Resources for your health IV....

Today's post:  Thursday, 11-3-2016

(The new resources that have been added since Tuesday’s 11-1 post begin at the end of the fasting section.  And they are labeled “New to this list, Thursday, 11-3.”)

1.  Today the majority of Americans still eat and drink things that make them fat and sick and don’t do the protective exercises that are proven to help them stay well at all or do nearly enough.

This results in heart attacks, strokes, heart failure, fatty liver, type 2 diabetes, vascular dementia and Alzeimer’s disease.  It also causes obesity, osteoarthritis, osteoporosis, shortened life, much shorter healthy lives worth living, and tends to cause cancer.  And, it both cuts the number of years people can work and their productivity while they still are working.

And, some people still smoke or use tobacco or nicotine products and ALL those problems get even worse!

The somewhat to completely ineffective drugs and medical procedures to make these avoidable problems somewhat better cost billions and billions more each year. 

The economy has a lot of drag because of this and will tank if it keeps getting worse!

2.  Meanwhile the research has been done in abundance.  If people stop that lifestyle and instead eat mostly organic vegetables and some organic fruit and health OK protein foods and health OK fats and oils instead AND take targeted supplements when needed AND do several kinds of exercise each week including strength training and short cardio with rests for fitness and other exercises they can fit in and like, ALL that changes!

Adding strength training and short cardio with rests and customized intermittent fasting to that lifestyle can cause permanent fat loss or prevent getting fat in the first place.

This also sharply slows aging and maintains the ability to be independent and self managing for almost all their lives in the people who follow it.

People can live and already have lived healthy lives worth living until well over 90 years old with none of these health problems. 

They have been productive when they have kept working or productive at the volunteer work and hobbies they like all that time.

3.  What are the resources that can help you make these lifestyle upgrades successfully that have helped others and gotten excellent results?

Here’s a short list:

The areas they are in include:

a)  Effective habit change for beneficial changes

b) Strength training produces many of the most valuable protective effects and self esteem boosts

c) Eating lots of organic vegetables which is possibly the most health protective thing known, 

d) Intermittent fasting because when done successfully it's an effective way to lose fat that is OK for your health to do

e) The way less sugar and no wheat people because stopping those things enables fat loss and stops most of the very worst kinds of foods and drinks

f) And the paleo people who combine no, or way less, sugar and organic lots of organic vegetables and enough naturally fed animal protein to support effective strength training.

g) Doctors who realize that lifestyle upgrades that prevent disease and restore health are more effective and safer than drugs to solve these problems and are working to enable medicine to include this approach and do it well in addition to medicine as we have developed it for those situations where it is needed and effective.

The resources:

a)  Effective habit change for beneficial changes

* James Clear has a large set of well thought out articles detailing workable techniques to do that. 

http://jamesclear.com/

I’ve found his work very helpful personally.

How to start improving your habits.  How to fix problems that block you when you try to change a habit.  How to keep improving.  How to ensure you keep the good habits you develop and regularly do enough of them to reliably get the good results you want.

His articles have all that and more!

b) Strength training produces many of the most valuable protective effects and self esteem boosts. 

Surprisingly it is even MORE important for women; but so far, fewer women do it than men.

* http://www.theperfectworkout.com/ is the website of a company that provides two very time efficient and quiet private sessions a week, even one will help, for a slightly pricey fee per month. 

They make it easy for women who have no experience to progress from there to some real health gains and protection from frailty in old age.  Many of the women also begin to look much better and gain considerable self confidence.  In fact, many older women who could no longer go places they enjoyed become able to do more than they could before!

Their method also tends to prevent and can help reverse osteoporosis.

They do well with professional men who are very short on time to exercise also.

* http://www.niashanks.com/   I like Nia Shanks direct approach that specializes in helping women.

"I help women achieve their goals with simple, empowering strength training programs."  "I've worked with clients for over a decade, and I know what works."

"Health and fitness information that makes you feel great about yourself."

"Shanks came up with her own powerlifting program to help women of all levels become their "strongest and most awesome" selves. She encourages readers to pay more attention to the numbers on the dumbbells than on the scale, to stop obsessing over having a "perfect" diet, and to find a way to get the best results with the least amount of effort."

https://www.muscleforlife.com/

* Mike Matthews specializes in helping people use power lifts with barbells to gain muscle while staying lean or becoming lean while increasing muscle at the same time.

His method works and his thoughtful and researched analysis is appealing.  So are the results he helps people get!

He’s quite knowledgable on strength training for women and has helped many get great results. 

But his sweet spot is helping men of 20 to 50 to look great and more muscular while losing fat at the same time.

He has added his own line of multiple component supplements.  I prefer to take many of these as separate supplements instead.  But his research on the benefits of the components is well done.

The bad news is that he is sometimes less health oriented than I think is desirable. And some of his health information is dated and incorrect.  But he is a very bright man who reads research well. So I think that will change eventually.

Bottom line, if you are a man who wants to look muscular and have visible abs, or you are a woman who wants to look athletic and sexy instead of just thin and willowy, Mike’s advice may well be just what you need.

New to this list, Thursday, 10-27:

c) Eating lots of organic vegetables which is possibly the most health protective thing known, 

A UK study found that eating six or more servings of vegetables a day or more cut the risk of heart disease, strokes, and many cancers AND cut the death rate from them and any other cause compared to people who rarely ate vegetables.

This is challenging so increasing your intake to three or more and trying to add one or two a day from there will help.

Also, eating that many every single day for many years means that it is essential to make all or almost all of those be organic vegetables only.

* Whole Foods Markets is far from perfect.  But I’ve found that they do manage to stock organic produce of decent or good quality at a reasonable price.  So they are a useful service available in most of the United States.   

http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/ and

    http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/stores/list

*The work of research dentist Weston Price found that the common elements of the many peoples he found still eating as they had for thousands of years AND who also had surprisingly good health and teeth -- all had in common that they included lots of organic vegetables and fruit and some source of animal protein and fat from animals fed their natural diet.  These diets also did NOT have grains or refined sugars.  They were totally free of wheat flour.

We now know that the factor he found in the animal protein and fat from animals fed their natural diet these peoples eat that caused good teeth and strong bones is vitamin K2.  Because K2 causes calcium to go to bone building and prevents it from hardening arteries, it also helps prevent heart disease.

There is no good place I know of to access his information at this time.

But a resource that does exist that found very similar things also found that a diet that stopped all other foods and additives and included all the different kinds of vegetables from green to orange to sea vegetables and some organ meats, particularly liver, had very dramatic health effects.

*Woman doctor, Terry Wahls MD, developed this diet to provide all the known essential nutrients in their natural forms. 

This is more powerful than it might sound because real foods have hundreds of synergistic and complementary micronutrients besides the better known ones.  Yes, carrots have beta carotene in abundance.  But they are also high in alpha carotene that may be much more health protective AND hundreds more carotenes that make those far more protective.

She had MS that had forced her to stop working and into bed rest.  She may well have been on the road to dying of MS.

Did eating the eight to 10 servings of vegetables a day and organ meats and stopping all the harmful foods and ingredients seem to work?

She gradually got close to 100 % recovery from MS!  She now is back working and taking hikes for exercise.

Other people who have followed her protocol exactly have had similar results.

And, people who weren’t sick who have followed her protocol have effortlessly lost fat until they became lean AND have begun to ‘youthen” – they look noticeably younger!

Her book, “Wahls Protocol, The : How I Beat Progressive MS Using Paleo Principles and Functional Medicine” by Terry Wahls (2014-04-03)1800

by Terry Wahls MD & Eve Adamson is available on Amazon

And, for help with using her information this book may be helpful and is also available on Amazon:

“The Wahls Protocol Cooking for Life: The Revolutionary Modern Paleo Plan to Treat All Chronic Autoimmune Conditions” Apr 4, 2017

My personal preference and that of many Paleo people and people into strength training is to include more animal protein from animals fed their natural diet than she does.

And, unless you have an autoimmune disease, you may have less motivation than it takes to follow her protocol; but the more of the organic vegetables she suggests that you eat each week the leaner and healthier you will be.

*Another resource is the book: 

“Anticancer: A New Way of Life   Dec 31, 2009   by David Servan-Schreiber MD”

The author does a wonderful job showing that grains and oils from grains and animals fed grains instead of their natural diet, cause high inflammation which helps cause and speed cancer and Alzheimer’s disease.

He makes it very clear and has helpful information on the anticancer effects of the many kinds of vegetables Dr Wahls recommends along with some tips in adding them to your meals.

My personal preference and that of many Paleo people and people into strength training is to include more animal protein from animals fed their natural diet than he does.

He does show why proteins and oils from animals fed their natural diet are far safer for you health than proteins and fats from animals fed grains!

*Another resource is Joel Fuhrman

https://www.drfuhrman.com/

His book, Eat to Live: The Amazing Nutrient-Rich Program for Fast and Sustained Weight Loss, Revised Edition Jan 5, 2011  by Joel Fuhrman MD is available on Amazon.

His focus using his ANDI score is on the organic vegetables and fruits and legumes that have the most nutrition per calorie.

He suggests getting your monosaturated fats from raw tree nuts or avocados instead of extra virgin olive oil for example.

He eliminates grains because they are so low on his ANDI score.  Sugars score zero and are NOT on his list!

His diet also is hard for most people to follow.  But those who do, find they gradually drop their body fat and become lean with low normal BMI readings.

“Beyond vegetarian and vegan there is the nutritarian. What is it and why would anyone do it? Dr. Fuhrman coined the term “Nutritarian” to describe a diet that is nutrient-dense and plant-rich, and includes anti-cancer superfoods, which also facilitate weight loss. These foods supply both the right amount of macronutrients (protein, fat and carbohydrates) and the vital micronutrients (vitamins, phytochemicals and minerals) that unleash the body’s incredible power to heal itself and slow the aging process, giving the body renewed vitality.”

Quite true!  The research supports this strongly!

My personal preference and that of many Paleo people and people into strength training is to include more animal protein from animals fed their natural diet than he does.

Dr Furhman says his diet without animal protein provides 60 or 70 grams of protein.  But this falls short of the 75% of the lean bodyweight in pounds that Matt Hedman, founder of The Perfect Workout discovered was the minimum needed for adding muscle and strength gains in his clients.

It falls even farther short of the gram per pound of bodyweight that bodybuilders and power lifters find to be optimum.

In my case, the 132 pounds of lean bodyweight I have now mean that my minimum intake should be 99 grams of protein a day.  The optimum would be 162 grams of protein a day with 146 grams a day likely the minimum needed to boost my muscle and bone enough to add 14 pounds of lean body weight to replace what I lost since I was younger.

Dr Furhman also overstates the dangers of animal protein foods from naturally fed sources when eaten by people otherwise following a low inflammation version of his diet and taking protective supplements in my opinion.

And, since his diet is vegan, the safest and most health producing way to use it is to take supplements for the many key nutrients it leaves out.  Methyl B12 is essential and l-carnitine and Omega 3 oils and DHA and zinc and magnesium and vitamin K2 also are. 

Dr Wahls avoids the lack of trace minerals by including seaweed for it.  With Dr Furhman’s diet adding seaweed or the supplement spirulina and being sure to include raw tree nuts if you aren’t allergic will help solve that problem.

But it’s clear that the more of the high nutrition, low calorie, organic vegetables he recommends that you eat, the healthier you will be.

d) Intermittent fasting because when done successfully it's an effective way to lose fat that is OK for your health to do.

I may add some of the other people in this field to the list that will be on our websites.

But for now, the two who I think have it right and have gotten extraordinarily good results are:

Dave Asprey of Bulletproof.com and Dr Jason Fung, author of the new book: 

“The Complete Guide to Fasting: Heal Your Body Through Intermittent, Alternate-Day, and Extended Fasting," by Dr Jason Fung" co-authored with Jimmy Moore.

I’ve read an interview he did with the core of his work; and he knows the approach of Dave Asprey and has used it successfully.

They have found that unlike every day cutbacks below the level needed by your metabolism that your body’s failsafe famine response reads as a famine, intermittent fasting can even boost your metabolism a bit.

And, because your brain can run on fats as well as sugars, you can use fasting with the kind of MCT oils that Dave Asprey finds do this best. 

He finds this helps you sustain energy and a good mood when you have removed all the foods with carbohydrates except the lowest glycemic nonstarchy vegetables while doing partial fasting.

Further, Dr Fung finds that if you do it correctly, your brain begins to run well on your stored fat as you remove it for use!

Lastly, periodic fasting sharply lowers small particle LDL, chronic inflammation, triglycerides, and excess blood sugar!

Here’s the book by Dave Asprey:

“The Bulletproof Diet: Lose up to a Pound a Day, Reclaim Energy and Focus, Upgrade Your Life”   Dec 2, 2014       by Dave Asprey and J.J. Virgin

http://www.bulletproof.com/about-us

*I find his book a bit hard to follow.  But some people will like his way of categorizing foods from great, to good, to fair, to “Kryptonite” because as long as you avoid the things in his horrible category and include a lot of great ones, you can customize his advice to your tastes.

*The thing I like about his work is how he uses MCT oil to maintain you mood, energy, and power your brain without carbohydrate foods or any other foods while fasting.

He found the two fractions of MCT oil that do this best and doesn’t use the one that tastes despicably BAD.  So his “Brain Octane” does a good job and is quite mild in flavor!

(This very important because I once tried an MCT oil that just included all the fractions.  I was able to choke it down twice before I tossed it out!  It was thicker and very bad tasting and eating it was like eating the grease they use on car and truck parts. So, if you have had an MCT oil of that kind, fear not.  Brain Octane is quite palatable instead!)

*Similarly, in addition to this MCT oil, to give you extra energy, he includes his coffee.

He found that most coffee in the United States that does not come from Europe has a good bit of molds in it. 

This reduces the energy you get from coffee and increases the side effects such as feeling jittery and over-amped and causing acid reflux.

He has managed to produce a coffee with close to zero mold.  And, the people who drink it do report more energy, less jitteriness or none, and no reflux effect!

In addition to his original Brain Octane coffee he now carries French Roast Brain Octane that has gotten very good reviews.

He also found that many people could fast without hunger better if they added melted grass fed butter to their coffee.  (This avoids the milk proteins and lactose in milk or light cream that can reduce the effect of making fasting easy to do.)

And, recently he began to supply premade grass fed ghee so you can use a liquid easy to mix into your coffee instead of having to whisk unsalted butter into it.

And, ghee has more of the water and milk solids removed:

"Ghee is a product made from butter....It is made by boiling butter until all the water has evaporated out and the milk solids have settled to the bottom"

from Wikipedia

Ghee is what you have when you carefully pour off the top part leaving the remaining milk solids.

(So far I use coffee and Brain Octane only; but when I try a several day fast, I’ll have some of their Ghee on hand if needed.)

The coffee and Brain Octane MCT oil or that plus the Ghee will supply reliable energy for the first part of a fast where your body isn’t burning its own fat yet.  Once your body does begin to burn its own excess fat, you actually have higher than normal energy after that.

e) The way less sugar and no wheat people because stopping those things enables fat loss and stops most of the very worst kinds of foods and drinks

f) And the paleo people who combine no, or way less, sugar and organic lots of organic vegetables and enough naturally fed animal protein to support effective strength training.

These overlap a good bit because both sets of these people include zero hybrid wheat and zero or very limited amounts of other grains, if any and zero extra fructose and very limited amounts of real sugars, if any.

e)  The best source for the health harms of hybrid wheat, lots of other grains, and sugars is the author:  William Davis, MD.

Wheat Belly: Lose the Wheat, Lose the Weight, and Find Your Path Back to Health by William Davis  was his first book.

He now has an upgraded edition AND one that shows that removing all wheat and adding DHA has a very powerful heart health protection effect with a significant amount of quoted research called:

Wheat Belly Total Health: The Ultimate Grain-Free Health and Weight-Loss Life Plan

(Dr Davis shows that hybrid wheat has both the pro-inflammatory omega 6 oils that the author of Anti-Cancer shows causes so many diseases and helps cause cancers, it also slams up blood sugars more than sugar and has a kind of gluten that triggers gluten intolerance and negative health effects from it that are quite real but somewhat less!)

f) The Paleo people simply model the naturally fed protein foods and vegetables and fruit and seaweeds that humans ate before they ate grain.

The native populations still eating their diet that their ancestors had eaten for hundreds of years or far longer that Dr Weston Price studied show that this diet can be quite varied depending on what is locally available.

Since we have no time machines to see what humans ate over 10,000 years ago for sure, Dr Price’s work that did look at similar eating styles is extremely valuable.

The two people who model this kind of food are Robb Wolf-- and Jimmie Moore who co-wrote the fasting book with Dr Jason Fung and supplies a lower carb approach.

My take is that for best health the versions that include lots of organic vegetables and some organic fresh fruit are superior.

For fat loss and just before fasting the lower carb version that Jimmie Moore recommends causes more fat burning for energy and energy for your brain best.

But both versions focus on eating animal protein foods from naturally fed animals just as humans all once did.

*http://www.livinlavidalowcarb.com/

"In January 2004, Jimmy Moore made a decision to get rid of the weight that was literally killing him. At 32 years of age and 410 pounds, the time had come for a radical change of lifestyle. A year later, he had shed 180 pounds, shrunk his waist by 20 inches, and dropped his shirt size from 5XL to XL. After his dramatic weight loss, Jimmy was inundated with requests from friends, neighbors and complete strangers seeking information and help. Jimmy is dedicated to helping as many people as possible find the information they need to make the kind of lifestyle change he has made. To that end, he has started a blog and a number of web-sites to get out the message of lifestyle change and healthy living. Here you will find links to Jimmy's blog, his YouTube videos and all of the websites he contributes to."

*http://robbwolf.com/

On his website he has a quick start program.  But reading his book to see his style first may make sense.  Or if you are already familiar you can try his program first.

Book:  The Paleo Solution: The Original Human Diet Hardcover  September 14, 2010 by Robb Wolf  (Author), Loren Cordain (Foreword)

(Loren Cordain originated the Paleo concept.  Robb Wolf apparently studied Cordain’s work.)

New to this list, Thursday, 11-3:

g) Doctors who realize that lifestyle upgrades that prevent disease and restore health are more effective and safer than drugs to solve these problems and are working to enable medicine to include this approach and do it well in addition to medicine as we have developed it for those situations where it is needed and effective.

The doctors we’ve already listed and Dr Dean Ornish and Dr David Perlmutter all do this to some degree.

But, so far the three I’m most impressed with are:

Dr Mark Harmon, Dr Jason Fung, and UK Cardiologist Aseem Malhotra.

Each of them knows in detail that converting people from the health harming lifestyle to the health supporting and protecting lifestyle is badly needed; is extremely effective, and is far more effective and safer than using drugs to do so.

1.  Not having the expertise to get people to make this upgrade even when he found they would be helped by it, Dr Fung’s delight that he could help people only part way there with fasting shows through in his writing. 

But he very clearly knows that making the upgrade works and does so when drugs often make things worse instead.

2.  The doctor who may know this best and express it most clearly is UK Cardiologist Aseem Malhotra:

Read this and see his movie if you can!

http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/869636?nlid=109804_3802&src=WNL_mdplsnews_161007_mscpedit_card&uac=17693FN&spon=2&impID=1211141&faf=1#vp_7

[Has info on how more vegetables and less smoking or exposure to it and far less sugar cuts diabetes, obesity, heart attacks, strokes, and medical costs WAY more than drugs or stents

AND it has a new film that is 80 minutes long that says so and is apparently quite good!]

'Big Fat Fix' Film Challenges Mediterranean Diet       An Interview With Cardiologist Aseem Malhotra

Around that time, I started writing for the BMJ and began looking more closely at the research on nutrition and cardiovascular disease. My first realization (and it's something we don't learn about in medical school) was that most cardiovascular disease can be prevented by addressing lifestyle factors. According to the Lancet global burden of disease reports, poor diet contributes to more disease and death than physical inactivity, smoking, and alcohol combined.[2] That's extraordinary.

There is good evidence that dietary changes can rapidly reduce cardiovascular risk. We have the Lyon Heart Study,[3] conducted in patients post–myocardial infarction (MI), and the number needed to treat to prevent early mortality is 30. Following a Mediterranean diet after having an MI is more effective than statins.[4] We have a huge imbalance. Overtreatment is a big problem, and at the same time, we have neglected lifestyle medicine.

 Cardiologist Aseem Malhotra, MBChB, MRCP, talks about his new documentary The Big Fat Fix, which sent him to Pioppi, Italy, the village where Ancel Keys researched diet and cardiovascular health. A regular contributor to the BMJ and major UK newspapers on the topic of dietary health, Dr Malhotra believes that the demonization of fat let sugar off the hook as the real culprit in the diabetes, obesity, and cardiovascular disease epidemic, and that we need to rethink our approach to exercise.

Aseem Malhotra, MBChB, MRCP

theheart.org | Medscape: How did you become interested in diet?

Dr Malhotra: Originally I trained as an interventional cardiologist. My journey to becoming a campaigner against the epidemic of obesity and its related diseases plaguing the western world began in the hospital.

I was working as a trainee (a registrar, as we say in the UK) and I treated a middle-aged man with emergency stenting for ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction. The next day, when I was talking to him about following a healthy lifestyle, quitting smoking, taking all of his medications, and following a good diet, he was actually served a burger and fries. He asked me, "How do you expect me to change my lifestyle when you're serving me the same crap that brought me in here in the first place?"

If our food environment was allowing our patients to be served junk food, then something had to change.

theheart.org | Medscape: What did you do to initiate change?

Dr Malhotra: I got involved with a group called the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges, which is essentially a prestigious academic body that represents every doctor in the UK. I joined their Obesity Steering Group as the junior doctor representative because I'd written a few pieces in the Guardian and the Observer newspapers. Through that, I met various professors involved in nutrition and public health policy, and after a year of reviewing evidence to tackle obesity, we came up with a 10-point plan.[1]

There is good evidence that dietary changes can rapidly reduce cardiovascular risk. We have the Lyon Heart Study,[3] conducted in patients post–myocardial infarction (MI), and the number needed to treat to prevent early mortality is 30.

Following a Mediterranean diet after having an MI is more effective than statins --

when you look at the components of the Mediterranean diet with consistent evidence of benefit, they're green vegetables, cauliflower, tomatoes—you name it.

Non-starchy vegetables should be at the base of the food pyramid. The reason I say "non-starchy" is because potatoes are not good for people with type 2 diabetes

We have evolving research telling us that excess sugar is associated strongly with cardiovascular mortality.

A paper published in JAMA Internal Medicine in 2014[10] showed that people who consumed more than 25% of their calories from sugar had an almost threefold increase in cardiovascular mortality compared with people who got less than 10% of their calories form sugar.

I'm sure there is some individual variability, but Walter Willet, who is probably considered one of the chief nutritional scientists in the world, notes that coconut oil preferentially increases HDL-C.[24]

So even if your LDL-C increases slightly, your overall cholesterol profile improves. This is not a license for people to gorge on coconut oil. What's really important is that people cut out the sugar and the refined carbohydrates.

Then you can have coconut oil as part of your healthy diet but I wouldn't put it at the base of the food pyramid. Personally, I add it to my diet because it gives me energy and makes me feel full, and it's very stable for cooking.

My concern is that about 40% of Americans are considered prediabetic.[25] If you have prediabetes, you need to reduce carbohydrate consumption.

There is an example from the UK of a family practitioner named Dr David Unwin who advised his patients with type 2 diabetes to stop eating refined and starchy carbohydrates.[26] Simple advice, no calorie restriction, and he told them to eat fats, including saturated fat.

Within a year, he managed to save £45,000 (about $60,000) compared with practices in his area. Some of his patients reversed their diabetes, or you could say that they went into remission and stopped their medications.[27] Extrapolate that across the healthcare system and this would save about £423M (about $530M).

You emphasize extra-virgin olive oil in the diet, saying that it can help reverse inflammation and potentially atherosclerosis. Is that based on the PREDIMED-Navarra analysis of carotid intima media thickness?[15]

Dr Malhotra: Yes, and it's in keeping with other good-quality observational and lab-based studies.[16] When you look at inflammatory markers and the polyphenols in foods like olive oil, nuts, and vegetables, they rapidly attenuate inflammation

The evidence clearly shows that the biggest decline in mortality from cardiovascular disease in the past several decades is because of the decline in smoking and tobacco consumption. The example often given is Helena, Montana.[21] In 2002, they brought in a public smoking ban, and within 6 months, there was a 40% absolute reduction in MI hospital admissions. Then the tobacco lobby came in and the law was rescinded, and the admission levels went back up again.

We can explain that because even 30 minutes of passive smoking increases platelet activity, making you more prothrombotic and prone to plaque rupture, especially if you've got underlying coronary disease.[22]”

3.  Dr Mark Harmon practices something he calls Functional Medicine.

I think a better name is Integrated Medicine –

-- because it integrates the best of lifestyle changes and effective supplements to move systems in the body that test as down or in a harmful stage to good health

while at the same time using targeted medicines for short periods where indicated to help in one of these systems repairs or turn off the cause when there is a cause producing these system problems.

This form of medicine should rapidly become the mainstream kind of medicine because it cures patients more surely, more reliably, faster, and at lower long term cost than what we do now.

I’ve read his emails for many years; and Dr Harmon has used his system to cure people, sometimes quite quickly, who conventional medicine has not been able to help at all.

For more on Dr Harmon see:

Institute for Functional Medicine   Mark Hyman, MD

https://www.functionalmedicine.org/page.aspx?id=162

MARK HYMAN, MD, is a practicing family physician, a nine-time #1 New York Times bestselling author, and an internationally recognized leader, speaker, educator, and advocate in his field. He is the Director of the Cleveland Clinic Center for Functional Medicine. He is also the founder and medical director of The UltraWellness Center, chairman of the board of the Institute for Functional Medicine, a medical editor for The Huffington Post, and has been a regular medical contributor to CNN and many television shows including CBS This Morning, the Today Show, Good Morning America, - See more at: https://www.functionalmedicine.org/page.aspx?id=162#sthash.Gm0jQ0dS.dpuf

About Functional Medicine - Dr. Mark Hyman

drhyman.com/about-2/about-functional-medicine/

Written by MARK HYMAN, MD

About Functional Medicine

FUNCTIONAL MEDICINE is the future of conventional medicine–available now. It seeks to identify and address the root causes of disease, and views the body as one integrated system, not a collection of independent organs divided up by medical specialties. It treats the whole system, not just the symptoms.

Conclusion:

These are not the only practitioners who deserve being listed here. 

But I’ve found the ones I’ve listed here to be of unusually high quality in what are the most important parts of causing good health and preventing bad health.