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Me vs. Them

(Hopefully, one day it will be Me and Them, but for now...) I've been called a lot of things in the almost 30 years that I have been practicing alternative medicine: "That chiropractor my wife goes to in Boulder", "Her" and perhaps my favorite, "The Witchdoctor." I am actually rather fond of all the epithets I have collected over the years, because they imply that I do things differently, that I go beyond convention and that I have learned to use, among other things, the all-pervasive energy field that surrounds us all as a means to find the bottom-line truth of what is happening in the body.

Something's working. I'm still in business, never been sued (knock on wood now, please), and I have had the profound and blessed privilege of helping many patients attain a level of wellness that they never thought possible. Yes, I admit it. I use certain alternative methods that many conventional doctors and patients frown upon, point fingers at and dismiss (arbitrarily and ignorantly) out of hand as "witchcraft" and certainly not provable by "the scientific method." (How about Vioxx? Was that proven by the "scientific method" before it killed thousands of unsuspecting people of heart attacks and strokes? It took them years to remove Vioxx from the formulary.)

I use muscle testing to find out a lot of things about my patients, particularly what is making them feel outright sick, or many times, what is causing them to feel "just not quite right, doc." I will, of course, read very carefully the symptom picture they present at their initial consultation (sore throat, very tired, can't sleep, don't go to the bathroom easily) because I learned a very true thing many years ago in school: You learn some amazing and important information about a patient from a good history and from asking the right questions.

Sure, I care about symptoms, but I care more about what caused those symptoms. I care more about eradicating root causes than making nice and being popular and getting rid of symptoms because those very problematic and annoying symptoms will disappear automatically when the root cause is found and handled. And until then I really need to "read" those symptoms as a barometer of how well we are doing in getting you well.

Let me give you an example: Many of us carry around toxic loads of fungus, molds and yeast, due to the huge sugar consumption in our country. This is then compounded by the rampant use of antibiotics. The antibiotics kill the good guys in the gut while the sugar and extra carbs that we eat feed the bad guys, so isn't this a classic lose-lose situation for us? Our health just tanks with this scenario. So a patient comes in with, let's say, asthma, IBS, heartburn, achy knee joints and loss of memory. Would you believe that these seemingly disparate symptoms are quite possibly the result of one thing? A toxic load of fungus, molds and yeast?

If questioned carefully, I will find that this same patient will also complain of having intermittent rashes that come out of nowhere (Ha! It's the yeast acting up. . and possibly a gluten intolerance.) or athletes foot, an occasional leaky eye with blurred vision and chronic bladder infections. But, it's all coming from one root cause  the fungus, molds and yeast erupting in their various sneaky disguises. (This, by the way, is a fairly typical symptom picture of a new patient.)

Now what if this same patient goes to a regular MD rather than me? She might get drugs for her asthma from a referral to a pulmonologist (ka-ching $$), dangerous COX 2 inhibitors from a referral to the rheumatologist (ka-ching $$) for her arthritis, maybe expensive steroid creams from a referral to the dermatologist (ka-ching $$) for that rash that comes and goes, then back to her internist (ka-ching $$) who can probably handle giving her Prilosec for her heartburn and antidepressants because she had no idea that so much was wrong with her and she feels hopeless and depressed thinking that she is certainly waving good bye to her healthy life as she thought she knew it. And she might be, if she takes all those awful pharmaceuticals.

The separatist movement in medicine - or the pigeon-holing into "part" specialists, like little finger specialists, ascending bowel specialists, right eye specialist, etc, - is destroying the health of the trusting populous that goes to them for help. After a while, who knows what which doctor is doing to whom? There are far too many pills, potions and creams and the cut/burn/poison cancer treatments that conventional medicine loves so much is just appalling. Fifty years from now, when cancer is either non-existent or easily eradicated by an in office procedure, (Laser? Sound? Big Zapping Machine you get into, like Star Trek?) ) we will look back on this medieval torture routine for cancer and be horrified.

Bottom line: No one seems to be looking at the total picture here. A person is no longer considered to be a whole being, but a series of disparate and unconnected parts. But, you and I both know that this is patently untrue.

And this is why doctors like me differ from Big Pharma driven M.D.'s. I am very interested in finding root causes and treating the WHOLE YOU while the majority of allopathic docs are trained in the ways of Big Pharma and learn how to make just certain parts of people feel good by getting rid of the symptoms residing in their "part" specialty. While symptoms to me are precious guideposts in discovering the root cause of any illness, most M.D.'s want to eliminate these life-saving symptoms with drugs. I am not, in any way, dissing M.D.'s, but I am suggesting here that an ounce of prevention (me) is worth a pound of cure (them).

In my opinion, most conventional docs practice emergency medicine and this is NOT A BAD THING! It definitely has its part in the world. For example, please don't come to me with a burst appendix, a broken leg, a detached retina, a perforated bowel, necrotizing fasciitis, bacterial meningitis, a brain tumor, fulminating pneumonia, a myocardial infarction or if you are about to deliver a baby. I am trained to recognize these things and to refer you out, but I cannot handle nor can I treat those kinds of medical emergencies and blessed be that we have specialists with an arsenal of heavy duty drugs trained to do just this.

Now back to the muscle testing I mention in paragraph three: Those of you who have seen me know that I have hundreds of little vials with potentized extracts of heavy metals, chemicals, fungi, molds, bacteria, parasites, pesticides, foods and lots of other stuff with which I test you. I have never counted, but I probably have 2,000 little vials hanging out in my office just for testing purposes.

I use these vials to muscle test through the science of Applied Kinesiology which has been around since the early 50's when a chiropractor, George Goodheart, discovered that there were certain energy patterns in the body which were easily disclosed to the practitioner through a certain learned technique of muscle testing. Michael Lebowitz, D.C. further refined Goodheart's methodology (i.e. made it easier) 30 years ago.

For example, AK found that beneficial nutritional supplements (vitamin C) would increase the strength of certain indicator muscles whereas hostile stimuli (Round-up) would cause those same muscles to weaken. This implied that "at a level far below conceptual consciousness, the body 'knew' and through muscle testing was able to signal what was good and bad for it." (Power vs. Force, David Hawkins, M.D., Ph.D.)

And this is the essence of what I do. Very simply stated, I can tap into pre-conscious energy fields, and determine through your body's wisdom with, let's say, your arm muscle acting as an indicator, what is making you feel bad and what will probably make you feel better. I don't make it up since all of this information comes through and from you. I, as a practitioner have merely learned how to read your cues and clues. Muscle testing is also sublimely non-invasive and you don't even have to take your clothes off or get a painful shot.

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