Empowered Patient Blog
Fixing Digestion for Good
Digestion is way too important of a process to entrust to a gastroenterologist. Being your own advocate begins with eating a whole food, nutrient-dense diet and using simple approaches to improve digestion rather than blunting digestive fire with acid-suppressing drugs like proton pump inhibitors. We have to appreciate that the combined contributions of gastric acid, bile acid, and enzymes are a fiery cauldron of transmutation.
Preventive Medicine Doesn’t Exist
Conventional allopathic medicine operates on a split paradigm. The primary medical initiative is to heroically swoop down when disaster strikes. A car accident or heart attack will bring about a quick and decisive intervention. In managed care, it gets a little more gray. Symptom management may take precedence over addressing the root causes of disease, often because they stem from environmental and lifestyle factors that are unacknowledged or lack solutions within the biomedical model.
Reflections on ‘Kiss the Ground’
All life stems from air, earth, and water. We are all literal and metaphorical extensions of the Earth, as manifested as living soil. No matter what ends up on our plate, the components of that meal derive from elemental forces that amalgamate to form the biodiversity of life.
The Contagious Biofield
As any experienced gardener knows, the health of the soil determines the fate of the planted seed. With COVID-19, it is possible that the activity of the virus is not the root cause of illness and death but a proximate cause. A breakdown in the relationship between our health and our relationship with nature is the true reason so many have fallen ill.
Trouble Falling Asleep? Remedying Sleep-Onset Insomnia
The other common deterrent to peaceful slumber is the inability to fall asleep, otherwise known as sleep-onset insomnia. This is a multifactorial problem, chock full of nuance, so realize there may be one or more causes that need to be addressed if you suffer from this type of insomnia.
Cancer: Treating Illness by Generating Health
Cancer formation is the planting of a seed caused by unmitigated exposure to carcinogens. Seldom discussed are all the contributing factors—known as proximate causes—that inhibit healing of that initial wound. These proximate causes may not be potent enough to transform a precancerous cell into a malignant one, but they are the soil in which that cancer seed roots itself and grows unchecked.
Rethinking Magnesium
Magnesium is an essential nutrient that you may be lacking. It is a cofactor in hundreds of enzymatic processes in the body, yet many people are completely unaware of the health challenges that can ensue from an insidious deficiency. Let’s explore the need for magnesium, a blood test to evaluate magnesium status, and the best forms of supplementation.
Are You Eating Fake Food?
Traveling late at night when a craving hits? No problem as the nearest gas station has your belly and brain covered with an assortment of colorful and wildly flavorful snack options. How could any reasonable human being find fault in such an agricultural marvel?
My Experience with the Clear Passage Approach to Treating Abdominal Adhesions
It had been a long six years. Following remission of the non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma diagnosis that filled my abdominal cavity with tumors, I still suffered from periodic episodes of small bowel obstruction secondary to deep scar tissue known as adhesions. Although infrequent, these episodes were severe, traumatic, and occasionally resulted in hospitalization.
The Future of Cancer Therapy: Adaptive Therapy
The diagnosis of prostate cancer was a bad dream that Jack couldn’t wake up from. At age 53, he was working overtime to prepare for his eldest daughter’s transition to college, and fitful nights of sleep had been plagued by a recurring dream of an angry, burning fire in his pelvis
How to Stream TV Without Wi-Fi
Our family doesn’t watch much TV, but the Olympics were airing soon and we live far enough out in a rural area that an antenna receives few channels. Satellite or cable TV is excessive for our needs, leaving a streaming service as the only viable option. The challenge then became figuring out which streaming device uses ethernet and does not broadcast radiofrequency electromagnetic field (EMF) radiation.
Obeying God Equals Obeying Nature
What does it mean to obey God regarding health? Is an ethic for living a balanced life detailed in the holy book of each religious tradition? Or does following “God’s law” require a reinterpretation to guide modern-day adherents to be faithful servants of soil and spirit to empower human health?
Medical Reformation
We live in a time where the medical-industrial complex and related regulatory agencies are providing medical indulgences to citizens of the Western world. Rather than lead with education and invest in prevention as a first line of intervention, high-priced drugs and procedures cram the coffers of corporate medicine. If you think this analogy is pure hyperbole, what follows is a small sample of “theses” widely espoused by providers in the integrative and holistic medical community.
Breathing in Spirit: How to Recognize and Cultivate Inspiration
Being connected to a universal stream of consciousness may sound as unattainable as it is mystical, but to do so is an inherent feature of a broader spiritual reality we all share. From pre-civilized shamanic peoples to modern spiritual traditions, the same theme has echoed across millennia—we are not human beings having spiritual experiences but spiritual beings having human experiences.
The Rain Man Effect: How to Recognize and Hone Intuition
What is intuition and how do we experience it? This is a question I’ve thought a lot about as a practitioner of traditional Chinese medicine. Though my work is based on the science of herbal prescribing and acupuncture point indications, there is also a subtle art to the medicine that draws heavily on intuition.