Restoring Optimal Health through Nutritional Intervention

Hippocrates came to the conclusion that health was the natural state, disease was abnormal, and that the role of the physician was to assist nature in returning to a natural state. Thus, the statement “First Do No Harm” was included in the oath I took as a young altruistic medical student named after the founder of modern medicine.

Unfortunately, after learning my craft and setting out to help patients, I quickly discovered that many of our key tools to help people were also “harming them.”

As Director of Surgical Intensive Care at a large teaching hospital in Dayton, Ohio I was constantly amazed at the delicate balance between the side effects and benefits of our most advanced medications. Add tremendously stressful major operations to the mix and I realized that there needed to be a better way to help people recover from illness.

When I really started paying attention to my patient’s nutritional needs I was amazed at the acceleration of their recoveries and the decrease in frequency of complications.

Although these very sick people could not feed themselves (and many times their intestines were not functioning) when given the building blocks the body needed to help in recovery I realized true inherent capacity the body has to heal itself! I didn’t realize it then, but this discovery would lead me away from dangerous medications and surgeries I had spent so long to master; and fuel a growing passion to help people treat their illnesses with advanced nutritional intervention.

I am not saying that all those marvelous new medicines and surgeries are not important because they have placed the American medical community at the cutting edge of treating acute injury.

I needed to return to Hippocrates’ premise of assisting nature in reestablishing a natural state. If you get hit by a car or have a heart blockage our interventional health care including medicines and surgery are in their glory. But I can tell you that without a shadow of a doubt when it comes to treating diabetes , high cholesterol, heart disease, and of course the ever-growing disease of obesity that the American medical community is woefully lacking.

There is no surgery or medication available or to come that will ever provide the solution. The future to curing these chronic conditions and disease will come from a kinder gentler approach that would have Hippocrates beaming from ear to ear.