However, there is at least one success story of an ALS patient who won the battle against the deadly illness without any assistance from modern medicine. His name is Wang Zhiyuan, now a research scientist in the Harvard Medical School, formerly a physician in China for 25 years.
Falling Into Despair
ALS is a fatal, degenerative disease of the motor neurones, the cells in the central nervous system that control muscle activity including speaking, breathing, swallowing, walking, and general body movement.
Most people with ALS die from respiratory failure within three to five years after the onset of symptoms. About 10 percent of ALS patients survive for 10 or more years. There are as many as 20,000-30,000 people in the United States with ALS and about 200,000 in China.
In late 1980, while Wang was still a practicing physician in China, he was diagnosed with ALS. In less than two weeks his weight dropped from 170 lbs to 130 lbs. He could not climb stairs without fainting and could not go anywhere without a car. His memory deteriorated and he could not remember his home address.
Wang’s heart sank. He was hospitalized during the entire period of his wife’s pregnancy. His despair grew as he was unable to find any cure. He remained fretfully at home without much hope.
“When I was diagnosed with ALS, I came across a male patient in his thirties who also had ALS in the hospital of a medical school. He was unable to breathe without the help of a ventilator during the three years of his hospitalization.”
Wang went to every major hospital with experience in handling ALS in China. He also studied Chinese medicine and qigong, the slow breathing or bodily exercises for regulating energy. Nothing worked and his symptoms worsened.
In order to find a cure, Wang’s wife Mou Qiqi came to the U.S. Wang refused to go with her initially, as he did not want to die in a foreign country. Three years later Wang relented and joined his wife to seek treatment.
After arrival Wang suffered a severe hemorrhage in his digestive track, suffered memory loss, and was bedridden for 18 months.
Though he had moved to the U.S., Wang’s cure would come from China.
Next: Survival
Survival
While Wang was thus spending the most difficult time in his life, he received a letter from a friend back home.
While he was in China, because of his health problems, he and a few of his friends were searching for a qigong practice that specialized in physical fitness. They found none at that time. They promised to inform each other if they found any. “One of my friends in China who has been studying qigong for a long time sent me a letter. He told me that he has been practicing Falun Gong and believed that it was the best, a real practice of a high level,” said Wang.
Wang soon found out that there were Falun Gong practitioners in MIT who could teach the practice. “The first day I was there, I watched the founder Mr. Li Hongzhi’s video lecture for an hour and learned how to do the exercises. During the class, I felt streams of heat flowing from head to toe. The energy was incredibly powerful.”
Falun Gong is a spiritual practiced based on the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and forbearance. It includes the practice of five slow-motion exercises and living according to those principles.
On the first day of the class, Wang afterwards had a bout of loose motion. When he went home, he realized: “At that time, I had muscle atrophy and my hemoglobin level was less than half of the normal value. I also had kidney stones. Normally after I finished work in the lab in Harvard and got home, I would be terribly tired. However, that night after I got home from the first class, I was so clear-headed. My eyes were wide open and I felt comfortable and energetic. I had not felt that way in the past ten years.”
Wang continued, “I just had hemorrhage in my digestive track which still hurt at the time. The pain was gone in five days after I attended the class. My other illnesses disappeared as well. I felt there was a stream of heat surrounding me all day long, it was very warm and comfortable. In less than three months, I was completely cured.”
Wang’s weight was back to normal; he had got his energy and memory back; his muscles were no longer atrophic and weak. His complexion improved and his hemoglobin level increased to normal. He felt as if he turned ten years younger.
He attributes the curing of ALS to his practice of Falun Gong, which he continues to this day. Now Wang says he is more energetic than ever, and only sleeps five hours a night.
Wang says that the modern science cannot explain what happened to him. “It is something higher than science. Whenever we discover something new in science, it will take us some time to gradually understand it. The same is true with Falun Gong. First of all you need to experience the magical healing power yourself. As you go on with the practice, you discover more amazing things about the practice.”
As to how it cures illnesses, Wang suggests that research may one day uncover that.
Wang believes that a human body has a balanced system that has a defense mechanism to fight diseases, but that when a person’s thoughts become more complex as a part of complex society, the system becomes imbalanced. Falun Gong’s teachings enable one to restore the balance to its optimum level, or even better, Wang says.
Family Benefits
Wang’s wife also attended the Falun Gong lectures. She used to have a stomach ulcer, which hurt when she was hungry and became worse after she ate. She also had problems with her cervical vertebra, leading to cerebral vascular stenosis, a disease and shrinking of the blood vessels outside the brain.
“I could not lie on my sides when I slept because it would cause numbness in my arms. The first day I attended a Falun Gong lecture class in Cambridge, MA, my sleep disorder was gone. I did not suffer insomnia once ever since,” said Wang’s wife, Qiqi.
Seeing how her son and daughter-in-law benefitted from the practice, Wang’s mother also began to practice Falun Gong. She used to have lung cancer, high blood pressure, heart problems and diabetes. All her illnesses disappeared in a month after she began the practice.
In July 1999 Jiang Zemin, then head of the Chinese Communist Party, launched a persecution against Falun Gong practitioners in China. Wang’s mother was forced to give up her belief under threat of jail or violence. In half a year her symptoms recurred, and she passed away in 2000.
Read the original Chinese article.
