How many of you are health care workers or parents?  How many of you have been cornered with the question about the Flu Vaccine for your family this time every year?  I’m guessing most have had to carefully consider the flu shot, right?  Yet finding and understanding information isn’t so straightforward, is it?

I would like to offer my own perspective on the Flu Vaccine and Wellness as a doctor of Oriental medicine, acupuncturist, and father-to-be.

Now, there is a time and place for most treatment approaches in medicine.  Any given treatment requires a proper context.  The context includes not just the pathogen’s qualities (the virus, in this case), but also the qualities of the terrain where the pathogen would do its worst… the body, its substances, and its functions.  I personally take issue with specific treatments applied in grossly oversimplified contexts, such as applying a vaccine to a large population with notable variances in the qualities of each individual’s health, or applying antibiotics to patients with upper respiratory symptoms regardless of supporting diagnostic criteria demonstrating a bacterial infection.  As a wellness specialist, I see in my office every day how seemingly dissimilar people are regarding the state of their health and immunity.  Show me twenty people all simply labeled ‘healthy’ by the modern medicine experts, and I will show you significant immunity variances in all twenty.  And, for me at least, these variances are to be accounted for before skillfully applying any treatment or vaccine such as this.

Germs do not cause disease… often.

My perspective with any new client in my office is that, even if he or she appears to be and proclaims herself or himself as healthy, this client certainly has an Achilles heel in their immunity–whether apparent or not.  This compromise, however it is manifested, is the fundamental cause that leads one into illness.  Now, I am not going to attempt to make perfectly clear volumes of Oriental medicine theory and years of clinical practice experience to convince you that germs themselves are not the initial cause of a disease as modern medicine would have you believe, because it is just too much info for a blog post.  But I would like to introduce the idea, so you can see a different perspective of the flu shot or any annual vaccine such as this.  Here’s a borrowed quote from Dr. Robert Young, author of the book Sick and Tired?: Reclaim Your Inner Terrain.  The quote itself was from Rudolph Virchow, often regarded as the “Father of Pathology”.

“If I could live my life over again, I would devote it to proving that germs seek their natural habitat — diseased tissue — rather than being the cause of the diseased tissue; e.g., mosquitoes seek the stagnant water, but do not cause the pool to become stagnant.”

This point, although generalizing, is important to this discussion.  The basic views Oriental medicine takes regarding immune function are:

• Immunity is the sum of all actions of the systems, resources, and functions of the body.
• Compromises in one’s immunity often emerge due to the stagnation of these actions.
• Pathogens (such as the flu virus) are ever-present at all times.  We do not exist in sterile environments.  You cannot escape pathogens, and you do not need to escape them.
• For the body to properly exercise its immune functions, pathogens must be present.
• The real responsibility of one’s immunity is to ‘keep pathogens moving toward the door’ and not allow them to stall in one’s system, take root, and reproduce and flourish.
• Therefore consistent uninterrupted immune function is the key to staying well.

The focus I take clinically is to make sure one’s total immunity is working, and working consistently.  The inconsistencies or ‘hiccups’ in immune function, often at times of stress, are like dropping a protective veil temporarily with pathogens all around you.

And now introducing George Carlin.  No, wait, I’m not kidding…

“What we have now, is a completely neurotic population obsessed with security and safety and crime and drugs and cleanliness and hygiene and germs. There’s another thing: Germs. Where did this sudden fear of germs come from, in this country? Have you noticed this? The media constantly running stories about all the latest infections: equali, bird flu, … and Americans panic easily, so now everybody is running around, scrubbing this and spraying that, and over-cooking their food and repeatedly washing their hands, trying to avoid all contact with germs. It’s ridiculous, and it goes to ridiculous lengths.

Besides, what do you think you have an immune system for? It’s for killing germs! But it needs practice, it needs germs to practice on. So listen, if you kill all the germs around you and live a completely sterile life, then when germs do come along, you’re not gonna be prepared. And never mind ordinary germs, what are you gonna do when a super virus comes along and turns your vital organs into liquid shit? I’ll tell you what you’re gonna do, you’re gonna get sick, you’re gonna die, and you’re gonna deserve it because you’re fucking weak, and you got a fucking weak immune system.”

~ George

Oh George, you and your perverted common sense!  But I do agree, although this is still quite a generalization.  There are indeed super pathogens or superbugs that are so virulent that most healthy folks will be overwhelmed by them, but these do not exist so commonly.  Think smallpox, the plague, and polio, but not the flu. The attempt to reduce pathogens in our environment does not significantly assist our ability to survive, unless we are indeed talking about super pathogens, which the flu is not.  If the black plague was in town, I’d consider helpful options even if they came at a significant cost, but any cost associated with a flu vaccine makes me think twice.  What are we trying to do here?

To sum up, in my holistic health and medicine experience, keeping one’s wellness (total health) and therefore immunity functioning consistently well, is more than half of a successful effort to make it through the cold & flu season, and the other half is to allow your immune system to do its good work all on its own, as George profanely described above.

The most important point I can make regarding my professional perspective of the cold/flu season and its ‘risks’ is that one’s day-to-day wellness — the state of one’s general health manifesting as immunity — is the most important factor in the equation of being well through this season.  Wellness is not a mere absence of symptoms, but a sum of all sufficient resources to have a healthy and fulfilling day by one’s own determination combined with the resilience of one’s health when under stress, which is the essence of immunity.  A vaccination alone will not prevent you from getting sick this season, but your immune system will.  A flu shot will, in theory, merely reduce the probability of getting infected by three strains of the flu virus and nothing more.

The vaccine is trivalent, or comprised of the 3 most known active flu strains determined by the CDC from the recent previous years.  The viruses are significantly reduced in virulence so as to not overwhelm one’s immunity in an individual with an apparent normal level of immunity when introduced.  Then it takes two weeks for your body to create antibodies, which are what provides immunity to these particular three strains.  The best you can get out of it is to be immune to the three strains the CDC predicts to be active this year.  The viruses change and mutate every year, so last year’s shot will not necessarily help you this year, and there is no real cumulative benefit. The worst you can expect, some say, is to get the flu from the vaccine itself.  This is known to happen on occasion in individuals with a compromised immunity.  Of course, those individuals were determined to not have a compromised immunity by the physician administering the shot according to CDC guidelines, which brings about its own questions.

But what about other strains of the flu, or other variations on this type of seasonal illness not predicted by the CDC?  Nope, it will not help you in any way whatsoever, and other pathogens do and will exist.

As a committed natural health guy, I let nature do its work on its own without intervention unless intervention is really required.  At times it is important to consider.  There are valid arguments for the shot.  An example may be a healthcare worker with a weak constitution and immune compromises who works in a busy allopathic clinic.  Yet, for most of us who are generally well, the shot offers very little benefit at all and does not remove the risk of getting sick this season.  That risk you will walk with regardless of your efforts.  But one thing is for sure, if your immune system functions well as your whole physiology functions well, then you are in the perfect position to handle whatever stress nature throws at you, whether an airborne virus, a food-borne bacteria, or financial stress.  Whether you believe in vaccines or not, whether you get them or not, nature will still throw you curve balls, and your wellness and immunity will be tested nonetheless.

In honor — if that’s the word, and I don’t think it is — well anyway, in honor of this totally brutal Summer, Part II today will focus on the Summer and a couple ways how Traditional Chinese Medicine relates it to your health.

One of the foundations of Oriental medicine and TCM is the Five Element system.  It is a very profound theory with far-reaching philosophical roots that allows for describing any phenomena in nature.  The Summer and its distinct aspects are the phenomena we are discussing today.  So let’s start with these two Statements of Fact in TCM:

The qi of summer communicates with the heart.

-and-

The hot qi of summer nourishes the heart.

The heart itself is considered to be a manifestation of one’s fire element.  The Summer is also ascribed to the fire element in nature.  But elemental fire (as opposed to pathogenic fire), for most folks, often runs deficient… not up to the par required for normal complete health.  Fire also has a unique quality important to understand here, which is to do what fire does in nature and can be observed to rise, expand, and disperse.  This is what flames do when left to their own devices (without being blown about by wind, or directed by the presence of burnable fuel, for example, because this demonstrates other elements getting involved and affecting fire).  By way of fire’s natural movement, to rise/expand/disperse, fire has an ability to reach out and affect things, and penetrate outer defenses.  ‘The qi of summer communicating with the heart’ is exactly this action of the warmth or heat of summer, that which relaxes, opens, circulates, and softens, reaching out from the sun and into our bodies.  It literally warms the channels identified in acupuncture, allowing them to relax and open for improved circulation and warmth in the body.  So the second statement becomes more clear now, right?  The hot qi of summer nourishes the heart through opening and warming.  And the heart, even more than other organs, really likes openness and warmth.  So this is good, the Summer effect.

But not so fast.  Yes, it is good, but what about too much of a good thing?  Well, it’s 108 outside.  We are right in the middle of ‘too much of a good thing’.  And now for the next relevant Statement of Fact.

The heart is averse to heat.

So, things get a little interesting here.  The top two statements say that adding warmth to the heart is natural, especially during this season. So, how is it averse?  Well, the fact is all organ systems and all life itself are dependent on heat and have an obvious affinity for warmth up to a point. The heart isn’t averse to any or all heat, but it is averse to excess heat, which is defined as more heat than the whole body and physiology can balance out.  Where the heart is associated with fire the kidneys are associated with water, and water cools or controls fire.  So, as the heart is exposed to excessive heat, which can come from a litany of possible causes, the kidneys function to keep the heart properly cooled.  This prevents damage through excessively fast heart rates, or excessive sweating (associated with the heart), for example.

If the kidneys are not fully up to the task, which is indeed quite a challenge in a Summer like this one, then the heart’s fire burns and burns, eventually leading to many of the following symptoms that tend to come on stronger in the Summer than other times during the year: anxiety/panic, palpitations, sleep issues, feeling scattered, poor focus, lack of drive or motivation, excessive sweating, and irritability & restlessness.  In the clinic these symptoms are typically treated best by improving the water at the kidney rather than treating the heart directly.  By the way, improving water to the kidney requires more than simply drinking more water, although that may or may not be a part of the treatment.

I personally love the Summer, because I love the feeling of openness and vitality that comes with the warmth and activity these months.  But I am also very aware that we all have our unique limits with how much heat exposure we can naturally deal with.  So, enjoy the Summer!  Yet watch yourself… any of the symptoms I listed above are early signs of a worsening imbalance, and the general rule of Wellness is to treat early to make it easy.  Or treat late and make it more difficult than it needs to be.

If you are experiencing any difficulties with the heat this Summer then check in with me.  If I can help as many folks as I do, then I can almost certainly help you, too!

There are many of these statements from various sources by various authors at various times in TCM’s history.  Since TCM is borne out of early humanistic philosophies actually, many of these statements are philosophical in nature.  Some statements are quite straightforward while others are true mind-benders.  For the humble student of TCM, all statements of fact are profoundly interesting, even though some are elusively simple.

For a start let’s look at this simple one, then let’s look a little more deeply:

When water is depleted, fire becomes effulgent.

This is a very basic concept of TCM.  The terms “water” and “fire” are representations of different aspects of the body.  Each refers to both substances and actions in the body and its physiology.  “Water” refers both to the inert fluid substances of the body as well as the body’s potential and ability to source and provide those substances to the tissues.   “Fire” refers both to the transformative substances of the body (e.g. enzymes, acids, bile salts, ATP, etc.) as well as the body’s potential and ability to manufacture those substances and drive them to combine with the fluids which are the medium for movement.  This could all be grossly oversimplified by saying: water represents the fluids and fire represents the actions of the physiology (such as circulation, muscle contractions, nerve impulses, etc.).

I chose this statement today because we are in the middle of the summer.  In TCM it can be said that we are in the heart of the fire season. And with all the heat here, the management of water becomes important.  The more heat/fire is present, the more water is spent.  Put a bowl of water on the porch in the winter and it goes nowhere fast.  But put that bowl of water on the porch today, and before long the heat itself will disperse the water, causing it to eventually go dry if not restored.

It’s the same in the body.  Sufficient water allows the fire substances to move and do their active thing.  The blood, for example, carries enzymes and other transforming substances around the body.  But if the water is depleted due to excessive heat exposure (e.g. excessive sweating) without refilling the water, then the heat/fire is left unchecked. The fire is not limited by water any longer, and is allowed to express its true nature which is to rise, expand, and disperse. Just picture the flames of a large camp fire.  The upper portions of the flames do exactly this… rise, expand, and disperse.  The flames vent out upward into space and disappear.  This is fire expressing its nature without being held back by the tempering effects of water.

If one’s body fluids actually become so deficient as to be labeled ‘depleted’ (which is a significant statement, clinically speaking), then that basically means that workings of your fire element (which describes all actions, transformations of substances, and activities of the body) have gone excessive and unchecked by water due to the low water.  It’s a pretty simple concept, actually.  Another way to picture this is to visualize an oil lamp with a single flame. The flame burns nice and steady while the oil in the lamp is sufficient.  Then, as the oil in the lamp goes low, you will notice the flame becomes unstable and fitful.  But here’s the most important part: when the oil burns out, the immediate next thing is the fire goes crazy, flaming upward chaotically for a moment until it is unchecked by the lost oil and the flame expresses its nature: it rises, expands, and disperses out into space and is gone.  So, this is why body fluid depletion is a significant clinical finding… because the next step beyond fluid depletion is fluid expiration.  At the point of fluid expiration, the fire is fully ungrounded by any other force.  In other words, there is no force grounding your active life processes to the body any longer, so these life force processes, your fire element, is allow to express its nature of rising/expanding/dispersing. This leads to one’s life force leaving the body, which is the end of life.

Seems like something minor, right?  Like a little poetic description of something insignificant, but no… we’re talking about life and death potentially.

Another example of fire going nuts due to depleted water?  How many stories have you heard of someone trapped in the desert without water and the ensuing hallucinations and delirium they experienced?  This is the fire going nuts.  If the fire was less and the water was more, hallucinations and delirium would never come up since they are a manifestion of unchecked fire.

In this season it is particularly important that fire and water are at a balance somehow.  One of the primary points here is that, when either becomes excessive, then the other is relatively deficient, and the problems from this imbalance show immediately and quickly.  Once these forces are at an impasse, things go south very quickly and take the body’s systems to dangerous states, potentially.

If you have any questions or comments about any of this, speak up!  Stay tuned for more in the Statements of Fact Series…

~ David

We all agree with that bit, but there is more going on with the physiology, the interaction of organ systems and life functions, and our lifestyles.  Oriental medicine has an enhanced perspective.  Let’s take a look into a bit more detail of what’s going on in our bodies.

When the heat rises outside, one of the first things to happen according to Oriental medicine is that the yang organs, known as the Fu organs in Traditional Chinese Medicine, become slightly weakened.  This occurs because these types of organs are bladder-type organs (such as the intestines, the stomach, the urinary bladder, etc.), and the role of these hollow bladder-type organs includes the role of containing and directing turbid substances downward during the digestive process.  Three of these organs’ channels (as identified in the acupuncture anatomy) — the stomach, urinary bladder, and gall bladder — all begin at the head and move downward to the feet.  These three examples of hollow organs all direct turbid substances, that of food & drink, used blood, used lubricating substances such as mucous, etc, are cleared from the head and moved downward toward their respective organs, and are further directed downward to the final act of digestion, which is discharge from the body.  If these channels can do their job effectively, the head will be clear.  If they cannot clear the turbidity effectively, then fogginess, lack of clarity, and poor focus ensue.

But one of  the issues that occurs from the heat is from heat’s own nature: heat rises, expands, and disperses in nature when left to do its thing.  This is a ‘law’ of nature, as it were.  Heat rises as cold descends in the body like in weather patterns, heat expands in the body like it does in nature (pores open when hot, pores close when cold, for example), and heat disperses via expansion when allowed to express itself.  The heat often pushes the body out of balance due to its extreme temperature.  Normally the body will be able to stay ‘pulled together’ in regular climates, but the hot temperatures disperse the hollow organs’ energetic actions to contract and pull in on turbid substances, thereby directing that stuff downward.  But in the hot climate this action is disrupted due to those energies being scattered.  This leads to the same turbidity that should normally be contained in the hollow organs to be uncontained.  This then leads to damp turbid fluids invading the tissues and systems that are normally protected from such turbidity.

Uncontained turbidity has now ‘invaded’ a layer of tissues and function where it normally would not reside.  This causes a particularly noxious problem, because the nature of turbidity is both heavy and dense.  It’s too dense for the lighter energy of body heat to penetrate fully.  So some share of one’s natural body heat residing in and flowing through the deep organs such as the heart, the liver, and the spleen becomes stuck without an effective way out to express itself, which again is to rise, expand, and disperse.  When body heat such as this becomes stuck without a way out, it still has its warm nature and still would naturally expand-rise-disperse if not constrained and stopped in its tracks by the heavy dense layer of turbidity containing it.  So instead of expressing itself, because it cannot do that effectively enough, it simply festers.  This agitates the affected organs and their blood supply, thereby affecting the consciousness (due to the old wisdom that, according to Oriental Medicine, the blood is the ‘substrate of the mind’ — hot blood leads to a hot mind).

When the organs and blood are agitated by the trapped heat, trapped due to the layer of uncontained turbidity, then this leads to the following problems: feeling unusually hot inside, mentally restless and unable to effectively relax, irritability, high or unquenchable thirst, insomnia or other sleep issues, feeling clammy and damp, excessive uncontrolled sweating, and even queeziness or nausea from drinking too much fluid in an attempt to cool down.  This occurs because too much fluid intake (more than one can digest completely) typically leads to queeziness and nausea.

This picture is also common in alcoholics, who drink excessively turbidity-generating fluids which also generate significant heat internally, in the liver and blood primarily.  Alcoholics tend to exhibit the symptoms of feeling hot, having excessive thirst, being restless and irritable, having sleep problems, and being clammy and damp as well as a litany of other issues.  But this is from an excessively imbalanced lifestyle.  It gets some of the same effects that come from short-term issue arising from the summer, however.

So, what does it all mean?  Here are some important points to observe:

• When thirsty, drink patiently rather than throwing large amounts of fluid down the gullet too quickly.  This will allow your digestion to work with the fluid intake rather than be overwhelmed by the flood of it coming down the pipe which may lead to the turbidity problem.
• Stick with some sour or tart enhancements to your fluids.  Lemon, lime, grapefruit, etc, are examples of substances that assist the hollow organs in astringing, thereby helping to contain turbid substances in the hollow organs and not lose control of such turbidity.
• Avoid spicy foods, excessive sugar, and excessive dairy during this time as those types of foods and drinks will feed the problem and further imbalance one’s system.
• Consider visiting an herbalist of Oriental/Chinese medicine.  Such practitioners have skills to help clear the imbalance leading to an improved quality of life.  Imagine less irritability, no sleep problems, easy relaxing, and feeling less hot and agitated through the summer!  I’d say that’s an improvement if you are having trouble in this heat.

In an oversimplified nutshell, here’s the difference:

• Modern medicine sees the problem to be the airborne pathogen, e.g. the virus that invades your body due to contact.  Aside from diagnosed depressed or insufficient immunity, the fault lies in the virus, not in the body and its defenses.  One is a helpless victim at all parts of the process if you’re in the wrong place at the wrong time and are exposed.
• Traditional Eastern medicines, including Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), see it very differently.  They describe these pathogens (the modern correspondence being an airborne virus, for example) as ALWAYS present in varying amounts.  An infection (cold/flu in this case) comes from an opportunistic vulnerability in one’s immunity.  This in itself is not entirely different from the modern conventional view, however.  What’s different here is how and why one’s immunity is interrupted and becomes vulnerable.  The answer, in brief, is abusive (often unknowingly) eating & drinking patterns: one’s diet.

Now, I’m not going to try and convince anyone here.  This view is hard-earned and becomes crystal clear after sufficient clinical experience is gained.  This argument would never sound reasonable to me either had I not accumulated some 16 years of clinical experience of watching people’s health struggles through the eyes of Traditional Chinese Medicine.  But anyway, here’s how one of the great legendary masters of Chinese Medicine, Li Dong-yuan, sees it:

Food and medicinals which assist yin and drain yang are prohibited in yang qi insufficiency diseases with superabundance of yin qi.  [Hence one should refrain from] the various bland foods and medicinals of bland flavor which drain the upbearing and effusing [of yang qi] and assist [or strengthen] control and contraction.  The various bitter medicinals are all sinking and drain the dissipation [or spreading] and floating of yang qi.

It is a central tenet within Li-Zhu medicine that good health is founded on the proper function of the spleen-stomach and that this requires the upbearing and effusing or out-thrusting of clear yang.  Therefore, anything which works against this upbearing and effusing is seen as deleterious if yang qi is insufficient, unless there are cogent extenuating circumstances.

Take the first line: “Food and medicinals which assist yin and drain yang are prohibited in yang qi insufficiency diseases with a superabundance of yin qi.”  So, who are these types of folks with yang qi insufficiency diseases with a superabundance of yin qi?  They are you and me, almost every single one of us.  Why?  It comes from years of low-level abusive eating patterns that overwhelm our immunities long enough for the airborne pathogens, such as the cold/flu- associated virus, to take root in one’s system and reproduce, leading to a cold/flu and its symptoms.  But what comprises abusive eating/drinking patterns?  You will be surprised:

1. Eating or drinking anything cold, chilled, iced, or raw.  Read that line again: anything cold/chilled or raw, particularly in seasons with extreme temperatures, such as the cold of winter or the peak of summer heat.
2. Eating or drinking too much at any time.
3. Eating or drinking too late in the day.
4. Eating or drinking before the last meal is drained from the spleen-stomach (basically eating any new food before the last food taken is voided from the stomach — about 2 – 2.5 hours).
5. Excessive alcohol intake.
6. Excessive sugar intake.
7. Eating large meals before sex.
8. Drinking excessive alcohol before sex (probably talking about more than 2 glasses or wine, for example).

Li Dong-yuan mentions that “good health is founded on the proper function of the spleen-stomach [the root of immunity in TCM] and that this requires the upbearing and effusing or out-thrusting of clear yang.”  In other words, anything that temporarily mitigates the functioning of the digestive strength leaves one vulnerable to the ever-present airborne pathogens long enough to be infected.  The bottom line?  More than 9 times out of 10 that cold or flu can be totally averted without any necessary treatment.  However, that will take an ongoing lifestyle commitment to stay clean & clear… the immunity must not be interrupted, so the diet and drink must be in support of rather than detracting from one’s digestion and therefore immunity.

From a seasoned practitioner’s standpoint, the picture could hardly be clearer.  Let me give you a couple real-world examples:

• Last week Joey, a 7 year old active healthy boy, was out enjoying the warming weather, and also enjoying cold or chilled drinks while outside.  Then a cold front moved in, and it negatively affected his innate ability to ‘upbear and effuse or out-thrust clear yang’ (see Li Dong-yuan’s quote above).  The climate, as innocent as it may appear, does indeed affect one’s immunity… weaker folks, such as kids, are affected much more than others.  Once the climate suddenly cools, the cold/chilled drinks become enough of a force that his immunity is overwhelmed.  The cold drinks become temporarily undigested, and the contracting, draining, and descending actions natural to cold food or drink remain in one’s system incompletely digested.  This undigested nutrition acts like a heat sink in one’s immunity, thereby draining the charge that would normally prop up one’s immunity.  When Joey’s immunity is interrupted, even though merely for a few minutes or hours, it has likely been long enough for an airborne virus to take root.  The virus has been there all along, but Joey’s immune system is only vulnerable when it has been interrupted… in this case from food or drink that interrupted it.  Had he treated his digestion (speaking to the parents, of course) with respect to both his body’s digestive capacities and his response to the climate, then it is likely that his immunity would have stayed the coarse and not been interrupted.
• Martha is 52 years old, and is in average health according to her.  She’s not strong, but not terribly weak either.  She is committed to natural health and eats well, or so she thinks.  She is fairly consistent about it, until she gets very stressed.  Then she runs to the freezer and finds the Ben & Jerry’s.  She eats half a pint, not a seemingly excessive amount.  It gives her a sugar rush followed by a lull, and it puts her to sleep.  She wakes the next day tired and feeling drained.  By 2pm she is chilly with unusually tight neck & shoulders, she becomes a bit agitated or irritable, slightly queezy, and begins to experience chest congestion.  Within 2 more hours, she can officially call herself sick with a cold.  Yes, it’s true that she was struck by an airborne pathogen, such as a virus.  But arguably the virus is not the cause of the disease.  Rather, one could track how the immunity was interrupted by an overwhelming eating pattern by foods warned against by Li Dong-yuan some 2,000 years ago.  In an effort to close this post, you can choose to trust this point: the symptoms Martha experienced at each stage of her cold’s unfolding corresponded exactly to the immune-interrupting progression seen by the temporary damaging effects of taking in a significant amount of chilled frozen food from the TCM point of view.

My point here is not to get you in my office, believe me.  My professional experience is that more than 98% of the population is unwilling to believe anything not from the conventional institution of modern medicine, and most of the rest are unwilling to even try an experiment to change and see if there is something better available to them regarding their life quality.  I’m basically over giving this soap box speech.  However, I am passionate about making information available to the self-responsible, the curious, and the willing.  If you were indeed interested to know more, how best to stay immune, remain unaffected by common diseases, and consistently feel better, then I am here to help.  But you’ll have to get over your old notions to find new truths.

1. Cold and chilled foods & drinks damage the stomach, and therefore the blood.  This leads to significantly damaged health in later life.  In a committed patient who lives up to their own health-responsiblities, enough damage can be reversed to measurably improve the quality of life according to the patient’s own evaluation.
2. Excessive intake of sugar in the first half of one’s life leads to trapped internal inflammation typically affecting the liver and pericardium.  This imbalance is the foundation of both auto-immune disorders as well as chronic sleep problems (and others… plenty of them).
3. Digestion is considered the root of an adaptable immune system.  Protecting or restoring the digestion is the first step in overcoming disease.  But the first step in actual treatment is to STOP FEEDING THE PROBLEM.  Work with the body, not against it.

Although this info is not simple specific instructions of what to do and what not to do, it is extremely valuable nonetheless.  The point is to learn to be responsible and look forward.  You, your health, body, and human experience, will become a product of the influences you introduce to yourself (and your family) today.  All the unusual health problems and diseases modern people face today are not random in any way.  Every disorder from simple colds/flus to Systemic Lupus Erythmatosis to Interstitial Cystitis to cancer may be effectively understood and described through the schema of Oriental medicine.  The understanding gained over the many generations of clinical research and experience has concluded that, whether any patient or MD sees it, diagnoses it, or understands it, the problem has a clear cause, a clear progression, and a clear end-stage.  And most of these chronic problems may be completely averted by living differently in the first place, while undoing such problems is difficult at best.  So, what’s the point here, Dallas?

Would you believe that most medical schools who require recitation of the Hippocratic Oath have removed this line?  I have no difficulty at all believing it.

Rule #2: Don’t feed the problem.

If conventional medicine could wrap its head around this one, everything would change.  Well… that’s really easy to say… ok nevermind.

Rule #3: Generalizations do not apply to individuals.

Coffee is bad for you.
Everyone should eat a low-fat diet.
All women should take 1200mg of Calcium daily.
Adults must drink 8 8-ounce glasses of water daily.

etc etc.

These are obviously generalizations.  But these types of apply-to-all statements are of little or no use in a clinical environment when a practitioner is evaluating a patient’s needs and requirements to attain improved health.

Coffee is not a poison, for example.  It is a natural substance with actions and effects on the body.  Depending on the situation, the actions and effects may be appropriate at that time.  But maybe not before or after that appropriate time… one will need to re-evaluate again when the new time comes.

I have often seen in clinic that many clients force water due to the general consensus that adults need lots of water… more is better.  And many many times I have diagnosed excessive fluid intake as part of the cause of their health complaint.

My point?  Listen to everything, always.  Learn, study, pay attention, refine your awareness.  Just take sweeping generalizations with a grain of salt.  Dr. Oz, Dr. Weil, your MD, the surgeon general… they all have information to distribute.  Some of it is right, some of it may be helpful, and some of it even may be scientific fact.  But that does not mean it absolutely applies to you like it applies to any other individual.

HOWEVER, those who willingly take full responsibility for their choices, actions, diet, and patterns are extremely likely to succeed. It all comes down to you… heal thyself (and I’m here to help you).

I didn’t make it up.  This is over 2500 years of skilled practice and refinement of health management expressing the truth.  If you are really intent on improving your health then you will be challenged immediately by the higher-ups to find out how serious you are.  If you are not serious, then don’t waste your time with real healing, and head to your physician.  I hear he has a list of medicines and an even longer list of health-damaging side-effects at the ready for you.  Big Pharma wants you!

“If your child has been diagnosed with ADHD and is struggling, he probably needs medication,” says Stephen Copps, M.D., an ADHD specialist in Macon, Georgia. “Medication is the cornerstone of therapy. It’s appropriate for most children with diagnosable ADHD. It is not a last resort.”