Tag Archives: prevention

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.

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.

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.

Discover Your Own Healthy Diet

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Improve your physical and mental health by eliminating foods that weaken your immune system and create inflammation throughout your body. Whether you are really sick with a chronic disease or are more concerned about mental clarity, prevention, and healthy aging, you deserve to know what specific foods are creating problems for you and what foods you can eat without adverse effects.

First, know that there are different types of food allergies and sensitivities. Besides the traditionally recognized food allergies that create immediate life-threatening reactions, there are other types of food allergies and sensitivities that create less severe and delayed responses, sometimes 24-48 hours after consuming a food. However it is these lower grade, delayed responses that are so often responsible for chronic problems. For example, would you have thought that your shoulder or knee pain, headaches, indigestion, fatigue, or mental fog may be the result of your body’s reaction to a food that your are eating regularly?  Since food sensitivities can trigger inflammation anywhere in your body,these are all common symptoms and can become severe, acute problems.

In my book, Your Inner Pharmacy, I tell the story of a famous orchestra conductor who experienced disabling shoulder pain and was anticipating surgery. His problem totally disappeared after we discovered that wheat was triggering weakness and inflammation in his shoulder. Not only was surgery unnecessary, it would not have corrected the problem. All he had to do was eliminate wheat from his diet and his shoulder problem took care of itself. This doesn’t man that everyone with a shoulder problem has a reaction to wheat or that everyone who eats wheat is doomed to get a shoulder problem; the fact is that everyone’s body reacts in different ways to different foods. And yes, food sensitivities are becoming much more common, as the quality of our food has deteriorated and our digestive systems have become compromised by varying stresses.

How could you know what foods you may be reacting to and furthermore to know if the reactions are mild, moderate, or severe? I have seen tremendous value in a specific blood test which evaluates the reaction of your white blood cells when exposed to specific foods. Called the ALCAT, there is more information on my website, yourinnerpharmacy.com, and the opportunity to proceed with discovering what foods your body does and doesn’t react to. Once you obtain this valuable information, you will know your own anti-inflammatory diet.

Just know that there is no “magic” medication that will eliminate these food sensitivities. However you may be taking medications to treat the symptoms that your food reactions are causing. Rather than treating the symptoms that result from the food reactions and the further problems that often result from the side-effects of the medications used to treat the symptoms, you can treat the cause of the problem. It will require you to eliminate certain foods from your diet…..usually not forever, but for a period of months. During that elimination period while you are no longer triggering the reaction, your digestive and immune system can be healing and improving in function. Working with a holistic doctor, such as an Applied Kinesiologist, can optimize this process, the restoring of normal function to your body.

The beauty of this whole approach empowers you to deal directly with improving your physical and mental health in a way that eliminates specific symptoms and complaints.