Energy, Disease, and Aging

I recently returned from an international conference on mitochondria, cellular energy, and aging. Attendees at this conference included medical doctors, naturopaths, veterinarians, dentists, nurse practitioners, chiropractors, acupuncturists, and even a smattering of interested lay people.  They came from the U.S., Canada, Australia, Thailand, India, the Phillipines, and other nations.

Much of what we learned was necessarily technical and wouldn't be of interest to our patients and blog followers.  What will be of interest to you is how what we learned can help you live longer and healthier.  In the coming months, we will continue to expand our services in the tradition our patients have come to expect.

Meanwhile, I thought I would share with you some random notes from the conference:

What is health?  

Health is NOT the absence of symptoms.  It is NOT the absence of disease.  It is NOT the absence of abnormal tests.  

HEALTH IS THE PRESENCE OF CELLULAR ENERGY, which requires optimal oxygen utilization.  This is not the same as oxygenation.  When you come in for an appointment and we check your vital signs, we also check your oxygen saturation.  Any level less than 90% is concerning.  This is typically the result of an acute or chronic disease, such as pneumonia or COPD (also known as emphysema).  Ideal saturation is 95-100%.  However, an oxygen saturation of 100% does not mean a person is healthy.  Transporting oxygen from the air we breathe to our lungs, then to our red blood cells, then to cells throughout the body, is a critical process.  If oxygen saturation drops too low for very long, we die.  Unfortunately, far too many of us with "normal" oxygen saturation aren't fully living because our mitochondria--the power "generators" in our cells--are no longer able to fully utilize the oxygen that reaches the cells.

The Mitochondrion

"Damage to mitochondria is THE cause of aging and degenerative disease."  What is meant by "degenerative disease"?  Cancer, diabetes, heart disease, stroke, Alzheimer's, high blood pressure, arthritis, COPD, and much more.  Sounds like a "who's who" of diseases that hardly existed a hundred years ago.  Why has the incidence of these diseases skyrocketed in the last century?  It has everything to do with lifestyle, both personal and global.  This is the subject of an entire article by itself.

Meanwhile, what can each of us do to save our mitochondria, thus reducing our current disease burden or preventing the development of disease down the road?  Five areas of intervention were discussed:

• Diet
• Don’t eat junk unless you want to be junk.  Eat what your great grandmother would fix.
• Avoid processed foods.
• Watch the carbohydrates.  "Sugar and excess carbohydrates are the death knell to mitochondria."  We have been gratified to see increasing numbers of our own patients discover the benefits of sugar-free living over the last few years, and are pleased to see this issue gaining international attention.

• Detoxification
• Liver toxicity
• The liver is one of the body's filters.  From time to time, it could stand a good cleaning out itself.
• Many of our patients report dramatic improvements in their health after following our week-long liver detoxification protocol.
• Heavy metals
• Heavy metals such as mercury, lead, cadmium, and aluminum wreak all kinds of havoc in the body.  A few common effects include fatigue, depression, hypothyroidism, testosterone deficiency, heart disease, cancer, autism, and Alzheimer's disease.
• Heavy metals are found in the water supply, food supply, antiperspirants (it's best to look for brands that do not contain aluminum), "silver" dental fillings, vaccines, cigarette smoke, car exhaust, factories, and many other sources.  Limiting exposure the best we can is critical to our long-term health.
• Even low levels of heavy metals--especially mercury--can be particularly poorly tolerated in some people.  In other words, levels of heavy metals that are considered "acceptable" by traditional authorities can be very toxic to some people.  People with autism are particularly sensitive to even small amounts of these poisons.
• Blood tests are useless for determining one's body burden of heavy metals.  Such metals circulate for less than a month after exposure, thereafter taking up residence in tissues such as the brain, thyroid, adrenal glands, bone marrow, heart, liver, and fat cells.
• The body does not have a mechanism for detoxifying heavy metals on its own.  In our office, we remove heavy metals through a remarkable process called chelation.
• All “silver” (mercury) fillings need to be removed from teeth.  Small amounts of mercury are released into the body every time we chew food or drink hot liquids.  Once these fillings are removed, a complete course of chelation will rid the body of decades of accumulated mercury and other destructive metals.

• Hormone replacement
• Testosterone, estrogen, thyroid hormones, and adrenal hormones all play important roles in mitochondrial oxygen utilization.  It should be no surprise, then, that men and women who are deficient in one or more of these hormones have more fatigue and increased chronic diseases.
• Where possible, we strive to support the body's own ability to produce adequate amounts of these important hormones.  When this is not possible--as in menopause and andropause, for example--we provide bioidentical replacements to restore healthy youthful levels.

• Stress control
• Three kinds of stress tax mitochondria, especially in the adrenal glands: mental (like studying for a big test in school), emotional (what most people think of when they hear the word "stress"), and physical (exercise, illness, surgery, unhealthy diets, etc.).
• Common offenders include too much caffeine (adrenal glands in particular do not like stimulants), too much alcohol, too much exercise, not enough sleep, toxic emotions, allergies, and sugar.

• Oxidation therapy
• Nobody with any chronic disease has optimum oxygen utilization.
• Reactive oxygen species (obtainable in our office) jump-start impaired mitochondria throughout the body.  They can also be used to facilitate joint healing.

Stay tuned for more!

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.

Tomorrow’s Medicine Today

Imagine waking up from a good night's sleep feeling rested, without pain and stiffness.  Imagine waking up every morning with no desire to smoke.  Imagine looking at that doughnut with complete disinterest.  Imagine taking a wreck on your mountain bike and heading back up the mountain for more punishment the next day.  Imagine getting sick and recovering faster than ever.  Imagine having energy that lasts throughout the day, without that extra cup of coffee.  Imagine feeling relaxed and enjoying life.

This is not Star Trek or the Jetsons.  It’s just 21^st –century medicine.  Energy medicine, to be precise.  “It’s hard to wrap your mind around at first,” says Dr. Ray Andrew, Medical Director of Grand County Wellness Center.  “The pharmaceutical industry has so successfully overtaken Western culture that many of us can’t imagine life without drugs.”  There are drugs for pain, migraine headaches, irritable bowel syndrome, smoking, depression, heart failure, diabetes, osteoporosis, attention deficit disorder, high cholesterol, etc.  Unfortunately, our love affair with the pharmaceutical industry has created a windfall for the legal profession as more and more drugs are found to have undesirable—and often deadly—consequences.  Even without side effects and long-term complications, drugs don’t cure anything, and most are intended to be taken for life.  This is because they fight against the natural processes at work in the body.  And they are a one-size-fits-all approach.

By contrast, energy medicine works with the body and is entirely personalized.  It identifies which electromagnetic fields the body wants and delivers them non-invasively.  “In traditional medicine, we have to give every symptom and disease a label (diagnosis), then prescribe one or more drugs to suppress that symptom.  In the Wellness Center, labels don’t matter,” Dr. Andrew explains.  “We use energy medicine to identify what is out of balance and to tell the body how to fix it.”  There are no needles, no drugs, and no pain.  Just patient-specific waves.  Whereas cell phones and numerous other wireless devices produce harmful waves that interfere with the healthy function of the body, energy medicine uses waves that are in the same range as those created by the body itself.  Side effects include pain relief, reduced inflammation, improved immune function, enhanced digestion and metabolism, restful sleep, relaxation, and hormonal balancing.

Ideal candidates for this therapy include people of all ages, athletes, couch potatoes, weekend warriors, individuals with acute injuries or infections, and those with chronic conditions.  One of the best-studied applications has been bone regeneration in osteoporosis.  Energy medicine can unravel the patterns of weakness and dysfunction in the physical and emotional realms, leading to tissue repair even during the initial consultation.

Does energy medicine work for everything?  “It is so powerful and versatile that we are never surprised to discover what it can help.  However, no single therapy works for everything.  We have many tools in the toolbox.”  When a woman’s ovaries no longer produce adequate amounts of hormones, for example, Dr. Andrew recommends replacing those hormones to maintain optimal health.  Similarly, when deficiency of key nutrients impairs healthy cellular metabolism, dietary changes and supplementation are essential.  Combining these treatments with appropriate electromagnetic field therapies enables the body to achieve its true potential.  Wellness Center staff work with each patient as a whole person, creating a health plan unique to him or her.

Naturally, like every effective unconventional treatment, energy medicine has its skeptics.  Dr. Andrew is quick to admit he is not a crusader, not out to convince the critics.  “By and large, our patients are pragmatists.  When they feel better and see their numbers improve, they don’t care what the experts say.  At Grand County Wellness Center, our market consists of people who want to be proactive with their health and get better.  There’s plenty of evidence out there for those fascinated by the details, but most of our patients just enjoy being happier, healthier, and more productive.  They want to live longer and to have a better quality of life.”

Driving by the office, the casual observer would never mistake the Wellness Center for its high-priced counterparts in large cities.  It’s what goes on inside that makes the difference:  Personalized care.  Top-notch staff.  Engaged patients.  All of these—combined with constant study, frequent lectures, and attendance at international conferences—enable Dr. Andrew to bring energy medicine—the “wave” of the future—and all of the latest anti-aging treatments to the people of Moab today.

21st Century Medicine – Bandaids or True Healing?

The other day I saw an ad depicting Larry the Cable Guy trying to sell Prilosec.  “Suffering from heartburn day after day is as unnecessary as wearing sleeves,” he says.  It might be catchy, and it obviously sells a lot of drug, but it makes no more sense to take a drug to cover up heartburn than it does to cover up a skin cancer with a fresh Bandaid every day.

Unfortunately, this has been the approach physicians have taken toward a host of health problems for over 100 years.  Instead of making the effort to determine the cause of an individual’s heartburn, for example, we are content to suppress it with drugs that reduce stomach acid.  As long as the patient feels better now, never mind the fact that excess stomach acid may have nothing to do with the problem.  Never mind, either, that long-term acid suppression has some very serious consequences.  When the heartburn continues or worsens, we increase the dose of stomach acid-reducing medicine until the maximum dosage is reached.  When that no longer works, patients are offered the next drug on the list or even advised to go under the knife in the hope of fixing the problem. 

By contrast, at the Grand County Wellness Center, our interest is not in merely finding the magic pill that temporarily suppresses or controls every symptom.  Instead, we search for potential causes and make every effort to help patients rebalance their physiology.  Our approach is simple:  Give the body what it needs; remove what it doesn't need; treat causes, not symptoms.  The body has a remarkable ability to heal itself if we give it the right fuel, remove the obstacles to health, and utilize an ever-growing array of tools to support the body’s repair.  The more we learn, the more we discover that nobody has all the answers and that no single treatment is the definitive answer to a given condition.

Fortunately, people are becoming increasingly aware that covering up each symptom with a drug doesn't necessarily solve their problems.  As a result, they are demanding more effective, less risky (think of all the side effects and complications rattled off at the end of the commercials), and more personalized care.  They even ignore national expert committee opinions and specialty society consensus guidelines that seek to reduce human beings to numbers and medical professionals to technicians in an assembly line.  Fortunately too, when doctors run lab tests and say "there is nothing wrong with you, just take this pill," patients are no longer content.  They keep looking.

At the Grand County Wellness Center, we do not pretend to have all the answers.  But we are always learning.  Thanks to weekly continuing medical education from experts across the country, we do not practice the same medicine today as we did even one month ago.  And we are never satisfied to just control symptoms.  If you are driving and notice your steering wheel tugging toward one side, you wouldn’t just grip the steering wheel harder.  Before too long, you would check your tire pressures and then your alignment.  We feel the same way about dis-eases that arise in the human body – It makes much more sense to step back and take a look at what might be causing them than to merely compensate for or try to cover them up.  When routine lab tests come back normal (or are simply not relevant in the first place), we are fortunate to be able to draw upon the resources of multiple specialty labs that enable us to get to the bottom of perplexing problems.  A small sampling of the common problems for which we have uncommon solutions includes fatigue, depression, irritable bowel, constipation, muscle weakness, insomnia, sinus congestion, and yes, heartburn.  Whether you have been dealing with issues like these for a week or decades, you might want to schedule an appointment.  If we don’t have the answer today, chances are we might have it next week.  On the other hand, if you feel fine now but want to prevent diseases for which you are or think you might be at risk, you will find refreshing our focus on true disease prevention, not just early detection.

Health and Wellness

Everybody kept telling me I needed to see ‘that hormone doctor’ in Moab. I'm sure glad I did. Finally I’ve found a doctor who cares enough to listen to me and figure out what is going wrong instead of just prescribing an antidepressant that I don’t need." Men and women from all over Utah—as well as from New Mexico, Colorado, Montana, and even Alaska—echo this statement as they meet with staff in the Grand County Wellness Center. Although patients are initially drawn here in search of a sensible and effective approach to the hormonal imbalances that plague much of our population, young and older alike, many come to discover that there is a lot more to the Wellness Center than bio-identical hormone replacement. In fact, some learn—to their surprise—that sex hormone deficiencies are not their problem after all, or at least not their main problem.

Although Dr. Andrew was trained in the traditional Western medical approach to disease, and continues to use that training in the everyday practice of family medicine, it became clear to him early on in practice that something was lacking. "Every time we go to the doctor, we are conditioned to expect to receive a drug—or undergo surgery—for each symptom that ails us. It’s no wonder we are getting sicker as a people and bankrupting our health care system. I believe there is a role for drugs. I prescribe them every day. However, every drug has its side effects and long-term complications, many of which are unknown. Who would have thought a few years ago that the most common cholesterol drugs would contribute to diabetes, depression, hormone deficiencies, and heart failure? These facts are not taught in medical school and the drug companies would rather us not think about them as we dutifully fill our expensive prescriptions every month for the rest of our lives. Making matters worse, an alarming number of Americans are taking 5, 10, or even 15 prescription drugs a month, often at a cost of over $100 a piece. If the multiple side effects and drug interactions don't kill us, the gutting of our life savings will."

Rather than merely "manage" (i.e. perpetuate) disease, Dr. Andrew decided to focus on helping patients enhance their health and prevent disease. As a result of this decision, he regularly attends conferences and lectures by national experts in all areas of medicine. The emphasis of this advanced training is to help patients return, as much as possible, to optimal health. Sometimes this requires the use of certain drugs, at least temporarily. In other circumstances it involves vitamins, minerals, herbs, or hormones, alone or in combination. At the same time, Dr. Andrew is quick to point out that many of the illnesses from which we suffer stem from things that we do to ourselves. Lifestyle, environment, and attitude are inseparably connected with our health. Unfortunately, no combination of drugs can overcome the effects of some of the poisons we put in and on our bodies, some knowingly and others unknowingly. 

What gratifies Dr. Andrew most is being able to help patients return to health and wellness by removing from the body things that don't belong there and putting back things that do. "It's exciting to me when I can treat in a matter of weeks or months a myriad of symptoms for which only 10 years ago I would have written 5 or more potentially lifelong prescriptions. It's a lot of work for doctor and patient alike, but many agree it is more than worth it. We're going through a huge culture shift right now. Just as some people will never embrace computers, some would rather not take the active role in their health that is required for wellness. Fortunately, ever-increasing numbers of people are becoming more educated about their health and are no longer satisfied with statements like 'It's all in your head,' 'You're just getting older,' and ‘You just need to eat less and exercise more.’” For the first time, many patients are realizing they have options. Thanks to the recent addition of Physician Assistant Keely Fitzgerald, the Wellness Center and the Family Practice office are able to accommodate more of both types of patients than ever.