Focusing On What Really Matters

These days, everyone’s attention is focused on cancer.  This makes sense since it is estimated that one in eight American women will have breast cancer during her lifetime, and that’s just one of many cancers that plague Western society.  However, what might come as a surprise to some is that heart disease kills more American men and women than all forms of cancer combined.

Why aren’t we as a society doing a better job of preventing and treating heart disease?  As with everything in medicine, the answer has to do with money.  But that is the subject of another article.  While Grand County Wellness Center cannot change what government, insurers, hospitals, and other doctors do, staff providers routinely help one patient at a time identify and change specific risk factors, thereby preventing disease instead of waiting until it happens.

Twelve years ago Dr. Andrew trained with a group of preventive cardiologists who taught him that standard cholesterol testing has very limited value in predicting heart disease.  It is stunning that even today, patients and doctors alike talk about the traditional cholesterol numbers as if they mean something.  When studies demonstrate that half of people with heart attacks have normal cholesterol—and many of these are already taking statin drugs—this should be a clue that the cholesterol theory of heart disease is missing the boat.  Doctors are looking at the wrong numbers and trying to make those numbers better with drugs instead of identifying and treating the true underlying causes of heart disease.  It should not surprise anyone then, when they get a "clean bill of health" from their doctor shortly before their heart attack!

Grand County Wellness Center staff do not waste patients’ money on traditional cholesterol testing.  Instead, they order advanced tests that reveal a lot more about what's going on in patients’ arteries.  They sit down with patients to review test results, discuss any abnormalities identified, and provide options.  Because drugs are the least-effective and highest-risk agents for preventing and treating heart disease, those who are looking for an artificial chemical solution to their problems will usually be disappointed.  Ironically, medical schools do not teach future doctors about several of the causes of heart disease.  Why?  Because there is no drug to treat them.  Instead, the treatments are already found in nature.  As much as multinational drug conglomerates would like to, they can't patent the foods, vitamins, minerals, herbs, and hormones that have prevented and treated heart disease—and so many other diseases—for thousands of years.

Fortunately—the body being a wondrous symphony of chemical and electromagnetic activity—many of the factors that prevent heart disease also prevent cancer and other diseases.  Thankfully, patients don’t have to leave Grand County to find cutting-edge diagnostic and treatment regimens to restore that symphony.  In fact, many come to Moab from Salt Lake City, Denver, and places even farther away because they are unable to obtain these services in the big cities.  Not surprisingly, GCWC patients often discover that treatments they have been receiving for years are now starting to be recognized by their cardiologists and even some popular media medical advisers.  GCWC is continually expanding its services, bringing breakthroughs from around the world to bear on common problems for which drugs and surgery have limited effectiveness.  Due to a relentless pursuit of the latest in medical science and technology, you can always count on GCWC to be ahead of the curve—even in Moab and Provo.

That Purple Pill: Panacea, Poison, or Both?

Back in medical school we learned to prescribe proton pump inhibitors (such as Prilosec) for heartburn. Then, when patients got osteoporosis, we were supposed to prescribe bisphosphonates (like Fosamax)—which cause ulcers, jaw bone destruction, and many other problems—and horse urine hormones (Premarin)—which cause breast cancer, heart disease, and strokes. Then, when patients had their heart attack, we were supposed to prescribe statin drugs (such as Zocor)—which cause liver damage, depression, diabetes, muscle damage (including the heart muscle), hormone deficiencies, and so forth. You get the picture.

Prescribing acid-blocking drugs to treat heartburn is based on the presumption that there is too much acid in the stomach. To be sure, a gastroenterologist could do a scope and place a pH probe in the stomach to monitor its acidity for 24 hours. In practice, I have never seen this done. Doctors will often prescribe acid-blocking drugs after seeing abnormalities in the esophagus or stomach during a scope procedure but, again, they are making the assumption that too much acid is the cause of those abnormalities, which is anything but scientific.

Like depression, ADHD, headaches, chronic fatigue syndrome, and the rest of today’s vogue illnesses, heartburn is not a disease at all. It is merely a symptom of an underlying imbalance. Paradoxically, most people with heartburn do not have too much stomach acid. Instead, many have too little. But when any acid at all gets into the esophagus—where it doesn’t belong—it can cause intense burning, chest pain, difficulty swallowing, chronic coughing, hoarseness, etc. 

In combination with other agents, acid blockers are very effective in the treatment of ulcers. Healing occurs in a matter of weeks. Unfortunately, many patients first present to us after decades of treatment with these drugs, which were originally FDA-approved for treatment courses lasting eight weeks. What their doctors did not know is that the human body requires stomach acid to digest proteins and absorb vitamin B12 (think fatigue and anemia) and key minerals, such as calcium, magnesium, zinc, iron, chromium, molybdenum, manganese, and copper. Most people were never warned that long-term suppression of stomach acid can cause osteoporosis, yeast overgrowth, hair loss, charley horses, food allergies, rashes (including hives), diarrhea, constipation, weak fingernails, acne, asthma, bloating, belching, gas, gallbladder problems, autoimmune diseases, thyroid disease, and much more. Most of these effects don’t even make it to the rapid-fire list of dangers you hear during the last 10 seconds of the commercial telling you how your life is going to be transformed by that purple pill. Unfortunately, because many of these effects take years to develop, people don’t realize they were caused by the magic pill that keeps their heartburn away.

Before you or someone you love reaches for any magic pill to make your symptoms go away, seek out a doctor who is trained in finding and treating the causes of gastrointestinal symptoms, not just suppressing them. Alternatively, if bloating, belching, gas, constipation, diarrhea, nausea, or any other symptom has become such a way of life for you that you have convinced yourself it is normal, think again. While you may think they are just annoyances you have to live with, in reality they signal imbalances that can eventually lead to serious diseases, such as colon cancer. A little detective work and a few changes now may not only make the symptoms go away but also save you a lot of money, unnecessary procedures, and serious diseases in the long run.

Dr. Andrew is board-certified in Family Medicine and has additional training in Functional and Anti-Aging Medicine.