Naturopathic Maine

In the CNN article , they list alcohol as the leading cause of death for people between the ages of 15 and 49.  But those people weren’t keeling over from heart attacks or cancer, they were running off the road. How often is alcohol mentioned in relation to an accident or injury? We all know this, it’s not a surprise. If somebody lights himself on fire or falls down a well, we know to ask if he’d been drinking. Somebody gets in a fight? Alcohol is probably involved. So yes, I absolutely would agree that alcohol is a major problem for the health of otherwise healthy people if we’re looking at their risk of accidental injury leading to death. Let me know if any of you take issue with this assumption. What was striking about the Lancet’s assessment of alcohol risks is the overwhelming risk for men as opposed to women. Men drinking had three times the risk of dying between 15 and 49 as women. Road accidents and self-harm were leading causes of death, though they also included tuber...

For those of you who missed the USA Today article , a professor decided that, amid a world awash with animal fats, she needed to single out coconut oil as pure poison. I went looking, and here's what I found: In July of 2018, researchers attempted to compare different fats . They did this by combining every study they could find that compared two fats. If one fat was compared against olive oil, and another fat was compared against olive oil, they assumed that the two fats would perform similarly against each other. If you have a question about this logic, so did they, but they were pretty desperate. No definitive research. Why? Because, and this is important, almost no research has been done on comparing different fats. So when anyone, no matter what their degrees, and no matter how many letters they have after their name, says anything definitive about comparing fats, they literally don’t know what they are talking about. That means if someone tells you that coconut oil is po...

Right before I got diagnosed with colon cancer, I wrote a book on our guts, called Tending Your Internal Garden. In it, I found some pretty exciting things (like you have thousands of unique species living inside you right now).  But science marches on, and now we have research that shows why diet books and diet experts don't agree. They are all right, and they are all wrong. Why? Because you're unique. No, seriously. This isn't a "feel good" moment. This is an "Oops, that means they don't know" moment. Yep. All the diet experts out there cannot tell you what the best diet is for you because you have a unique ecosystem. Your responses to food are your own. You literally can make yourself sick eating like they tell you to if you ignore yourself. Just because it worked for "buns of steel" diet-guru-of-the-week does not mean it will work for you. Here's the TED video detailing how they found this out, with some suggestions about...

It can seem with any chronic illness that the road is one way. You can slow the progression using drugs, but there is no way to go back. This feels particularly true with patients who have diabetes. Yet a new study shows that isn't the case. The researchers in this study used a novel new approach called diet, foregoing the usual drugs. They found that diabetes patients, many of whom had been diabetic for years, were able to reverse their diabetes by using a low-calorie diet and dropping about thirty pounds. The numbers the researchers saw in these patients were similar to those seen in weight-loss surgery patients. Surgical practices advertise that they can reverse diabetes, but it usually involves a major surgery and the subsequent loss of over a hundred pounds. What happened in the low-calorie diet was that diabetic patients were able to reset their insulin levels and increase their body's ability to process sugar. The question is why this study needed to be done at all. ...

Here's the question: if something is amazingly successful, why does it need to saturate the airwaves with advertising? That's the problem with the Outback Vision Protocol , which was first sent to me by a patient. The extremely long infomercial-style presentation promised me that two marvelous supplements would cure very serious vision problems. My hearty presenter informed me that these supplements, with the addition of kangaroo meat, are what a keen-eyed group of soldiers use for superhuman vision. They cured his wife's eye problems and they could cure mine. Some of you already can see what's coming. But if you're one of the millions of people dealing with macular degeneration, you might keep reading and pull out your credit card. So let me save you the time.  At long last, the supplements were revealed to me. They were (drumroll please) lutein and zeaxanthin. If I seem underwhelmed, I am. These are not mysterious or new. They've been around for decades. I...

A new study, brought to my attention by another patient, shows wonderful news for both children and adults with NF1. We finally have evidence that this genetic disease can be seriously improved through dietary intervention. It also gives evidence that supplements added to a bad diet won't help much. The study followed NF1 patients for six months, on either the Mediterranean or Western diets. Neither diet impacted the rate of neurofibromas. Then the researchers added 1200 mg (three capsules worth) of turmeric to the diets. Adding turmeric to the western diet did nothing. But adding it to the Mediterranean diet caused a slowing in the buildup of neurofibromas. Having a diet and a single supplement slow the progression of a genetic disease is wonderful. It means that the disease is not genetic in its symptoms, but epigenetic. Epigenetics is the study of how the body turns off and on genes. The diet and the supplement were able to turn off the progression of neurofibromas. But what...

As someone who's had colon cancer, I was excited by the Newsmax headline that trumpeted. " 3-Step Treatment Cures Colorectal Cancer in Mice "  (yes, I use a variety of news sources, NPR to Newsmax). But when they said that this new treatment was 100% cure, I got suspicious. When I get suspicious, I go digging. The Newsmax story didn't give me enough specifics to find the original medical article, but I found it eventually. The original title is a mind-numbing, " Curative Multicycle Radioimmunotherapy Monitored by Quantitative SPECT/CT-Based Theranostics, Using Bispecific Antibody Pretargeting Strategy in Colorectal Cancer. " It makes me wonder if I missed the class in medical school on how to write the most boring headlines imaginable. The most exciting word of the headline is "curative." These mice were cured. But these mice didn't get colon cancer the normal way (bad lifestyle choices and poor genetics). They had human colon cancer cells x...

For those of us in the chronic back pain field, Dr. Sarno is a bit of a legend. He had a perpetually best-selling book, multiple celebrity endorsements, and an established place in the NY medical community. When I wrote my own book on chronic back pain , I looked at him as a leader in the field. But the movie  All The Rage brings that idea into a sharp contrast with the reality of Dr. Sarno’s ideas being largely ignored by his colleagues. Not just ignored, disregarded as foolish. In a world where we cut, inject, and numb with our strongest painkillers, Dr. Sarno’s solution of the mind has no place. His results were disregarded as placebo, and his colleagues did not refer their patients to him because they did not believe what he was doing could work. In the past year we have had the medical realization that our strongest painkillers are not more effective than lesser, over-the-counter medication. They are also addictive, creating a crisis that kills patients and robs others of ...

Is your inner anxiety not yet up to "impending catastrophe?" Are you not watching enough political media to make your blood boil? Here's a new threat, possibly lurking in your backyard, Powassan virus! The earliest mention of Powassan Virus in online medical journals is from 1959,  when it was first named after a town in Ontario where it was found. That 1959 medical article mentions that Powassan had probably been around for decades. So why are we hearing so much about it now? Well, we've just had two cases of Powassan in Maine. By just, I mean that we just had two more cases. Two earlier cases this year were reported in a Bangor Daily article back in April . Those were from around Portland, and these two new ones are from the midcoast region . Bringing our total for the year to four cases. At the same time, we're counting hundreds of Lyme cases, so why do we care so much about Powassan? Well, according to the CDC , Maine only had two Powassan cases IN THE PA...

Salt may not make you thirsty, and it may help with weight loss. Yep, those on the conclusions of a NYT article on Russian Cosmonaut studies . Researchers rarely get to put people in isolation and measure all their excretions (what a great job!) so they can be forgiven for missing this particular discovery. It turns out that the cosmonauts had twenty-eight-day cycle of salt retention, even if they were on a low salt diet. Because these were men, it's a new discovery. If they'd been women, everyone would have said, "I knew that." The men also lost weight when they ate lots of salt, and weren't thirstier overall. Again, this seems miraculous until you remember that iodine reacts with the thyroid to stimulate thyroid function. Lots of salt, lots of thyroid function. But the reason we don't do tons of salt is because you can't really control thyroid function well with salt. Sometimes it becomes active (weight loss) sometimes it gets very active (panic att...

A recent Norwegian study on aspirin and colon cancer patients was published in May . Unlike many other, smaller studies, they were able to survey the entire population and had automatically recorded their aspirin use from over ten years ago. Bad for personal privacy, good for medical research. The study combined all cancer groups, but found a significant (15%) reduction in cancer deaths directly associated with aspirin use. Stage II patients benefitted slightly more.  Aspirin is recommended in my book, The Colon Cancer Diet , though my personal experience with it has been that it likely increased my CEA. It's nice to see it being supported so broadly. A study of this size is wonderful because it doesn't just make the alternative medical journals. Not only did the study get written up by N.D.s ( article here ), it appears on a conservative Texas Colon Cancer Research Center's site . Hopefully, the broad interest will translate into a changing of recommendations ...

So many products have no medical research, it's hard to say no to one that does. Avemar is sold widely and used by many practitioners, so why would I not recommend it? I don't, and here's why. Patented back in 1998, fermented wheat germ extract (Avemar) was supposedly Dr.Hidvégi's life work . He based it on Dr. Gyorgi's idea that compounds like it might balance blood sugars. So how did we get from balancing blood sugars to curing cancer? The company isn't saying, but I suspect that this particular extract tastes terrible. The initial studies talked about basically a paste you had to eat. They've added more water and an orange flavor, but that usually is a sign of something fairly unpalatable. But there are studies. We've got test tube studies, rat studies, and an open label human trial for colon cancer patients. Overall, the results are all very positive. An article by another enthusiastic practitioner pushing the product for all cancers brought it ...

I spoke at the Alfond Cancer Center at 6 pm on Tuesday, October 25, 2016 on pain and marijuana use. These are my extended notes including studies I cited. Casket joke: What would you want them to say? Doctor, Teacher, realist. Discussing Pain  Who I am. Naturopathic Doctor Colon Cancer Survivor? (I prefer the term “careful person”) Researcher Does marijuana help with cancer pain? No. -side note on politics and medicine. Maybe. -nausea research. What is pain? A definition of pain. Unpleasant sensation. “physical suffering or discomfort caused by illness or injury” a) Dental work b) broken arm c) vagovasal response to needles d) “gas pains” post-surgery. Tolerance is based on predictability, expectation, and duration. Uncontrolled, random, unending pain Torture is “the action or practice of inflicting severe pain on someone as a punishment or to force them to do or say something” it’s horrible but at least you know when and why. What ca...

Some years ago I did some research on prions as part of my interest in mad cow disease. What I found was very disturbing, as well as the possible overlap between diseases like mad cow and Alzheimers. Now, other doctors are considering the possibility that we could be passing material from one person to another and infecting them with early Alzheimers . It's very preliminary, but it's based on the idea that patients with  Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease  (the human version of mad cow) who received spinal column material had early onset Alzheimers develop while other patients who didn't receive the material did not. The biggest issue is that prions, the material that may have been passed, are resistant to normal sterilization procedures. Until we have larger studies on early onset Alzheimers, we won't know if the issue is widespread or limited to people who already have a prion disease. 

Doing art lowers the stress levels of most people, regardless of their level of talent. A few people continue to stress, about 25%, but most had lower cortisol (the stress hormone) levels after doing creative art. The Drexel University study expected that experience would matter, but finger painting works as well as making a Monet . So do something nice for yourself. Doodle, sculpt, and be messy!

Most of us only want to "bite the bullet" occasionally, but a disturbing number of people bite the bullet, or their own teeth, all night long. The common medical opinion is that grinding your teeth is all in your mind. It's called bruxism, and the Mayo Clinic defines it as " when you grind, gnash or clench your teeth." I love it when we give something a Latin name and pretend that means we know anything about it. In the same breath that the Mayo clinic says bruxism is due to stress,they also say it can be associated with a whole host of medical conditions. So don't worry, or really worry, and grind your teeth some more. At any rate, there isn't much to be done for it besides seeing a shrink, getting a dental guard (a plastic bullet to bite instead), or trying out botox injections. So much for conventional treatments. We need another plan for treating teeth grinding. Let's start by asking if bruxism, grinding, is the same as chewing or sucking. T...

As pollen season hits with a bludgeon, many people turn to antihistamines to keep their eyes from looking like something out of the Walking Dead. Those seeking out a doctor's prescription for itchy eyes are most often prescribed antihistamines, and most doctors do not change the prescription despite continued complaints from patients ( 43% found the treatment unsatisfactory in one study). But what about eye drops? Patients have a choice between simple saline, any number of drug preparations, homeopathic remedies , and even Ayurvedic options. For a start," The simple washing of nasal cavities using isotonic saline provides a significant improvement and is useful, particularly in children ." None of the eye drop options are risk-free. Of the studies available, the drug sodium cromoglicate was far less risky than anything in the steroid classes (usually words ending in -one). But patients are typically prescribed both. Of the alternative treatments, homeopathics would ...

I received an email from a married couple that both came down with colon cancer at nearly the same time. The husband has an extensive history of surgeries for other reasons, and the wife has a resistant case of c. difficile. I would love to hear from any other couples out there who have both been diagnosed with colon cancer near each other. As far as I know, no one is researching this particular aspect of colon cancer. 

Three Things I Wish Someone Had Told Me After Surgery One: Your first bowel movements will be blood. That’s expected, don’t freak out. Two: Gas will hurt for a long time after your surgery. You will expect to hurt every time you laugh or sneeze or poop. Three: Your nerves that were cut will gradually heal back. When they do, you will hurt like something bad is happening in various parts of your body you previously didn’t know could hurt. This painful reunion of your nerves will go on for months after your surgery. Do call your surgeons about any pain, and realize there’s not much they can do.