Introduction To Our Philosophy Of Treating Illness
A disease state is a signal that something in the body is not working correctly. If we can help the body work correctly, many things things that we call “diseases” will disappear.
Of course the trick is: How do we get the body back to working correctly? Sometimes it’s as simple as eating better, exercising routinely and getting a good night’s sleep. But it can be much more complicated.
If you no longer have the symptoms, can we call it a “cure”?
Example: Suppose a person has migraine headaches and we have them get off all gluten and the migraines go away (actual case we mention in the section on migraine headaches). Have we cured the person? In some ways we could say yes. As long as that person avoids gluten, they have no migraines. On the other hand, we might say that we have not “cured” the person because they still get migraines if they eat gluten.
Thus “cure” is not a term that I like to use.
Another example: A person has type 2 diabetes. He changes his diet dramatically. He begins to exercise. He takes appropriate supplements and gets off all his medications. And his blood sugar is now down in the normal area. He no longer has diabetes by definition because he has normal blood sugar without taking any medications. Is he cured? Well - if he goes back to eating as he did before and he stops exercising and discontinues the supplements that help his body, he will again be diagnosed with diabetes.
Was he cured?
So, what is a cure anyway?
For some disease processes, I tend to think of it more like this. If I hit my finger with a hammer I’m going to have have pain. If I stopped hitting my finger, I’m “cured”. A better way to phrase it might be, by changing my lifestyle so I no longer hit my finger, I no longer have pain in my finger. I’m not so much “cured” as I have stopped damaging myself and creating various forms of pain and dysfunction.
If I’m the guy with the migraines and I stop eating gluten, I don’t have migraines. I’m not so much cured as I have “stopped hitting my finger with a hammer” - if the analogy is clear.
For other issues like post viral chronic fatigue, we actually need to do certain things. In this case, the best thing that I know of is high dose vitamin C IVs. In this case we work toward getting rid of the virus and its after-effects, and the body functions more normally. And people feel good again. Is this a cure? Perhaps. But, again, I prefer to use other ways of describing what we do.
The important thing is to discover what might be causing the “disease” or the symptoms one has and attempt to deal with the problem at that level - at least the best we can.
The important factors that can be a part of causing disease include the following:
Autoimmune issues - and we discuss it further under that section
Food allergies or sensitivities
Chemicals in the environment such as RoundUp, plastics, pesticides, and many others
Heavy/toxic metals such as mercury from dental fillings/coal power plants, aluminum from deodorants and vaccines, lead from paint/plumbing, gadolinium from MRIs, arsenic from water and rice, and potentially others such as beryllium and cadmium
Chronic infections including H pylori, mycoplasma, Epstein Barr Virus (EBV/mono), lyme, parasites, and fungi/yeast/mold - to name a few. Sometimes these chronic infections are throughout the body and sometimes they can be more localized such as a tooth that has become infected but nobody knows since it may not cause pain.
Loss of hormones. As we age, we usually lose the ability to make hormones. This can include thyroid, estrogen, testosterone (typically, the first hormone to drop for women), and progesterone. It could also include growth hormone, aldosterone, and other less well known hormones.
Physical trauma such as traumatic brain injury
Lack of nutrients such as minerals, vitamins and amino acids
Excessive levels of insulin and/or blood sugar
In order to help people faced with the challenges of chronic illness, these are the issues that need to be considered and dealt with when they are a problem for the body.
In light of this understanding of disease, there is a wide array of “diseases” that we are often able to help. We can’t help the disease by treating the disease itself. We must help by finding the cause of the “disease” and doing our best to reverse that challenging issue.