Regulating the Regulators

Fish stink from the head.

Last week I spoke out against the nomination of a health czar whose only qualification was that of a career politician and lobbyist for the drug industry.

So, who should it be, he asked, rhetorically. Cards on the table, whoever it is had better be seriously battle tested, politically, and have some major league media savvy. But it also has to be someone with a deep understanding of how the body actually works, and how to integrate therapies to produce positive outcomes, not just how to sell drugs. The time has come.

This week, my nominations.

1. Jeffrey Bland PHD; Of my three choices, Bland will be the least known to the general public, yet, argueably, the best choice of the three. He's been teaching the tenents of functional medicine to healthcare practitioners like, well, Andy Weil and Mehmet Oz, for close to thirty years. He co-founded Bastyr University, which is the equivalent to Harvard Med for a Naturopathic Doctor. Last week at his seminar on the Future of the Clinic, in NYC, he mentioned that he, Weil and Oz would be testifying before Congress on what the shape of healthcare reform should look like. There's a link to his website on this blog. You can look up his credentials. Naturopaths and nutritionists who've attended any of his seminars over the last thirty years, pretty much, to a fault, genuflect at the mere mention of his name. He has a mind that boggles the mind, and he is tough. He would not buckle under the weight of Washington political pressure.

2. Andrew Weil MD;

3. Mehmet Oz MD;

If you're reading this and don't know who the other two are, I can't help you.

Any one of these guys would be just great. They should all hold up to the vetting process. None are in bed with big pharma, yet they all know their medicine. None of them are naive when it comes the realities of what the job entails. They're virtually unassailable. Weil and Oz are Mt. Rushmore-like in their level of belovedness. So is Bland among healthcare practitioners.

The nomination of someone like these three would truly signal the dawn of a new day in healthcare, and not more politics as usual.

Actually, I might rather have Andy Weil as the drug czar. You'll have to read his book, The Natural Mind, to understand the cryptic nature of that remark. He wrote it almost forty years ago, and it's still the best, most insightful book on drug policy I've ever read.

"The Graveyards are Full of Indispensible People"

That quote was by Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell's former Chief of Staff, last week on MSNBC. He was referring to an Obama nominee to the defense dept., I forget who, but he could just as easily have been talking about Tom Daschle.

The nominee that Wilkerson was referring to had ties to defense contractors, gee what a surprise, but the White House claimed he was "indispensible". Wilkerson said that there were plenty of other, just as qualified, candidates out there who didn't come with that kind of baggage.

I was preparing to really blast the Daschle nomination for Health Czar, until I got home last night and found out I was beaten to the punch, and he'd already withdrawn. Obama, himself, was on TV, defending him as the best qualified candidate to lead healthcare reform, and most of the mainstream press and their pundits seemed to be agreeing with him.

What allegedly sank Daschle was his failure to report taxes on some gifts. This isn't even the symptom of the symptom. Daschle, himself is the symptom. Start with this link, http://www.salon.com/opinion/walsh/?last_story=/opinion/walsh/politics/2009/02/03/daschle/ , then click on Glen Greenwalds link in the article, then click on Matt Tiabbi's link in that one, and Stephanie Mencimer's 2002 article on his wife. If you don't feel the need for a shower after that description of Daschle's level of stink, I can't help you. Tiabbi's quote was the best; "In Washington, there are whores and there are whores, and then there is Tom Daschle. Tom Daschle would suck off a corpse for a cheeseburger." I love this kid.

Healthcare reform is a HUGE topic. You have to start by cleaning out the sludge at the bottom of the barrel, and guys like Daschle clearly demonstrate that sludge to be bipartisan.

But it starts with each of us, and how we perceive the problem. A colleague, Dr. Chris Saltpaw, said, "In Chinese Medicine, you have to divorce yourself from every Western pardigm you've been conditioned with. In order to truly understand it, you have to understand the nature of nature."

Think about this. Our species, and every other species here, as well, evolved on the surface of a planet with very distinct rhythmns. A 24-25 hour light/dark cycle, a 365ish day cycle with very distinct seasonal rhythmns. We have hormonal cycles that rise and fall in harmony with those cycles. You want to stay healthy, stay in touch with those cycles. Lose touch with them, you will fall out of health, and then, fall prey to every snake oil drug dealer out there, and their agents, people like Tom Daschle.

God, how I hate politics.

Resveratrol

I've been asked a lot of questions this week about resveratrol in the wake of a 60 Minutes story on it, so I thought this would be a good time to discuss it.

Interest in this goes back 15-20 years, when a phrase "The French Paradox" was coined, which referred to the observation that the French ate like pigs, drank like fish, smoked like chimneys, yet didn't drop like flies as much as we did. Ironically, 60 Minutes, of all people, did a story on it in the early 90's.

What they seemed to drink the most of was red wine, the grapes of which resveratrol is a major constituent. It's also found in pine trees, peanuts and other plants, one of which, polygonnum cuspidatum, turns up in Chinese Medicine used for liver and heart conditions.

The ensuing body of science on resveratrol is far too vast to be covered in one blog entry, so I won't try.

What I will do is to try to provide some overview.

In order to get a sense not only of what resveratrol does, but why it might do this, one has to step back and view plants as existing in the same, toxic environment that we do. They have a need to develop protection from said toxins, too. They evolve to produce these protector compounds, called flavanoids and polyphenols. Turns out, the animals who eat(or drink) these plants seem to have some of this protection conferred upon themselves, too. At least, that's the theory, and the evidence is piling up in favor of it. http://www.lef.org/resveratrol/

The above link talks about the main areas of research. I'm going to focus on the aging question and the best source.

My theory on its anti aging qualities is pretty simple. The studies highlighted in the link clearly demonstrate that resveratrol has an inhibitory effect on many cancers and a protective effect against heart disease. These are the two biggest health threats we have. If you delay or prevent these two things from happening, common sense dictates that, statistically, the population, at large, will live longer.

What science is learning is that food is more than mere calories. Food is also information. Information that may be signaling disease causing genes and turning them off. Red grapes are only the first to be studied extensively and for a fairly long time. There will be more. Keep your eye on hops. That could be tomorrow's resveratrol. Beer and wine. Who knew?

Which brings me to the best source. All jokes aside, excessive alcohol consumption is extremely dangerous. It's a known carcinogen and a lot of other things, few of which are good.

The best way to get this in efficacious amounts is through supplementation of a standardized extract. Most red wine contains very little resveratrol, and you'd have to drink a case of wine a day to get a protective amount of it.

Caveat Emptor; not all supplements are created equal. Cheap supplements usually means poor quality. Metagenics, Thorne, Standard Process, Pure Encapsulation are the best supplement manufacturers on the planet. None of them pay me. The company that does pay me makes very high quality products, as well.

Assume Your Audience is Intelligent

This is the time of year for Diet/Fitness books. After the holidays, it's natural for people to make committments to healthier living. The apocolyptic bottom came, for me, the other day, when I walked past Barnes and Noble on 6th Ave., and saw a new fitness book in the window by, none other than TO, aka Terrell Owens.

The topics that the existence of this book, and others like it, underscores, for me, and no, I didn't read it, nor do I intend to, are, fad diets and flawed partnerships.

Jeffrey Bland PHD http://www.jeffreybland.com/ , once said that if you walked into any bookstore and purchased any fad diet book on the shelf, took it home and executed what it proposed, you would experience positive results. He then said that the only thing that proved was that if you, "Stopped consuming grease filled bags, shoved through anomymous glass windows into high speed automobiles", you will become healthier.

Point being that there is always some truism in just about every diet/health book out there, and any change from blatently toxic behaviors will probably be good. But deeper, fundamental truths are a bit more elusive.

The second thought here concerns celebrity endorsements.

If we keep buying it, they'll keep selling it. Publishers are in a, for profit, business. It's not their fault if we buy an air brushed picture of someone who's only claim to fame was that they were on a sitcom 20 years ago. Nobody's holding a gun to our heads. Dumbing down only works if we allow it to. When ideas become more attractive to us than aging celebrities, our collective conciousness will move forward.

Partnerships with superficiality waste resources. The ideas are the true celebrities, because that's the substance. The interminable phalanx of self help glop purveyed by these people are like so many fast food meals, lots of calories, but very little nutrition.

I grew up, unapologetically, "Grateful Dead". Their publicist and biographer, Dennis McNally, once said that, in their entire 30 year performing life, they adhered to one, underlying principle; "Assume your audience is intelligent.". Now, when the Dead stopped playing in '95, I read in some industry publication that they were the highest grossing live musical act in the country. They accomplished that with very little traditional industry support. This suggests, to me, that the idea has some pretty strong merit, and you can be successful, not by pandering to the lowest common denominator, but by challenging people to rise to their greatest self.

I'm no economist, nor foreign policy wonk, but common sense tells me that this idea could be applied to our larger ship of state, too. Hopefully, it will.

Symptoms vs. Causes

If the roof collapses on a house, is it because the roof is faulty, or is it because the underlying foundation has rotted?

I got a call from a client yesterday that underscored this idea. Her six year old son was experiencing a package of symptoms that had been diagnosed as asthma by one doctor, and an unnamed autoimmune disorder by another.

I asked if tests had been done to determine intestinal permeability, yeast overgrowth, bacterial imbalance, and fungus. They had not. I explained that, even though these symptoms appear in his breathing apparatus, they often begin in the gut and intestines. No doctor had ever discussed this with her, so she, understandably, had some difficulty accepting this notion.

If the digestive tract is damaged, toxins will leak into the surrounding tissue and trigger the release of all sorts of inflammatory agents to try to suppress the uprising. They will also migrate to weakened areas in the body. In her son's case that was his sinuses and bronchi. For someone with a twisted knee, it would stiffen the knee.

This speaks to a larger issue of how we are taught to view our health. We have to learn to look for the underlying cause of any problem. Where does it start, not just where does it show up? Even down to what we're ingesting that creates an environment for the problem. We are discovering that food is more than just calories. Food is also information that signals genes. Some foods can turn on disease causing genes, some turn them off. Some foods produce inflamation, others reduce it.

If the roof collapses, look at the foundation first.

Fish Oils, Dry Eyes and Related Topics...

A recently published study from Brigham and Women's Hospital and the Schepens Eye Research Institiute, both in Boston, has demonstrated a correlation between a diet high in Omega 3 fats, specifically fish oils, and a lowered incidence of Dry Eye Syndrome, perhaps as much as a 68% reduction.

The data on the benefits of fish oils continues to mount. No real surprise, here. Fish oils reduce inflammation, and provide lubricants. Using supplemental high dose, pharmaceutical grade fish oils will provide benefits for almost every chronic condition we suffer from, be it Dry eye to joint pain, to high blood pressure and beyond.

This study made me wonder, however, about research on glaucoma, medical marijuana, drug law reform, which, from there is but a short jump to the state of our world in general.

Med. MJ research does seem to suggest that THC may have a positive effect on reducing pressure in glaucoma patients. The question I have is would fish oils work even better, and with fewer side effects?

The data on the anti-inflammatory action of EPA is much more convincing than the data that THC is systemically anti-inflammatory. And you can't convince me that inhaling the smoke from smoldering leaves is good for you, even though there is some evidence that pot smoke is less carcinogenic than tobacco smoke. That's akin to saying Saddam Hussein isn't as bad as Hitler, because he didn't gas quite as many people.

Ingesting poison to get delivery of a potentially healing nutrient is a flawed approach.

Which brings me to the whole subject of Med. MJ research. It's ultimate purpose is to promote legalization, not cure disease.

Don't get me wrong, I support legalization. But I've been critical of the pot lobby's efforts, because their approach is back door, instead of hitting the issue headon. Pot should be legal because there is not now, nor has there ever been a single, legitimate reason for it to be illegal. This emperor hasn't had any clothes for over 30 years.

This is supposedly the largest cash crop in the country. Allegedly, as much as half the population uses it at least occasionally. Why is this such a political football? You can't tell me that if NORML started backing candidates for local, state and congressional seats using legalization as their primary platform, the public wouldn't start saying enough, already. It's "high" time we started to reap the tax benefits of this and quit criminalizing behavior that isn't criminal.

Then we can stop with this Med. MJ as primary therapy for these disorders and focus researching compounds with a less toxic method of delivery.

The Flaw in the Western Paradigm

An incident occurred yesterday that underscored much of the problems we face with our healthcare system.

A woman came to us and requested a specific supplement, red yeast rice. Her husband's cholesterol was high. He had taken it, and it did lower his cholesterol.

I told her we didn't use it, for a couple of reasons.

First, while he had lowered his cholesterol, he had done nothing to address the reasons it had risen in the first place. In other words, the health food store that sold it to him had engaged in the very practice that the natural products industry decries; they treated the symptom only.

Second, half the heart attack victims don't suffer from high cholesterol. There are many other mitigating factors. In fact, in people with blood types O and B, there is an abundance of an enzyme, intestinal alkaline phosphatase, in their intestines that prevents cholesterol from causing a heart attack. Yet people with blood types O nd B have just as many heart attacks as everyone else, suggesting that there are other causes.

Our system here in the West conditions us almost from birth to seek a remedy for the overt, and very definitely discourages us from looking further into underlying cause. Got a headache, pop a pill; cholesterol high, another pill. Correct the imbalance that's causing the symptom, hurt the sales of the maker of the pill.

The only solution lies in changing the way we look at the problem. That sounds easy. It isn't. Changing ingrained neurological programming takes work.

Off to the races...

I'll let this serve as a combination shake out cruise, and mission statement, of sorts.

There's a Taoist saying that supposedly goes something like, 'You cannot achieve enlightenment until your parents are dead.'

2-3 years after my father's passing in '99, I remember saying to my bus. partner, "You know, I half get that."

After he died, I began to read about the chronic health conditions he faced in life. An elite athlete for his day, he contracted a catastrophic illness at about 30, which, while it didn't kill him, it weakened him slowly and set up his ultimate demise.

He got sick in 1958. What I found shocked me. In 1950, some 8 years earlier, 2 doctors had published the cure in the New England Journal of Medicine. The most prestigious medical journal in the world, not some esoteric, new age rag.

Because it didn't involve high priced drugs, but simple dietary changes, the mainstream medical world ignored it. If they hadn't, my father would, in all likeliehood, still be alive.

This provided me the inspiration to get serious about our work.

Western medicine is built on a flawed, reductioniost model, that concerns itself with suppression of symptoms, not at getting to, and correcting the inderlying problem.

As Chris Rock once said, "Ain't no money in the cure. Moneys in the be back."

Anyway, this blog is a place for me to editorialze outside the business website. I hope people see it, and ask questions and discuss. Finding ways to get this seen is my next challenge.

Obviously, I hope folks who do see this will visit the website, www.invitehealth.com .

The renowned New York therapist, Joan Pancoe, once told me, "Rik, I just figured out a way to make a living doing what I wanted to do." She continues to inspire me, too.