Changing healthcare sums up the whole purpose of the website, the medicine, the book, the workshops and years of hard work. Healthcare must change, and it can only come from patients and practitioners working together on a mission to take back our health.

These two approaches to health care (western allopathic model and functional medicine model) can successfully join forces ( integrative medicine) through genetic research and updated standard of (preventative and restorative focused) care that will help bridge the gap between the worlds of personalized (clinical) medicine and evidence-based generalized (research) medicine (Teutsch et al., 2009). A collaborative approach to medicine offers the best of both worlds and can be done in a single venue. The challenges to healthcare will be resolved by replacing a fee-for- service model with a value based outcome approach to treating patients. Lowering the cost of treating pre-existing conditions by 80-90% is possible using medical systems currently in place by other developed countries with proven results. The U.S ranks 49th in health outcomes among developed nations, just behind the Dominican Republic!

Integrative Medicine gained acceptance as a board certifiable specialty under the American Board of Physician Specialties in May 2014. The American Board of Physician Specialists defines Integrative Medicine as “the practice of medicine that reaffirms the importance of the relationship between practitioner and patient, focuses on the whole person, is informed by evidence, and makes use of all appropriate therapeutic approaches, healthcare professionals and disciplines to achieve optimal health and healing.” It is a vast, encompassing field, but deals with therapeutic modalities such as acupuncture, herbalism, Ayurveda, Traditional Chinese Medicine, yoga, and meditation.

The Integrative Medicine Program at Baylor Charles A. Sammons Cancer Center at Dallas is open to everyone. The program combines complementary, holistic, ancillary and traditional medical approaches, optimizing the foundations of good health for body, mind and spirit. Lifestyle, diet, exercise, and mind-body medicine are integrated with traditional care to promote optimal health and healing. Baylor providers believe that the unique makeup of each patient and their environment contribute to personalized recommendations for best health.

The Cleveland Clinic’s Center for Functional Medicine, under the direction of Dr. Mark Hyman, received a gift of $1 million from Pure Encapsulations (Sudbury, MA) for clinical research, education, curriculum development, community programs and policy change initiatives. Cleveland Clinic’s functional medicine division opened in September of 2014 and is the first major, academic medical clinic to pursue functional medicine in an allopathic setting in collaboration with the Institute for Functional Medicine. Patients are coming from across the country to receive this type of opportunity to be treated. For more information, visit www.clevelandclinic.org.

Mayo Clinic is now conducting studies to prove the efficacy of functional medicine. Evaluation of a functional medicine approach to treating fatigue, stress, and digestive issues in women found that functional medicine to be an effective approach to managing stress and gastrointestinal symptoms. The showed significant improvements in many stress, fatigue, and quality-of-life measures.(Cutshall, Bergstrom, & Kalish, 2016)

The Swedish Cherry Hill Family Medicine Program in Seattle, Washington is committed to providing excellence in education to all of the residents in Integrative Medicine. Swedish has created a one year fellowship provide for training in Integrative Medicine. There will be foundational curriculum in Integrative Medicine for all fellows including nutrition, botanicals, mind-body medicine, botanical medicine, and spirituality in medicine. In addition, the fellow will choose an area of particular interest to pursue through CME, self-directed learning and work with area practitioners.

Providence Health and Services and St. Joseph Health in Seattle, Washington have merged to create Providence St. Joseph Health, a not-for-profit health and social services system to serve as the parent organization committed to improving mental health care in the United States. The newly formed organization has established the Foundation for Mental Health and Wellness to oversee the work which is supported by an initial million dollar investment that will be used to identify and advance innovative solutions in mental health. Grants will be used to distribute the funds to entities and organizations across communities in seven states-Alaska, California, Montana, New Mexico, Oregon, Texas, and Washington. The new system formed in June of 2016 with system offices based in Renton, Washington and Irvine, California.

The Functional Forum is the world’s largest integrative medicine conference. On the first Monday of every month offers practitioner education brings together the latest health news, functional medicine research, practice development and health technology archived for free on Youtube Channel. The forum also offers innovative business models being developed around the country for integrative and functional medicine. (http://functionalforum.com/category/podcast/)
Imagine what change might take place when these forward looking medical organizations incorporate functional medicine, orthomolecular psychology and biocybernetic approaches to health care and mental health. Restorative medicine in an integrated setting, utilizing the best proven approaches to rebalance health, will reduce costs and lead to an enormous shift towards positive long-term health outcomes.

CONNECTED WELLNESS CENTER: A NEW MODEL FOR HEALTHCARE

In the past seventy five years American life expectancy has fallen behind that of most countries due to real declines in the underlying health of Americans, ranking 49th of developed nations, just behind the Dominican Republic for health outcomes.

A project by Professor Dana Goldman (Director of the University of Southern California Schaeffer Center for Health Policy and Economics, Los Angeles, USA) modeled what U.S. longevity would look like if U.S. health trends approximated those in Western Europe. The study quantifies the public finance consequences of the deterioration in health. The model predicts that, by improving our current medical system to reflect the health status enjoyed by Western Europeans, Americans could save up to $1.1 trillion in discounted total health expenditures by 2050.

The US ranks highest in obesity and outspends all other countries in the world annual per-capita expenditures according to The Commonwealth Fund Report, 2012.  Public views in 2010 noted by the same report indicate that only 29% of American view the health care system as working well, and over 68% do not believe the current health care system is working (41% see a fundamental need for changes and 27% believe it needs to be completely rebuilt).

Symptoms are often caused by toxicity and inflammation. Suppression of symptoms can induce a more dysfunctional elimination pattern and create deeper disease states.  We currently have a dominant medical system with a focus on and economic incentive for suppressing symptoms.  The herd approach to medicine is not working and has created an epidemic of chronic degenerative disease.

Medical and scientific knowledge doubles every 3.5 years or less. (http://www.worldhealth.net/anti-aging-tips/1/knowledge-power/) The knowledge explosion opens doors of opportunity for our current medical system to adapt to the new insights and understanding of medical intervention. Providers have busy schedules making it difficult to stay abreast of a rapidly evolving field of medical knowledge. Incorporating changes into a practice is often challenging.

Economic politics profoundly impact the direction of both mainstream medical practice and individual lifestyle choices. Pseudoscience skews outcomes to support new drug sales is not designed to solve the growing problem of obesity as a symptom of chronic degenerative disease. The politics of fast food, toxins, genetic modification of food, addictive ingredients are all allowed to be marketed through powerful lobbying efforts

America can turn the health care crisis around. A start is being made by integrating western and alternative approaches, and combining the advantages of both systems to address these challenges.

It’s no secret that the health care system in America is broken. In fact, a doctor visit today includes an average of just less than seven minutes of actual face time with the physician.  The most common result of these visits is prescriptions. That would be great if drugs actually fixed your problem; but they don’t, they simply treat symptoms of the core issue. Even worse, they often create more symptoms that lead to more drugs. It’s a vicious merry-go-round that’s almost impossible to get off.

According to the National Center for Health Statistics and the Center for Disease Control, the U.S. spends $2.6 trillion on health each year. That’s almost 18 percent of GDP. Most countries spend about 5-8 percent of GDP on health expenditures. If these trillions of dollars made us the healthiest country on earth, perhaps it would make sense to spend that kind of money, but we’re not.

The U.S. ranks  the 33rd healthiest country in the world, right in between Czech Republic (32) and Bosnia (34), based on data from the World Health Organization compiled in the Bloomberg ratings,

The U.S. spends twice as much per capita as other countries. According to the National Institutes of Health, in 2011, per capita health spending in the U.S. was $8,608. The average per capita health spending among the three healthiest countries in the world (Singapore, Italy and Australia) was $3,887.

THE HIGH COST OF TREATING SYMPTOMS

Pharmaceutical drugs often turn off enzyme systems, overriding the body’s innate homeostasis. Our body is comprised of intricate systems. Doctors are trained to address the biological systems from a mechanical Newtonian chemistry and physics perspective. Any medical model that attempts to manage disease from the perspective of repairing a machine does not sufficiently address the awesome complexity of the human body. The model of functional medicine incorporates more advanced principles of quantum physics that restore enzyme systems that maintain the body’s natural balance.

Suppressing a symptom by writing a prescription takes only minutes. Addressing an underlying cause and restoring balance takes time. When was the last time you went to the doctor? Did you leave feeling like he or she took the time to truly understand what was going on with you?

There are many reasons why we spend so much and are seeing a dismal return on our investment. One is that we treat symptoms instead of root problems. Another is that we use expensive tests to diagnose disease and then prescribe even more costly treatments. Even worse, a lot of these tests and treatments aren’t even necessary.

Up to 30 percent of health care expenditures in the U.S. are unnecessary, according to a survey published in 2011 by Dartmouth College and the Congressional Budget Office. The cost adds up to almost a trillion dollars in avoidable X-rays, MRIs, EKGs, prescriptions and visits to specialists. There are cheaper, less invasive and (often times) more effective ways to deal with many common health problems.  Doctors must often do these tests to avoid lawsuits. There is clearly room for legislative support in this area to help reduce costs.

MEDICINE IS BIG BUSINESS

According to the Center for Responsive Politics, the pharmaceutical and health-care products industries, the health­care­industrial complex spends more than three times what the military­industrial complex spends in Washington. According to one of a series of exhaustive studies done by the McKinsey & Co. Consulting firm, we spend more on health care than the ten biggest spenders combined: Japan, Germany, France China, the U.K., Italy, Canada, Brazil, Spain, and Australia. On the other hand, the US spends almost 20% of the gross domestic product on health care, compared to about half that in most developed countries, yet results are no better and often worse than the outcomes in those countries.

Of the total $3.8 trillion that will be spent on health care, about 30% will be paid for by the federal government, driving the federal deficit.

As a country, our healthcare providers must be allowed freedom of speech and the ability to practice medicine free of persecution from government entities motivated from a place of political and economic gain. The medical arena is fraught with violations of the first amendment of the US constitution which provides for freedom of speech under the guise of protecting the public.

To the extent that alternative solutions and medical claims are marginalized, discredited, and actively blocked to protect financial interests. Our first amendment right is being violated when alternative medicine and trials of empirical solutions are prohibited from entering the mainstream medical discussion.

As the first amendment to the constitution states: ‘Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.’ This was adopted on December 15^th, 1791 as one of the ten amendments that comprise the Bill of Rights.

The politicization of US health care is succinctly described by Harvard Business School Professor, Regina Herzlinger, in her book: Who Killed HealthCare? : America’s $2 Trillion Medical Problem – and the Consumer-Driven Cure.  When it comes to health care, the real issue is power.  The federal government has absconded with the nation’s entire healthcare system.  This has been accomplished with and ‘end run’ around the constitution, the medical professionals, and the will of the consumers. This was seen in the form of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) passed in 2012. The ACA was not entirely without virtues. The United States is a wealthy nation, well able to make healthcare available to citizens who lack the resources to obtain medical help. Preexisting conditions should not bar an individual from gaining access to affordable healthcare. On the other hand, citizens should be able to choose their own doctor and the type of healthcare they prefer, while not being taxed excessively to covered everyone else.

The repercussions and damage to the system slowly emerged and are deeply disturbing in light of the fact the very members of congress who approved this legislation have exempted themselves and their staffs from its consequences. Groups and organizations who have access to the Whitehouse were also been granted exemption.  (Herzlinger, 2007)

Trillions of dollars have been wasted on far less important matters than universal coverage for healthcare, and it is time to formulate both a free market based delivery system, as well as a medical system that supports preventative and catastrophic healthcare accessible to all. Patients and healthcare professionals must be allowed to actively participate in the solution. Insurance companies and lobbyists for Big Pharma have been allowed to control and regulate a self- serving agenda that has resulted in a broken bankrupt system that is anything but “healthcare”.

Hopefully, health care will evolve into a value driven system that allows patients to choose safer and less expensive medical interventions with value based outcomes. Doctors and other healthcare providers must be allowed to provide direct patient care without regulations from insurance companies that have outdated fee for service restrictions. In the end, these changes can reduce the cost of healthcare and solve the problem of spiraling costs.

Recently, holistic physician, Dr. Clogston, went missing April 15, 2016 and Dr. Curtis Clogston, 68, was found dead inside an overturned Mini Cooper located just outside Boerne, Texas under suspicious circumstances after missing for three weeks. The body count is now at nearly 40 doctors in mysterious deaths in well under a year.

In June of 2015 Dr. James Jeffery Bradstreet, a prominent autism researcher and vaccine opponent was found dead floating in a North Carolina river under suspicious circumstances. A fisherman found the body of Dr. James Jeffery Bradstreet in the Rocky Broad River in Chimney Rock, North Carolina. Dr. Bradstreet undertook the effort to pinpoint the cause of the disease after his own child developed the ailment following routine vaccination. In addition to treating patients, Bradstreet has also offered expert testimony in federal court on behalf of vaccine-injured families and was founder and president of the International Child Development Resource Center. The circumstances surrounding Bradstreet’s death were preceded by a multi-agency raid led by the FDA on his offices shortly before his death. The FDA did not reveal why agents searched the office of the doctor, a former pastor.

Dr. Bruce Hedendal DC PhD of Florida) suddenly died on Father’s day, 2015. Dr. Hedendal was also holistic in his anti-vaccine advocacy. His body was found in his car, but there was no accident and the car was not running. Dr. Hedendal held a PhD in nutrition from Harvard and a colleague of his said he was in great shape. Both doctors Hedendal and Bradstreet reportedly had recent run-ins with US federal agents. There are multiple cases of doctors being murdered in the past two years, all share a passion for resolving the rising epidemic of autism linked to vaccination and all had US federal agents investigating them.

Recently, holistic physician, Dr. Clogston, went missing April 15, 2016 and Dr. Curtis Clogston, 68, was found dead inside an overturned Mini Cooper located just outside Boerne, Texas under suspicious circumstances after missing for three weeks. The body count is now at nearly 40 doctors in mysterious deaths in well under a year.

In June of 2015 Dr. James Jeffery Bradstreet, a prominent autism researcher and vaccine opponent was found dead floating in a North Carolina river under suspicious circumstances. A fisherman found the body of Dr. James Jeffery Bradstreet in the Rocky Broad River in Chimney Rock, North Carolina. Dr. Bradstreet undertook the effort to pinpoint the cause of the disease after his own child developed the ailment following routine vaccination. In addition to treating patients, Bradstreet has also offered expert testimony in federal court on behalf of vaccine-injured families and was founder and president of the International Child Development Resource Center. The circumstances surrounding Bradstreet’s death were preceded by a multi-agency raid led by the FDA on his offices shortly before his death. The FDA did not reveal why agents searched the office of the doctor, a former pastor.

Dr. Bruce Hedendal DC PhD of Florida) suddenly died on Father’s day, 2015. Dr. Hedendal was also holistic in his anti-vaccine advocacy. His body was found in his car, but there was no accident and the car was not running. Dr. Hedendal held a PhD in nutrition from Harvard and a colleague of his said he was in great shape. Both doctors Hedendal and Bradstreet reportedly had recent run-ins with US federal agents. There are multiple cases of doctors being murdered in the past two years, all share a passion for resolving the rising epidemic of autism linked to vaccination and all had US federal agents investigating them.

THE REAL ISSUE IS POWER

So what is going on?  According to Professor Herzlinger, the real issue here is power.

The hospitals, the insurers and the health policy researchers have teamed with Uncle Sam to deliver their Dr. Frankenstein version of a socialized medical system. The government is now telling doctors how to practice medicine. The powerful individuals that lobby for the current healthcare system have no medical training. As a result the consumer is encumbered with cookie cutter ideas on how to provide your medical care. Only doctors who follow the ACA recipes will be well paid.  Dr. Herzlinger also highlights the fact that we receive far too little healthcare relative to our expenses.

The rising cost of health insurance excluded over 46 million people with no provision for the chronically ill who can no longer qualify to receive insurance. We are the richest country in the world with great doctors, hospitals, and medical technology ‘and because of the lack of integration of medical care delivery for the chronic diseases and disabilities that account for 80% of health care costs, patients fall between the cracks, for example, kidney disease patients font get the preventive care they desperately need to halt the progression of their deadly disease.’   Indeed, this could be said for all of the chronic degenerative diseases including cancer, heart disease, and of course obesity.

More importantly, integrative approaches to medicine that address the underlying causes of disease, complementary and functional medicine have been marginalized and poorly reimbursed for lack of a consumer driven model. Americans have been denied the right to fully pursue solutions for their medical conditions outside of the western medical model. We have seen suppressive measures such as antibiotics and surgery do save lives, but long-term effects need to be evaluated and addressed. Medical approaches that create imbalance the body have created an unprecedented epidemic increase in chronic disease and its associated cost. Biological systems are complex, following complexity theory and multifactor projections. The existing healthcare crisis is at a critical point. Restoring healthcare will require more a change in insurance and lower costs. The healthcare system modalities and the underlying principles must be restructured. Functional medicine must be given a prominent place in an integrated system to allow for positive outcomes at a sustainable cost.

Health care professionals and students of medicine are becoming increasingly dissatisfied with the limitations of conventional, symptom-oriented medicine, but still feel committed to the ethical principles the heath- care profession and are now demanding change.

It is time challenge the medical-pharmaceutical measures of the conventional school medicine.  A new future is possible to all the people in the world, for everybody who has serious doubts concerning the integrity / accuracy of the global profit-driven health-care policy. To learn more please visit https://www.cium-geno62.de/home/englisch/.

We will not solve this problem by engaging the same system that created the problem. Solving obesity and restoring your health demands a consumer driven medical care system based soundly on science, physiology, and ancient healing wisdom. The Declaration of Independence states that ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness to secure these rights.

So what is going on?  According to Professor Herzlinger, the real issue here is power.

The hospitals, the insurers and the health policy researchers have teamed with Uncle Sam to deliver their Dr. Frankenstein version of a socialized medical system. The government is now telling doctors how to practice medicine. The powerful individuals that lobby for the current healthcare system have no medical training. As a result the consumer is encumbered with cookie cutter ideas on how to provide your medical care. Only doctors who follow the ACA recipes will be well paid.  Dr. Herzlinger also highlights the fact that we receive far too little healthcare relative to our expenses.

The rising cost of health insurance excluded over 46 million people with no provision for the chronically ill who can no longer qualify to receive insurance. We are the richest country in the world with great doctors, hospitals, and medical technology ‘and because of the lack of integration of medical care delivery for the chronic diseases and disabilities that account for 80% of health care costs, patients fall between the cracks, for example, kidney disease patients font get the preventive care they desperately need to halt the progression of their deadly disease.’   Indeed, this could be said for all of the chronic degenerative diseases including cancer, heart disease, and of course obesity.

More importantly, integrative approaches to medicine that address the underlying causes of disease, complementary and functional medicine have been marginalized and poorly reimbursed for lack of a consumer driven model. Americans have been denied the right to fully pursue solutions for their medical conditions outside of the western medical model. We have seen suppressive measures such as antibiotics and surgery do save lives, but long-term effects need to be evaluated and addressed. Medical approaches that create imbalance the body have created an unprecedented epidemic increase in chronic disease and its associated cost. Biological systems are complex, following complexity theory and multifactor projections. The existing healthcare crisis is at a critical point. Restoring healthcare will require more a change in insurance and lower costs. The healthcare system modalities and the underlying principles must be restructured. Functional medicine must be given a prominent place in an integrated system to allow for positive outcomes at a sustainable cost.

Health care professionals and students of medicine are becoming increasingly dissatisfied with the limitations of conventional, symptom-oriented medicine, but still feel committed to the ethical principles the heath- care profession and are now demanding change.

It is time challenge the medical-pharmaceutical measures of the conventional school medicine.  A new future is possible to all the people in the world, for everybody who has serious doubts concerning the integrity / accuracy of the global profit-driven health-care policy. To learn more please visit https://www.cium-geno62.de/home/englisch/.

We will not solve this problem by engaging the same system that created the problem. Solving obesity and restoring your health demands a consumer driven medical care system based soundly on science, physiology, and ancient healing wisdom. The Declaration of Independence states that ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness to secure these rights.

Joseph Pizzorno, ND, Editor in Chief; Stacie Stephenson, DC (Republished from Here)

 

The US population is sick and becoming sicker at all ages. For the first time ever in our history, children born today are projected to live shorter lives and suffer a heavier burden of disease than their parents. Yet we spend much more per capita on health care than any other country. Something is fundamentally wrong. America cannot be great if her people are sick and dysfunctional. In this article, we address the fundamental causes of the health care crisis and the transformational thinking and leadership required to restore our people to health.

 

The US Population Suffers a High, and Ever-increasing Burden of Ill Health and Disease

The numbers are clear: US children and adults are suffering an ever-increasing burden of ill health and chronic disease never before seen in our country. According to the Centers for Disease Control, considering only adults in their prime (aged 18–64 years) and only 6 chronic diseases, almost 50% suffer from 1 or more chronic diseases with a stunning 8% suffering 3 or more. Diabetes has become epidemic, increasing more than 15-fold since the senior author was in naturopathic medical school. Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and autism—conditions rarely seen in the past—now affect an ever-increasing number of children. Although a medical apologist might argue we have more disease now because people are living longer, the reality is that we have substantially more disease in every age group. The current priorities and “health care” system simply are not working.

 

Why Is the US Population So Sick?

In an Integrative Medicine: A Clinician’s Journal (IMCJ) editorial from volume 14, issue 3 (2015), entitled “Hard to be Healthy in North America,”1   substantial research is reviewed showing how rampant nutritional deficiencies and high toxic load have become the primary causes of ill health and disease. These issues have addressed in many editorials and articles in the 16 years since the founding of IMCJ. Using only the example of diabetes, excessive sugar consumption and depletion of the trace mineral chromium have contributed to the epidemic. But far more important has been the inundation of the population with chemicals such as phthalates that block insulin receptor sites and metals such as arsenic that damage the pancreas’ ability to produce insulin. The role of these toxins—found in our air, water, food, cleaning agents, and even health and beauty aids—is fully documented in an IMCJ editorial in volume  15,  issue  4  (2016),  “Is  the  Diabetes  Epidemic Primarily Due to Toxins?”2

 

We Need a Health Care System

 

Ultimately, the only cure for the ailing health care system is to help people to be healthier. This requires fundamentally rethinking what we fund and prioritize. Key to this is changing the passive determinants of health—dietary, environmental, and social. By this, we mean making changes that do not depend on behavioral change. We are not suggesting abandoning health education or promotion of healthier individual choices. Rather, that we must change the environment to promote health rather than disease. Key examples are the research showing that food grown conventionally has suffered a 25% to 80% decrease in trace minerals. Without adequate consumption of these key nutrients, the enzyme machines that provide us life are not able to work properly. Worse, we have now contaminated the environment with chemical and metals toxins that actually poison these enzymes and cause disease.

 

A true health care—rather than a disease care— system addresses these foundational determinants of health. Following are some ideas on how to accomplish this.

 

Public Health That Promotes a Health-promoting Environment

We need to more fully embrace the promise of public health. Many years ago in an IMCJ editorial in volume 2, issue 2 (2003), “Integrative Medicine and Public Health,”3 a vision for 21st-century public health was presented. As you may know, historically, 75% of the increase in longevity is due to public health measures. Although most people think of public health as contagion control and providing health care for underserved populations, it can be so much more. We have 3 suggestions:

 

1. Teach and reward farmers to grow food with higher nutrient density.
2. Teachand reward farmers to decrease pesticide and herbicide contamination of food and the environment.
3. Develop, fund, and implement real health education as a major program in schools.

 

Nutritional deficiencies are rampant in the United States. According to hundreds of published research studies, almost the whole population is deficient in at least       1 nutrient with half the population deficient in many. Our physiology does not work if required nutrients are not available. There are several key reasons why this has become huge problem:

 

1. Most of the foods most commonly eaten in the United States are processed in such a way as to improve appearance and short-term taste, at the expense of nutrient content. Approximately 20% oftheaverageperson’s calories come from nutrient-empty sugar.
2. Synthetic fertilizers promote the growth of bigger food, but with seriously lower levels of nutrients. The more fertilizer used, the lower the nutrient content. So even if a person is trying to eat responsibly (i.e., real foods rather than high processed … stuff), the critical nutrients are much lower than the body needs.
3. Worse, high-phosphate fertilizers often contain high levels of the heavy metal cadmium. Notonly does this then impair the absorption of critical trace mineral zinc by the foods, but this toxin poisons many systems of the body, and it is a key factor in the kidney disease epidemic, osteoporosis, cardiovascular disease (especially in women), thyroid dysfunction—the list is long.

 

Rather than subsidizing farming practices that produce large amounts of nutrient-deficient foods, we should either totally eliminate such subsidies or redirect them to reward nutrient density rather than food size and weight.

Many examples show how public health measures such as we suggested previously work. For example, adding iodine to salt dramatically decreased severe hypothyroidism and protected many children from intellectual impairment. Another is the 1970s measure prohibiting lead in gasoline and paint resulting in more than a 90% decrease in blood lead levels in children and adults. These are good examples of passive changes that promote health without requiring behavioral change.

 

Primary Care That Addresses the Primary Causes of Disease

 

We   need to fundamentally change how everyday health care is provided. With typically less than 10 minutes per office call, it is not surprising that pretty much most doctors can only diagnose disease and prescribe drugs to alleviate symptoms. Although sometimes this works well, such as for infections, for virtually all chronic disease, this fails. There is something seriously wrong with a health care system where 9 of the top 10 most commonly prescribed drugs only alleviate symptoms while allowing the underlying disease and it causes to proceed unimpaired. This is full addressed in an IMCJ editorial in volume 7, issue 3 (2008), “We Need Drugs, Don’t We?”4

 

Instead, we need primary care that focuses on helping patients understand why they are sick and how to become health. Most therapies should be agents such as nutrients that support proper (even optimal!) physiological function rather than drugs that temporarily relieve symptoms. The optimal primary care physician is an amalgamation of today’s family practice medical doctors, and modern naturopathic doctors (NDs), and broad scope chiropractors. Growing research supports this approach. The IMCJ editorial in volume 7, issue 5 (2008), “Integrative Medicine: Cost   Effectiveness?   Long-term   Health   Outcomes?”5 reviews some very compelling research. Although correlation does not prove causation, something can be learned by noting that 8 of the healthiest states license naturopathic physicians. In contrast, none of the 20 least healthy states license NDs.

 

Personalized Health Care Rather Than Generic Disease Care

This topic is fully addressed in the accompanying article by Dr Bland.

 

Health Care Reimbursement and Regulation

The adage that you get more of what is subsidized and less of what is taxed is certainly true in health care. As a business person, you know that competition results in better and less expensive products and services. However, this does not work if distorted by crony capitalism, political-activism pressure, and protectionism. Government subsidizes conventional medicine education, residencies, research, income, and others while suppressing the other health care professions that provide different, and often better, solutions.

 

The most important role of government is to ensure a level playing field and that health care professionals are appropriately trained and regulated. Let the consumer decide which healing art they want. All health care professionals should be licensed and paid according to their educational standards and scientific validity.

 

Conclusion

President Trump, you are in a remarkable place in history. Our population is sick, the “health care” system is on life support, and the costs are bankrupting our country. With your leadership, we can change the fundamental determinants of health, the only cure for the ailing health care system.

 

The White House Commission on Complementary and Alternative Medicine Policy (of which the senior author was a member) was created by President Clinton and US Congress and continued by President Bush to advise them on how to improve the health care system through the integration of the concepts discussed in this editorial. The report published in 2002 provided many keys that are equally valid and important today. Convening another such Commission with your appointees would be a huge help in solving this very challenging problem.

 

P.S. To help focus our message, we did not include the thousands of references to the peer-reviewed medical research that support our assessment and recommendations. Many of these are included in the IMCJ editorials mentioned previously.

 

References

1. PizzornoJ. Hard to be healthy in North America.Integrat Med Clin J.

2015;14(3):8-13.

2. Pizzorno J. Is the diabetes epidemic primarily due to toxins? Integrat Med Clin J. 2016;15(4):8-17.
3. Pizzorno J. Integrative medicine and public health. Integrat Med Clin J.

2003;2(2):8-9.

4. PizzornoJ.Weneeddrugs,don’twe?Integrat Med Clin J. 2008;7(3):8-10.
5. Pizzorno J. Integrative medicine: Cost effectiveness? Long-term health out- comes? Integrat Med Clin J. 2008;7(5):8-10.

Joseph Pizzorno, ND, Editor in Chief (Republished from Here)

Abstract
Most of the commonly prescribed conventional drugs treat only symptoms, not the underlying causes of a patient’s disease. This logically leads to a perception that much of modern medicine is about management of chronic disease and prevention of more serious sequelae—not actual cures. However, most health care professionals are attracted to medicine with the mission of curing patients leading to the cognitive discord that eventually leads them to integrative/functional medicine. Though use of the term cure has been actively discouraged except in limited types of cases, perhaps true health care reform needs to reclaim this term and concept.

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In the late 1970s and early 1980s when I was creating Bastyr University, I engaged in many conversations and debates with MDs in academic, foundations, and policy positions. After trying to make the case for the important role of natural medicine in health care, I was many times admonished to not assert that we could cure patients.
I remember vividly an argument with a professor at the local medical school who asked me to define hypertension after relating to him several successful patient outcomes. I then spent probably too long giving him a scientific overview of cardiac output, arterial elasticity, kidney function, etc. He looked at me and stated, “Oh, I thought you were misusing the term as a description for patients under a lot of stress.” Sure brought home how much work was needed to change conventional medicine’s perspectives of “alternative medicine.”
Nonetheless, after being told yet again to stop saying we were curing patients, I realized there was some truth to their advice. As I was working hard to establish a scientific foundation for naturopathic medicine, I could see the validity of their perspective—lack of double-blind, placebo-controlled studies of naturopathic concepts and interventions necessary to prove cure. Although I and my colleagues appeared to be having a lot of clinical success with our patients, realistically this was all anecdotal until objectively researched and validated (or invalidated). So I stopped using the term cure. But then in the early 1980s, Michael Murray, ND, and I began the arduous process of deeply digging through the peer-reviewed medical research to write The Textbook of Natural Medicine (TBNM). (I say arduous because when we started, the only way to find and access articles was through old-fashioned, thick, paper index volumes and searching isles and isles of journal racks—desperately hoping the article you wanted was not out for binding.) We were very pleasantly surprised to find a huge body of work documenting the efficacy of natural medicines in a wide variety of diseases (the fourth edition of the TBNM has more than 10 000 citations). Although the research was not yet to the state of directly validating naturopathic philosophy and practices, we found many supportive studies. The strongest were those showing that many diseases are due to a deficiency of specific nutrients, whereas other studies showed that supplementation resulted in apparent total reversal of the disease. I started thinking that maybe we could now start asserting cure was possible.
Then in the late 1980s, I was invited by the National Institutes of Health to debate the recently retired dean of a conventional medical school. He was quite aggressive and asserted that, except for some acute illness such as antibiotics for infections and insulin for type 1 diabetics, cure was not possible. All doctors could do was alleviate symptoms and try to prevent more serious sequelae. I must admit to being quite surprised by his pessimistic stance and even more surprised when I looked around the room and saw a lot of nodding heads. Happily, although we disagreed on almost everything, the debate was amicable and we each made a number of important points. On the flight home cross-country, I continued to think about our conversation. I was stuck on wondering why a well-respected medical leader would take such a strong anticure position that I thought would be quite discouraging to most anyone who entered medicine wanting to help people.
Then I happened to see a list of the top 10 most commonly prescribed drugs of the time. According to my understanding of cure (discussed later), 9 of the drugs only relieved symptoms while allowing the underlying disease to progress. I finally started to understand the problem—the interventions actually being used for the vast majority of patients were indeed only palliative. This also made much clearer the centuries-old philosophical conflict between “unconventional” medicine (by its various names) and conventional medicine.

How Do We Differentiate Between Symptom Palliation and Disease Cure?
I believe this is a foundational issue that must be fully addressed if the health care crisis is ever going to be cured. Anything else, such as the Affordable Care Act, is simply addressing symptoms rather than the underlying true causes. In Table 1, I list criteria that I suggest to students on how to evaluate the care they provide a patient to help determine whether their treatment is actually addressing the cause(s) or only transiently controlling symptoms—no matter how “natural” the intervention.

Table 1. Criteria for Determining Whether a Therapy Is Curative

1. Is the patient cured if all that is accomplished is that their symptoms are alleviated?
2. Is the intervention causing any adverse effects?
3. Do the symptoms recur when the intervention is stopped?
4. Does the patient report their general health as improving or getting worse over the course of care?

 

Criterion 1
Sometimes the symptoms are indeed the full manifestation of the disease. For example, unless only an analgesic is used, a child with an acute ear infection is cured in proportion to the degree to which symptoms are cleared and the physical signs normalize. However, if the child is having recurring ear infections, the intervention is clearly not curative. In contrast, providing a patient suffering depression an antidepressant is rarely curative. Depression is not caused by a lack of Prozac. Nor is it caused by a lack of St John’s Wort. The patient could be depressed due to deficiency of vitamin D (very common cause), a toxin such as mercury leaking from a “silver” filling (which is typically 55% neurotoxic mercury), or by their life choices not working for them and they need to make changes in their life. The problem with only treating the symptoms is that the underlying problem continues unabated and is very likely causing many more problems than only the symptoms. For example, being low in vitamin D increases all-cause mortality, cancer, osteoporosis, allergies, etc. Having a mouth full of mercury increases the rate of dementia, fatigue, etc.
Patient Example. An otherwise apparently healthy 35-year-old man came to see me acutely ill with high fever, cough, and rust-colored sputum. Physical examination, complete blood count, and Gram stain of his sputum made the diagnosis of bacterial pneumonia easy. Appropriate antibiotics resulted in complete resolution within a few days. As this was a regular patient whom I saw periodically and did not have recurrent infections, immune dysfunction was not a problem and intervention was clearly a cure.

Criterion 2
Adverse drug reactions and other side effects are a huge problem. Although not as common with “natural” drugs, this must always be considered. As is now well established, properly prescribed drugs are the fourth leading cause of death in the United States.1 I have many times recommended in my editorials N-acetylcysteine (NAC) as a very effective way to increase glutathione thus supporting detoxification and protecting mitochondria from oxidative stress. But for the small percentage of the population that has trouble metabolizing sulfur compounds, NAC can be toxic. The bottom line is that we need to ensure our interventions are not causing damage. No, I am NOT saying causing less damage than their benefits. I am saying that, except in very limited cases, we should not be using interventions that damage our patients. Period.
Patient Example. An 18-year-old young woman came to me for help with her ulcerative colitis. She had been first diagnosed when 14 years old and was getting worse, despite treatment. She had just seen her gastroenterologist who was recommending that she switch to another anti-inflammatory but had been delaying prescribing as patients experience so many side effects. But worse, he said her case was so bad that she would likely need a colectomy within only a few years. She came to me hoping for an alternative medicine miracle. Careful case history revealed that as a child she had suffered from recurrent urinary tract infections and was started on daily antibiotics at age 8 years. By age 11 years, she was constantly having intestinal upset and eventually was diagnosed with inflammatory bowel disease. The cause was clear to me: disruption of her healthy gut bacteria with whatever would grow there after all the antibiotics causing recolonization with inappropriate bacteria, chronic gut inflammation, and eventually leaky gut.
I started her on my usually successful protocol for this condition: improve diet food quality, cessation of wheat and dairy products, supplement with digestive aids, and reseed her gut with healthy bacteria using a multistrain product I have found quite effective. She was a very compliant patient but experienced only modest improvement—approximately 30% reduction in symptoms and continued dependency on the prescribed drugs. This being the modern age of the Internet with so much health information available online, she started researching her condition and learned about fecal transplants. She decided to do the transplant on her own using her father’s stools. After only 1 treatment, her symptoms quickly started to improve and after repeating one more a month later all her symptoms were gone and her surprised gastroenterologist proclaimed her in remission (apparently unwilling to say she was cured). As this is now 5 years later, a quick call revealed robust health and a clear cure.

Criterion 3
If the symptoms recur when the intervention is stopped, then it is very unlikely to be curative. Although in many ways this is pretty obvious, it is much more complex when considering biochemical individuality. The genomics revolution has greatly enhanced our ability to understand each of our patient’s unique nutritional needs and susceptibility to toxins. For example, we now know that many people have polymorphisms in the vitamin-D receptors requiring much high–levels of vitamin-D supplementation unless they get a lot of regular sun exposure. Others have trouble converting dietary folates to their activated forms. Some patients have very limited capability to detoxify the pesticides and herbicides that contaminate conventionally grown foods. In each of these situations, nutritional support is needed to maintain normal physiology.
Patient Example. A 50-year-old woman presented with osteopenia and a strong family history of every older woman in her family dying from complications of osteoporosis—typically hip fractures. Despite a very good diet, regular energetic exercise, estrogen replacement, and good supplementation, yearly dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry (DEXA) scans showed relentless loss of bone. A genomic test revealed 5 (of 6) single nucleotide polymorphisms impairing vitamin-D receptor site function. Intervention required supplementation with 14 000 units of vitamin D for 2 years (of course, must also supplement with vitamins A and K2) before bone loss was stopped. After 10 years, her bone density became normal but requiring a maintenance dose of 10 000 IU (many times the supposed recommended daily intake). This is a good example where the intervention was curative, but needed to be continued due to a unique biochemical need.

Criterion 4
This is the most difficult to address objectively but is well recognized by most every health care professional and may be the most important criterion of all. So many times I have had a patient profusely thank me for alleviation of a health problem that I had not consciously addressed. If a patient suffers depression due to a lack of vitamin D, for example, optimizing their levels will often also improve function of all the other biochemistry affected by the deficiency. As their biochemistry normalizes, they become healthier and more energetic.
Patient Example. A 55-year-old woman came to me with a chief complaint of depression. While examining her, I noticed a fairly strong “essential” tremor. She had dismissed it as a sign of growing old and had not even noted it on her intake form. Full neurological exam revealed no apparent abnormalities. However, I did notice a mouth full of amalgam fillings. Challenge testing showed high levels of mercury and lead. Putting her on my standard metal detoxification program not only resulted in reversal of depression, but her tremor fully abated and she remarked feeling better than she had in years. Yes, this is anecdotal—but when a patient responds with not only relief of the presenting complaint but improvement in other areas, I consider this a good indication that something curative has happened.

Applying This Logic to the Most Commonly Prescribed Drugs
Table 2 lists the most common drugs prescribed in the United States by number of prescriptions filled per month. As you can see from my comments, almost all of them only address symptoms, not the actual causes of disease.

Table 2. The 10 Most Commonly Prescribed Drugs in the United States2

Drug	Purpose	Why Not Curative
Synthroid (levothyroxine)	Hypothyroid	Iodine deficiency common, selenium deficiency common, PCBs poison thyroid enzymes
Crestor (rosuvastatin)	Elevated cholesterol	Almost entirely due to diet and lifestyle
Ventolin HFA (albuterol)	Asthma, COPD	Almost entirely due to diet and lifestyle
Nexium (esomeprazole)	Acid blocker	Almost entirely due to diet and lifestyle
Advair Diskus (fluticasone)	Anti-inflammatory	Almost entirely due to excessive arachidonic acid and inadequate antioxidant vitamin C, carotenoids and flavonoids in diet
Lantus Solostar (insulin glargine)	Diabetes	See editorial in 15.4 showing environmental toxins a primary cause of diabetes3
Vyvanse (lisdexamfetamine)	ADHD	Children in top quintile of organophosphate exposure have doubled incidence of ADHD
Lyrica (pregabalin)	Epilepsy	Diverse causes
Spiriva Handihaler (tiotropium)	COPD	Almost entirely due to diet and lifestyle, especially smoking
Januvia (sitagliptin)	Diabetes	See editorial in 15.4 showing environmental toxins a primary cause of diabetes3

Abbreviations: PCB, polychlorinated biphenyl; COPD, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease; ADHD, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder.

 

Conclusion
Please be clear that I am not recommending against use of these drugs. Rather, I am asserting that the best medicine first addresses the causes. Drugs are should only be used if addressing the causes does not produce the desired clinical results or patient safety requires transient use. I can confidentially state that virtually everyone reading this journal cares deeply about their patients and became a health care professional with the expectation of being in medicine to cure their patients. Symptom control is much easier and almost the only approach in a health care reimbursement system that limits doctors to only 10 minutes with a patient.
The only cure for the health care system is to address causes, not only symptoms. This requires restructuring medical education and the reimbursement system so that we have the skills and time needed to find and correct the causes. After all, aren’t we all in medicine because we want to cure our patients?

 

Joseph Pizzorno, ND, Editor in Chief
drpizzorno@innovisionhm.com
Tweets by drpizzorno

 

References

1. Lazarou J, Pomeranz BH, Corey PN. Incidence of drug reactions in hospitalized patients: A meta-analysis of prospective studies. JAMA. 1998;279(15):1200-1205.
2. Brown T. The 10 most-prescribed and top-selling medications. Web MD Web site.  http://www.webmd.com/news/20150508/most-prescribed-top-selling-drugs. Published May 8, 2015. Accessed September 4, 2016.
3. Pizzorno J. Is the diabetes epidemic primarily due to toxins? Integrat Med Clin J. 2016;15(4):8-17.