Introduction

In our analysis of your whole health picture, we determine the functional relationships between the organ systems, and look for the fundamental defects behind problems. Our background and experience enables us to tackle difficult cases. Whatever your situation, we most likely can enhance your health.

Our nutritional practice uses mainstream nutritional techniques with alternative ones blended in—“integrative nutrition”, if you will. We use only the finest quality, pure, pharmaceutical-grade preparations, and methods backed by science. Upon request, references to the basic science and clinical literature about any recommendation we make will be provided.

To us, health is not simply the absence of disease. Health is a state beyond the absence of illness, and most times we go even further, seeking to achieve optimum health in our clients, mentally, physically, and spiritually. This means peak mental clarity and thinking, strength, endurance, ideal body weight and composition, high self-esteem, self-image, confidence, and happiness.

Usually, our clients have had conventional medical treatment. We include that experience in our evaluation, and seek methods to help your body recover. We work within your present physician’s program for you, poring over health history details, collaborating seamlessly and pleasantly with your conventional practitioners, if any. Typically we spend more time with you, face-to-face, and behind the scenes, researching the latest alternatives to prescription medicines that might help you. We take your input seriously; work with you as an individual, with respect and empathy, to solve your health problem. Your program is always individualized, since it has to work for you. In summary, we are health enhancement consultants.

Our philosophy and beliefs

• The body has great power for self-healing. Mother Nature has been perfecting biological systems for many millions of years, whereas humans have been studying medicine for a tiny period of time. Mother Nature has inherently given our bodies’ extensive means to detect and correct abnormalities associated with disease. With proper nutrition, water, pure air, the right kind of activity, and other support, the body will heal itself. In fact, over 95% of illnesses are self limited, and will resolve without medication or intervention of any kind.
  
• There is an essential connection and interaction between the structural, biochemical, and mental/emotional parts of us. An abnormality in one of these components leads to abnormalities in the others.
  
• Each of us is unique. We are genetically, biochemically, structurally, and emotionally different from one another. Each of us also responds differently to changes we may encounter. One size does not fit all when it comes to health.
  
• Health depends upon a harmonious interaction of our physical, mental and spiritual selves with our environment and nature in general.
  
• Suppressing and interfering with our natural healing powers, rather than supporting them, leads to prolonged illness, deterioration, and degeneration.
  
• In health, there is a dynamic equilibrium in the body called homeostasis. In disease, homeostasis is disrupted, and must be restored.
  
• For health, humans need proper nutrition, pure water, clean air, sunlight, exercise, rest and relaxation, and human connection. Social and cultural influences must be considered.
  
• The majority of illnesses humans suffer from today are the result of lifestyles and habits that do not follow the needs mentioned above.
  
• Prevention is far preferable to treatment, when the horse has already left the barn.
  
• Natural methods, which are gentle and safe, are preferable
  
• Identifying and eliminating the cause of an illness is more important than just masking or eliminating the symptoms.
  
• Education of the client is essential, so he or she may fully understand the choices available, and actively participate in the management and care of what is bothering them.
  
• Restoration of health must be done on a cellular level by improving nutrition, circulation, innervation, elimination, with support and detoxification.
  
• The fewer medicines one takes, the better.
  
• Acute disease processes are different than chronic ones.
  
• Understanding illness from the cellular level up, we actively pursue the latest biochemical findings regarding how the body works, and the dynamics of nutrition, botanical medicines, natural therapies, energy therapies including homeopathy, and related areas.
  
• In both health and disease, it is best to view the body as integrated systems of molecules, cells, tissues, and organs, and work with the relationships between those systems.

General Principles

• First, do no harm.
  
• Support the body’s own healing processes.
  
• Use simple techniques first, before more complex ones, which tend to have undesirable side effects.
  
• Lower the burden of the load. Often, when there are several contributing factors to a health problem, reducing the load of one of the offending factors may significantly improve the condition.
  
• While basic science, research, and theories are wonderful, we are most concerned with clinical outcomes and results in producing optimum health.
  
• A long-term healing relationship with people, with exchange of information, ideas, feelings, and meanings, results from compassion, respect, and integrity. They are essential to build confidence and trust.

What To Expect

After reviewing an extensive health survey, and specialty questionnaires that you complete, we take a careful health history, system by system. Searching for the factors behind the development of your presenting complaints, what modified the problem, and its natural history. We gain insights into your individual constitution. We analyze your responses to past and current supplements and prescribed medications, and review your past health records.

Dietary, nutritional, and environmental history is stressed, as is social and relationship history, emotional and stress factors. We look for mind-body connections in the development of your ill health.

Together with biomedical knowledge of the problem, we construct a framework of the fundamental processes that brought about your problems. Functional changes within and between organs (improper signaling) the contribution of such things as inflammation, oxidation (biological rusting), allergy, immune system status, glycation (due to sugar), deficiencies, interactions, and depletions of nutrients, hormonal imbalance (glandular sluggishness), toxicity, digestive malfunction (dysbiosis), organ malfunction, food sensitivity, harmful effects of stress, cancer risk, consequences of impure water and air, and balances between parts of the (autonomic) nervous system are the types of processes we consider. We think in terms of biomarkers for inflammation, clotting (thrombogenicity), tissue (heart, brain, kidney) injury, cancer development (cell mutation), oxidative stress and risk reduction. A nutritional assessment is made as well. We blend old and new concepts in visualizing the factors pertinent to your health problems.

We formulate goals, and the actions required by the various nutrients, herbs, formulas, other preparations and methods at our disposal, over 15,000 of them, to help you regain your health and wellness.

We then present you with the possibilities, the advantages and disadvantages of different approaches to manage your malady. You actively and fully participate in the decision of what path to take back to health.

We assist in choosing the products needed to help you. This is an important step, for there are many preparations available to achieve a particular purpose, each differing in contents, quality, purity, and concentrations of ingredients, the procedure used in making the product, particle size, shape and form, inactive ingredients, and other factors related to chemistry, such as acidity. Low quality supplements may not contain what they state they have, may not be absorbed and hence unavailable to the body. There is just no sense in using an inferior product for any health-related matter. There is also the question of delivery of the product, its taste, etc. All these are considered and personalized for you when we see you.

Then we monitor your progress through telephone, e-mail, and office contact. Follow-up visits are just as a necessary when using alternative methods as they are in conventional medicine, since adjustments may be needed. Your nutritional and clinical status must be reviewed, since each person is different in their responses. We are results-oriented, and want you to be well in as short a period as possible.

In conclusion, we help you find natural solutions for your health problems. We function as scientists performing health consultations and wellness management. We artfully blend modern, cutting-edge methods of evaluation and management with natural, ancient, and traditional methods. We use a paradigm that is founded on a rational balance of tradition, science, and respect for nature’s accomplishments in the total realm of the universe.

Goals

We are concerned with:

• Strengthening the immune system
  
• Restoring energy and reduce fatigue
  
• Decreasing inflammation
  
• Improving endurance and performance
  
• Insuring mental sharpness and memory
  
• Reversing chronic disease processes
  
• Promoting recovery from illness and surgery
  
• Normalizing body weight and keep it there
  
• Relieving muscle and joint pain
  
• Preventing degeneration of body systems
  
• Eliminating toxins from the body
  
• Slowing processes which lead to aging
  
• Balancing relationships between the glands
  
• Relieving depression and moodiness
  
• Increasing amount of quality sleep
  
• Restoring sex drive and potency
  
• Minimizing allergic processes and symptoms
  
• Strengthening bones, teeth, nails and hair
  
• Maximizing feelings of well-being and vitality

The purpose of all this is to enable you to enjoy life more, be less stressed and more productive, a better companion to your loved ones and friends, and be happy.

Nutrition: its central role to growth, health, and survival

Importance of nutrition to health

The phrase “you are what you eat” is entirely true. As a child develops, growth of every organ depends upon the nutrients available. As an adult, the constant turnover of tissues demands a continuous supply of nutrients for maintenance and re-growth of all components of the body. Lack of one or more nutrients inevitably causes malfunction and, eventually, physical distortion of cells and tissues. Your appearance, strength, feelings, immunity (susceptibility to infections), movement, thinking, virility and sex life, repair and growth, muscle and bone health (and height), heart function, elimination by the kidneys, ability of the liver to detoxify and metabolize foods, and every other aspect of your health is determined by your nutrition. Nothing happens in the body without proper nutrients.

Scope of nutrition concerns

Nutrition is concerned with energy production, the digestion, absorption, and utilization of what is eaten, water and acid-base balance, gene-nutrient and nutrient-drug interactions, food intolerance and allergy, malabsorption, and adaptation. It covers carbohydrates, fats, proteins, minerals, vitamins, fiber intake, and special vitamin-like substances—deficiencies and inherited problems in each of these areas. Fitness and sports performance, as well as the course of pregnancy and aging, are strongly dependent upon nutrition. Food preparation, safety (food borne diseases), supplements, nutraceuticals, detoxification and genetic abnormalities are part of nutrition.

Nutrition affects disorders in every organ and tissue. Inflammation and oxidation, involved in so many diseases, as well as enzyme function and deficiencies, are also subjects that nutritionists study. Nutrition may be used to prevent or treat disease, to support an ill person, or to optimize health. Obesity, cholesterol, triglycerides, osteoporosis, diabetes, intestinal diseases, and intake of alcohol and its consequences, are intimately connected with abnormal nutrition.

Just as poor and inadequate nutrition may cause ill health, enhanced nutritional support can be an important part of the management of most health problems. All organizations, from the most conservative, including the Institute of Medicine, National Academy of Sciences, National Institutes of Health, to the most alternative, acknowledge the central role of nutrition in creating and maintaining optimum health, as well as the power of nutrition to help the ill.

Inseparable nature of nutrition and disease or wellness

Most deaths in this country are due to degenerative, chronic diseases: atherosclerosis, cancer, lung disease, stroke, and diabetes, all operating with obesity and high blood pressure together. Nutrition plays a part in all of them. Forty percent of cancers can be prevented by nutrition and lifestyle changes. Elimination of smoking could lower the impact of lung disease to a pittance. Over twenty percent of all strokes can be eliminated through improved nutrition. Diabetes itself and its deadly complications might be cut in half through nutrition intervention. Many cases of high blood pressure, and the heart failure it produces, could be prevented by proper nutrition and lifestyle changes earlier in life, and certainly nutritional improvements may lower the number and/or dose of drugs needed to control blood pressure once it has taken hold. Finally, with over 12% of adolescents and 66% of our adults overweight, we are in the midst of an epidemic and crisis of gargantuan proportions, which threatens to break our national budget within several years, from the expense of medical complications. Remember, over 30% of us are obese, over 40% have high cholesterol levels, one in five has heart disease, over one in five has diabetes (nearly 1 in 5 Americans also have the metabolic syndrome, a step away from diabetes)—and—92% of us are deficient in one or more essential vitamins and minerals. The incidence of diabetes and sugar intolerance is increasing sharply in our society, and the suffering and economic burden affects us all. Without changes, nearly 10% of the entire population will be diabetic in 21 years.

What we do concerning nutrition

We apply nutritional basics and health science so that you can maximize health potential. This approach can help a wide range of conditions, and assist in recovery. We take a nutritional history, review eating habits and patterns, do a computer analysis of possible deficiencies from a food frequency questionnaire and program, measure BMI, % body fat, muscle mass, total body water, bone mass, visceral fat index, analyze your food diary, and assess nutritional status and individual needs, which are unique in each of us. Basal metabolic rate and calories expended to maintain your present weight are calculated. Together with any special studies, we consider nutritional strengths and weaknesses, which come from our personal genetics, backgrounds, and our environments. Each of us has particular health concerns—including prescription drug intake--which may alter our nutritional status.

We usually suggest dietary and nutritional improvements, but also offer guidance on digestion and absorption support, promotion of colon health, avoidance in consuming or inhaling toxins or allergens, and advice on natural detoxification. We will also touch on the health properties of certain foods—which would be best for your condition—and those which you need to avoid. Without a doubt, we will talk about salt and sugar, fat and protein, and types of carbohydrate best for you.

In the Presidential Address at the last American Heart Association Scientific Sessions, Dr. Eckel asked “How important is nutrition and physical activity [in preventing and treating heart disease] in this modern era?” And he quickly answered that it is extremely important, with the potential to reduce the incidence of heart disease by 90%.

Last, at the end of your visit, we will discuss the widespread misinformation about certain aspects of nutrition with you, as discussed in the media and on the internet, which is pertinent to your health.

It is imperative to use only pharmaceutical-grade supplements. Consumer’s Union found quality issues in various supplements—variation in actual content of active ingredients, contamination, failure to disintegrate for proper absorption. We only use pure, authenticated, potency-tested products of exceptional quality--that you can trust.

Deficiencies are found on every nutrition survey

It’s no secret that most of us do not eat properly and as a result deficiencies and symptoms are common. A continuing food survey of food intake showed the following percentages of women over 20 who failed to consume the recommended intake in nutrients. This is the RDA intake, the minimum needed, which may not the optimal amount needed at all:

Women over 20:

And in a larger study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, over 70% of people did not even meet two-thirds of the RDA for one or more nutrients. Surveys consistently show that inadequate intakes of vitamins and minerals are common in the United States. The USDA reported that the most common deficiencies were in vitamins A, E, B6, calcium, magnesium, iron (especially in women), and zinc. From other studies, add folate, chromium, copper, and others to the list. Despite that fact that the US Government ordered folic acid fortification of food in 1998, as of October 2006, a report in the Amer J Public Health reported that folic acid deficiency was still not sufficiently corrected in the population.

Not many of us actually take in the 4700 mg of potassium we are supposed to. And now, we are in the midst of an epidemic of vitamin D deficiency, as reported in Time and Newsweek. This is of particular concern, since vitamin D helps protect against a number of cancers. If we just look at older folks, the number or people with serious deficiencies increase sharply.

Nutrients most important to women include calcium, vitamin D, iron, folate, magnesium, omega-3 fatty acids (fish oil and flaxseed), flavonoids and other antioxidants, soy, and olive oil.

In an ideal world, where people eat all the right foods, in the right amounts, often enough (broccoli everyday, anyone?), there would be no need for supplements. But very few of us do that and get enough exercise. As a result, many people may suffer with nonspecific symptoms constantly, which include lack of energy and motivation, fatigue, depression, poor concentration, loss of interest in sex, moodiness, weight gain, loss of skin tone, lack of organization, fuzzy memory, even poor complexion, and poor hair and skin health.

Benefits of optimum nutrition

The potential benefits of optimum nutrition are many, and may include:

• Mental alertness, clarity
  
• Peak physical performance
  
• Stable moods
  
• Lifting of depression, fatigue
  
• Greater and sustained energy
  
• Improved concentration and focus
  
• Weight control with better appearance
  
• Accelerated learning
  
• Fuller memory
  
• Greater productivity
  
• Reproductive and sexual health
  
• Enhanced resistance to disease
  
• Proper healing
  
• Greater muscle mass
  
• Increased capacity to handle stress
  
• Healthier body composition
  
• Improved self-image and self-esteem
  
• Sound sleep
  
• Improved bowel habits
  
• Less illness
  
• Lower health costs
  
• Decreased chances of accidents
  
• Cleaner, smoother skin
  
• Greater happiness
  
• Improved sugar handling by the body
  
• Lower triglyceride (fat) and cholesterol levels
  
• Relative protection from developing: Diabetes, Heart disease, Cancer, Osteoporosis, Stroke, Other degenerative diseases, such as AMD, gout, Deficiency syndromes.
  
• Fewer allergic symptoms, if any
  
• Reduced need for prescription drugs
  
• Healthier levels of hormones
  
• Improved internal efficiency in hormone metabolism”
  
• Longer life
  
• Reduced blood pressure
  
• Protection from dementia (Alzheimer’s Disease)
  
• Better vision
  
• Sharper reflexes
  
• Better hair and nail health
  
• Lower risk of becoming disabled
  
• Stronger, denser bones
  
• Less pain experienced
  
• Protection from fatty liver
  
• Improved capillary and blood vessel function
  
• Fewer arthritic symptoms
  
• Greater emotional health
  
• Renewed interest in sex and relationships

We help you with a plan to correct any deficiencies, and move on to better health and wellness.

Hippocrates said “Let food be thy medicine, and medicine be thy food” but Maimonides added, "Let nothing which can be treated by diet be treated by any other means."

Botanical medicine

Medicinally, an herb is a part of a plant used for treatment. About 15% of current medications are derived from plants (85% were in 1987), and 80% of cancer drugs come from plants. Worldwide, 80% of the population uses herbal medicine. Many of the health trends of the days of Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance—herbs and the Mediterranean diet--are popular again. Scientists are scouring the planet in jungles and oceans for plant-derived cures for our worst diseases. With millions of years under her belt, Mother Nature is the ultimate chemist and healer.

Differences between pharmaceuticals and herbs

Most pharmaceuticals are single chemicals, synthesized or isolated in vats, refined, and packaged. Most herbs contain hundreds to thousands of related compounds. The safety and effectiveness of herbs is often related to all of its components working together.

Will herbs work for me, and how long will it take?

Herbal medicine is an art, as well as a science. Consulting a professional helps greatly in choosing the right herb preparation, formula, concentration, dose, and a source that is most likely to help a given person. There are well over 8500 herbs available. In simple conditions, it is easier to find an herbal solution. In complex cases, there is great need to seek expert advice. Several herbs are often used together to increase effectiveness and synergy, and reduce toxicity. Depending upon the condition, and how the person follows directions, it may take from 30 min to 4 months for results to be seen. Herbs typically work slower than prescription drugs, but are gentler with fewer side effects. For this reason, most people return for a follow-up in two to four weeks.

Our attitude

It is a special privilege, honor, and responsibility to serve you. There are seven points to our relationship with you:

Empathy--we put ourselves in your shoes, try to feel your pain

• Humane--compassionate, caring, kind
  
• Personal--interest in you as an individual
  
• Forthright--telling you what you need to know plainly, directly, and honestly
  
• Respect--courteous, gracious treatment, taking your input seriously
  
• Thorough--conscientious and persistent
  
• Diligence--we are committed to expertise and excellence

Weight Control

Many people are overweight due to poor lifestyle habits and eating the wrong foods. In our fast-paced society, eating “fast foods”, due to lack of time, and sugary foods, sometimes to relieve stress, contribute to weight gain. Energy-dense diets with too much fat, food, and soft drinks definitely play a role in keeping our weights up. Empty calories in sugary, fatty, and processed foods also deprive our bodies of vitamins, minerals, and basic building blocks such as amino acids to make proteins, such as enzymes. Despite taking in an excess of food, many overweight people are actually malnourished.

We do not view overweight as a disease, nor a result of anyone being at “fault” in conducting their lives. Rather, we see it as an adjustment that has to be made as a result of the pressures that modern society places upon us. There is no denying that some people simply have a higher metabolism than others and stay thin despite what they eat.

WHAT ABOUT PILLS, SPECIAL FOODS, AND VERY LOW CALORIE DIETS?

Ultimately, you will need to change your eating habits and lifestyle to maintain a normal body weight. This is not as difficult as it seems, and we help you with guidance and direction. Sometimes certain supplements may be of benefit, giving you the encouragement and motivation necessary to make permanent changes. We assist you in developing healthy eating patterns as you progress in your program.

Our programs emphasize correct choices of food, proper eating habits, nutrition education, behavior modification, activity, and correc

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