Expo offers Tucsonans healthy weekend

Katherine K. Gardiner Arizona Daily Wildcat Actor Dennis Weaver speaks at the Westin La Paloma resort yesterday prior to the opening dinner for this weekend's Natural Choices Expo '97. The Expo, which will be held at the Tucson Convention Center, will exhibit alternative medicines, environmentally safe household practices and ways for children to get involved in saving the Earth.

The three-day public event, being held at the Tucson Convention Center, will feature exhibits, demonstrations and lectures on topics ranging from building solar homes to integrating Chinese and Western medicine.

The Expo is sponsored by the University Medical Center, and is being hailed as the first major exposition to combine themes of environmentalism with alternative medicine.

"The health of the environment affects the health of our bodies," said exposition organizer Mekaela Ryerson. "I wanted to provide a venue for people in various fields of health from personal to environmental, to come and share their knowledge with each other and the community."

The exhibition brings together herbalists, medical doctors, exercise physiologists and meditation therapists with natural clothing designers and the makers of an electric car.

Throughout the weekend doctors from the University of Arizona, and throughout the United States will speak and hold discussion panels to tackle such topics as interactive medicine, environmental poisoning, and immune system disease and regeneration.

Chefs will demonstrate natural cooking and builders will construct a straw-bale wall.

"Exhibitors are coming from throughout the world," said C.J. Walker, who has helped coordinate the event.

"But we have an incredible wealth of talent in Southern Arizona, so about 60 percent of our exhibitors come from right here in Arizona," she said.

At a banquet honoring the opening of the exposition, last night, actor Dennis Weaver and physician Andrew Weil shared the keynote address at a dinner celebrating the opening of the Expo.

Weil, a doctor at University Medical Center, has been working to forge connections between different areas of healing arts for nearly 25 years. He recently established the Program in Integrative Medicine at the UA, which seeks to combine Chinese and Western medicine, osteopathic manipulation, homeopathic remedies and other healing techniques into one setting.

"The consumer movement that is favorable to natural healing and environmentalism has reached a real critical mass," Weil said. "That is what has made this weekend possible." Weaver, a dedicated environmental advocate, spoke about the health of the Earth and the health of the individual.

"The Earth nourishes us and as the Earth goes, so go the rest of us. If we poison the water and drink it, we poison ourselves, so we must nurture and maintain the environment, for it to nourish and maintain us."

Based on the volume of calls the Tucson Convention Center has received concerning the exposition, it expects about 20,000 visitors to attend throughout the weekend, Ryerson said.

The Natural Choices Expo '97 is running today from 2 to 9 p.m., tomorrow from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Admission is $8.75 per day, with a $3 discount for students and senior citizens, or $15 for a three day pass. Tickets can be purchased at the Tucson Convention Center box office.