and operating theatre. Instead, she practises consciousness-based techniques of Psych-K and Body Talk which “tap into the human body’s healing capacity”.

“I use muscle testing to make the body aware of what areas need attention, what connections have been lost, what beliefs must be changed, etcetera. Then, the body’s own innate intelligence makes the changes necessary to restore health.

“Sounds like magic, doesn’t it?” she smiles ... especially when thinking what her old class mates would make of it all.
Kimberley Paterson
www.soulpr.com