They’re much harder to spot than old-time cinematic monsters such as Godzilla or Frankenstein, but they are much, much more deadly. By learning to identify and avoid them you’ll be taking big steps towards saving your heath and your life.

There are so many of these “Frankenfoods” these days that it can be challenging keeping up with the new ones. To help you identify them more easily, here is a short list of the worst offenders:

Genetically Modified Foods (GMOs)

Many of the common ingredients used in processed food products come from genetically modified foods. The most common are corn, potatoes, soybeans, canola oil and rice, but there are many others.

Some growers like these GMOs because they are designed to survive higher levels of pesticide and herbicide use, thus making them easier to grow. They’re also commonly engineered to look fresher longer, resist insect damage, etc.

However a growing body of research points out some potentially serious problems with these “foods.”

For example, in a number of studies, rats fed GM crops developed kidney and liver damage. They also had elevated blood sugar and triglyceride levels (precursors to diabetes). Stomach lesions, intestinal damage and immune system malfunctions were among the other effects.

And these problems didn’t take years to show up. They happened as soon as 3 months after starting to eat these foods.

Although almost no testing has been done on humans, another curious fact showed up in workers picking GMO crops – they developed severe allergies.

In addition, some GMO crops, such as Roundup Ready beans, have significantly lower protein and amino acids than non-GMO crops.

My motto is, “Just say no to GMO.”

Artificial Sweeteners

Aspartame (NutraSweet® and soon to be released as AminoSweet®) and Sucralose (Splenda®) are the two most commonly used products in this category.

Aspartame breaks down in the body into formaldehyde and wood-grain alcohol. Formaldehyde is toxic and is commonly used to preserve cadavers. Wood grain alcohol is the kind of alcohol that causes blindness.

Sucralose, which is often marketed as “made from sugar,” is actually a Chlorocarbon. In this case sugar is combined with chlorine. Other Chlorocarbons include the pesticide DDT and the toxic plastic manufacturing chemicals called PCBs.

Problems associated with artificial sweeteners include long lists of health issues ranging from immune suppression to joint pain and anxiety. Asthma, male impotence, lymph cancer, diabetes and Alzheimer’s Disease are also commonly associated with these non-foods.

Sweet? I think not.

Soft Drinks

Sodas make this list for a variety of reasons.

For one, recent findings indicate soda drinkers are more likely to develop pancreatic cancer. As few as two soft drinks a week increased the risk by nearly 90 percent.

And since most sodas are sweetened by high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) or artificial sweeteners (see above), there are other problems as well.

For example, HFCS is associated with accelerated aging, cardiovascular disease, irritable bowel syndrome, kidney disease and increased cholesterol.

On top of all that, a recent sampling of 90 soda fountains in Virginia discovered the nasty fecal matter organism, E-coli, present in the soft drinks they dispensed.

Yum! Supersize that please!

You Can’t Fool Mother Nature

An outstanding general rule for improving your health and reducing your chances of serious illness later on is this – if you can’t find it in nature, don’t eat it.

The examples above are dramatic illustrations of why this is important if you want to stay healthy.

Be well,

Dr. Bruce

—————————————

References:

Jeffery M. Smith, Genetic Roulette: The Documented Health Risks of Genetically Engineered Foods (Fairfield, IA: Yes Books, 2007) 21-31.

Organic Consumer’s Association article on GMO foods.

Aspartame Poisoning Information

Sucralose Toxicity Information Center

Hyperhealth Pro Database, In-Tele-Health, Hansville, WA, 2008.

For example, the other day I was reviewing Metabolic Typing® results with someone. I was encouraging her to notice how she felt after eating a meal with a specific ratio of fats, proteins and carbs.

Every time I would mention it, she’d say, “I don’t know how to do that.”

I finally said, “Think about it this way – an hour or two after you eat, pay attention to your energy level, how satisfied you feel from the meal and whether or not your thinking and emotions are in a good place. In other words, notice how well your body is functioning in relation to the meal you’ve just eaten.”

“Oh,” she said, smiling, “I think I get it. I want to eat in ways that give me solid, long-lasting energy, that help me think more clearly and that let me respond to whatever is happening with a steady, even emotional reaction.”

“Right!” I said.

She is already aware of many important health concepts. But this conversation got me thinking about how even the most intelligent and educated people sometimes don’t make the connection of how they are functioning with the foods they eat.

The signals are continually there, but we often don’t pay attention to them. Ironically, they are very easy to notice, which may be the problem. They’re so obvious that we miss them. I think of these body responses as early warning signals about our health.

It’s kind of like pulling weeds in the garden. When they first show up, they’re pretty easy to pull out with just your hands.

But ignored, these small signals gradually increase until there’s no way to ignore them. To use the gardening analogy, fixing the problems when they’re big is like waiting for the weed to turn into a fully grown tree. To remove it takes a chain saw and a backhoe.

What are these early warning signals?

There are a number of signals you can pay attention to, but they can be placed in three categories:

1. Appetite Signals – If you are hungry again only an hour or two after eating, something was off about your last meal. If it was ideal for you, you’ll feel satisfied and not need additional food before the next regular meal.
2. Body Signals – These include changes in energy level. A drop in energy or hyperactive energy tell you the meal wasn’t your best. Pain levels may also go up or down depending on if you’ve zeroed in on your best choices.
3. Mental & Emotional Signals – These can be very important signals about how you’re responding to food choices. If you are focused, clear and emotionally resilient after a meal, you’re seeing the results of great choices. If you feel more anxious, depressed, fuzzy-headed or otherwise not clear, it’s time to notice and adjust what you’re doing.

Since you’re going to eat anyway, I recommend you use your body’s signal system to dial in exactly the right foods and the right proportions of fats, proteins and carbs for you. Once you do, you’ll see a huge improvement in how you experience your daily life.

Dr. Bruce

P.S. – The absolute best way to figure out the right foods for your unique requirements is with Metabolic Typing^®. Learn the best ‘fuel’ for your body by contacting me to get started today.

Why? No matter what other medicine you take (prescriptions, herbs, vitamins, etc.), your food has a greater impact. A plate full of food wins over a handful of pills every time because there’s so much more of it.

So choosing your food shouldn’t be just a casual matter. But it also doesn’t have to be difficult. By paying a bit of attention to just three qualities of the foods you eat, you’ll automatically start feeling better.

1) Eat Whole Food:

This means unprocessed. A piece of fruit is far better than a glass of fruit juice, even if the juice is freshly squeezed. This is because juice has 3 to 5 times more sugar per volume than fresh fruit. And since most people already get too much sugar, less fruit juice is better.

Of course if the juice is homogenized, pasteurized or bottled in a way that requires heat, it’s even worse.

This doesn’t apply only to juices either. Each step of processing removes nutrients and alters the original nature of any food that’s processed.

This means that processed grains (bread, pasta, cookies, cakes, muffins, etc.), any kind of snack food (chips, pretzels, popcorn, etc.) and anything else you might eat that’s been processed before you buy it will be less nutritious than the whole food version of the same exact ingredient.

In addition, if you eat these processed foods you must become a ‘label detective’ to make absolutely sure what has or hasn’t been added to the end result. Most food additives are there to improve color or shelf-life, not to improve your health. The bottom line is, if you can’t pronounce it, don’t eat it.

2) Eat Fresh Food:

This one is obvious, but there’s a hidden message here as well. When we pick out produce, dairy or meat, we typically choose those that are fresher.

For example you’d never pick out a soggy tomato with mold on it from the tomato bin. You’d go for the one that is firm, fresh and smells good. The same goes for any other food you buy that you can see in its normal state.

But when foods are processed, we have no idea what the original state of the food was.

A recent NY Times article drives this particular point home. The article details how a group of purchasing managers from well-known companies such as Kraft Foods, Frito-Lay and Safeway took bribes for buying substandard crops as ingredients for their processed foods.

The substandard crops included millions of pounds of tomato paste and puree with mold counts far above safe limits. The produce got by regulators due to falsified documentation about the quality, acidity and age of the product.

That’s not to say that every processed food suffers from these problems. However it does point out that if food comes in a box, a jar, a can, a bottle or a package, you can’t tell what condition it was in before processing.

To be safe, fresh is always better.

3) Eat Food In Its Natural State:

This one is simple.

Ever seen a bread tree? How about a pasta bush?

Nope. Neither have I.

The point here is that if you’re eating food in a form that you can’t find in nature, it’s, um… not natural. The closer to its natural state a food is, the more likely it is to have all of the vitamins, minerals and other nutritional factors nature intended.

In summary, by eating primarily foods that meet the above three criteria, you can be reassured that you’re actually getting what you pay for. And you’ll be getting your food with the maximum nutritional value possible.

Be well,

Dr. Bruce

P.S. – There is one more element to an ideal diet, namely knowing which foods are the best fuel for your unique metabolic tendencies. Since there are 5,760 basic metabolic patterns, Metabolic Typing® is unsurpassed for zeroing in on the right foods for you.

NY Times Article, February 24, 2010

Healthexcel.com article on Metabolic Typing®

I no longer think that’s true.

It probably sounds funny for a doctor to be saying that. Even so, I stand by it.

The reason is that the human body is extremely complex and each individual uniquely different. This fact means that a ‘one size fits all’ approach to health is destined to fail. At the very least such a standardized approach will miss things and won’t be effective for a significant portion of the population.

That’s not to say that there aren’t procedures and techniques that apply to pretty much everyone. For example, if someone gets a broken arm, the process of setting and casting the arm is consistently effective for everyone. It stabilizes the break and prevents further injury.

Of course how well someone heals from that treatment is another story.

A case in point is a woman I treated who had a broken arm. She came in with a cast on her lower right arm and asked me to help it heal faster.

I asked, “How long has that arm been in a cast?”

She replied, “Two years.”

Then she continued by saying, “About every six months I go back to the doctor. He x-rays the arm, and when he finds it hasn’t healed, he cuts the old cast off and puts a new one on. Then he sends me home for another six weeks.”

I was surprised by that and asked, “That’s been happening for two years?”

“Yes,” she replied.

If you know anything about the typical healing process for a broken bone, it usually takes between 6 and 8 weeks for a well-set bone to heal enough that a cast is no longer necessary. For the process to take 2 years is very unusual.

In this case, the doctor was doing what he knew how to do to fix the problem – putting on a cast. However what he didn’t know how to do was to support her body’s ability to heal the break.

He had recommended she take calcium, and she had done so faithfully. But the bone hadn’t healed. It was obvious to me that something else was the cause of the slow healing.

We took a two-step approach to solving the problem. The first step was getting the bone to heal. We accomplished that with acupuncture. Six weeks after starting acupuncture she had her next visit to the doctor. The x-ray showed the bone had healed. This time he removed the cast for good.

Although we were both very happy with this result, I was still concerned about the underlying imbalances that prevented the bone healing in the first place.

To uncover these factors, we started with a Metabolic Typing® assessment. It turned out that she was eating many foods that were wrong for her body. These wrong foods placed a long-term, low-grade stress on her system and set up a state of sub-clinical malnutrition. No wonder her arm didn’t heal!

By changing to eating the ideal foods for her body, she started seeing improvement in many areas of health. She lost weight, her energy level increased and she even mentioned that she was thinking more clearly.

She was so encouraged by this that she also wanted to correct some of the damage that eating the wrong foods had caused her over the years. One of the things we discovered was that her adrenals were in an advanced stage of fatigue.

Through testing and treatment, we were able to turn that around as well.

I mention this case to reinforce the idea that if we simply assume that our doctor knows everything there is to know, we could be missing out on other effective approaches to healing, especially if our body is giving us other signals.

And, if we don’t listen to what our body is telling us, we will be left with only the information our doctor or someone else gives us. Effective healing always means paying attention to the signals our body gives us.

Dr. Bruce

P.S. – The absolute best way to figure out the right foods for your unique requirements is with Metabolic Typing®. Learn the best ‘fuel’ for your body by contacting me to get started today.

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It’s a very poetic way of saying that what something is matters more than what someone calls it.

But the reverse is also true. If someone handed you a plate full of rotten, stinking eggs, and told you they were health food, you’d laugh in their face. We all trust the evidence of our senses when it comes to something this obvious. But sometimes the choice isn’t as obvious as smelly old eggs.

A similar event is happening right now in the world of health. It involves a well known artificial sweetener that’s getting a name change so it can be marketed as health food.

The sweetener? Aspartame, which is commonly marketed as Nutrisweet^®.

Before we talk about how evil this bait and switch tactic is, here’s a bit of trivia for you – before the FDA stopped counting complaints against it in 1992, Aspartame accounted for between 78% and 85% of all complaints the FDA received.

In other words, more that 3 complaints out of 4 the FDA received were for this substance. Sounds like health food, doesn’t it?

We’ll leave the question of why the FDA didn’t immediately yank this poison from the marketplace for another day. For now, let’s focus on the most recent outrage.

Apparently Ajinomoto, the makers of Aspartame, are losing market share to the competition. Their response? Rename Aspartame to “AminoSweet” and call it a “healthy” sweetener.

Yeah, that should do it.

To set this clearly in your mind, here is a partial list of the known health problems associated with this “healthy” sweetener:

The bottom line is that this “healthy sweetener” is actually poison. Based on that, here’s my recommended marketing slogan for AminoSweet: “How sweet, it isn’t.”

All the best,

Dr. Bruce

P.S. – Getting and staying healthy is always a mix of doing the right things and avoiding those things that damage your health. It can be complex to sort everything out and make progress. If you want help and support in getting yourself back on top of your game, call my office at 775-827-6901 or email me by clicking here.

Dr. Janet Hull

Hyperhealth Pro Database, In-Tele-Health, Hansville, WA, 2008.

But is it the only factor when it comes to being healthy?

For seven years, from 1978 to 1985, I was the co-administrator for a martial arts school in Los Angeles. I also taught several classes at the school. That experience was an amazing opportunity to see the effects of choices people made regarding their health.

When it came to exercising, one student who stands out in my mind. Jim was as dedicated a student as I’ve ever seen. He meditated 2 hours a day from 4:00 to 6:00 am. He also practiced qigong and kung fu several hours a day each. All of this was in addition to his full time job as a professor at USC and spending time with his wife and kids.

If you would have asked me at the time, I would have said that Jim was among the healthiest people I knew. But during the third year I knew Jim, he had a shocking turn of events with his health.

On his birthday that year, his wife made him his favorite desert, key lime pie. Being his favorite, after he finished his first piece, he asked for a second. After all, he told me later, it was his birthday and besides he did so much exercise that certainly one more piece of pie couldn’t hurt.

As it turns out, he was wrong.

Within an hour of eating that second piece of pie, his vision started fading. By the next morning he was almost blind.

Fortunately for Jim, this loss of vision wasn’t permanent. After a few days some of his vision returned. But even so, his night vision was extremely impaired and he could no longer attend classes at the school because they were all held at night and he couldn’t see well enough to drive.

Jim’s unfortunate experience was a great lesson to me. It brought home the fact that even though exercise is important, what we eat can have a very powerful effect on our health no matter how much exercise we get.

I’ve come to think of it this way – if you don’t put the right fuel in your car (food in your body), it doesn’t matter how much or how well you drive it (exercise).

Food for thought…

Dr. Bruce

P.S. – The absolute best way to figure out the right foods for your unique requirements is with Metabolic Typing^®. Learn the best ‘fuel’ for your body by contacting me to get started today.

The most obvious example of this is the water that comes out of the tap. We usually don’t think twice about whether it’s pure and safe, we simply assume it is.

I’m going to recommend you question that assumption in a moment, and also give you the tools to easily test it for yourself, at least if you live in the U.S. I’ll also offer suggestions if you don’t.

But first, here is a few of the crucial roles water plays in our health. You might be surprised by some the things on this list:

• Drinking sufficient water may help prevent hangovers (sorry, had to get in a New Year’s reference).
• Chronic dehydration can lead to hypertension, kidney stones, the build-up of toxins in the body.
• Because they are composed of a high percentage of water, cartilage (joints) and muscles need to have sufficient water to function normally.
• Sufficient water intake can alleviate a wide variety of health issues, including obesity (due to increasing thermogenesis), psoriasis, and even fatigue (a symptom of dehydration).
• Drinking enough water can reduce the risk of bladder and colon cancer.

All of these are in addition to the basic fact that all the fluids in our body require water to move freely. And when fluids move freely everything else works better.

Back to the idea of safe tap water.

Given how crucial pure, uncontaminated water is for a healthy life, you may have assumed that there are laws, or at least rules guaranteeing safe water in our homes. Unfortunately, this isn’t the case.

The Environmental Working Group (EWG) has done extensive research on the safety of our tap water. The results aren’t very encouraging. If we interpret the findings closely, it becomes apparent that decisions about water safety are mostly a compromise between cost-cutting and what is referred to as “acceptable risk.”

Basically acceptable risk means it won’t outright kill someone right away. That doesn’t, however, mean it’s healthy.

Sources of water contamination are everywhere. Ground runoff of fertilizers, pesticides and other pollutants lead to more than 600 toxic chemicals being potentially present in our water. And normal water processing not only doesn’t eliminate all of these, it actually adds chemicals to the water (chlorine and related substances) that combine with these chemicals to form additional deadly byproducts.

Of the 600+ toxins that can end up in water, only 11 are regulated by the government. Feel safer yet?

And, although bottled water may be a better choice, you have no way of knowing for sure how pure it is or even where it came from.

Hopefully you can see why it makes sense to filter your tap water.

If you live in the U.S. and want to check your city’s water quality, you can use the EWG “What’s In Your Water” research site. You can go to that site by clicking here.

If you are on a well, or live outside the U.S., you’ll want to get your water tested by a certified laboratory.

After testing, if you want to filter your water, there are lots of choices available. Anything will be better than nothing, and even simple carbon filter will help. For the purest, most highly filtered water, consider a reverse osmosis system for your drinking and cooking water.

My favorite brand of this comes from FreeDrinkingWater.com. This is the one we use in our home. As a point of full disclosure, this link is not an affiliate link and I don’t get any compensation for recommending them. However, if you do buy a filter system from them and mention my name, they’ll send me a set of replacement filters.

You can mention my name or not as you prefer. Either way you’ll pay the same amount, which is $299 for their 5-stage, reverse osmosis system.

As a small aside, when we ordered our system from them, it came with a small particulate meter. Since we’d previously been using a counter-top carbon filter, we set aside some water from it and did a comparison with the water once we’d set up the reverse osmosis system.

The water from the counter-top filter measured a respectable 48 ppm (parts per million) of particulate matter when tested. That’s pretty good. However when we tested the reverse osmosis filtered water, it tested at 1 ppm. In other words, 48 times better.

Hyperhealth Pro Database, In-Tele-Health, Hansville, WA, 2008.

Truckee Meadows Water Authority Water Report – use this link to see your water quality if you live in the Reno area.

EWG “What’s In Your Water” Research Page – use this link to find out your water quality if you live in the U.S. but outside the Reno area.

NRDC Bottled Water Report

FreeDrinkingWater.com

Boschmann, M., et al. Water-induced thermogenesis. J Clin Endocrinol Metab. 88(12):6015-6019, 2003.

Michaud, D. S., et al. Fluid intake and the risk of bladder cancer in men. New England Journal of Medicine. 340(18):1390-1397, 1999.

Blechman, S., et al. Drinking water helps prevent colon cancer. Muscular Development. 37(2):46, 2000.

There were several interesting details in these findings. First, not just any olive oil achieved results. It had to be extra virgin olive oil.

Also interesting was that olive oil has similar anti-inflammatory properties to ibuprofen. Ibuprofen has demonstrated the ability to decrease the risk of Alzheimer’s when used regularly. Presumably this is because there is a strong element of inflammation present in the disease.

Of course ibuprofen has other, unwanted side effects, especially with regular use. This makes it less desirable for preventing Alzheimer’s.

Olive oil, on the other hand, not only doesn’t have such side effects, it has dozens of additional health benefits, including:

• Improving cardiovascular health by reducing the risk of atherosclerosis
• Supporting cell membrane health
• Helping the immune system
• Preventing rheumatoid arthritis
• Lowering LDL cholesterol while raising HDL (good) cholesterol

The specific finding for Alzheimer’s Disease was that olive oil interferes with a highly toxic class of proteins in the brain, called ADDLs. These proteins block healthy nerve function by binding with the nerve synapses. Synapses are the communication gap that allows nerve impulses to be carried from one nerve to another.

And, because current research identifies ADDL binding as the first step down the road to Alzheimer’s, this is great news.

The part of the olive oil that showed this effect is called oleocanthal. Not only did it prevent ADDL binding, it also protected the synapses from structural damage caused by ADDLs.

Researchers indicated that more studies need to be done to determine how this translates into regular use of olive oil for preventing Alzheimer’s. However, given the long history and safety olive oil use, it seems like common sense to include it in cooking and salad dressings right now as part of your brain health program.

Hyperhealth Pro Database, In-Tele-Health, Hansville, WA, 2008.

Oleocanthal May Help Prevent, Treat Alzheimer’s , Monell Center, Philidelphia, PA, 09/29/09.

- Buddha

Modern life brings us lots of advantages, but one very large disadvantage.

The disadvantage I’m referring to is that we are awash in secondary knowledge that keeps us from being able to be certain about many things.

Let me explain.

The original kind of knowledge, what Nietzsche called “primary knowledge,” is the knowledge we gain from our own direct experience. When we’re young we touch a stove and it’s hot so we pull our hand away. That way we learn first-hand to be more careful around stoves.

Secondary knowledge is theoretical knowledge. It comes from books, media, friends and family. In other words, anywhere but from direct experience.

Both kinds of knowledge have their place in life.

However in modern times, there is a massively higher ratio of secondary knowledge compared to primary knowledge than ever before. It’s so common that we’ve come up with a new term for it, “information overload.”

Information overload applies in practically every area of life, including our health. It’s quite easy to find more health information than you could ever use on just about any topic with a short search on the internet. And some of it may even be true…

But even well-intentioned and honestly presented information might not apply to everyone. That’s why a remedy that works wonders for one person might do nothing for another, or even make them feel worse.

How do we deal with this issue when it comes to our health?

The simplest way is to increase our skills at listening to the signals our body gives us. These signals are present 24 hours a day.

Some are obvious, of course. We usually know when we’re hungry or tired.

Other signals are less obvious unless we have learned to notice them. These forms of body signals, what I call real-time biofeedback, show up in the small changes we experience throughout the day.

For example, your general energy level is an outstanding indicator. When you’re tired for no reason, or hyper and jittery, it’s your body’s way of letting you know something is off.

The same rule applies to your appetite (hunger too soon after eating, cravings for junk food, etc.) as well as to your mental and emotional well-being.

In other words, if you feel satisfied after eating, if your energy is plentiful without being excessive and if you are mentally clear and emotionally resilient, your body is saying, “good job!”

But if you have any other type of experience in any of these realms, your body is giving you feedback that you can use. The trick is to isolate the influence that is most likely causing the symptom.

Here’s a short list of some possible contributing factors that might trigger such symptoms:

• Food, particularly processed, denatured food, and also food that is wrong for your Metabolic Type®.

• Lifestyle factors such as too little, or even too much exercise.

• Relationship issues (work, social, family) that trigger strong negative emotions.

• Time factors such as stress caused by deadlines.

• Environmental exposure, including exposure to toxic metals (lead, mercury, etc.), pesticides, electromagnetic fields.

For more on how to recognize which factors are triggering responses, see this article: Black Box Medicine.

The bottom line here is that by honoring the signals your body gives you (primary knowledge), you have a much greater chance at sorting out what secondary knowledge (books, doctors, internet) that best applies you your situation. The result is that you continue moving towards better and better health while cutting away some of the information overload.

I recommend this approach to all of my patients and I recommend it to you. If you decide to approach your health this way, let me know how you do!

References:

Black Box Medicine, Reno Alternative Medicine website.

Tough Decisions… Made Easy, Michael Masterson, Early to Rise, December 7, 2009.

I’m talking about the signals from your body when it’s out of balance. I like to compare these signals to a series of escalating messages your body gives you telling you something isn’t quite right.

At the beginning, they are usually subtle and easy to ignore. They might show up as a decrease in your usual energy level, or a vague sense of not feeling ‘right’. Sometimes they’ll be subtle aches and pains you haven’t noticed before.

Almost always you’re able to ignore these early warnings of internal imbalances.

Unfortunately, unless something changes for the signals to stop, the problem will escalate. The messages get louder and louder. Eventually you can no longer ignore them.

Over time these stronger signals become chronic health problems that typically don’t respond well to the usual medical interventions. At worst they end up requiring surgery or other powerful invasive procedures.

——————
Subtle Overload
——————

The above description of how chronic illness comes about is a great example of how small things can add up to something much bigger. I call this process, “subtle overload” because our bodies are constantly adapting to the stress of each subtle little thing. When this goes on long enough, eventually our ability to adapt to diminishes.

It is this loss of adaptive ability that leads us to chronic long-term health problems. Once we reach this point it takes only a small push to send us into a health crisis. Sort of like the straw that broke the camel’s back.

The best way to deal with this subtle overload doesn’t simply address symptoms. In other words, we can’t just take a pill and make the problems go away. They are too complex and systemic for that.

A better approach is to do what I call Deep Systemic Rejuvenation™ (DSR).

———————–
How does DSR work?
———————–

The best way to illustrate how DSR works is by using a diagram:

All imbalances in our health originate in the communication between the brain and the body.

As you see from the top of the diagram, brain and body communicate via the nervous system, blood and signaling hormones. This communication is also influenced by the food we eat, exercise and our thoughts and emotions.

Symptoms show up when there are chronic stressors. The body must constantly adapt to rebalance itself.

Some of these chronic stressors are obvious. They include:

• Mental/Emotional – fear, guilt, excitement, worry, anxiety, grief, depression, financial, divorce, job-related, overwork, trauma and abuse, relationship stress.

• Physical – fractures, muscle injuries, nerve compression, over-exercise, lack of sleep, chronic illness, dieting.

• Sense of Purpose – lack of purpose or meaning in life, hopelessness, despair.

Other stressors are more difficult to spot. These ‘hidden stressors’ include:

• Pathogens – parasites, bacteria, fungi, viruses.

• Toxic Exposure – pesticides, herbicides, chemicals, tobacco residue, drugs, toxic metals, metal in teeth.

• Food-related – wrong foods, blood sugar problems, alcohol, food additives, food allergies.

• Physical – structural stress such as misalignment, poor ergonomics and bad posture.

Although the above list seems like a lot to think about, there are ways to address imbalances by starting with the most likely influences in someone’s situation. Since everyone is unique, this may be different for each person.

Fortunately, it is possible to make changes at these deeper levels that pull the plug on chronic symptoms. When there is nothing driving the symptoms, your body returns to its natural, healthy state of balance

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Deep Systemic Rejuvenation uses a combination of time-tested ancient healing methods such as herbal medicine, combined with the very best of modern approaches for correcting systemic imbalances. These modern approaches include Metabolic Typing® and Functional Diagnostic Nutrition.

Assessment and treatment can be started by phone and email communication and often doesn’t require direct office visits.

For more information, contact my office at (775) 827-6901 or email me by using this contact form.

References:

Hyperhealth Pro Database, In-Tele-Health, Hansville, WA, 2008.

Reed Davis’ Functional Diagnostic Nutrition Web Site.

Bill Wolcott’s Healthexcel Web Site for Metabolic Typing®.