It takes nearly a year to get an appointment with Dr. Nader Butto. Why?
Talking to: Dr. Nader Butto, 55, cardiologist and practitioner of alternative medicine, married father of two, lives in Petah Tikva
When: Sunday, 5:30 P.M.
Where: His clinic in Petah Tikva
The wait for an appointment with you is close to a year. I know that you’ve treated Shimon Peres. How do you explain the great demand for the method you’ve developed?
I think people have the sense that the system isn’t truly satisfying their needs, and they’re searching for other kinds of help.
You’re a cardiologist by training. What draws a ‘Western’ doctor to alternative medicine?
I studied medicine in Italy and did my residency in cardiology. But even during my studies, I was bothered by the question of where the soul is of this cadaver we’re working on in anatomy classes. A friend of mine, a fellow med student, said to me, “How can you talk about a soul? That’s a primitive idea. There’s a biochemical and electromagnetic process that gives life. When it goes awry you get disease, and when it stops you get death.” And I thought, Can all the billions of people who believe in the existence of the soul be wrong? Is that possible?
How do you explain your desire to deal with this question? Especially in the midst of medical school, where this dimension is dismissed.
That’s what attracted me, it would seem. And also maybe because of the Arab culture that I come from. It’s a culture that believes in spirits and demons, in angels and prophets − even though as a child and teenager I wasn’t a believer.
You had to go to the other extreme in order to believe.
Yes. Then, I believed that science is the truth and can explain everything, and only the ignorant turn to mystical aspects as a way to gain relief. As a student, I started reading about hypnosis, and with the books that I read I taught myself to hypnotize, and I started to see things that have no scientific explanation.
Like what?
I hypnotized my friends, in the dorms. One day I gave a post-hypnotic order to a guy who had viral blisters on his hands. We were studying microbiology at the time and we learned that blisters is a viral illness. But 10 days after the hypnosis, all the blisters were gone. I said, “How could it disappear without medicine?” I began to search for an answer. What I found was the placebo effect. But no one really knew exactly how it works. They say, “It’s in the head.” But how does the head work to heal someone? And if blisters can be healed, then why not asthma? Or even breast cancer?
It’s an amazing thing, the placebo effect. During World War II, when there was no morphine they injected the wounded with a saline solution.
It is really incredible. In the Soviet Union, they used to do heart surgery on people who complained of chest pain but were in normal health. They would just make an incision and then close it, and the people would get well. I’ve often seen immigrants from the former Soviet Union with scars on their chest, and then when I did the catheterization I found that they had no blockages and had no bypasses done.
The more I searched, the more I found that medicine just doesn’t have the answers to basic things. What is life? Some people will say that life is a chain reaction of chemicals inside the cell. But is that really it?
That’s a very reductive explanation.
Very. But it’s the starting point from which I began to develop my method, which I call the energy wash-out. I started exploring Indian medicine and Chinese medicine, and I arrived at the vitalist paradigm that says that there’s a certain type of energy that vitalizes the physical body.
Like Chi.
Like Chi or Prana. But why don’t they teach us about this in university? I kept delving into it and realized that this was my mission, that I have to gain a thorough understanding of it.
What would you say is the problem with the way Western medicine is taught and applied?
In medicine, we’re only trying to make the symptoms go away. The World Health Organization defined a state of health as total well-being − physical, emotional and social. And what do we do in medicine? Just the opposite of this definition. We only want to do away with pain. Every single day, patients come to the emergency room complaining of chest pain. When we examine them we see, even with catheterization, that everything is normal.
But the person is still suffering. He tells me, “Doctor, I have chest pain,” and we tell him that the tests say he’s fine, that it’s nothing.
But what’s hurting him?
The soul. The soul hurts long before the physical illness appears. It’s a signal, like a flashing warning light before the car stalls. But what do we do? We cover up the light. Instead of asking what’s behind the symptoms and why we feel pain.
So you think medicine should take a holistic approach, that it shouldn’t separate mind and body. Is this realistic?
I’m doing it, and there’s no reason that others shouldn’t do so as well. I think the basic thing a doctor needs is to be patient, to feel love for others and have a desire to dig deep in order to truly understand things, and not just cover them up superficially.
That’s a utopian vision. Many doctors have trouble with basic human relations.
I see a lot of my colleagues who would like to behave differently, but the system forces them to meet the pace. To see a patient every 10 minutes. What can a patient say in 10 minutes? It’s an assembly line. The tests are more important than the patient, and if they say you’re fine, then you’re fine. But the patient wants someone to hear him, to help him understand his pain. Why don’t we listen to his troubles? Most of the treatment we give people is psychology. If my relationship with the patient isn’t good, I could give him every medicine in the world and it won’t make him feel better.
He won’t feel better or he won’t get well?
He won’t get well. Medicines never cure anything.
And you’re telling me this as a doctor. Medicines don’t cure anything.
No. Say that someone has a problem with his blood pressure and I give him a medication to balance it. He doesn’t become cured. He becomes a chronic patient − he’s dependent on this medication for the rest of his life. I’m not curing anything. There’s no healing here. There’s treatment but no healing.
That’s a very radical statement.
Yes, and this is just what needs to be addressed. Just what are we doing by treating the symptoms? Is it enough? Does it satisfy us? Personally, I am not satisfied.
You believe that every kind of pain derives from the soul?
I don’t think there is any illness that is not dependent upon the soul. No such thing exists. We go to the doctor when the problem manifests in the body. A person shows up with a problem in the cardiac arteries. What do we say? That it’s because he has high cholesterol. And if he doesn’t have high cholesterol? Then it must be his blood pressure. Or he must be diabetic. But it’s not, and he’s not. And then we ask, “Did your father have heart disease?” And he says yes. “Aha! So it’s genetic!” we say.
OK, so what would you ask him instead?
I know now that the person who comes to me with heart disease experienced a breakup crisis that wasn’t properly processed. It could have been two years ago or 10 years ago.
But we all go through that type of crisis at some point.
True, so you’re saying that we’ll all get heart disease.
Yes, and the statistics seem to be on our side, don’t they?
Right, but when I’m standing there with a patient in the catheterization room and I ask him what crisis he’s experienced and what year it happened; it’s starting to get specific.
How do you do that?
At first I used the blinking technique. The person is there in my mind. I’m picturing his stomach; I insert my hand into his stomach and ask, “Is there an ulcer here?” When I touch the part where there’s an ulcer, he blinks. If he doesn’t have an ulcer, he doesn’t blink.
Why would he blink when you imagine you’re touching his stomach?
Because he enters a state of resonance upon hearing my question. Understand?
No.
On the patient’s side there’s a condition. On my side a question is asked. If the condition and the question are similar, resonance is created between them. When I ask “Is there an ulcer?”, I’m imagining an ulcer. If the person has an ulcer, I get into a resonance with him and he starts to blink. Here I’m getting into a plane that is not physical, and not emotional either.
Then what is it?
It’s quantic. I’ve studied this in depth and come to understand the essence of the quantic plane. In physics, too, this plane is more philosophy than science. People might say, “A thing might be here, and it might be there. It could be in several places at once and there’s no way of knowing where it really is. I can only tell you in terms of likelihood.” It got to the point that physicists arrived at the mistaken conclusion that everything is random on the subatomic level. In other words, that there’s no order and everything is random.
But you don’t think so.
No. It’s precise mathematics. Otherwise, how could a flower look like a flower, with its color and form and smell? At a certain point within the molecules, order began. I can’t begin order from chaos.
Because then nothing would be like anything else.
Correct. Physicists asked the same question. Einstein talked about hidden variables that we don’t understand.
The physicist David Bohm said there are two types of order − implicate and explicate (or hidden and unseen).
The implicate order cannot be seen or measured, but it is manifested in the explicate order. Like Einstein said, God doesn’t play dice.
And what is hidden from your view? When you look at a patient, what is it that you see? What do you see when you’re looking at me right now?
I see your deep reality. I see the weakness in your kidneys. Your lack of sleep. The fears. When I look at a person, I see the entirety of his behavior, his personality, what he needs, what he’s getting, what crises yet await him in life.
And then you treat him with an energy wash-out? What is that exactly?
It’s a therapeutic technique. An unresolved emotional crisis creates dissonance in the system. I’m pushing something away from me. There’s something threatening, and this threatening thing is making me feel bad − because the energy frequency in the surrounding field, which I call the soul, is starting to be out of sync with the body’s frequency.
What is the physical body? Energy at a certain frequency. Now, if the frequency of the surrounding field is not in sync with the frequency of the body, destructive interference starts to happen. One wave destroys another and alters the frequency of the substance. As soon as the frequency is altered, the structure and function of that substance also change. It all depends on the frequency.
Let me try to simplify the argument. If there is dissonance between a person’s desire or path, and the circumstances or conditions, it is eventually manifested in organic damage in the body.
Yes, but a lot of people experience lots of crises. So why don’t they all get sick? Because in order for there to be illness, two conditions are needed. The first is the stress that arises in wake of a crisis. Or even just chronic daily stress without a special crisis. The second is a low energy state i.e., a defense system that is unable to effectively cope with internal or external stimuli, and then the dissonance effect begins to affect the body.
Can you give me a concrete example of this kind of dissonance that’s manifested physically?
A woman is going through a crisis in her marriage. She’s fighting with her husband all the time. This feeling consumes energy. This energy comes at the expense of something else. Where will it come from? Form the place in which the frequency of that crisis is the same in the body. In this case, it’s the right breast. If she internalizes the anger and fury, over time a type of cramp appears in the breast, or cysts. If she breaks down and drains too much energy on the crisis with her husband, her breast cells become weakened, and then they can fall below a certain threshold that’s defined, medically speaking, as below 36 millivolts − which is the membrane potential. In any cell, no matter which kind, when it falls below this potential, the cells begin to multiply, because they sense a mortal danger. This is what we call a cancerous growth. The patient doesn’t die from the cancer; he dies from the thing that caused the cancer.
Scary.
On the contrary. This enables us to deal with it. I’m working on this now. I’m building a device that measures your level of tension and vitality, and tells you the precise risk level of seemingly healthy people − before they get to the stage of being sick. I identify which of them is at risk and needs to make an effort to avert illness. And then I intervene in order to repair this dissonance between the psycho-energetic state and the physical state.
The energy wash-out is an interaction between me and the patient, an interaction of magnetic field versus magnetic field. The energy begins to flow, and then it gets stuck when it encounters those knots where there is dissonance. And when it gets stuck there, the person begins to experience the emotional conflict that caused him this dissonance − whether it took place a year ago, 30 years ago or in his mother’s womb.
But how is it possible to know if there’s dissonance? How can somebody know what his calling is?
It’s very simple. If you’re doing what you love and you feel happy, it’s your calling.
Do you know anybody who’s happy, aside from yourself?
I know a lot of people. There are many happy people, particularly those who’ve understood that material things are not a goal but rather a means to get ahead, to develop, to learn new things and to be more useful to others. I could be the greatest doctor in the world, but if I don’t have a single patient, I’m nothing. If I don’t use my knowledge in order to contribute to others, I won’t be happy.
It’s like the principle of conditional reciprocity.
Yes, we run into all kinds of obstacles and problems, which are stimuli, in order to advance. The tests we face in life force us to make changes. When I’m feeling good about things, I don’t make changes. When I’m not, then I look for ways to get out of my situation. As long as I don’t find the real reason that I came into this life, I live in an illusion of immortality. I think that I’m immortal and that I must perpetuate my descendants and my territory, and then I have expectations in order to satisfy my needs. And wherever there are expectations, there is disappointment. And where there’s disappointment, there’s suffering. These are not my words.
They’re the words of Buddha.
Yes. So if I’m still dependent on something and think I have to fight to keep it, then I haven’t understood why I came into this world.
I’ve seen film clips of the reactions of people going through an energy wash-out. They cry and shout and get all worked up. It doesn’t frighten you?
No, just the opposite. I’m happy to see that the person is suffering − because I know that this suffering is just coming out. Our life is much more than a headache or a cardiac catheterization. It’s much deeper than that. I see it every day. Do you know what kind of cries I hear here? It’s a good thing that all the offices around are empty when I do the treatment.
What do you think about your own illnesses?
What illnesses?
You’ve never been sick?
I’ve been sick. I used to have chronic headaches and problems with my tonsils. I had Raynaud’s disease, a disorder in which the hands turn totally white and the fingers swell. Medically, there is no cure for it.
And what did you think at the time, when you were sick? What did it make you understand?
I didn’t understand. Do you know how many penicillin injections I was given? I didn’t understand anything. When I started to ask the right questions, I started to get answers. Now I know that if I understand what the flashing light is trying to tell me, I can fix it.
If it’s conditions and circumstances that produce illness, can one try to understand why, in our times, cancer has become so common?
Two things have changed. First, we hardly do any physical activity. Second, our food is highly processed. Even though it contains the carbohydrates and proteins and fats we need, it’s lacking the essential element that’s to do with how much antioxidants the food contains. And when we eat processed and industrialized food, even though it’s tasty, we’re not introducing enough energy into our system to neutralize the free radicals. The result is that we’re secreting in our urine more energy than we’re taking in, and then we lose vitality. The weakest place in a system that has experienced a crisis that weakened this area starts to develop a cancerous growth. The energy continues to decline, and the next-weakest organ develops a cancerous growth. And then we say that this is metastasis. There is no metastasis.
You can’t really be saying that. No metastasis!?
They did a study in Scandinavia. They tested people who received a blood transfusion from people who were later found to have had metastasized cancer. The thinking was that if there were metastases, there must be [cancerous] cells in the blood, and if there are such cells in the blood, these must have been given to the patients who got the transfusions. They tested them and not one of them got cancer. In other words, my theory about cancerous growth goes like this: Just as in faltering countries, where there’s a shortage of food and water, they have more children, because of the survival odds − the tougher the environmental conditions, the more reproduction increases.
You also claim that vaccinations are responsible for an increase in cancer.
In nature there are mechanisms designed to maintain balance. When there are weak cells in the body, they give an opening for viruses or fungi that only touch on those weak tissues. A virus will not harm healthy tissue. It identifies weak tissue and destroys it, and then it enables the healthy tissue to remain healthy. We’re obstructing this natural mechanism. It’s as if we were preventing fungi and insects from consuming trees that have fallen in the forest. What happens? The forest becomes a big pile of dead trees that aren’t disintegrating, that are starting to get in the way of the healthy trees. What happens with cancer? If we don’t remove the weak cells, they may turn into cancerous cells.
So because vaccinations prevent natural selection, there is a higher incidence of cancer.
Yes. Cancer is the cells’ attempt to survive and not to die.
You’re a senior cardiologist at a hospital. When a patient comes to you, do you do anything differently?
No. In the hospital I do things just the way I’m supposed to in the hospital. I speak to the patient and try to get to know them, as I think a doctor should, but I don’t do an energy wash-out or an energy diagnosis. Sometimes a patient will say, “Doctor, I don’t want this, I want the other thing.”
They don’t really know what it is I do, but they’ve heard something.
What do your medical colleagues think of all this?
They respect me. I don’t try to persuade anyone of anything. I accept their opinion. Sometimes there’s a kind of fear that I’m doing things that they aren’t able to do. But anyone can do what I do.
How can that be?
Anyone who loves to help and who has the desire to learn to help can do it. You have love, you have a desire to help others − there’s no special talent here. It’s doable and learnable. It’s mathematics. One can learn mathematics, right? I’ve been teaching it since 1994.
Do you treat doctors, too?
Of course. If they or someone in their family has a problem, they try to use their connections − “Do me a favor, see this person.” Department directors call. Sometimes they say, “I don’t believe in it, but do me a favor and see me.”
