As conventional medicine has very, very slowly begun to acknowledge the worth of “other” approaches to helping patients, the term “integrative medicine” has arisen. This term is intended to mean incorporating a variety of approaches towards the goal of creating the best possible outcomes for each patient. It implies that maybe, just maybe, there is something better about some other approach. For example, using meditation or exercise or biofeedback instead of taking a prescription tranquilizer. That concept motivating use of the word integrative is great, but there are a couple of problems. The first is that the term, “integrative”, ducks the reality that sometimes patients (and wise physicians) intentionally avoid conventional medicine. They don’t combine, they exclude. They don’t just like the other choice, they actively dislike the conventional option. One rationale for choosing something else is that conventional medicine is more likely to be harmful than those other approaches. So, who willingly chooses the less effective and more harmful option? The second problem, is more subtle and insidious. Even the conventional practitioners who have a favorable view of these other therapies nearly always believe these therapies are unsuitable for serious problems. They treat them as if the therapies are more “cute” than effective. The term most often applied then, is “wellness”. In other words, these treatments might help healthy people feel better, but nothing more. If a person has a real disease, they need real prescription medicine. From 35 years of experience, I can assure you that that belief is completely wrong. In fact, I know that these other approaches, especially the health habits, are absolutely better, more powerful and more effective than prescription medicines. That perception is the inspiration for the title of my book, Better Than Medicines. It is entirely impossible to be healthy without making these habits a part of your life. I have helped many patients with serious illness get better, largely by addressing these simple habits Medical doctors are unfortunately obsessed with prescribing drugs. This is wrong because, as I have already stated, drugs are just are not as effective as health habits. They are dramatic, but weak. They are useful in the short term, but the longer a person takes them the more troublesome the drugs’ limitations become. Why should anyone choose a second rate therapy that costs a lot of money? In my view, physicians have shirked our responsibilities, first to learn about these simpler and more powerful methods, and second to help patients implement these habits. Some physicians, as evidenced by some of the comments on my book,...
The results of a four-year study of over 150,000 American households were just released and found that 2/3 of the calories purchased were “highly processed foods”. Not processed, HIGHLY processed. The consequences for our health and well-being are immense. Some of you might be shaking your head, tsk-tsking at those other people who live on McDonalds “food”. They are right to believe that fast food from such establishments is not so healthy. Their mistake is that even those of us who eat organic foods eat too much processed food. Highly processed organic is only marginally better than highly processed nonorganic. Did you ever see the movie Super Size Me? If you haven’t, I urge you to do so. In the film Morgan Spurlock experiments on himself by eating only McDonalds food for a month. He also decided that if the clerk asked if he wanted to have the meal “super sized”, which was McDonalds sale campaign at the time, he had to say yes. He also had to finish all the food. Before he began his month-long McDonalds feast, he saw three medical doctors, a family physician, a cardiologist and a gastroenterologist. The doctors each conducted a physical exam and ran blood tests and an ekg.on Mr. Spurlock. They all told him that he was in great health, and the McDonald’s diet shouldn’t cause him any significant harm. They were quite wrong. Right away his energy level dropped. He began to suffer headaches and depression. He gained 10 lb. in the first week. His heart became irregular and his blood tests showed liver damage as a consequence of the diet. The same physicians who had reassured him before the experiment began, now urged him to abort the test after just two weeks. He ignored their advice and finished out the 30 days. It took him over a year to lose the 25 lb. he gained. A few years after Super Size Me came out, an unusually perceptive patient who ate a lot of food from a local organic fast food producer jokingly suggested that we run the same sort of test on him. Of course, that would have been foolish, maybe even unethical, given what he and I both knew. Organic is good, but not good enough. When I started eating organic food back in 1970 (seriously, it has been that long), “organic” meant something quite different from what the word means today. In truth, the word doesn’t have a different meaning, but the food it refers to is quite different....
The busiest little beaver needs to rest from time to time. Recreational activities are essential to our wellbeing. Relaxing and recovering from stresses helps us feel better, but recreation goes way beyond that. Recreation does more for us than just erasing the health problems caused by stress. I was a linguist in college, so I learned to pay careful attention to words. The word “recreational” comes from “re-create”. That’s what we do. We recreate ourselves. For sure recreation is a process of recovery and relaxation. We need that. It is also a re-making of ourselves, reconstructing our physical, mental and emotional selves. Recreation creates a renewed and better version of us. Maybe there is something even beyond those physical, mental and emotional components. Some people label the “something more” as religious or spiritual. I don’t know. What I do know, what is 100% clear to me, is that there is much we do not know. Fortunately for us, we don’t have to know the details, what something is for, how it works, or even if it exists, for it to help us. Vitamin D was good for us, even before anyone made up the word “vitamin”. Before we get it all figured out, we can be healed in ignorance. Another way of considering this “otherness” is to keep it just that simple. “Other” than us is the principle. The outside environment, the natural world, heals us. We are creatures of this planet. It sustains and nourishes us. That fact is 100% scientific reality. The Japanese have a practice called “Shinrin-yoku”, which means “taking in the atmosphere of the forest”, or “forest bathing”. Studies show that just fifteen minutes of walking through a forest leads to lower blood pressure, lower stress hormones, heightened immunity and increased feelings of calmness and wellbeing. It is more than a little bit odd that we have to turn to science to prove fundamental wisdom to ourselves. I guess the collective “we”, our culture itself, becomes forgetful and needs reminders of truths that humans have always known. Being out in nature reduce the rate and severity of many physical illnesses, as well as psychiatric ones. We know that spending time out of doors, looking off into the distance, literally shapes our eyes. Children who spend more time outside develop better eyesight. It is not just a stereotype that sitting inside, reading hour after hour, cripples our ability to see. Even a little bit of nature makes us healthier and happier. Just having a plant on your desk...
Firmly established conventional guidelines on blood pressure and salt are finally eroding. It’s about time. For decades I’ve guided my patients along a different path, telling them that I am not concerned by their blood pressure in my office and that they need salt to live. Both of these blood pressure-related opinions have gotten me in hot water with other docs. It’s time for another victory dance. You tell me. If you are worried, anxious, stressed or fearful what happens to your blood pressure? Do you feel as calm and relaxed in the doctor’s office as you feel at home? Is there some “body-wisdom”, a biologically wonderful reason why your blood pressure and pulse rate should increase when you are stressed? The answers are obvious. Well, the answers are obvious to you and I, but they have not been to conventional medicine until now. Just about anyone’s blood pressure will be unusually high in the doctor’s office. Our blood pressure and heart rate rises with stress, so that we can respond to the stress. Yes, that was much more functional for humans when the “stress” was an attack from a saber tooth tiger than it is now, when the stressor is finding a parking space or some conflict at work. Taking this one more step, the simple question is: “Do you think that checking your blood pressure in your doctor’s office is a decent way to determine if you have high blood pressure?” The organization that creates the guidelines for medical screenings for disease the United States Preventive Services Task Force - USPSTF has now achieved a level of common sense equal to your own. They made an official (although still preliminary) declaration that patients should not be diagnosed with high blood pressure on the basis of in-office measurements. Of course, in line also with your common sense, we should not ignore it when a patient has dangerously high blood pressure, even in our offices. Do check your blood pressure yourself. Make sure you are relaxed before you check it. If it is high (140 if you are young,160 if you aren’t, 130 if you have diabetes or kidney disease) talk to a doctor or other health professional about it. Do you remember Mahatma Gandhi, the grandfather of nonviolent resistance? One of his greatest strategic triumphs was when he organized a march to the sea to make salt from seawater. That might sound like a pleasant school outing, except for two facts. One was that the British government (at the time the...
The mission of this site is to inform and empower you. Representing the sum of my experience as well as the latest clinical research, my perspective is often somewhat at odds with the simplistic articles appearing in the media. Applying the information here you can become healthier, stronger and hopefully happier. Look around and let me know what you think.
