In my 19 years of practice I have found it helpful to use supplements and nutrition to enhance the body's healing potency.  I offer this brief explanation to better understand the thinking behind the supplements I recommend.

Inflammation, a naturally occurring physiologic mechanism of the body’s healing response, is both a blessing and a curse…Too little and the body is susceptible to illness and slow, incomplete healing, too much, and the body is riddled with pain and chronic system-wide degeneration. Achieving the right balance depends on many conditions being just right - tissue and joint health and mobility, optimal arterial blood supply and elimination of waste products through the venous and lymphatic vessels, proper nutrition and gastrointestinal assimilation of nutrients, and adequate neuro-endocrine and immune function.

We all know that the body is mostly made of water, 70-80%, in fact. But did you know that it’s salt water and that we are actually tiny marine aquariums? Proper hydration and adequate salt intake are necessary for optimal fluid and electrolyte balance in our inner ocean. I recommend drinking some purified ocean water by Quinton labs on a daily basis. A little bit of the “mother fluid” helps prime the whole system! Soaking in salt water also helps to keep your aquarium clean by drawing waste products out of your body right through your skin!

In order for cells to exist and function in this hydrostatic (fluid) environment, cell membranes have to be made with a substance that is not going to dissolve in water. That substance is fat…good old cholesterol. Contrary to the widespread, almost religious, belief in the “cholesterol is detrimental to your health” theory, cholesterol is actually essential to the optimal function of the entire body! That’s right, cholesterol is good for you…People are starting to realize the importance of getting plenty of good fats from their diet but most of us are not getting enough vitamins A and D (present in cod liver oil), which are necessary to metabolize fat into important hormones, immune system constituents, cell membranes and brain tissues! The association of high levels of cholesterol with heart disease is not as certain as we have been led to believe. Certain kinds of fats, particularly trans fats, and many polyunsaturated fats, are the most likely fats to end up in your clogged arteries. It turns out that trans fats are a type of saturated fat, giving these important fats a bad name! Animal fats, which are saturated, may not be so bad after all…especially if the animal in question is eating a proper diet. (for example, milk, eggs and meat from pasture fed animals)

Dysbiosis, faulty gastrointestinal absorption, results in improper assimilation of nutrients and activates an exaggerated immune response causing inflammation and a host of neuromusculoskeletal, allergy and constitutional symptoms. Dysbiosis often begins after a course of antibiotics, destroying the important “good” bacteria in the gut (which digest food and liberate the nutrients for you to absorb) and allows the yeast population to expand into the space previously occupied by the “good” bacteria. "Leaky Gut Syndrome" often results from dysbioisis where the enterocyte cells that line the gut become ill, shrink and develop spaces between them through which nutrients escape into the blood stream before they have a chance to be broken down. There they cause an immune reaction which produces inflammatory and even toxic substances that underlie many chronic debilitating conditions. To correct this problem the enterocytes must be nourished back to health, the yeast population must be reduced and the “good” bacteria dominance reestablished.