DAY 111 Forgive Me ... But You Have Food Allergies

Yes, you.

Truth be told, I am just trying to be helpful. I did not wake this morning with the intention of trying to ruin your day by telling you about your food allergies.

 I understand that this can be an emotional issue, so let me be clear; I will not be telling you what to do, and I won’t be taking any foods away from you.

And please remember, I am just the messenger.

It is reasonable to believe that every person has a least one food allergy.

Food allergy is one of the most common causes of a laundry list of chronic health conditions. Signs and symptoms of chronic unwellness such as pain, fatigue, arthritis, headache, high blood pressure, diabetes, weight gain, depression, congestion, constipation, and reflux are often indicators of food allergy.

I could have just let you suffer. Or, I could have just sold you treatments for your ailments, without ever discussing their causes. No one would have blamed me because most people aren’t even aware of the endemic problem of food allergy. But, I can’t do that to you.

What’s wonderful and amazing is that each and every one of the signs and symptoms that I listed above, usually responds amazingly, or completely resolves when food allergens are removed from ones diet.

So, just give it some thought; would you trade a few foods to get rid of some of your illnesses? Or, maybe you can’t live without your Gouda cheese.

See; I didn’t take anything away from you, and in fact I may have just given you your life back.

The ball is in your court.

DAY 36 – Living with Arthritis - Why???

I was ten years old when I awoke one morning unable to move. I was on my back and could not turn, or attempt to get up without a sharp pain piercing my low back. Lying there, I fearfully wondered what kind of shape I would be in at 50, given that I was in such pain at 10. Finally I called out to my parents; and my Dad came to gently lift me out of bed.

That was the first of many painful, and at times incapacitating, episodes of arthritis that I would experience during the next 3 decades. Thirty-one years after that fateful morning an MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) showed that the arthritis had destroyed bone and discs in my low back.

(the image to the left is a second MRI of my low back taken in 1998)

Today, November 10, 2010, forty-nine years after that fateful morning, I get an e-mail from the United States Department of Health and Human Services, titled “Living with Arthritis”. Not exactly timely for me. :) But timing is not the problem with this e-mail and the linked article from the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases (NIAMS) of the Department of Health and Human Services’ National Institutes of Health (NIH). http://www.niams.nih.gov/Health_Info/Arthritis/default.asp  The problem is that from the highest healthcare resource in the land we learn almost nothing about the causes of arthritis, and scantily more about what to do about it.

The article informs us that inflammation causes arthritis, but then neglects to tell us what causes inflammation. This is a serious omission. Fortunately, some of us already know.

As for what to do about our arthritis, we are advised to stay active, lose weight, absolutely see a doctor (implies an MD), and by all means take the anti-inflammatory (NSAID) medication that your MD will surely prescribe. Again, no discussion or connection to the cause of the disease.

This article shines a flood light on America’s need for real healthcare reform. We must break from our addiction to the conventional medicine of suppressing symptoms with drugs, and embrace conversations and practices that deal with understanding the causes of illness and disease.

My advice is don’t waste your time learning to “Live with Arthritis”. Instead, learn about its most common causes, and make changes in your lifestyle to respond to those causes.

Dr. Young
Note: I will address causes and functional treatments for arthritis in a future post.

DAY 26 – New Day…Old Story about Drugs Without Conversation

First, let me give you a little background.  I practice a combination of Chiropractic and Functional Medicine. Chiropractic has historically been a practice of “natural” healing, with a strong interest in treating the causes of disease, rather than the symptoms. Functional medicine is personalized medicine that deals with primary prevention and underlying causes, instead of symptoms, in the treatment of serious chronic disease.
(photo - Doctors Mac by owensoft)

The dominant mode of handling patients today in the US is to name their conditions (diagnosis) and then treat the conditions with drugs to stop the symptoms. It is uncommon for causes to be discussed with patients; and patients usually don’t ask.

It doesn’t take a genius to know that covering symptoms with drugs, and not addressing the lifestyle causes of ill health, are a recipe for disaster.

So, let me share with you a simple story from the office that carries, as the kids say, a “ginormous” lesson.

A 58 year-old returning patient reports that thanks to my encouragement, she had gotten her vitamin D level tested by her MD and learned that the level was still low. The MD had also run a single test for thyroid disease, which also showed a problem, and for which he had written a prescription. When I inquired, the patient shared that her neck pain from some months back had improved and that she was taking 1,200 mg per day of oxaprozin that her MD had prescribed to be used for 3 months.

And here is the rest of the story, and the short list of the dangers for the patient;
1)    while the patient’s test results showed low vitamin D, she received no counseling on her associated risk for cancers (including breast and colon), heart attack, stroke, diabetes, autoimmune disease, etc…, and she received no direction regarding how much vitamin D to take and when to retest,
2)    while the thyroid test has undoubtedly found a problem, no further testing was ordered to determine the type and cause of the hypothyroid condition,
3)    thyroid hormone replacement was prescribed with no discussion of the cause of the condition,
4)    given that 90% of hypothyroid conditions are caused by autoimmunity (the body attacking itself) it would have been wise to discuss why the body is attacking itself,
5)    additionally, the patient was not informed that of patients with autoimmune thyroid disease, 50-80% of them also have an autoimmune reaction destroying one or more other tissues of their bodies, such as joints-arthritis, pancreas-diabetes, etc….,
6)    the fact that low vitamin D is associated with autoimmune diseases was not mentioned,
7)    the patient was put on a drug for neck pain without discussion of the cause of her chronic degenerative arthritis; and no long-term functional care program was discussed,
8)    the patient was not advised that the drug, oxaprozin, an NSAID, is known to cause damage to the lining of the digestive tract in some individuals, thereby breaking down the barrier between the gut and the immune system, leading to increased inflammation, and potentially additional damage to the joints in this patient’s neck, remembering that pain in the neck is what the drug was being taken for to begin with,
9)    there was no conversation about the interesting probability that both the arthritis in the neck and the thyroid disease are  both autoimmune based, and that low vitamin D may be a factor in their progression.

All of us, doctors and patients, would be wise to think more and talk more about what causes our illness. We would not just be wiser to do so; we would be safer, and we would be setting a more functional example for our children.

Dr. Young