Table of Contents
Part 1 - Your Vibrant Health Plan
Chapter 1: Week 1 - Beginning Your Journey to
Better Health
Chapter 2: Week 2 - Self-Evaluation
Chapter 3: Week 3 - Diagnostic Tests
Chapter 4: Week 4 - Outlining Your Plan
Chapter 5: Week 5 - Balance Your Diet
Chapter 6: Week 6 - Detoxify Your Body
Chapter 7: Week 7 - Exercise and Self-Care
Chapter 8: Week 8 - Evaluation and Long Term
Plan
Part 2 - Addressing the Imbalances That
Are Making You Sick
Chapter 9: De-Stress Your Life
Chapter 10: Balancing Your Brain Chemistry
Chapter 11: Sex Hormones: From PMS to Menopause
Chapter 12: Thyroid and Adrenals: Your Energy
Glands
Chapter 13: Syndrome X and Blood Sugar Balance
Chapter 14: Digestion, Dysbiosis and Food Allergies
Chapter 15: Dealing with Environmental Toxins
Chapter 16: Headaches Arthritis, and Osteoporosis
Part 3 - Essential Information for Your
Journey Back to Health
Chapter 17: Managing Your Weight
Chapter 18: Where to Look for Help
Introduction
There are almost 109 million women over the age of
18 in the United States. Because of our fast-paced lifestyle, the
accelerating pressure of career, family and relationships, and the
shift toward more equality in our social structure, we develop more
health concerns by the day.
We are also more susceptible than men to many conditions,
including depression, chronic fatigue syndrome, weight gain, and
of course, hormonal swings. I hear the same laments over and over
from young women, middle-aged women and older women, whether in
my office, by e-mail, at public appearances or even, at social gatherings:
"I’m always tired – it doesn’t
matter how long I sleep!"
"I can’t catch up on everything I need
to do."
"What can I do about my weight problems? I’m
disgusted with myself!"
"I’m always feeling down in the dumps."
"My whole body hurts! If it’s not my
back, it’s my shoulders or my feet."
"My PMS is actually getting worse as I get
older!"
"I have absolutely no sex drive!"
"I had no idea menopause would be this bad.
Between the hot flashes and night sweats, I’m miserable!"
"I’m totally confused about hormone replacement
therapy. My doctor says there is no other choice – either
take HRT with its risks, or suffer!"
And, from most of these women I hear, “My doctor
says they are just signs of normal aging or that I’m just
stressed and depressed, meaning that -- it’s really all in
my head!”
Nonetheless, problems with fatigue, sleep, anxiety,
depression, weight, pain, hormones, and memory, are real and often
debilitating. Part of the problem is that most doctors simply don’t
have time to delve into the reason for these symptoms. They may
have only ten minutes to hear out a patient, make a diagnosis, and
then prescribe a pain medication, a diet pill, an antidepressant,
or a sleeping pill.
If you have felt frustrated at not being truly heard,
and discouraged that everything you’ve done to try solve your
health problems has failed, take heart. You’re not alone,
and you’re not without tools to become your own health detective.
I have devised the Vibrant Health Plan
based on my decades of experience in treating hundreds of women
of all ages. As a conventionally trained physician with a specialty
in psychiatry, I have incorporated nutrition and other natural techniques
into my practice for more than 20 years.
At the core of this practice is a set of beliefs that
have served my patients well:
- Treat the whole person -- mind, body, spirit and environment.
- Look for the deepest root problems beneath the symptoms, which
includes using the best that science has to offer.
- Apply a continuum of treatments, always beginning with the safest,
most natural and most benign.
Crusade for reform
I am often asked how I became such a crusader for
the reform of conventional medicine. The fact is, there was no single
turning point or moment of enlightenment. It has been a long process,
beginning with my earliest family life:
My father was a general practitioner who practiced
out of our home in Toronto, Canada. From an early age, I recall
following him around on his medical rounds at the hospital and going
along on house calls. A caring and conscientious GP in an old- fashioned
practice, I saw him practice integrated medicine long before that
term was coined. Available and responsive, he ministered to his
patients with care and skill. He would talk to me about what he
was doing, assuming I understood, and never talking down to me.
Looking back now, I realize as the doctor’s apprentice, I
learned a great deal about the spirit and art of medicine, and even
about the practical aspects of diagnosis and treatment.
Moving forward many years, I studied medicine at the
University of Toronto School of Medicine, then interned at the Los
Angeles County-USC School of Medicine. I was struck by the serious
class divisions in the system of medical care, experiencing culture
shock as I was exposed for the first time to a clearly segregated
medical care system with serious divisions based on socioeconomic
status. In Canada, health coverage is universal, and I had not seen
such a disparity in terms of quality of care, and in the respect
given to patients and their families. Both my experience with my
father, and my medical school training had already given me a more
humane and holistic view of medical care, in contrast to the prevailing
mechanized, impersonal system.
My interest in a more relational, holistic approach,
coupled with an appreciation for the mind-body connection, led me
to decide to specialize in psychiatry. During my residency at Cedars-Sinai/UCLA
Medical Center, I eventually found that the standard “couch
and Prozac” combination of psychoanalytic and pharmacological
treatments.went only so far.
I was drawn to a more personal approach to patients,
where therapists were more directly caring and interactive with
their patients. I discovered art therapy with Helen Landgarten,
then guided imagery and other more cutting-edge interactive techniques
such as Voice Dialogue with Hal Stone Not only did these methods
work more quickly, but they clearly could affect the body in many
ways, from relieving more obvious symptoms to boosting the immune
system.
Then, during my family therapy fellowship, I discovered
the “systems approach, ” where the “identified
patient” was not necessarily the true problem! It wasn’t
just Johnny who was the “bad kid”, or Jenna who was
the depressed adolescent. In fact, there were secret family issues
(Mom’s depression, Dad’s gambling) that had unbalanced
the whole family dynamic, and the children’s problems were
the family’s symptoms. Treatment would be successful only
so far as the underlying issues, i.e. the parents’ problems,
were uncovered and healed.
By the same token, I became aware that the symptoms
my patients reported were just messages that their body system was
awry. They were clues that needed closer evaluation in order to
uncover the real cause. I paid more attention to the mind-body connection,
and the doctor-patient relationship.
I carried what I had learned into my new medical practice,
and began to explore the influences of nutrition and lifestyle on
health. I observed how imbalance in the body can affect the mind.
The brain, after all, is an organ, affected by its internal physiological
environment.
It became obvious to me that psychotherapy is more
effective once the brain is functioning properly. I went on to discover
how many typical psychiatric complaints—anxiety, depression,
PMS, even schizophrenia – are frequently due to biochemical
imbalances. These can range from low blood sugar, viral and fungal
infections, hormonal imbalances, allergies, and toxic overload,
to deficiencies of specific nutrients.
I am able to diagnose these conditions with the appropriate
laboratory tests that give a scientific basis for treatment decisions.
Then I can often help correct the imbalances with natural approaches,
including the use of well-researched nutritional supplements.
In contrast, conventional physicians are most likely
to prescribe first and test second, if at all. The results?
The third leading cause of death
Studies show that doctors are the third leading cause
of death, accounting for 250,000 deaths per year. They don't do
it intentionally, but due to a lack of knowledge, errors and over-influence
from drug companies, that is the end result.
There is little to counterbalance the over-prescribing
of drugs, despite the fact that according to one study, there are
over 100,000 deaths per year due to medications taken as prescribed.
That’s not taking into account drugs that were improperly
prescribed, or medication-related disability that, while not fatal,
takes a huge toll.
In my move toward “integral” or holistic
psychiatry, I found myself treating a variety of medical conditions,
from chronic fatigue to irritable bowel syndrome. Patients don’t
walk into our offices as disembodied heads. Our bodies do not separate
into specialized compartments for the convenience of cardiologists,
allergists, endocrinologists, or gastroenterologists. You can’t
get to the right diagnosis and treatment without looking at all
systems.
Every symptom reflects an imbalance somewhere in the
body’s systems. Conventional medicine has segmented the body
into the various specialties, and has not addressed the fact that
the body is actually a set of interactive systems.
On the other hand, holistic or integrative medicine
addresses the interactive systems of the whole person. The patient
is evaluated in a variety of ways, and supplied with specific health
prescriptions -- for supplements, foods, exercise, natural hormones,
mind-body techniques, and even prescription drugs when indicated.
Moreover, the individual has to partner with the doctor in this
process, both to carry out the regimen, and to give feedback in
order to fine-tune their program.
Compared to drug therapy, natural treatments offer
safer, more user-friendly solutions, with far fewer and less harmful
side effects. They work with the body’s chemistry rather than
adding what can be toxic substances to an already impaired body.
A case in point
I remember one early patient in particular, a 55-year-old
college teacher named Jean whose story is pretty typical. She was
being treated by her internist for high blood pressure, osteoporosis
and heart palpitations, and was referred to me, a psychiatrist,
because of anxiety, depression, and insomnia. I could find no obvious
psychological explanation for these, except maybe for the stress
of her physical illness. She was taking an array of medications,
with their attendant side effects. Based on some simple lab tests,
and my own clinical experience, I determined that a likely common
cause was a magnesium deficiency.
After a brief trial on this inexpensive and common
mineral, together with a multivitamin-mineral formula and essential
fatty acids, Jean was able to decrease her medications. Encouraged
by this result, she trusted me enough to eliminate some foods to
which she was allergic, which helped her even more. Not only were
her anxiety depression and insomnia gone, but she soon was medication-free,
depending instead on a list of supplements (I added a few to those
mentioned here) to restore her normal body chemistry.
As an integrative physician, I see cases like Jean’s
all day long, with sometimes seemingly simple solutions to what
appear to be complex conditions, and where part of the problem may
even stem from the prescribed medications.
Situations like Jean’s leave me with the following
questions:
1. Why had Jean’s internist been unaware of
her mineral deficiency, or even of its possibility? Why didn’t
he at least give her a basic multivitamin- mineral formula?
2. Why give prescription drugs first? This approach
is like unplugging the noisy smoke alarm instead of looking for
the fire!
3. And, more pointedly, why is the prevailing standard
of medical practice so symptom- and drug-oriented, especially
when this approach so clearly fails to serve the patient?
One answer is all too clear: Through sales representatives,
medical journal ads, research articles, and conventions, the pharmaceutical
industry is the main source of education for many physicians in
practice. The bad news is that drugs are expensive and often cause
more harm than they cure. For example, the NSAIDs for arthritis
can cause severe gastric irritation and even ulcers. Or, as numerous
human and animal studies show, the statin drugs for lowering cholesterol
deplete the body of an essential nutrient Co-enzyme Q10, which heart
cells depend on for survival. This leads us to believe that statins,
while certainly lowering cholesterol, may be doing more harm than
good. In his 22 page, fully referenced report reviewing this issue,
researcher Dr Peter Lonsjoen recommends that all statins be labeled
with a warning to take it with 100-200 mg of COQ10 daily. Has your
doctor mentioned that to you? Have you seen it in any drug ads?
This is the tip of the iceberg for the complexity of the pharmaceutical
industry and our health.
Most doctors have minimal exposure to more natural
treatments which they dismiss as “unscientific.” In
fact, the science is there, published in the very same medical journals
that tout drugs. The supplements that I recommend are well-backed
by published research.
Fortunately, this situation is changing as more doctors
are encouraged by the results they observe in their patients who
are incorporating natural approaches. (Hint: if you find solutions
to your problems in this book, please share them with your doctors.)
Physicians, and even medical schools, are showing greater interest
in integrative medicine, which incorporates the best of both worlds. |
