A recent large study announced last week that salt may be unhealthy in large amounts for some people, but that salt restriction might also be unhealthy.  Several smaller studies over the last couple years have suggested that the very low salt intake recommended for folks with high blood pressure might actually be harming some of them, which is the exact opposite of what standard medicine has been telling us for the last 30 years.  So this latest study seems to be saying that both the old and the new information is right (see Sodium J-curve).  So what gives?

What gives is the most common flaw of modern medical thinking - the "one size fits all" mindset.  This mindset is hammered into the tender brains of medical students from the day they set foot into medical school.  Why?  Several reasons come into play supporting this.  Number one is the reality that medicine is a reactive emergency response discipline.  Allopathic medicine (the kind we have today) was born on the battlefields of Europe and America in the 1800's.  This approach to the body is all about how to patch you up so you can "get back into the game" (or battle).  This approach is not concerned with how you got the symptoms (unless there is a bullet in you somewhere) or why you developed your symptoms.  It is only concerned with what it takes to make the symptoms go away so you can get back to your life (like the battle you were fighting.)  As such, immediate emergency life and death decisions have to be made without regard for who you are as an individual.
 
This approach works well on the battlefield as everyone needs to have bleeding stopped, broken bones set, and destroyed limbs amputated.  The circumstance of emergency physical medicine - trauma medicine - is where conventional medicine really shines.  If I am in a serious car wreck with lots of blood and broken parts, I want to be taken to an emergency room right now.  If I am on the verge of death from septic shock or a heart attack or any other life or death emergency, medical doctors are the angels of mercy I want on my side.  But the vast majority of visits to the doctor in this country are not for trauma medicine, but for illnesses created by lifestyle choices.  

In order to handle the pressure of having to make instant decisions, medicine had to agree to a necessary fiction - the concept of the "average man".  Doctors are endlessly drilled on how to respond to a presenting set of symptoms based on what will work the best for "the average man".  If a doctor had to deal with the truth - that there are no average men and the treatment protocols they were taught are likely to be completely useless for the patient facing them, they would be paralyzed.  How can you do what you need to do if you admit that you really don't know what to do?  How do you deal with the awareness that every patient you meet is an individual that is not average?

The vice president of the largest pharmaceutical company in the country recently admitted that pharmaceutical medications just simply do not work for ½ to 2/3rds of the patients who take them.  The patient's individual differences in personal biochemistry make the drugs ineffective for them most of the time.  Where does that leave the average doctor?  How is he supposed to help a patient who is expecting a "cure" for their symptoms right now?  We the public have been conditioned to expect immediate results from a pill for everything that ails us.  We want back into the game we were playing before the symptom popped up and interfered with our fun.  We have forced the doctors to pretend that it works to just write a prescription for a pill if we want symptoms to go away.  If our doctor is not willing to write the magic prescription, we will leave that doctor and go find one that will.  We accept that we might have to try several medications before we find the magic one that will make us all better.

This ties into the second major reason medicine supports the fiction of the "average man".  Through their contributions and support, it is the pharmaceutical companies that literally run the medical education in this country.  When the Journal of the American Medical Association, the most prestigious medical publication in America, polled its members as to how many of them actually read the medical research articles presented in the journal, they discovered that only 8% read even the short abstract of the articles.  Less than 2% of doctors actually read any of the research detail in the articles.  The rest of the doctors - 92% said they only read the pharmaceutical ads in the sidebars of the magazine.  92% of the doctor's education is coming from drug marketing ads.  The "take a pill for whatever ails you" culture is taught and supported by the folks that financially benefit from it the most - the drug companies.

So what is the truth?  This is the truth:

This normal population curve solves the question of why the researchers were getting such confusing results from the studies on salt.  If you believe in the fiction of the "Average Man" the apparent results of some people being unhealthy on high levels of salt while others are actually unhealthy on low levels makes no sense.  But looking at the individual variation that any normal population has, it becomes obvious that the people that are at the outer ends of the normal curve will do better with conditions that fit them and poorly if you push them to operate at the other end of the curve.  With salt, someone at the left side of the curve who has very little tolerance for salt will be unhealthy if you give them a lot of salt.  Someone at the other end of the curve that does best on high amounts of salt will get sick if you take their salt away - exactly what the researchers found.

Almost everything in the body operates on this balance principle, and balance is different for each individual.  Balance is hard for people to relate to, especially when you get it that there is no ideal balance as everyone is different.  This means there is no such thing as a universal right and wrong.  Good and bad become meaningless concepts when you try to apply them to different individuals.  Literally "one man's meat is another man's poison."  This is the truth that medicine refuses to address because it means that everything a doctor "knows" to be right is a lie.  At best all a doctor can have is a probable guess.  All modern research does is stack the odds in the doctors favor by saying what the most common response to a given treatment will be.  You don't know what will happen until you do something and see the response.  That is the reality.  It does not inspire the confidence we want in our health caregivers, so we ignore the truth...and we get the kind of healthcare we are getting today.

The hope for the future is that genetic testing will enable us to determine where each of us lies on the normal curve for dozens of basic biochemical processes.  This will enable researchers to determine what kinds of medications and treatments will work best for us before we try them.  This hope might not see the light of day as it does not support the agenda of the pharmaceutical companies.  They like us taking drugs that don't work for us and that produce side effects that we end up having to take a bunch of new drugs to counteract the effects of the first drugs.  If you don't want to believe this, just look at the 3 billion dollar fine slapped on GlaxoSmithKline (one of the biggest drug companies) for hiding the fact that its diabetes drug Avandia was causing strokes and heart complications for the last 11 years.  80,000 people have had strokes and complications that they know for sure came from Avandia.  But the profit they made from the last 11 years of marketing it made the 3 billion dollar fine only a drop in the bucket - just part of the cost of doing business for them.

My personal solution is to seek lifestyle solutions to lifestyle based problems - and 90% of health concerns are from inappropriate lifestyle choices.  Let medicine do what it does best - deal with emergencies that will otherwise kill you before the day is out.  The real problem here is the ego mindset that says we have the right to live our life any way we choose without consequence.  Unfortunately your body does not care about your ego mindset.  It has its own personal rules, and it is your job to discover what those rules are for you and follow them.  Drugs are only a way to cover up the warning flags that your are violating your own body's rules for health.  Drugs do not create health, only hide the symptoms that tell you something is going wrong.  The problems keep on growing even though you hide the warning flags.  Your only healthy choice is to heed the flags and change your choices in life.  If your body can't handle sugar, then you simply can not eat it or anything that turns into it.  That is what diabetes is - a simple sugar intolerance disease.  If you can not tolerate salt then stay away from it.  On the other hand if your body needs extra salt then you need to get that extra salt.  You can't just listen to other people's health advice, because chances are it has no relevance to your individual needs.  Only you can stand in the position of determining what works for you because only you are on the inside of you and can feel what works to strengthen and vitalize you.  

Some doctors are beginning to catch on to these truths.  This field is called functional medicine.  They understand the concept of the uniqueness of each patient and strive to test what is normal for each patient.  It still requires lots of trial and error, but it is a step in the right direction.  But the big shift in healthcare will only come when patients themselves decide to put being in harmony with the rules of their own bodies ahead of the desires of their ego to stay "in the game."  We can choose to define our own game - one that works for us instead of killing us.

Have a healthy holiday season,                  

Our beliefs about health are being manipulated by marketing "spin"

 

~ Aldous Huxley

Probiotic protects intestine from radiation injury

 

     It is unfortunate, but many people today are treated for cancer with radiation.  The problem with radiation is that it is no possible to confine the effects of the radiation to just the cancerous cells.  As any of us who lived through the 50's and early 60's know, radiation is not good for you.  It creates all kinds of problems like 50 foot lobsters and ants living in the sewers of LA (or was that a movie?)

     Well it certainly does nasty things to our insides.  New research is finding that the probiotic Lactobacillus rhamnosus GG is able to protect the lining of the gut from radiation damage.  Gut tissue is one of the most sensitive in the body to radiation damage.

 

~ Ann Landers

The Best Rechargeable Batteries and Chargers Of 2011

~ Harriet Braiker

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About Dr. DeLapp

Dr. DeLapp has been a philosopher, non-force Chiropractor, medical intuitive, and health innovator for over 30 years.  He began experimenting with  medical intuition in 1972 while studying physics at UC Davis.  In addition to physics he designed and completed an individual major in the philosophy and psychology of education.  Shortly after he choose to pursue a career in the only truly health oriented profession available at that time, Chiropractic.  He graduated with honors in 1981 with his doctorate and opened a private practice. 
Since that time he has continued his research into the effects of consciousness and learning on health. 
He developed the Biomagnetic Retraining system for correcting movement abnormalities. 
Since 1991 he has focused on developing a powerful system for uncovering and assisting the mind-body connection in health and personal growth.  The in-depth coaching, guided by the subconscious direction from the body, is called Heartflow and the simpler mind-body retraining for health and unfoldment he has named Gracework.  Both are available at Fair Oaks Health.

Dr David DeLapp DC
Chiropractor

Ellen Flowers FGM
Spiritual Life Coach

 

 

Catherine Cummings

 

 

Jin Shin Jitsu

 

 

Lorena Morales

 

 

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