Health Viewpoints

Can Faith Heal You?

A recent article suggests that routinely screening patients for spiritual needs should be included as a core clinical skill in neurology training.
Can Faith Heal You?
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Jingduan Yang
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The atrophy is still there. You can see it in the small muscles of Wang Zhiyuan’s hands—the permanent signature of a disease that was supposed to kill him within five years. His prognosis was given in 1983. He is still alive today, and although the disease has left its mark, it couldn’t finish the job.

Wang and I attended the same medical school in China, although he was many years ahead of me. At the peak of his career, he was diagnosed with ALS—amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. ALS destroys the motor neurons that control your muscles. There is no cure, and most patients die within three to five years.

Jingduan Yang
Jingduan Yang
M.D.
Dr. Jingduan Yang is a board-certified psychiatrist and fifth-generation classical Chinese medicine physician whose work bridges Western psychiatry, functional medicine, and ancient healing traditions. He is the creator of the ACES Model of Health and Medicine—a four-dimensional framework spanning anatomy, chemistry, energy, and spirit—and the author of “Facing East” and “Clinical Acupuncture and Ancient Chinese Medicine.” As a principal founder of the Northern School of Medicine and Health Sciences, he advances whole-person care grounded in science, ethics, and humanity.