medical model

A New Medical Model To Prevent Physician Burnout

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Origins of the Modern Medical Model

Probably few people are aware that the present method of medical practice was formulated by the Flexner report of 1910. John D. Rockefeller, the oil magnate, had set his sights on gaining a monopoly in the drug and pharmaceutical industry. To do this he had to get rid of the competition. This consisted of natural healing modalities that included naturopathy, homeopathy, and holistic medicine, all of which were flourishing in many parts of the country. Rockefeller paid Abraham Flexner to visit all the medical schools in the United States and the information was released in the Flexner report, calling for a standardization of medical education. It ultimately led Congress to declare that the American Medical Association was the only body with the right to grant medical school licenses. It compelled the government to destroy the natural competition by regulating medical schools.

Flexner had visited Germany and their method of medical practice was adopted for the United States. This formulated the idea that the laboratory would be specific enough to prove the diagnosis and gave rise to the concept of scientific medicine. This has become such a vital part of modern medical practice that failure to find laboratory evidence in a common appearance of polysymptomatic patients has usually come to indicate that there is really no disease. The patient is often told that “it is all in your head”. Unfortunately, it appears to assume that all the right tests have been applied. Furthermore, diagnosis of a particular organic disease depends on the constellation of the currently acceptable abnormal laboratory tests associated with that disease. Each disease is regarded as a separate entity whose specific cure must be found by detailed research. The Flexner report was so offensive to William Osler, Professor of Medicine at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine that he immigrated to England. He became Regius Professor of Medicine at Radcliffe Infirmary in Oxford and was knighted. His philosophy emphasized the clinical aspects of the patient’s symptoms and his leadership led to the bedside teaching model of British medical schools.

Using the present model, medical education requires the student to understand the complexities of each of the many diseases envisioned. Even worse, he is expected to remember constellations of symptoms and associated lab data called “syndromes”, many of which are named after the individual who first described it. The next stage of education after graduation is as a hospital resident where the concept of specialization is encouraged and the present medical model is reinforced. It also discourages an entry into primary care, often seen as a failure to ascend the ladder of specialization. It has given rise to the disproportion of primary care compared with specialists and has created a state where the emergency room has virtually taken the place of the family doctor.

Where We Are Now

The published statistics are worrying. A typical visit to a doctor consumes an average of 121 minutes of the patient’s time. This includes 37 minutes in travel and 64 minutes waiting for care. The average time spent with a physician is 20 minutes at most and the national average for visits to doctors is around four times a year. For a young person to contemplate going into medicine, the path to being a doctor takes a minimum of 12 years after graduating from high school. Not only is the process challenging academically, it requires perseverance to complete such a long course of training. Some specialties can take five or more additional years of training. In addition, the financial debt is often overwhelming. Of the nearly 956 million visits that Americans made to office-based physicians in 2008, 51.3% were to primary care practitioners.

The Current Medical Model Breeds Diagnostic Uncertainty

Researchers at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine have explored the frequency of diagnostic uncertainty by providers. They reported that 52% of physicians and 64% of nurse practitioners/physicians assistants admitted that they made a mistake daily. Responders included 633 physicians and 118 nurse practitioner/PAs. Previously published data had stated that 10-15% of all patient encounters included diagnostic uncertainty. In the light of these facts, what can a graduate from medical school expect? If he/she becomes a primary care physician and the allotted time with a patient is only 20 minutes, what can be accomplished? If a clinical problem appears to be complex, referral to a specialist is a way out of the dilemma. Thus, if a patient has been referred to a neurologist and asks a question concerning intestinal symptoms, the neurologist states that that is a question for a gastroenterologist, resulting in further referral. With the common incidence of complex problems, the time constraints have also been imposed on the specialists. Furthermore, postgraduate education, apart from an occasional conference, is from the pharmaceutical representatives, each explaining the “miraculous” effects of the latest drug. Before I came to the United States, I was in a family medical practice in a small country town in England. I can still remember that when a representative had called on the practices within the town, the local drugstores registered a large number of prescriptions of the particular medication whose clinical benefits had been presented to the physicians.

It is hardly surprising that, after a rigorous training, a young physician who chooses primary care as his life work would tend to become bored from the daily appearance of what seems to be regarded as so many patients with “imaginary” symptoms. Perhaps after recuperating financially, specialization may seem to be an acceptable escape, thus adding to the disproportionate number of specialists to primary care physicians. Perhaps these facts are responsible for the waning interest in being a physician. Add to them the appearance of bureaucratic interference and the intricacies of electronic recording constraints, the profession of medicine seems to be less attractive than other professions. A recent report from the Association of American Medical Colleges projected a shortage of 42,600 to 121,300 physicians by 2030. 

Is There a Solution?

Dr. Marrs and I believe that there is indeed a solution. We believe that the present medical model is a catastrophe and needs to be replaced. Evidence is rapidly accumulating that the core issue of disease is defective energy metabolism as defined by Selye 50 years ago. Although nutritional deficiency is by far and away the commonest way of producing energy deficiency, we now know that there are abnormal genetic influences, many of which can be resolved by epigenetic (use of nutritional elements) treatment. There are already professional organizations of holistic physicians. In 1982 I joined a medical group that came to be named as the American College for Advancement in Medicine (ACAM) and later became a member of the International College of Integrative Medicine (ICIM). Both of these organizations need to be encouraged since they are resuscitating the medical approaches that were canceled as a result of the Flexner report. Holistic medicine recognizes that healing requires cellular energy and that this can only be accomplished by attention to pristine nutrition and an epigenetic approach. It is interesting that the word “holistic” comes from an ancient word “holos”, meaning “the side of a hill where the ancients gathered herbs”.

A New Model of Medicine: Let Energy Be the Guide

In previous posts on this website we have outlined the skeleton of a new medical model by the triple influence of genetics, nutrition and stress (as defined by Selye). Even genetically determined diseases often require some form of stress to become clinically expressed. For example, diabetes has one or more genetic markers. If the genetic influence were the sole factor, one would expect the disease to be expressed at birth. However, the history of diabetes indicates that its onset is many years later and its onset is often associated with minor stress such as a cold. All diabetics are aware of the effect of nutrition. The DNA of an individual is seldom perfect but the imperfections may not be severe enough to cause functional breakdown if cellular energy is adequate to meet the stresses of life. The revised model hypothesizes that energy deficiency is the core issue of disease, thus emphasizing the wisdom of Hippocrates who, in 400 BCE, said “let medicine be your food and food be your medicine”. Our advice to a newly graduated physician would be that he upgrade the biochemical knowledge that he has acquired in medical school, with a particular emphasis on energy metabolism.

As a primary care physician, or even as a specialist, he would be most interested in the family history for indications of genetic risk. A review of the patient’s diet, including that associated with social activities, would be his next interest and he would ask a few questions to ascertain whether any form of stress added to the equation. Yes, an infection is an attack on the patient’s constitution and may be the primary problem, but body defenses require energy. With inadequate essential elements supplied by nutrition, the defense mechanisms gradually deteriorate. Their resuscitation requires megadoses of the defense supporting nutrients (vitamins and minerals).

Laboratory tests would concentrate on depicting the energy status of the patient. He would quickly appreciate that the so-called “imaginary” symptoms expressed by the patient are those of poorly energized brain cells registering their dysfunction. That is why we have hypothesized that beriberi, the classical energy deficiency disease is “the great imitator”. For example, some years ago young woman consulted me with the disease called thrombocytopenic purpura. This disease is caused by a deficit of cells that circulate in the blood, called platelets and they have an important part to play in the control of blood coagulation. The body becomes covered with tiny plebs of non-coagulated blood and a blood test shows that the platelets are deficient. She had suffered from this disease for many years, receiving conventional treatment without success. Applying the principle that there was an energy deficit in the bone marrow where platelets are produced, I treated her with a series of intravenously given vitamins with complete remission of the disease. This means that the three circles of health, genetics, nutrition and stress, if fully understood in principle, would present a simplification in the ability of a physician, or other health professional to approach a new patient. It would provide a simple “mind picture” for constructing the necessary questions to be asked after the reason for the consultation has been addressed.

We Need Your Help

More people than ever are reading Hormones Matter, a testament to the need for independent voices in health and medicine. We are not funded and accept limited advertising. Unlike many health sites, we don’t force you to purchase a subscription. We believe health information should be open to all. If you read Hormones Matter, like it, please help support it. Contribute now.

Yes, I would like to support Hormones Matter.

This article was published originally on September 30, 2019.

Image by günter from Pixabay.

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Mystery Illness: You Are Not Alone

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Hormones Matter is a health oriented website edited by Chandler Marrs, PhD. She has long recognized the need for people to report their “mystery illnesses”, simply because they are slipping through the cracks in modern medicine. My association with Dr. Marrs is a very fruitful one because we both have the same viewpoint. This viewpoint embraces the concept that the present disease model is antiquated and badly needs to be revised. In a recent post, I have defined what we mean by a “medical model”. We both have found that a common health problem, largely unrecognized for its true cause, is a polysymptomatic illness that is almost invariably labeled psychosomatic. I will try to explain.

Food, Energy, and Illness

Much of our food is broken down to glucose, the primary fuel of the brain. This has given rise to a common concept that taking virtually any form of sugar is a way to develop “quick energy”. Before the processing of sugar in the body was understood, athletes would sometimes load up on it. We now know that this defeats the purpose. Very much like a car where an excess of gasoline “chokes” the engine, an excess of sugar has a very similar effect, particularly in the brain. An additional effect of sugar is the extremely sweet taste that sends a signal from the tongue to centers in the brain that gives the person an extreme sense of pleasure. It has been shown in animal studies that sugar is more addictive than cocaine and a book was published in 1973 entitled “Sweet and Dangerous”. The author, Dr. John Yudkin, was a professor of nutritional studies in a major London hospital. He was able to show that sugar was the cause of many modern diseases. It is indeed hard for people to understand that such an appreciated delight is dangerous to our health. If we turn to nature, you will find that sugar is never found in its free state. It is always found in fruit and vegetables where fiber is a vital component in its processing. The sweet taste from eating a banana or an orange is the way that Mother Nature designed it and it is a healthy way of experiencing a sweet taste.

Glucose is burned (oxidized) in cellular “engines” (mitochondria) and it is a very complex process. The net result is energy that is stored in a chemical substance known as adenosine triphosphate (ATP). The nearest analogy would be a battery because the energy that drives all our mental and physical functions is electrical in nature.

By far and away the commonest personal story posted on Hormones Matter is a polysymptomatic illness that is the result of inefficient energy transduction and its major effect is in the brain. To put it as simply as possible, food is not being converted into energy in sufficient amount to meet the stresses of merely being alive. The most susceptible part of the brain that is affected is the part that controls our ability to adapt to living in an environment that is essentially hostile. Using a specialized nervous system and a bunch of glands that produce hormones, this part of the brain signals every organ in the body to participate. Now obviously, if no energy were produced we would die and that is indeed a major cause of death. However this common polysymptomatic illness affecting so many people is based on an inefficient energy production, not a complete lack. It can vary in its degree of severity depending on nutritional and genetic factors. The dominant effect is “psychological”, symptoms such as undue fatigue, depression, anxiety and anger. It can run the gamut of our emotional reactions. In fact, because of its emotional implications, I have suggested that the common state of violence in America is a reflection of our uncontrolled hedonism. Can a person nursing a perceived grievance become violent if the emotional controls are too easily activated?

Energy lack is quickly recognized as dangerous by the brain. It causes a sense of panic to be felt by the affected person. That is why “panic attacks” have been recognized incorrectly as a “psychological disease that requires a medicine to tranquilize the patient” whereas they really represent a fight-or-flight reflex, naturally designed to get the affected person “out of perceived danger, i.e. energy deficiency”. The affected person seeks medical help, but this effect in the brain is seen by most physicians as “psychological”, as though the patient is inventing the symptoms. The diagnosis is, “it’s all in your head”. The irony is that although the symptoms are indeed the result of a function “in the head”, they are evidence of a sick brain lacking in adequate energy and therefore have an understandable origin and meaning. Also, the symptoms are easily erased by administration of non-caloric nutrient supplements when they are initially experienced. If allowed to continue unchecked, sometimes for years, they may lead to the irreversible damage characterized as a neurodegenerative disease.

Because the dominant effect is in the part of the brain that controls the specialized nervous system, it begins to send out exaggerated “panic” signals to the organs of the body. The result is a variable assortment of physical effects— heart palpitations, breathing problems, diarrhea, often alternating with constipation, whole body pain, migraine headaches, nasal congestion, nausea with or without vomiting, chest or abdominal pain, pins and needles etc. In other words, any organ in the body may be activated or non-activated because the pattern of our adaptive mind/body machinery is adversely affected. The very important point is this: each and every action of the brain/body union requires energy, even sleep!

Perhaps the most common symptom is severe fatigue and this has given rise to a common diagnosis of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS). It is worth noting that it is often associated with Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) and it seems to be medically accepted that two diseases, both of “unknown cause” can occur in a patient at the same time. That seems to be a product of illogical thinking based on the present medical model.

Share Your Story

Anyone encountering this website is encouraged to write his or her health story and share it as a blog post. These stories help raise awareness about the scope of illnesses affecting us all and add to the knowledge base. To share your health story, send us a note here.

If you have specific questions about health and illness, we recommend that you “surf” the site because there are many posts on a variety of topics with long and detailed comment threads, one or more of which may be similar to your own story and may answer your questions.

We Need Your Help

More people than ever are reading Hormones Matter, a testament to the need for independent voices in health and medicine. We are not funded and accept limited advertising. Unlike many health sites, we don’t force you to purchase a subscription. We believe health information should be open to all. If you read Hormones Matter, like it, please help support it. Contribute now.

Yes, I would like to support Hormones Matter. 

Image by Leandro De Carvalho from Pixabay .

This article was published originally on December 2, 2019. 

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Problems With the Medical Model of Disease

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medical model of disease

The use of the word model is supposed to describe the nature of disease as it differs from that of health. Hippocrates was the first person to offer a solution to the preservation of health by saying “Let food be your medicine and let medicine be your food”. Throughout most of history there was no model and treatment was based on largely futile ideas. The present age of medical thinking was ushered in by the discovery of disease producing microorganisms. The model became “kill the microorganism, the bacterium, the virus, the cancer cell”. If no microorganism or cancer cells could be found, the remaining diseases were long considered to be a mystery.

Recent research has advanced the model by discovering that the brain controls inflammation through the vagus nerve by the use of metabolites called cytokines. However, the present medical model still dictates that the various symptoms that signify loss of health are put together in collections. Each is considered to represent a particular disease that has to be named for diagnostic purposes and that a cure for each is to be found from detailed research. So we now have literally thousands of different diseases, often being called after the person who first observed a particular symptom/sign collection, such as Parkinson or Alzheimer. Each of the named diseases is supposedly recognized by a collection of laboratory tests that are “diagnostic”. What is even worse, is that this collection is often called a syndrome and the first observer has his/her name appended. From that time on, this particular collection is known as “Joe Soap’s syndrome”. Fortunately, there is change on the horizon as we gradually realize that the human body is a “machine” whose function is metabolic in nature.

The Stress of Life

When I was in active practice, I discovered that thiamine could be used as a “drug” for many of the situations that I encountered, seemingly irrelevant to the diagnostic category with which I was supposedly dealing. I was thought of by my colleagues as a medical heretic. Since it had long been known that thiamine deficiency was responsible for the disease called beriberi, I studied the history of the early attempts to find its cause. Beriberi had existed for thousands of years and was still largely a mystery at the end of the 19th century. I found how easy it was for the investigators to be misled. In Eastern cultures rice had been a staple for centuries. At that time, factories had been built in China in which buildings had been separated by a corridor. In the summer months the workers would congregate in them to take their lunch. As the sun moved around, it would shine on the congregated workers and several of them would come down simultaneously with the first symptoms of beriberi. The obvious conclusion for the investigators was that this was some kind of infection since several of them had succumbed at the same time. When it was found that thiamine deficiency was responsible, an explanation was required for this simultaneous incidence of the disease.

We now know that ultraviolet light is a source of stress. It can be concluded that the affected workers had been marginally deficient in thiamine. They were either asymptomatic or had mild symptoms attributed to other causes. The stress caused by sunlight had provoked symptoms of the disease simply because the required energy was unavailable to achieve homeostasis. This intriguing discovery caused me to seek the work of Hans Selye, whom I visited in Canada. As I have written in several posts on this website, he had determined from the study of rats that each form of stress had to be resisted and required energy. He called it the General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS) and offered the idea that human disease was a lack of sufficient energy required for adapting to the more severe environmental influences encountered on a daily basis. This included severe trauma and infections. The energy deficiency conclusion of Selye was later backed up by one of his students who was able to produce the GAS experimentally in a thiamine deficient rat without using any form of experimental stress.

It seemed to me to be obvious that I had to study the way energy is produced in the human body if I were to understand the reality of health and disease. In Selye’s time energy metabolism was poorly understood and it was a mark of his genius that enabled him to suggest that it was energy deficiency that caused the collapse of the GAS. The reason that all animals, including humans, are living is because they construct energy from food and this creates a chemical called adenosine triphosphate (ATP). From there, electrical energy has to be created and that is the energy that we use for functional activity. The transition from chemical to electrical energy is not precisely known but there is some evidence that thiamine in the form of thiamine triphosphate (note the parallel with ATP) plays an important part. This triphosphate form is exceptionally high in the electric organ of the electric eel, capable of producing a paralyzing shot of electrostatic electricity to zap its prey. The electric organ is an adaptation of a nerve ending just like ours. It is obviously important to understand that this is an evolutional adaptation and does not mean that we can produce a high energy output from our nerve endings. Indeed, the evidence is strongly in favor of the energy being in microvolts. We are identifying the electrical potential when we perform an electroencephalogram or an electrocardiogram and a recent test has been devised using the electrical potential of a person with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (Open Medicine Foundation April 2, 2021).

Many of the people reading the information on this website are themselves patients seeking help for their misunderstood disease. The history recorded in their posts is repetitive and in each case their reported symptoms are usually thought to be bizarre by the physicians that have been consulted. In the present medical model a “real” disease is called organic and is marked by a series of abnormal laboratory tests. When these tests are reported to be normal, the conclusion is nearly always the same. The symptoms are considered to be imaginary in a person who is thought to be psychologically abnormal. They are referred to as psychosomatic and the patient is told that “it is all in your head”. It is always surprising to me that the physician seems to have the belief that the bizarre nature of the symptoms is generated in the patient’s brain without consumption of energy, that thought processes or imagination are not the result of energy consumption by brain cells.

Distorted Truth

The real trouble is that the disease model represents a distortion of the truth. To make a diagnosis, it is inherently necessary that some of the presently used laboratory tests must be abnormal. No thought is given to the possibility that energy deficiency in the brain might be the cause of the symptoms. Therefore no effort is made to obtain the right laboratory tests. It demands a totally different way of thinking about health and disease. People affected by this kind of brain energy deficiency disease are often working and living ostensibly normal lives but suffering greatly. They are in fact experiencing early beriberi, a disease that has a long morbidity and a low mortality. They can go on experiencing these symptoms for years, but if they are completely ignored as psychological misfits, one can easily imagine that permanent damage will develop. Perhaps Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease are really reflections of this permanent damage and that there will never be a “cure” for them. Attention to relatively simple symptoms, usually diagnosed and treated as variable named conditions such as “allergy” may be the only way in which these named diseases can be prevented.

To give an example of this kind of thinking, I was confronted by a 12-year-old African-American girl with extremely severe asthma occurring in individual attacks. Physical examination revealed that her body was covered with “goose bumps”. Because of this I came to the conclusion that her autonomic nervous system was dysfunctional and the cause of her asthma. I had already come to the conclusion that thiamine deficiency caused the energy failure that resulted in dysautonomia and that sympathetic/parasympathetic imbalance could affect the bronchial tubes. Without further testing, I gave her thiamine in pharmacological doses. It resulted in a complete disappearance of the asthma. This patient, at the age of 30 years, contacted me to let me know that she had only experienced two mild attacks of asthma in her 20s.

Health Requires Energy

What is important to remember is that any situation involving physical or prolonged mental stress requires energy in the brain, used to organize the complex defenses of the body. The recent discovery by Dr. Marrs and myself that thiamine deficiency in America is common, suggests that brain energy is insufficient in many people. If and when they are attacked by a microorganism such as Covid-19 it is possible their symptoms and their continuation reflect brain energy deficiency. Consequently perhaps they are unable to adapt and overcome the stress of the viral attack. It also suggests that symptoms expressed by so called Longhaulers might be helped by the administration of pharmacological doses of thiamine.

We Need Your Help

More people than ever are reading Hormones Matter, a testament to the need for independent voices in health and medicine. We are not funded and accept limited advertising. Unlike many health sites, we don’t force you to purchase a subscription. We believe health information should be open to all. If you read Hormones Matter, like it, please help support it. Contribute now.

Yes, I would like to support Hormones Matter. 

This article was published originally on April 7, 2021.

Image by Joshua Nicholas Vanhaltren from Pixabay.

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Undiagnosable or Sustained Ignorance?

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Undiagnosable

Over the last several years, I have born witness to immense human suffering; young women wracked by pain, with organs diseased, struggling to survive; some have seizures and brain infections are common; many have nerve damage, some develop cancer, and others die; sometimes by their own hands, so desperate for relief that suicide seems like a legitimate option, and other times by the cumulative effects of bad medicine.

These women are poked and prodded by physicians, hospitalized for extended periods, surgery after surgery, failed treatment after failed treatment, with no hope in sight. Their pain grows. Their symptoms worsen. Their suffering continues. In many cases, they are dropped by their physicians because their conditions are too complex to understand and too difficult to manage. They are undiagnosable, often untreatable, and their struggles are mostly invisible to the public.

They are your sisters, your mothers, your wives, your daughters, your girlfriends and colleagues. They are the 50% of the population that medical science ignores and the pharmaceutical industry preys upon. They are women. This is their story. And as a woman, a mom, a scientist and an advocate for women’s health– this is my story too. As a human being, how can it not be your story too?

Let me point you to the personal stories of the women I work with. Many were healthy once, prior to a medication or vaccine adverse reaction or ill-conceived surgery or surgical device. Some were not so healthy, suffering from one of the many undiagnosable women’s health conditions. But all of the women I work with have one thing in common – they fell victim to the promise of medical science. They believed that their doctors understood the effects of the drugs they were prescribed. They believed in the surgical treatment their doctor suggested. They believed that their doctors could find the source of their pain and treat it. They were wrong.

Meet Alisa, Alexis, Nicole, Britt, Nina, Ashley, Tracie, Susan, Danielle, Michelle, Kerri, Rosemary, Jordan, Philippa, Lisa, Angela, Kelsey, Rachel, Roxie, Rosalie, Heather, Jill, Louise, Sydney, Suki, Destini, Lisa, Emily, Debra, Patti, BJS, Joan, Holly, MAK, DES Daughter, Lisbeth, Robin, WS, Sarah, Zoe, Gabriella, Erika, Janet, Yuka, Sharne, SWC, Stacey, Bette, Amber, Momoka, Yumi, Dorothy, Samantha, Kristin, Katelyn, Jean, Sarah M., Erika, Charlotte, Kerry, Sharon, Taylor, Brandi, Alisen, Jess, J.H., Alex, Sandra, Theresa, Ann, Connie, Jessica, Kristyn, Bernadette, MJ, Marit, Alyson, Detrease, Claudia, Kristen G., Annie, Rebecca, Grace, Julia, Brooke, Anna-Karin, Brittany, Kristen S., CS, Asha, Anne, Leslie, Sharida, Lisa P., Daniel’s wife, Annie, JMR, June, Lisa MH, Casey, Margaret, Nicole, Stacey R., Stephanie, Karen, and all the men and women who shared their stories anonymously and the millions of others suffering in silence.

I have come to realize that their suffering is not uncommon. It is not a fluke. They are not the outliers of modern medicine; rather, they are the norm. Perhaps, the details of a particular story change somewhat, but every woman (and more and more men) has a health story; one that is marked by unending medical confusion and half-witted diagnoses based, not on a deep understanding, but on wild-assed guesses levied by pharmaceutical marketing. Indeed, if the illness does not have a medication then, in the eyes of all but the most progressive physicians, it does not exist. That may explain why the prevalence of medically unexplained symptoms ranges from 25-75% in outpatient settings, with pain being the most common.

Worse yet, when a medication elicits an adverse reaction, especially one that is chronic and complex, the patient is left to fend for themselves. It takes decades for recognition that a medication or vaccine might evoke complex reactions beyond those associated with anaphylaxis. The statistics for women’s healthcare back this up.

Did you know that it takes 5-10 years to diagnose common women’s health conditions and that once diagnosed there are often no medications or effective treatment options? You’d think that that since the development of modern medicine, someone, somewhere, would figure out how to diagnose and effectively treat some of these conditions? You’d be wrong.

Did you know that only 30% of Ob/Gyn Clinical Practice Guidelines are based on actual data – 70% are based on consensus? Sit with that one for a minute. You’d have a better chance of getting an accurate diagnosis with a dartboard.

Did you know that before the mid-1990s, women were prohibited from being in clinical trials – meaning that no medications developed before then were ever tested on women? Hundreds of medications currently on the market were developed before women were permitted into clinical trials.

Did you know that even today women represent only about 30% of early clinical trial participants? It is in the early trials that safety and efficacy data are established. Not even female rodents were used in testing drugs that would be used in the female population until 2014.

Did you know that even when women are included in clinical trials, there is no mandate to analyze the safety or efficacy data by sex – to see if a particular medication causes more adverse reactions in women, or even works in women? It took 20 years to realize Ambien dosing for women was different than for men. And by different, I mean, it should have been half. For the twenty years this drug was on the market women were over-dosing because no one bothered to consider sex as a variable in pharmacokinetic research.

Did you know that women account for disproportionately more serious and more frequent adverse reactions and that most of the major drug recalls in recent history were due to the adverse events experienced by women?

Nope, you probably didn’t know that because it’s not common knowledge. Unless, you are one of the millions of individuals suffering from an undiagnosable, untreatable, unknowable disease or adverse reaction, then it is all too real.

And though I focus of women’s health, men are not completely risk free. The British Medical Journal reports that when 3000 commonly used medications were reviewed, less than 50% had the appropriate data to suggest any efficacy whatsoever. Worse yet, because of publication bias, fraud, and the closed clinical trials system allows pharmaceutical companies hide their negative results behind the walls of intellectual property, when already approved medications are re-evaluated using the previously closed trial data, the recommendations for use changed for 93% of the medications – 93%. For cancer drugs, efficacy could be confirmed in only 11% of the studies reanalyzed. That’s just wrong. We can do better. We must do better.

As I rattle off these stats, you might be thinking to yourself, ‘but Chandler, those adverse reactions, those drug side effects are rare, they wouldn’t, they couldn’t, happen to me or my family, we’re healthy.’  Think again.

According to the Mayo Clinic, 70% of all Americans take at least one pharmaceutical chronically, 50% take two, and 20% take five or more medications, even during pregnancy where 80% of women take at least one medications and 30% take four or more, an increase of more than 60% over the last 15 years. And don’t get me started about administering vaccines to pregnant women under the auspices of protecting the fetus. There are no data suggesting that a vaccine during pregnancy is anything more than a toxic cocktail that both mom and fetus have to survive, and many do not. None of these medications or vaccinations have ever been tested for safety or efficacy during pregnancy, read the package inserts. Similarly, infants, children and adolescents represent key demographics for pharmaceutical marketing and once again, only 10-20% of pediatric medications were tested on children. We have no idea what illnesses we are initiating by our overuse of medications and vaccines. None. And therein lies the problem.

We Need Your Help

More people than ever are reading Hormones Matter, a testament to the need for independent voices in health and medicine. We are not funded and accept limited advertising. Unlike many health sites, we don’t force you to purchase a subscription. We believe health information should be open to all. If you read Hormones Matter, like it, please help support it. Contribute now.

Yes, I would like to support Hormones Matter.

This article was published originally on October 31, 2017, and as one might expect, the list of women who have suffered at the hands of sustained ignorance has grown considerably. 

Image credit: Imgflip.

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A New Model for Medicine

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new medical model

What is a Medical Model?

 In the Oxford English dictionary the word model is defined as “design to be followed, style of structure”. Then it follows that there must be a model to distinguish health from disease, that differentiates the two states of being. No disease can be treated without knowing exactly what caused it. Let us go back to Hippocrates, 400 BCE, who said “let food be your medicine and your medicine be your food”. What Hippocrates was saying was essentially that nutrition was the core issue in the maintenance of health. At this time and throughout the Middle Ages there was no model for the cause of disease. Consequently, treatment was extremely primitive and almost purely empirical. In the time of ancient Egypt it was believed that mental illness was caused by the presence of evil spirits in a person’s head. They bored holes in the skull to let the evil spirits out. If you think about that, perhaps it relieved the occasional headache because of increased pressure in the skull caused by a brain tumor. Hence, a few successes might have caused it to be retained as beneficial. During the Middle Ages, the only treatment that seems to have been used is bloodletting. It might have been temporarily useful in people with high blood pressure. A few successes yielded the conclusion that it was beneficial for all disease.

The First Controlled Experiment

Semmelweis was a 19 th century Hungarian physician. In those days, the incidence of puerperal disease (childbed fever) was absurdly high. Semmelweis made the observation that doctors, delivering their patients, entered the delivery room and went directly to their patients without changing their garments or washing. He came to the simple conclusion that the doctors were bringing something in with their hands that caused the problem. The obstetric ward consisted of a number of beds on each side of the room and Semmelweis directed that doctors delivering their patients on one side should wash their hands in chlorinated lime, while doctors on the other side of the room would continue in the old way. Of course, the incidence of childbed fever was so different that it did not need a statistician to document the difference. Semmelweis’s observations conflicted with the established scientific and medical opinions of the time, particularly as he was unable to explain what was on the hands of the doctors. Some doctors were even offended at the suggestion that they should wash their hands. It is truly an amazing vision of human behavior. Innovation carries with it loss of reputation for the innovator, no matter how successful the innovation. Well, of course everyone today knows that it was microorganisms on the hands of the doctors that caused the disease, but they had not yet been discovered. Poor Semmelweis wound up in a lunatic asylum and died in his 40s after a beating by attendants. Today, he is regarded as the first person to introduce antiseptic medicine.

The First Paradigm in Medicine: Microscopic Organisms

Most people are aware that the invention of the microscope, and the work of historical figures like Louis Pasteur, led to the discovery of organisms, that could only be seen with the microscope, caused what we now call infection. We are all familiar with the fact that a tremendous number of diseases are due to infection by bacteria, viruses or fungi. It was a perfectly logical conclusion that the development of treatment should be aimed at killing these organisms. This was the first paradigm in medicine, meaning that it was accepted by all. A glance at history will tell us that the search for medication that would kill these organisms was hard won. It was difficult to find something that would kill the germs without killing the patient and many patients lost their lives as a result of this search. The discovery of penicillin represented a dramatic change in perspective as it gave birth to the antibiotic age. Millions of lives have been saved. However, we are now entering an era where the development of antibiotic resistance is becoming an increasing problem. More and more potentially damaging antibiotics have been synthesized that present their own problems in therapy.

The Second Paradigm in Medicine: Immunity

It has been said that Louis Pasteur made the statement on his deathbed, “I was wrong: it is the defenses of the body that matter”. I believe that this may well become the second paradigm in medicine. So what are we talking about? Everyone recognizes that we have immunity but the average person has only the vaguest idea of what this really means. In fact, body defenses against infection are exquisitely complex and incredibly efficient when the immune system is healthy. The primary mechanism for health maintenance is exactly what Hippocrates said, not only the quantity but the quality of nutrition. By recognizing this, the concept is offered that preventive medicine, the use of nutrients based on a knowledge of the biochemical machinery that give our cells function, is the second paradigm.

Presently, we stimulate our immunity by the use of vaccines. However, each vaccine gives a protection to a specific microorganism, perhaps the best example being the flu. Most of us are aware that there are many strains of the flu virus and it may not be possible to predict the particular strain responsible for the “next epidemic”. Natural immune defense mechanisms recognize most invaders as “enemies”. Those whose adaptive/immune mechanisms cannot respond will succumb to the infection. Assisting the immunity mechanisms by making energy synthesis as efficient as possible and killing the “enemy” with maximum safety to the patient might just be the way of the future.

How the Body Responds to Environmental Stressors  

Each one of us comes with a “blueprint” derived from our parents in the form of genes that carry a code called DNA. This code is unique for each person and provides the structure that makes up a living person. The body is composed of 70 to 100 trillion cells, all of which have to cooperate to produce what we call function. I think of it being like an orchestra where all the organs are made up of cells, each one of which has a specific specialty to provide its contribution. Like instrumentalists in an orchestra, the cells within each body organ have to work together. This requires a conductor, a function that is performed by the subconscious brain. Coordination is administered through an automatic (autonomic) nervous system and a bunch of glands known as the endocrine system that produce messengers called hormones.

Consider what happens when a person is attacked by a pathogenic Streptococcus, for example. The throat becomes sore, the marker of inflammation. Controlled and executed through the brain, it increases local blood supply, bringing white blood cells into the area and is part of a defensive process. Glands in the neck become enlarged and this is also a defensive process, designed to catch and destroy the germs beginning to spread. Body temperature becomes elevated because disease producing bacteria are most virulent at normal body temperature and their efficiency is reduced at a higher body temperature. A standard procedure in medicine for many years has been to reduce the fever and it has always seemed to me to be a disadvantage, based on this explanation. We sweat when the environmental temperature is high and evaporation from the skin results in cooling. When the environmental temperature is low, we shiver and the muscular activity produces heat to maintain body temperature. These are examples of how we are able to adapt to changes in our environment that threaten our well-being. All of this is purely automatic and the only thing to complete the picture is how our food (fuel) is used to create energy. Maximum efficiency of brain metabolism is mandatory. Assist and protect the “conductor”.

How We Create Energy: Enter the Mitochondria

Because any form of burning is the union of oxygen with the fuel, in the body it is termed oxidation. The process is complex and many vitamins and minerals are involved, besides calories. It has long been known that thiamine (vitamin B1) deficiency is the cause of beriberi, the disease that had plagued humanity for thousands of years. Because this deficiency affects every cell in the body, it can degrade the efficiency of virtually any organ. But because different tissues have their own rate of metabolism and the brain and heart are the two tissues that require fast and efficient oxidation, it is the cells in those tissues that are most affected. Therefore, thiamine deficiency has its major effect in the brain and heart, but they are not exclusive.

Glucose is the main fuel, but like any other fuel used to produce energy, it has to be ignited. Thiamine, much like a spark plug in a car, processes this ignition. All simple sugars taken in the diet are broken down to glucose.  But before this happens in the body, dietary sugars have two effects. The first is a signal from the tongue to the pleasure zones of the brain. It is this sweet taste that makes sugar addictive. The second is that this excess of sugar overwhelms the capacity of thiamine to oxidize glucose to create energy. A person may have a perfectly normal thiamine level in the blood that is inadequate to meet the demand. It is the ratio of “empty carbohydrate calories” to the concentration of available thiamine that counts. I have called this “high calorie malnutrition” that seems to be an oxymoron since malnutrition is generally considered to be on the way to starvation. The patients with this form of malnutrition may be obese, remain relatively active, do not look ill and multiple symptoms are regarded by their physicians as “psychologic, or psychosomatic”. There appears to be no reason to seek laboratory evidence of malnutrition and the patient is written off as a “problem patient”. It is hardly surprising that the patient leaves the doctor’s office angry and tells friends that “the doctor told me that it was all in my head”.

The irony is that it IS in the patient’s head, but because of electro-chemical changes in brain metabolism. It has always seemed odd to me that physicians often consider that “psychological issues” are somehow “invented” by patients without thinking that every thought, every action, has a mechanism produced in a chemical “machine” called a brain. Distortions are the result of a combination of cellular energy deficiency (malnutrition), coupled with a potential genetic risk and perhaps a stress factor such as an otherwise mild infection/injury, or an inoculation. Any one of the three factors may dominate the clinical presentation, but in most cases the other two are involved.

A New Model: Genetics, Nutrition, and Stress

Throughout life each of us depends on our ability to survive in an essentially hostile environment. The first thing that it depends upon is our genetic inheritance that I have called “the blueprint”. But we also know that the “engines” of our cells, known as mitochondria, have their own genes in which the DNA is more susceptible to damage than our cellular genes. A new model must consider the fact that any stress requires energy in an adaptive response to any form of environmental attack resulting from a mental or physical problem or infection. The only way that we can protect the structural components of our bodies is by the use of the natural ingredients of nutrition, the ancient teaching of Hippocrates. The new science of epigenetics finds evidence that nutrition and lifestyle can make changes to our genes that might be beneficial or not, according to the circumstances. If a person has become sick from an excess of empty calories and refuses to change, the only way to treat that person would be by increasing the concentration of the missing nutritional ingredient in the form of a supplement. It is of paramount interest that in 1962 a paper was written in a prestigious medical journal. The author had found 696 medical journal manuscripts that reported 250 different diseases that had been treated with supplementary thiamine, with varying degrees of success. This suggests the possibility that health is produced by a combination of genetic influence, how we meet the daily impacts of stress and the quality of our nutrition. Disease results from, either genetic failure (cellular or mitochondrial), failure to meet stress because of energy deficiency, malnutrition, or combinations of the three elements.

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A Letter to New Physicians: Thoughts on Medicine after a Lifetime of Practice

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Let food be medicine

By way of introduction, I was educated at St. Bartholomew’s Medical College in London England and graduated with MB BS from London University. After National Service in the RAF as a medical officer, I entered family doctor practice under the National Health Service. I immigrated to Canada by joining the Royal Canadian Air Force on a short service commission. In 1960, I did pediatric residency at Cleveland Clinic in Cleveland, Ohio and was then invited to join the staff in 1962. My experience during the next 20 years showed me that what has come to be called Integrative, or Alternative Complementary, Medicine was an exciting and fulfilling way of practice. It is about this that I would like to talk to you.

First of all, ask yourself why you became a physician, for which you may have incurred a frightening financial debt. Was it because it provides a good income? Was it because of your fascination with science or was it because of your desire to heal the sick? Give it some thought because it can make a difference to your choice of practice. Let me pass on to you my experience because I enjoyed my entire medical career and did not retire until the age of 88.

Let’s look at the history of medicine as it has developed. During the Middle Ages there was absolutely no model to explain health and disease. You remember that Louis Pasteur and others like him discovered that microorganisms attacked us and killed us. Therefore, the first paradigm in medicine was an attempt to kill the microorganism without killing the patient. For many years this was extremely frustrating and many unfortunate patients did not survive the “cure”. Then came the exciting discovery of penicillin and the antibiotic era was born. Microorganisms became “the enemy” and the idea spread to killing the cancer cell, or indeed anything that appeared to attack our health. You know of course that we are coming up against some severe problems with reference to the antibiotics. Apart from bacterial resistance, their toxicity was found to be so great that some were diverted to the treatment of cancer cells.

During my tenure at Cleveland Clinic I was a pediatric oncologist for six years. The children with cancer all died and when I had the opportunity I diverted my interest to the study of inborn errors of metabolism and handed the oncology to a colleague. What was so interesting to me was that the nature of the biochemical lesion for inborn errors had to be discovered at birth, giving rise to the state screening laboratory. If not discovered at birth, nearly all of them would become mentally retarded. In many cases, an appropriate diet could be formulated by the discovery of the biochemical lesion. The damaging effects could be prevented. This is preventive medicine at its best.

One day, I was confronted with a six-year-old boy who had intermittent episodes of self-limited cerebellar ataxia. Each episode had left his mental functions a little bit worse and he had the earliest signs of optic atrophy. He had been tested by every conceivable neurological and neurosurgical method, all of which had been normal. By studying his biochemistry it became apparent that he had intermittent beriberi. His inborn error was due to a defect in the ability of thiamine to bind to pyruvic dehydrogenase as its cofactor. Each episode of cerebellar ataxia was initiated by some form of stress such as a cold, a mild head injury, and on one occasion, an inoculation. The biochemistry was apparently good enough to produce cellular energy, unless some form of physical stress was imposed on him. By giving him large doses of vitamin B1 his episodes of ataxia could be prevented.

To me this was a dramatic experience that completely changed my perspective of medical responsibility. I found by simple trial and error that many of the pediatric problems facing me responded to large increments of a completely non-toxic vitamin ( thiamine) used as a therapeutic agent. I began to be aware that Hans Selye was absolutely correct when he formulated the General Adaptation Syndrome. He recognized that an animal’s ability to meet stress demanded cellular energy to adapt. This was intuitive, because knowledge of energy metabolism in Selye’s day was limited. The collapse of a stressed animal was due to cellular energy deficit and he stated that humans were suffering from “diseases of adaptation” because of their cellular energy deficiency. Skelton, one of his students, had been able to initiate the General Adaptation Syndrome in animals by inducing  thiamine deficiency.

I started thinking about our medical approach. Since healing is a natural process within the body itself, shouldn’t we be assisting that in addition to attempts to kill the enemy safely? I came to realize that the use of nutritional elements represented the fuel that our cells use to produce energy. Provided that the DNA blueprint is either perfect or that its imperfections can be improved by epigenetic use of nutrients, the blueprint can be manipulated by understanding the nutrient implications. A study of ideal human nutrition in the process of energy synthesis is absolutely essential to our ability to retain complete health in a hostile environment to which we have to adapt continuously.

I left the Cleveland Clinic and joined with a physician who had opened a practice specializing in the therapeutic use of nutrients. The effects on my patients were dramatic and I can only say that this is the formula that was given to us by Hippocrates who said “let medicine be your food and let food be your medicine”. Now we know a great deal about the essential elements that make up human nutrition. It is as though medicine could be represented as a journey on a rough road. It came to a fork in the road and a signpost pointing one way stated “kill the enemy”. The other signpost was perhaps blank and can now be said to state “assist the defense”. Could it be that it is a new paradigm? It is interesting that Louis Pasteur was said to have stated on his deathbed “I was wrong. It is the body defenses that count”.

Perhaps you, reading this, might think about the truth existing behind these words. Would you be interested in doing your own library research to find out what has been written concerning the art and science behind the much maligned “Alternative Complementary Medicine”? After a lifetime of practicing medicine focused on supporting host defenses with nutrients, I am convinced this is the direction medicine should be taking.

As a new physician, you have yet to experience the frailty of the current medical model. You will; and as you do, consider whether simply ‘killing the enemy’ with antibiotics, tamping down the inflammatory reactions, or overriding any of the body’s many innate mechanisms to deal with illness, is working in your patients. If you come to the conclusion, as I did, that these methods simply do not work for many patients, consider the proposition that we must support host defenses in order to let the body heal.

Yours sincerely,

Derrick Lonsdale, M.D.

 

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The Wrong Fork: Understanding the Current Medical Model

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Medical fork in road

The Western Medical Model

Looking at the history of the development of medical thinking, there are many different models. A model represents an idea, a structural format that fits for the cause and treatment of disease, a word defined in Webster as “any departure from normal health, an illness”. For example, the model that is used today in the West is completely different from that used by the ancient Chinese and it would seem to be pertinent to look at how our Western model was developed in the first place.

Until the internal structures of the body and their functions were defined it was totally impossible to understand any principles of why we get sick. Throughout medieval history there was in fact no model. Very early concepts blamed demons and evil spirits and for several centuries, bleeding the patient seems to have been the only treatment offered. These ideas were developed out of ignorance. Our present model was derived from the discovery of organisms that were so small that they could not be seen without a microscope. This idea, however, was born even before the development of the microscope.

Germ Theory

Semmelweis was a 19th century Hungarian physician. He had observed that physicians would enter the delivery room directly from the morgue to deliver mothers of their infants. Since the puerperal “childbed” fever had a mortality rate of 10 to 35%, but germs had not yet been discovered, Semmelweis concluded that the physicians were “bringing something in on their hands”. He made them wash their hands before delivering any of their patients. Childbed fever virtually disappeared, as we would now expect. Even with this practical evidence that the current medical model was wrong, Semmelweis was persecuted and derided by the medical profession because his concept was “out-of-the-box”. It infringed on the philosophy that governed medical thinking at that time, an unforgivable sin in the eyes of his medical compatriots who were ultimately shown to be themselves wrong.

Well, as we all know, the germ theory was finally accepted and it provided the very first idea for the cause of disease. The foundation of this model is that an attacking agent is “the enemy”. The direction that took place was to kill “the enemy”. The philosophy was “kill the bacterium, kill the virus, kill the cancer cell” and medical science has spent years and is still trying to develop compounds and treatments that would kill the “enemy” without killing the patient. You can be sure that they killed a lot of patients (and still do) in their attempts, until the dramatic discovery of penicillin that opened the so-called antibiotic era. Antibiotic resistance is now a new threat conjured up by the “enemy”.

Facing the Fork in the Road: Kill the Enemy or Bolster Defenses

I like to think imaginatively that medicine was “walking down a long rough road”. It came to a fork with the road leading to the right that carried a signpost. The signpost said “Kill the enemy”. The road leading to the left had no signpost so the right fork was the obvious one to travel. Kill the bacteria; kill the virus; kill the cancer cell. Be aggressive; don’t let the disease take over the show.

The rest of this article deals with what the left fork may have yielded. I suggest that the signpost would have said “Help the defense”. Copy Hippocrates; don’t do any harm; above all, avoid a noisy mechanical hospital so that the patient can assist himself by proper rest while listening to gentle music. Make sure that his nutrition is appropriate so that “food becomes his medicine”.

The Body Is a Fortress

I now call into effect the reader’s imagination. Think of the body as like an old-fashioned fortress. An attack would demand a defense orchestrated by a commander. To watch for an attack there would always have to be guards or sentries posted on the battlements. Sighting a would-be attack by a guard would involve sending a messenger to the commander so that he could organize the defense. The body works like that. White cells are just like the imagined soldiers as they “go into battle”. All the other phenomena that we call “an infection” are really generated as part of a complex defensive system. I write more about the body as a fortress in Ostrich Medicine: Shouldn’t we Recognize Host Defenses.

The Brain and Body Work in Unison To Sustain Health

The human brain, complex as it is, consists of two basic parts which I am going to call the “upper” and “lower” brains. The upper brain is responsible for our thoughts and voluntary actions, the “ego” described by Freud. It conducts messages to the body through a nervous system that is called voluntary, giving us what we call willpower. The lower brain, the “id” described by Freud and where the central command is located, is automatic and controls an involuntary nervous system known as autonomic. It initiates a number of reflexes, the best known of which is called the fight-or-flight, a survival reflex activated by any form of danger that threatens life. It acts with “advice and consent” provided by the upper brain, that is then able to modify the reflex action. There are many other reflexes controlled from id, all of them being protective of either personal survival or survival of our species. The fight-or-flight is personal protection whereas the primitive part of our sex drive is species protection. So let us see how an infection (the enemy) is handled.

Imagine someone who has picked up a splinter in his finger. Unknown to him the splinter carries Staphylococci. The first defensive reaction is the development of what we call a pustule. This represents what I like to call a “beachhead”. The pus that forms is created from the dead white cells that have sacrificed themselves to killing the Staphylococci. This is a local mechanism and if handled successfully will resolve the problem.

If this defense is unsuccessful, the “beachhead” is breached and the Staphylococci begin to flow into the body through the lymphatic system. The “battlements” have been breached. The lower brain is informed and begins to activate a general defense. The body temperature goes up (yes, it is the brain that causes your fever) because germs are programmed to have their most noxious effect at 37°C, normal body temperature. By increasing the temperature of the body, the efficiency of the germ is compromised. A message goes out to the body organs to release white blood cells as the defensive “soldiers” (they go to the “breached battlements”) and explains why the white cell count increases in concert with the fever. Lymph glands increase in size because they are being prepared for destruction of the germs that they encounter. The patient feels ill, forcing him to take a rest. This conserves the energy required for carrying out the defensive system. Now the battle is in full effect and the outcome is resolution, death or sometimes stalemate where the battle is neither won nor lost.

The Left Fork in the Road

The point that I am trying to make here is that the defensive mechanism is as important to the resolution as killing the enemy in a safe way. It demands a colossal amount of energy to be effective and this is generated from the results of good nutrition. So let us see how we can assist the process. The paradox is that two thirds of the world population is suffering from starvation while one third is dying from over eating the wrong foods.

The clinical effects of starvation are completely different from those incurred by eating too much of the wrong foods. Behavior of people in the state of starvation is governed by the catastrophic hunger and search for food. The people eating the wrong food have an entirely different course, the effects of what I call high calorie malnutrition. These are “the walking sick”. They are not hospital cases and their symptoms are often referred to as being psychosomatic because all their conventional tests are negative.

A Case Study: When Short and Long Term Defenses Are Ignored

By way of example, let us follow the case of John Doe. He sees his physician complaining of palpitations of the heart. The focus is on the heart and no thought is given to the action of the autonomic system. He gets a prescription which governs the symptom. A month later he sees the same physician because of alternating diarrhea and constipation. He receives a diagnosis of irritable bowel syndrome and gets a prescription. No thought is given to the action of the autonomic system or the possibility that the former prescription has made things worse. No questions are asked concerning the nature of his diet. If and when he has emotional disease such as anxiety, outbursts of anger or depression, no thought is given to the abnormal chemistry occurring in the brain. Imagine the kind of diet that this American citizen, John Doe is ingesting.

Let us suggest that he has a doughnut and two cups of coffee for breakfast, a coffee break midmorning and enjoys a two Martini lunch. Let us suggest that he has a macaroni dinner with several more Martinis before. Exhausted from the day’s work, he sits in an armchair watching television and goes to bed, only to repeat the same performance the next day. His health is good and remains good for many years on this, or a similar, regimen. Let us say that 10 years later he is the John Doe that gets a prescription for heart palpitations. Because his symptoms are constantly relieved, he has a very high respect for his physician and continues to attend periodically for various symptoms such as “an allergy”. The years roll by and one day he develops mysterious symptoms related to his nervous system. He sees the same physician and is referred to a neurologist who diagnoses Parkinson’s disease. In the present medical concept there is absolutely no connection between his years of dietary indiscretion and the appearance of a chronic neurological disease. John Doe may even ask the physician whether his diet has any bearing on the development of this disease and he is told that it has absolutely no connection at all. I submit to you, the reader, “that this is “food for thought”.

Energy Metabolism: A Foundation for Health or Disease

The combination of between 70 and 100 trillion cells make up the human body. Our functions are dependent upon the cooperation of every single one of these cells, each of which depends on energy. Brain cells, and particularly those of the lower brain (the command center) are highly sensitive to energy deficiency. Oddly enough, the reflexes that I have described above become much more active. Panic attacks, so common today, are fragmented fight-or -flight reflexes. They indicate DANGER. The symptoms generated like this are nothing more than warnings. They are merely indicating that the cells in that part of the brain are either starved of oxygen, the vitamin/mineral combination that enables oxidation to occur efficiently, or that empty calories are overwhelming the ability of the vitamin/mineral combination to perform that function. As I have said in other posts before, it is exactly what would happen in a car if the engine was “choked” by too rich a mixture of gasoline.

When you are young, your cells can cope with the situation and for many years you may have either no symptoms or the kind of symptoms that get classified and can be treated with medications, mostly. When they cannot, these symptoms are often deemed psychosomatic. Ultimately, as we saw with the case of John Doe, permanent damage develops. It is not surprising, then, that the brain becomes the focal point of the disease. This strongly suggests that as we “take the left fork in the road”, prevention is far better than cure.

Are Vitamin and Mineral Supplements Necessary?

One might wonder, given the cautionary tale of John Doe, if vitamin and mineral supplements are necessary to maintain health. I would argue that they are, especially when dietary choices mirror those of our example. Additionally, however, because farming practices have changed, even when one’s diet is rich in fruits and vegetables, those fruits and vegetables may not have as much nutrient density as they once did. When coupled with highly processed foods, even those with vitamin enrichment, I suspect our nutrient needs yet outweigh our current intake capabilities. I am, therefore, inclined to believe that vitamin and mineral supplements are becoming a preventive necessity. It does not, however, take us off the hook. Restricting ourselves to real food is still necessary.

We Need Your Help

More people than ever are reading Hormones Matter, a testament to the need for independent voices in health and medicine. We are not funded and accept limited advertising. Unlike many health sites, we don’t force you to purchase a subscription. We believe health information should be open to all. If you read Hormones Matter, like it, please help support it. Contribute now.

Yes, I would like to support Hormones Matter. 

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