What exactly is Green Medicine? I like to think of it in terms of stimulating the body’s own resources and extraordinary abilities to repair and rebuild itself. It helps reverse even serious illness, using diet, nutrients, detoxification procedures and rarely drugs, to move our bodies in a healing direction. It means living a clean life at home, avoiding exposures, as much as possible, to toxic, synthetic chemicals. It also means working to keep the larger world around us cleaner, greener, as it was originally meant to be.

This approach differs considerably from the more conventional medicine we know so well, the slash and burn treatment of illness that uses drugs, invariably with long lists of toxic side effects, to blast away at the illness—be it bacterial or cancer. Of course no one denies the benefits of technological, pharmaceutical based modern medicine but it has serious limitations, and often doesn’t work well—witness the recent reports revealing that antidepressants, long considered one of the great victories of modern medicine, may overall work no better than placebo. But, nice as it may sound, gentle as it might seem in theory, can green medicine really work against a terrible disease like cancer? My colleague Dr. Isaacs and I, certainly believe so, and our experience over the past 20 years in the trenches with at times the sickest of the sick has helped confirm that done properly and intensively our brand of medicine can work.

We’ve received some significant recognition over the years, in the form of funding by major corporations such as Nestle and Procter & Gamble, even the U.S. National Cancer Institute. We’ve published results confirming the benefit of the treatment against the worst of cancers, and continue working hard toward its wider acceptance.

Though those who know of our work see it as a medical treatment, in fact, it is at its core “Green Medicine”—an entire green lifestyle that uses food, nutrients and enzymes to change our vital chemistry for the better. It also requires patients lead a clean and green lifestyle. We think of our therapy at three levels:

1. Personal green—the basics of good, wholesome nutrition
2. Local green—the environment in our homes and office
3. Global green—protecting the soils, the forests, the air, water
4. and the earth.

Personal Green
In terms of personal green, our therapy, in its essence, consists of three basic components, individualized diets, individualized supplement protocols, and detoxification routines, such as juice fasts and colon cleanses, but it most certainly is not “one size fits all.” We don’t prescribe just one magical diet, suitable for all sizes and shapes of humans, but a variety ranging from near pure, near raw nuts and seeds to fatty red meat three times a day, akin to an Atkins’ approach. Our supplement programs are equally as varied, involving precisely designed combinations of vitamins, minerals, trace elements, again depending on the patient’s specific needs. And for our cancer patients, large doses of enzymes we believe fight the disease effectively. The detoxification routines we believe help patients mobilize and excrete the myriad of toxic chemicals we take in daily from our food, water and air, and that we synthesize during normal minute to minute life.

In addition to whatever specific diet, supplements or detox procedures I might prescribe, since I started in practice, we have insisted our patients eat primarily, if not exclusively, organically. We’ve long believed that organic food, whether of plant or animal in origin, not only lacks many toxic chemicals found in conventional selections, but provides more nutritional benefit. For example, organically raised carrots yield higher quantities of essential antioxidants such as beta carotene, and grass fed beef can contain ten times the amount of the essential omega-3 fatty acids than cattle raised on grain in the feedlot.

Easy Being Green
Twenty years ago organic wasn’t as easy to come by; now almost every supermarket in the country provides naturally grown food. In the good old days, even into the 1990’s, my patients often had to rely on limited selections of produce from small mom and pop health food stores, or turn to mail order suppliers that shipped overnight. Fortunately today organic is everywhere—when over Christmas Mary Beth, my wife and I stayed on Sanibel Island in Florida, I was pleased to see the local Island supermarket had an extensive section of organic produce, as well as grass fed meat. Organic is always best, but locally grown organic is the very best, since food, even if grown cleanly, loses some value in transport.

We believe the cleaner the food, the better our patients do, but we believe everyone— or at least, everyone interested in optimal health—should eat organically, or as much as feasible given the cost issue. I have eaten this way myself for the better part of 25 years, and my wife and I run an “organic kitchen.” I’ve been eating cleanly for so long, that when I travel and must rely on non-organic restaurant food, I can feel the difference. I don’t sleep as well. I’m just not as sharp mentally. Those chemicals do indeed make a difference.

Green Water
Water is as important as food and lots of it since we’re mostly made of water. But only clean water. Don’t believe tap water is fine, chlorine has been shown to be mutagenic, that is, it disrupts our DNA. And the debate about the safety of fluoride continues unabated. As Mary Beth, wrote in her “Green” blog, evidence now shows millions of Americans ingest all manner of drugs that have contaminated our water supply. Clean water is key and for our supply we rely on reverse osmosis filtration. Put ten water experts in a room together and you will get 20 opinions about the best filtration system, and admittedly, no system is perfect, but until someone comes up with a better way, I believe reverse osmosis still the best.

Green Home and Office
We run an organic kitchen, but we also run a non toxic home. All our cleaning products are “green,” from companies such as Seventh Generation and Shaklee, both with extensive selections of home products. When we had our apartment painted several years ago, we purchased non-toxic, non-fuming paint that left no irritating, noxious odor. All our rugs consist of natural fibers, untainted by any number of chemical treatments commercial carpet manufacturers traditionally use, such as formaldehyde. Even pesticides—that’s right, some commercial carpets have traces of pesticides, so when your kids are crawling over them playfully, the stuff will rub onto their skin.

I also run a green office. When we built 16 years ago, we insisted everything in the office—the wooden floors, walls, even the furniture, be constructed of non-toxic materials. No toxic dyes, no formaldehyde, only natural woods, natural oils, and natural paints. A company with a factory in Vermont and a New York showroom, Pompanoosac Mills, made all our office furniture out of natural, untainted woods and finishes, and 16 years later, all of it has held up to wear and tear beautifully, without exposing us to one milligram of synthetic toxic junk.

Global Green
Of course, when you live green personally, at home, and if possible, at the office, you are living green globally. When you choose organic, you support farms that don’t apply the load of toxic chemicals that degrade soil, penetrate into water supplies, and eventually leech in our rivers and oceans, then into the fish who swim in these waters. When you chose local organic, you reduce the carbon footprint, the costs of transport and reduce nutrient loss. When each of us lives green in our home, we’re keeping a host of toxic chemicals out of the greater environment at large.

I’m encouraged by the growing acceptance of adopting a green lifestyle and the change in attitude toward concepts such as organic I’ve witness over the past 20 years. With the growing interest in all things green, I believe more and more of us will turn to greener medicine, the gentler, less toxic interventions that can work, again, if done properly.

An Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) study of chemicals found in human body fat through biopsy showed the wide array of toxic chemicals that each of us carries within. The “toxic load,” also known as “total body burden” or “bio-accumulation” occurs when the body exceeds the capacity of the organs of detoxification to reduce or neutralize toxins. Since the end of the Second World War, our planet has been experiencing a dramatic chemical revolution. Our existence, at the cost of our health and quality of life, now depends upon thousands of synthetic chemicals that are used to create virtually everything we associate with modern life—agriculture, health care, energy production, food supply, household and personal care products, and manufacturing all pumping tons of chemicals—most sold to consumers or dumped into the environment. A portion of these foreign chemicals, referred to as xenobiotics (foreign to the body), end up within the human body.

INNOCENT UNTIL PROVEN GUILTY
With over 75,000 chemicals currently registered with the Environmental Protection Agency, only very small fractions are assessed for their toxicity in humans. In fact, only about 25 percent of commonly used chemicals have undergone even the most basic toxicity testing— even fewer are tested for their effects on the developing fetus, brain or the immune system. Chemicals, like criminals, are presumed innocent until proven guilty. Unfortunately, because of our lax environmental laws, most of these toxic offenders never go on trial and are presumed safe until widespread harm occurs or the public demands accountability.

The use of mercury in dental amalgam fillings is a perfect example of toxic chemical “grandfathers” that remain in widespread use without any adequate safety testing required of the manufacturers. I worked in dentistry for many years prior to embarking on my career in natural health. I am one of those victims of heavy metal poisoning as a result of not only handling mercury in the course of dentistry, but also as a result of a mouthful of mercury amalgam fillings from age seven to eighteen. The only way we can preserve or repair our health from these toxic saboteurs is through education and finding safe alternatives.

Most of these untested chemicals make their way into natural ecosystems and end up in the human body. Because of this, we are unknowing victims in a giant, uncontrolled experiment with billions of humans functioning as the experimental animals. It’s making millions very sick. As a result of this toxic exposure and buildup, we’re developing “invisible illnesses” like fibromyalgia, arthritic disorders, chronic fatigue, lupus, scleroderma, multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, Gulf War syndrome, multiple skin disorders, a myriad of chemically-induced immune system disorders, and yes, even cancer.

Future generations may look back upon this era with contempt for the indiscriminate way we’ve allowed toxic chemicals to pollute our world, erode our quality of life, and in general cause disease and death.

A PHYSICIAN’S PERSPECTIVE
Dr. Claudia Miller, Department of Family Practice, University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, believes we are on the threshold of a new theory of disease— one that recognizes the impact of toxic chemicals. In a paper discussing chemical intolerance in Annals of New York Academy of Sciences, Miller wrote:

“In the late 1800’s, physicians observed that certain illnesses spread from sick, feverish individuals to those contacting them, paving the way for the germ theory of disease. The germ theory served as a crude but elegant formulation that explained dozens of seemingly unrelated illnesses affecting literally every organ system.

“Today, we are witnessing another medical anomaly—a unique pattern of illness involving chemically exposed people who subsequently report multi-system and new-onset chemical and food intolerances. These intolerances may be the hallmark for a new disease process, just as fever is a hallmark for infection.”

Miller and other prominent scientists believe this new disease process is the key to the emergence of a totally new type of chemically related disorders and undiagnosed diseases. Disorders such as Gulf War syndrome, chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, lupus, environmental illness, chemical sensitivities and multiple allergic response syndromes (MARS), are now believed to have a common denominator, toxic overload.

POISONS WITHIN
Toxic stress comes from more than the absorption of environmental chemicals. A wide range of potentially toxic substances are generated from processes at work within our body. When the natural mechanisms of detoxification malfunction, or when internally generated toxins are produced in excessive amounts faster than the ability of the organs to detoxify and neutralize, significant health disorders and disease result.

For example, if a person does not have sufficient intake of vitamin B6, B12, or folic acid to meet their body’s specific demands, their cells are unable to properly metabolize and excrete the amino acid methionine—an important nutritional substance derived from protein digestion. When this occurs, a normally harmless amino acid is broken down into toxic homocysteine, a waste material that damages arteries and causes atherosclerosis.

Even the processes within cells that generate energy from food molecules and oxygen result in the release of toxic free radicals — unstable molecules that have to be snuffed out by a complex system of dietary and internally generated antioxidants. If these complex antioxidant systems fail to perform properly, accelerated aging, disease and eventually death occurs.

Toxins are also continuously generated from microbial activity in the digestive tract. Everything we eat is either absorbed into the body or it ends up in the colon where it is fermented by over 400 different species of bacteria and several kinds of yeast. Some of the fermentation by-products are harmless substances like lactic acid, but a wide variety of more toxic substances are also produced; ammonia, hydrogen sulfide, methane, butane, cadaverine, and putrescine—a few of the many microbial toxins generated in our own gut. Most of these toxic by-products remain in the gut and those that are absorbed are quickly neutralized by the liver. However, if unfriendly gut microbes overgrow, or if liver function is compromised, serious health problems occur.

Many individuals living with chronic health problems suffer, in part, because of the condition commonly known as “leaky gut syndrome,” in other words, autointoxication, meaning they are being poisoned by the toxic substances within their body—the condition does not have to be acute for the person to manifest symptoms.

This condition, technically known as increased intestinal permeability, occurs when the normally leak-proof lining of the small intestine becomes inflamed or damaged and tiny gaps open up between intestinal cells. In this condition, large molecules from partially digested food and microbes pass through the leaky gut and into the surrounding blood and lymph.

When a person has leaky gut, every meal places an unhealthy load on their immune system, particularly their liver, resulting in an increase in overall body burden—often escalating into multiple allergic response syndromes (MARS™). Once this occurs, the allergic responses to food and the environment can escalate to multiple chemical sensitivities and even anaphylactic shock. As a recovered victim of leaky gut syndrome and MARS, I can attest to the life-threatening and life-altering challenges that a victim of these disorders endures. In order to achieve full recovery, complete life-style changes must be implemented. The best insurance against these disorders is knowledge. However, knowledge without action is just as deadly as no knowledge.

BODY BURDEN—The Chemical Assault
The human race is now contaminated with hundreds of synthetic chemicals, which were not found in our ancestors. Exposure in the womb to these contaminants can cause birth defects and affect our children’s future ability to reproduce and their susceptibility to diseases, including cancer. In some cases, developmental problems can result and affected children may never reach their full potential. Put simply, the integrity of the next generation is at stake. Protecting our children from the legacy of these chemicals is a major challenge and responsibility of modern society.

CHEMICAL TRESPASS?— Pesticides in Our Bodies
Many U.S. residents carry toxic pesticides in their bodies above government assessed “acceptable” levels. “Chemical Trespass: Pesticides in Our Bodies and Corporate Accountability,” makes public for the first time an analysis of pesticide-related data collected by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in a study of levels of chemicals in 9,282 people nationwide (2,644 of whom were tested for pesticides).

Many of the pesticides found in the test subjects are linked to serious short- and long-term health effects including infertility, birth defects, learning disorders, childhood and adult cancers. Chemical Trespass finds that children, women and Mexican Americans shoulder the heaviest “pesticide body burden.” For example, children—the population most vulnerable to pesticides—are exposed to the highest levels of nerve-damaging organophosphorous (OP) pesticides. CDC data shows the average six year-old sampled is exposed to the OP pesticide chlorpyrifos (commonly known by the product name Dursban) at four times the level the EPA considers “acceptable” for a long-term exposure.

Future articles will discuss specific challenges and the modifications necessary to live healthy in a toxic world through nutrition-based medicine employing pluralistic health principles, naturally.