Category Archives: Wellness

Maintain Your Health Without Trade-offs

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The myth that you can just let your body deteriorate and then replace the “worn-out” parts is a costly, dangerous, and inefficient approach. Unfortunately, this myth is deeply entrenched in the American consciousness. It not only breeds disease, but is crippling the economy with “health care” costs that are spiraling out of control and increasingly will be paid from taxpayer dollars.

So many medications are over-used and actually contribute to accelerated aging and greater problems later in life. Here is just one common example, where there are much better solutions for treating or managing the problem than just taking medications. In this example, the medication helps reduce the immediate symptom, but in a way that allows the problem or other related problems to worsen dramatically.

Anti-inflammatory medications all bring trade-offs, one way or another. Whether it is stomach irritation and potential gastric bleeding from NSAID’s (non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs like ibuprofen) or liver damage from tylenol products, there are specific and common side-effects that affect many people. An even more costly trade-off, from long term use of anti-inflammatory medications, is allowing a problem area to deteriorate further without doing anything to correct it.

Let’s say, for example that your knee was painful and inflamed, and that you believed what you heard on TV that an anti-inflammatory medication would reduce the pain and swelling. Either you got your doctor to prescribe the medication or you purchased it on your own at the local pharmacy, and let’s say it did actually reduce your pain and swelling, so you continued to take it for months and years.

BUT, what if your knee pain was actually being caused by a mechanical misalignment of your knee, or an ankle that wasn’t absorbing shock properly because of an old injury? These are very common causes of knee pain and inflammation, and are correctible or at least modifiable through natural health care. The problem in just using the anti-inflammatory medication indefinitely is that, covering-up the pain can allow the knee to deteriorate further at an even faster pace because you are under the illusion that nothing is wrong with the knee. And there is little motivation to question what is triggering the knee problem because the pain is decreased, even though the cause of the pain hasn’t been addressed.

Then, one day you notice that the medication no longer seems to be working because the knee is very painful and inflamed even with taking higher doses of the medication. You visit your doctor and have x-rays or an MRI , which reveal that the joint surface of your knee has deteriorated and that you are now “bone-on-bone” and require a knee replacement.

You ask your doctor how the knee could have deteriorated so severely and hear the reply that it just old age. Meanwhile your other knee, which is presumably the same age, is fine.

This is a scenario that I have witnessed daily in patients for the past 35 years. The truth is that specific mechanical or chemical alterations in your body caused one knee to deteriorate prematurely. Had you done at least as much maintenance on your body as you have done on your car over the years, you may very well now have two healthy knees, a less damaged stomach and liver, and not be in line for a knee replacement.

I suggest that you work with an Applied Kinesiologist or other doctor who is dedicated to restoring and maintaining the normal function of your body.

Optimize Your Health and Performance

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Health is not just the absence of disease; it is being the full expression of you, thriving and performing at your best in the challenges of daily living.

In terms of your quality of life, career, and success, what is the cost of “not being at your best” day after day?

Being and performing at your best requires an abundance of Energy, vitality, a clear mind, and a properly functioning body.

Unfortunately, the standards and expectations of so many people, in the past decades, have deteriorated to where it is common to plod through daily life and think they are healthy as long as they aren’t in severe pain or being hospitalized. Common thinking is that you are healthy as long as you have a heartbeat, are breathing, and aren’t sick.

These attitudes take on great significance when applied to a culture, as a whole. Not only do they impact “health care” and its enormous economic toll, but also on the productivity, health, and well-being of a society. As a result the U.S. is spending trillions of dollars each year managing diseases. So many of these health care dollars could be better spent in building infrastructure, improving education, arts and sciences, and contributing to a stronger culture and richer experience of daily living.

“Shifting to a healthy mindset”, (the sub-title of my book), can raise our standards and expectations of heath and human performance. This, in turn, would lower our “disease care” bill and free up tax dollars that could be used for other purposes.

Thinking of “health as optimal function” isn’t just a concept for competitive athletes. It is a concept and attitude that can improve the health and productivity of a culture. While it may be quite different from how the U.S. currently views health, disease, and health care, it is an attitude that could prevent the “spiraling out-of-control” health care bill from taking such a huge toll on our economy and quality of life.

Holistic health care, described in “Your Inner Pharmacy“, focuses on restoring and maintaining health…..which is so different than treating diseases. One of the greatest “off-label” benefits of optimizing your health is that your performance and experience of daily life also improves. Imagine the positive changes that could happen to a culture that shifted its focus from disease to health.

Restore Health by Correcting Chemical Imbalance

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For any chemical imbalance, the first question to ask is, “what chemical is my body not producing enough of or else not breaking down properly?” If you have any “non-emergency” symptom that you think may be related to a chemical imbalance, this is the place to start.

Let’s contrast this inner pharmacy approach with the typical approach of Western Medicine, which If you watch any amount of television, you have heard hundreds of times. The standard pharmaceutical approach is to provide a chemical formula for your symptoms, which usually means taking a medication to replace or offset some chemical that your body is not able to regulate on its own. And in some situations, pharmaceutical medications are used to stimulate your body’s production of certain chemicals.

The obvious drawback of the pharmaceutical approach is that it usually doesn’t correct the imbalance in the body that created the problem. Medications merely offset the imbalance and sometimes worsen it by: 1) inhibiting the body from producing more of the deficient chemical on its own, or 2) by stimulating an already depleted gland and further depleting it. Of course there are situations where medications are beneficial and necessary, but they are so over-used and do so much harm in situations where they should not be the first course of action.

The whole concept of restoring and maintaining normal body function is a foreign idea to most people in the twenty-first century. Yet it is the most fundamental and sound approach that exists for healthy aging. For any new symptom or health concern, don’t ignore it, but do ask a reasonable set of questions of yourself and your doctor. 1) Is something in my body malfunctioning to produce this symptom?  2) If so, is the malfunction fixable?  3) Is there something I am doing or not doing that is causing the malfunction?  4) Is there a health care practitioner who can work with me to correct the malfunction and restore my health? Any “yes” answers to these questions provide opportunities to improve your health and to avoid or postpone using medications that may have costly trade-offs and side-effects.

So many chemical imbalances can be corrected by restoring normal function to the body. My book, Your Inner Pharmacy is filled with guidelines and examples of how you can produce more good chemicals that maintain your health for a lifetime.

Use Your Inner Pharmacy to Maintain Health and Avoid Side-Effects

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Using the complete pharmacy that exists within your own body is an efficient and cost-effective way to maintain  your health. With the raw materials from a nutrient-rich diet along with a properly functioning body, your body can produce all the good chemicals you could want for a lifetime of health and well-being. Getting your own body to produce good chemicals that maintain your health also avoids the serious and costly side-effects and trade-offs that accompany pharmaceutical medications.

Yes, there is certainly a time and place for medications, especially during emergency situations or to replace a vital chemical that the body has lost its ability to produce, when it is no longer able to maintain normal function itself. However, it is wise to question the long term effects of just replacing a chemical the body can no longer produce enough of, known as “replacement therapy“, by taking that chemical as a medication. Replacement therapy is extremely overused and unfortunately is usually used as a first option for so many chronic problems.

Think of the number of people you know who are taking various hormones, like thyroid, estrogen, testosterone, progesterone. So many others are taking chemicals normally produced by the adrenal glands, to control their inflammation or asthma, or taking adrenal stimulants for their ADHD. I am not saying this is always a bad thing; I am raising several questions about replacement therapy, which may help you to look at it differently.

First, was every attempt made to get the body to produce more of the deficient chemical on its own? For chronic problems that are not emergency situations, the best approach is to use Your Inner Pharmacy first! Then, if the body is unable to produce enough of a critical chemical, replacement therapy may be indicated. Unfortunately, so many people resort to the external pharmacy first, using the medications and never giving the body a chance to return to normal function.

Second, is the replacement therapy being done in a way that further decreases the body’s production of that chemical or perhaps in a much wiser way that allows the body to rest and rebuild? There is usually a fine line here, and most medical approaches don’t concern themselves with nurturing and healing a fatigued or exhausted organ that may have been overworked by a person’s lifestyle and diet, and could actually be brought back to health with proper holistic treatment.

Third, why are there are so many widespread chemical imbalances? Currently about one in five high school boys is being diagnosed with ADHD, and most of these are being given adrenal stimulants to help their symptoms. Regardless of whether ADHD is being over-diagnosed, the real question to ask is why are teenager’s adrenal glands so depleted or exhausted that they need medications to stimulate them to function normally? Along with this question is the obvious one of, do the stimulants like Ritalin and Adderall have a rebuilding effect that result in healthier adrenals after taking them for a period of time, or do they further deplete the adrenals, creating an ongoing need and often addictive pattern for the stimulation?

The fact is that restoring the health and normal function of someone’s adrenal glands is a much better approach than just using a stimulant for years that further depletes them. Yes, restoring the normal function of any depleted glands may require a healthy diet, lifestyle, and working with a health care practitioner who is trained in doing this.  It is the subject of my book, “Your Inner Pharmacy“, and is well worth considering for a lifetime of health and optimum function.

Women’s Health and Your Inner Pharmacy

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Most women’s health issues are regulated by the body’s production and breakdown of various hormones. While there is rarely a “magic pill” that fixes them, they can be usually be helped through lifestyle and holistic care that improves the health of the person.

While people often use hormone replacement therapy to “replace” what the body is not producing, there is much more to it and numerous options to explore first.

It would be great if there were a “quick fix” for hormonal imbalances in both males and females, but there really isn’t. If anyone offers you a “quick and easy fix”, you would do well to question it and consider the big picture…..your overall health for many years into the future.

Here is one example that you can use and apply to various hormones in the body. If you have symptoms of a hormonal imbalance, don’t immediately assume that you need more of a specific hormone. Many hormonal symptoms are produced from an excess of one hormone and a subsequent alteration of the ratio between that hormone and others. The single biggest cause of pre-menstrual symptoms is from an “excess” of estrogen that exists not because someone is producing too much estrogen, but because the liver is not breaking down enough estrogen. The liver’s inability to keep up with the estrogen breakdown further complicates the situation by creating the sugar and chocolate cravings that make the liver work even harder and make it less efficient at breaking down the estrogen.

What really helps the liver in regulating the estrogen level are 1) a healthy diet, 2) aerobic exercise, as described in “Your Inner Pharmacy”, and at yourinnerpharmacy.com, and 3) B vitamins, especially thiamine (vitamin B-1), which the liver uses in breaking down the estrogen. Emphasizing these three factors throughout the month, and especially during the week before the period, will minimize pre-menstrual symptoms for most women.

It isn’t a magic pill, but it is a totally natural and effective way to maintain healthy hormonal balance. You can simply do it through a lifestyle that maintains the normal function of your inner pharmacy.

The Mediterranean Diet and Your Inner Pharmacy

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The specific chemicals that your body is producing at any time is highly modified by the ingredients you give it through your diet. Your body uses good fats from olive oil, nuts, beans, and fish to produce its own anti-inflammatory chemicals, which go to work throughout your body. A recent study, published on the New England Journal of Medicine’s website, showed a 30% reduction of heart attacks, strokes, and deaths from heart disease in those high-risk people who followed a Mediterranean Diet.

The fact that the diet had an effect as powerful as medications came as a surprise and a revelation to many. I would add that the fact of this being such a surprise is a good indication of how deeply our attitudes are ingrained about using medications to treat chronic diseases rather than using lifestyles to keep people healthy.

I have written extensively about how giving the body “good fats” and nutrients that help the body to break down those fats leads to more energy, greater endurance and longevity. I have seen it countless times with thousands of patients, including some of the greatest endurance athletes on the planet. Good fats are the raw materials for the body’s creation of good chemicals.

Getting the body to metabolize or “burn” fats is one of the principles of endurance sports. The same is true of Health Aging, which is much like an endurance event. This is discussed thoroughly in my book, “Your Inner Pharmacy” and basic guidelines are provided on the exercise section of my website, yourinnerpharmacy.com.

The new evidence supporting the effectiveness of the Mediterranean Diet commands that we look more closely at how our diets and lifestyles can keep us healthy and prevent the need to treat disease.

Use Your Inner Pharmacy to Create Healthy Aging

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Healthy Aging is the ultimate success and comes first from maintaining health throughout life. The early identification and successful treatment of disease only come into the picture when your inner pharmacy breaks down and is no longer able to maintain the healthy normal function of your body. It is much more efficient and effective to restore and maintain health than it is to treat disease.

The solution to our “health care crisis” is NOT about treating disease. It is first and foremost about maintaining health. Everyone can do specific tangible things on a regular basis to maintain their health and avoid or delay the onset of what are considered “age-related” chronic diseases.

The fact is that your diet and lifestyle greatly determine what chemicals your body is producing right now as you read this and at all times. Your body is like a chemical factory that makes hormones, neurotransmitters, enzymes, and many other chemicals, based on the “raw materials” your have given it through your diet and nutritional supplements. Furthermore your lifestyle, like exercise, sleep, and stress-reduction play a big role in directing what chemicals your body produces.

You may be producing chemicals that are aggravating the inflammation in your joints, your blood vessels, brain, or digestive system, or you could be producing chemicals that decrease and control this same inflammation. It all depends on Your Inner Pharmacy, this powerful tool that you can use to create either health or disease. My message is to teach people how to use this tool to create health and to increase their quality of life.

It is widely known that a healthy diet, regular exercise, and stress-reduction can promote health and actually prevent disease. However there is no one healthy diet that is ideal for all people. This variance is due to body type, activity levels, individual food sensitivities, stomach and digestive system function, past stresses and chemical imbalances, a whole host of factors that mean there is value is working with a health professional who can help you identify your ideal diet and nutritional supplements to complement it.

Similarly, in the world of exercise, there are right ways and wrong ways to do it that determine the benefits obtained as well as the risk of injury. Again, working with a health professional, whose training and focus is to improve your health, is greatly beneficial. If you are not sure where to start, read Your Inner Pharmacy or check out the exercise section of yourinnerpharmacy.com.

The other big factor that determines what chemicals your inner pharmacy produces is the proper function of your body. This is where past stresses, injuries, and chemical imbalances all contribute to the breakdown of the the normal function of the body. It is also this factor that has so little understanding in our culture. In terms of routine maintenance, most people take better care of their cars than their own bodies. The reason for this goes deep into our disease-oriented and pharmaceutically-dominated culture.

If you shift your focus to maintaing health, you will probably want to work with an Applied Kinesiologist, who can help to restore and maintain the normal function of your body and your powerful inner pharmacy.

Moving Health Care Toward Prevention and Beyond

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Health Care that restores and maintains normal healthy function of the body offers the greatest solution for our health care crisis.  Moving in the direction of “disease prevention” is a transformational shift, and while we are at it, we can do even more. To improve the health and performance of the American people, and to reduce long-term health care costs, it is essential that we move not just in the direction of prevention, but beyond it to the level of maintaining health.

A significant article came out in September’s New England Journal of Medicine titled, “From Sick Care to Health Care-Reengineering Prevention into the U.S. System”.  This article is amazingly similar to the first 30 pages of my book, Your Inner Pharmacy, in its assessment of the U.S. health care system.

One of the great similarities is the description of how “the acute care model” which remains securely embedded in every aspect of our health care system, is an obsolete model for chronic disease. The misapplication of the old acute care model is not only ineffective but is what sustains the current two trillion dollar a year “Disease Management Industry”.

Chronic Diseases, most of which are not diseases we catch or get infected with, but are ones that develop when the normal function of our bodies breaks down and is no longer able to maintain health, require a new model for effectively dealing with them. In my 2006 book, which is even more relevant today, I referred to the shift from acute to chronic diseases as the “New Landscape” of health and disease. Chronic diseases are now responsible for 78% of the dollars spent on health care in the U.S. each year.

It is critical for the health of the American people and the sustainability of the U.S. economy that we open our eyes and take a realistic look at chronic disease, prevention, and health care that seeks to restore and maintain normal function of the body throughout life.

A New Model for the World’s Health Care Crisis

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Non-communicable Diseases, the greatest health care challenge of the 21st century, can best be solved by maintaining health, versus “treating” the disease. A new model, based on Healthy Aging, is the solution to what the World Health Organization calls the “Dominant Public Health Challenge of the 21st Century”, Noncommunicable Diseases (NCD’s). In the May 16, 2012, issue of JAMA (The Journal of the American Medical Association) devoted to Global Health, several articles point out the global importance of NCD’s and the emphasis placed on this global health crisis by both the World Health Organization and a special 2011 meeting of the United Nations General Assembly. The UN held a specific High Level Meeting on the Prevention and Control of Non-communicable Diseases-cardiovascular disease, chronic respiratory disease, diabetes, and cancers. To this list I add what are recognized as the most common chronic diseases (also NCD’s), arthritis, GERD/digestive diseases, and mood disorders.

The first 30 pages of my book, Your Inner Pharmacy, explains how NCD’s (although I use the earlier term “chronic diseases”) develop. Essentially, they develop when normal function of the body “breaks down”, which is a distinctly different cause from that of communicable or infectious diseases. It is an absolute “system failure” that modern medicine attempts to treat chronic diseases with the same outmoded “silver bullet” model that worked for acute and infectious diseases. With the exception of some cancers, treating chronic diseases or NCD’s this way does not cure them. Furthermore this ineffective approach has spawned a 2 Trillion Dollar a year Disease Management Industry in the United States. It is an industry that doesn’t cure chronic diseases; rather it thrives on managing them, using an obsolete model that worked for Infectious Diseases, and it now consumes 78% of our health care dollars.

The New Model that I am promoting is not about “treating disease”; it is about “maintaining health”. It is a core message of “Your Inner Pharmacy” that successful healthy aging comes from 1) diet, 2) lifestyle, and 3) health care that restores and maintains as much normal function as possible throughout life, as applied kinesiology does. Because of US cultural attitudes about health and disease, these 3 factors don’t just happen in healthy ways without some effort and attention. The Standard American Diet (SAD)-appropriately named-is responsible for a great amount of chronic disease. Hopefully other developing countries do not follow our example of how unhealthy diets and lifestyles create diseases that aren’t cured, but managed in costly ways that take resources from education and and other social needs just to pay for their management.

Use Your Inner Pharmacy to create Healthy Aging.

New Criteria for Health Care Interventions

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Answering one simple question would help greatly in prioritizing the best health care interventions:  Does “it” safely and effectively restore normal function to the body?

The recent meningitis outbreak draws attention to the fact that millions of people get steroid shots in their back to relieve pain. While the outbreak may be blamed on poorly regulated and contaminated medication, it raises the question of the safety and effectiveness of this intervention, when other safe and effective procedures exist that not only decrease back pain but actually improve the normal mechanics of the spine.

If someone has neck or back pain, it is most likely due to faulty mechanics of the spine, including dysfunction in the joints and soft tissues around the spine. As a measure of effectiveness, one can ask if injecting a medication into the spine will actually improve the mechanics, which is the cause of the pain. Furthermore, using a medication to “over-ride” or cover up the source of the pain, without doing any structural treatment to improve the faulty mechanics, allows the problem to continue to deteriorate unattended.

This downward spiral is a classic example of how our health care costs are escalating at such a rapid rate. Allowing body parts to continue to deteriorate is an expensive and ineffective use of health care resources and tax-payer dollars. It is akin to periodically “painting over rust” and so often leads to more serious, more expensive, and more invasive problems later on, when the further deteriorated body part is totally broken beyond repair.

Chiropractic and Applied Kinesiology interventions have been shown to be safe and effective for the treatment of back and neck pain. Furthermore, their effectiveness is based on restoring normal function to the body and doing so without medications. To learn more, check out the website of the International College of Applied Kinesiology, www.icakusa.com. My book, “Your Inner Pharmacy“, also explains the thought process of Applied Kinesiology and how it may be able to help with reducing back pain and improving your health. Actually reducing back pain and improving your health at the same time, by restoring normal function to the body, is a far superior approach.