Viscum album is its Latin name, and it is about much more than Christmas. It has been a sacred plant throughout the world since ancient times.  There is a long tradition of medicinal and religious use of the plant throughout the ancient world, including the Celts and the Druids, the Greeks and the Romans, the Slavic peoples of western Asia. It was considered a panacea in early Japan, so much so that it is mentioned in myth and poetry.

I first learned about the medicinal use of this remarkable plant several years ago, while traveling through the former Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.  I have only recently begun using it in a select group of cancer patients, but we will soon be using this fascinating plant much more routinely.  Although many of the studies are published in the German medical literature, it is actually one of the world’s most extensively researched alternative cancer therapies. 

So promising is the evidence that the German healthcare system pays for mistletoe for people with cancer. It is available by prescription, and any doctor can prescribe it.  There are a number of preparations made from different kinds of mistletoe.  Like honey, mistletoe contains different active ingredients when it lives on different trees.  These include pine, apple and oak, and practitioners treat different cancers with different varieties of mistletoe.

One of the physicians I spoke to here told me that mistletoe ‘is somewhat of an aristocrat among plants here in Europe’.  For one thing, it lives on trees and so never comes in contact with the soil.  For another, it grows in a spherical bush that looks like a clump on the treetops, leaving it with no visible beginning or end. Another curiosity is the berries are considered false, because they are actually just projections of the stem. 

These may be some of the reasons why early European and Asian tribes took a special interest in mistletoe.  Its modern use, particularly its use in treating cancer, can be traced back to Rudolf Steiner, father of Anthroposophical medicine.  This system was articulated by Steiner in the early 20^th century as part of a holistic approach to living, farming, thinking and healing that has been embraced by millions in Germany, Switzerland and Austria. These folks’ avoidance of vaccination and their agrarian lifestyle has been associated with decreased incidence of asthma, allergies and autism.  There is an Anthroposophical hospital in Berlin, and its very existence is an impressive testament to German society’s tolerance of different approaches to life – and medicine.

I won’t go into too much detail about exactly what we know about how mistletoe works.  The nuts-and-bolts explanations of its selective toxic effects on cancer cells and its stimulatory effects on the immune system are available on many websites (www.mistel-therapie.de is one of the best).  Viscotoxin is an important active ingredient, but lectins, flavonoids, triterpenes and polysaccharides have all variously been studied in other promising anti-cancer botanicals, and mistletoe contains them all.

More interesting to me is the fact that Steiner’s discovery of mistletoe was not based on any scientific data at all.  It arrived in a moment of ‘divine inspiration’.  This is how most plant medicines were discovered in early societies, particularly in South America and in India.  Yogis and sages, wandering monks and shamans were masters of the mind, and they routinely entered altered states of consciousness to get these ‘insights from the Gods’.  While this makes no sense to us at all, our western view of mind, matter and reality is based on nothing more than our left-brained prejudice, and we would do well to keep an open mind about such useful ‘coincidences’ as the discovery of mistletoe.

Mistletoe is just one of a number of useful integrative approaches to cancer treatment that have been used throughout Germany for decades.  Specialized clinics, most of which are in southern areas surrounding Lake Constance, routinely use IV vitamin C just as we do.  I will be going back to Germany to attend and speak at a couple of conferences over the coming months, and I think this will be a good thing for us.

The park itself has a fascinating history. It sits on a fault line, with Mazinaw lake filling a deep ridge between two plates of ancient rock that are part of the Canadian Shield, making it a place of interest for geologists. This may be why it has long been a sacred place for First Nations peoples. Algonquin pictographs on the rock that depict shamans, spirits and magico-religious symbols are up to 1000 years old. They were preserved by a thin coating of natural glass that comes from rain falling on silica that has trickled down the rock for ages.

Its modern history began with the Bon Echo Inn, a large retreat facility that was built by Dr Weston Price in 1910. Dr Price was a dentist from the Mazinaw region who practiced there before moving to the US. He is of interest to integrative medicine because of his seminal work, Nutrition and Physical Degeneration. Based on his travels around the world over several years, it describes in vivid detail – with hundreds of photos – how indigenous children around the world developed terrible dental health – cavities, crooked teeth and shrunken lower jaws – when they abandoned their traditional diet in favor of a modern diet based on refined grains. The usual explanation for the disturbingly common need for orthodontics is that children have ‘one jaw from the mother and the other from the father’ and they just don’t fit. The truth is probably closer to what Dr Price described.

I was amazed to see Dr Price’s picture on a placard in the park. It was next to a picture of the Denison family, who took over in the 1920s and turned the inn into an artist colony, where spiritualism and creative expression were the order of the day. It is impressive if only for the fact that the owner was a woman – one of the most important leaders of the feminist movement at the time, Ms Denison was the brains behind the operation. There were only vague references to what actually went on there, but I suspect their gatherings were fascinating and colorful, and I must admit I would like to have been there to join in the antics.

The Bon Echo Inn burned down in a lightning fire in 1936, and a few fragments and relics remain in a Visitors Centre at the Park. Since the fire, there has only been nature. The family decided to replant trees throughout the property, and eventually donated it to the province. At over 17,000 acres, it was one of the largest donations ever made. The park remains well-kept, if heavily used, and the hiking and canoeing trails nearby open into an immense world of natural wonders.

This experience brought me home, in a sense. When I returned from my travels with the desire to establish a centre for Integrative Medicine, the ultimate vision was always to incorporate nature into the healing process. Nature heals us – because we belong there. Holistic healers and neuroscientists alike have examined this phenomenon, linking it to such factors as the living energy of trees, the negative ions in the air, the benefit of so much green color, the soothing sounds and the irregular visual shapes of the natural world. At Bon Echo, an additional factor is the quartz in the granite rock of the Shield, and quartz has been used around the world because of the fascinating electrical properties that come from its unique structure.

I would like to start taking our patients for walks in nature. This will be informal, in a group setting, and will give patients a chance to ask me questions that are on their minds that might not require a doctor’s appointment. It will also get them breathing good air, walking vigorously, talking to each other and spending time in the forest. As an added bonus, I will get to spend more time in the forest, which will be good for me. The natural world has become the most spiritual place I have found. I consider it my church and my temple, and it has always had a healing effect on me.

Except for the mosquitoes.

I am here to learn some Osteopathy.  This is the modern name for a profession dedicated to manual manipulation, whose heartland is in the Midwestern US but whose roots are centuries old and spread throughout the world.  It was popularized in this country by Andrew Taylor Still, the son of a preacher who abandoned medicine when three of his children died of meningitis.  He developed a reputation as the ‘lightning bonesetter’ of Kirksville, Missouri and founded a school there in 1892.  With a handful of teachers, he taught a generation of osteopaths who spread out across the nation. 

Osteopathy is one of a handful of alternative healing professions whose dealings with orthodox medicine make for interesting reading. The DOs – Osteopathic Medicine in America by Norman Gevitz is an authoritative work about this interesting part of medical history in North America.   The author focuses a great deal on the osteopaths’ struggle for legitimacy in the face of pressure, lobbying and opposition from the American Medical Association.  The AMA successfully tackled the threat posed by the homeopaths and the eclectics, but somehow the DOs managed to become recognized as equivalent to MDs in the US, and can enter residency training programs to become neurosurgeons and cardiologists. 

Canada has very few osteopaths.  The Canadian College of Osteopathy was established here in 1982, but its graduates do not enjoy nearly the same recognition or legitimacy as some of the other manual practitioners.  Chiropractors specialize in only one type of manual technique, the high-velocity, low-amplitude ‘adjustment’ that we all recognize as a cracking of the bones.  They can be found all across the country, they are licensed and regulated and their services are often reimbursed by insurers.  The same can be said for massage therapists and physiotherapists, but Canadian osteopaths are not nearly so well organized.

That is a shame, because this stuff works. There is very good evidence that manual medicine effectively treats many painful disorders.  There are millions of people suffering with musculoskeletal pain around the world who could benefit from this simple, safe and cost-effective healing art.  Many are considered invalid, unable to work, on permanent disability, labeled as sufferers of ‘chronic pain’, but many might return to the ranks of the healthy and functional if they could get proper treatment.  

One of the key differences between osteopathy and the other disciplines is that the practitioner identifies and treats many lesions at the same visit, and a keen eye can recognize a few key lesions that create spreading patterns of dysfunction throughout the body.  Another is that the focus is not on the bones – or the muscles – but rather on both.  The various techniques, with names like muscle energy, myofascial, functional and mobilization with impulse, make for an impressive toolkit.

The notion of a healing energy or lifeforce within the body that can be enhanced by a wise clinician is centuries old, with roots in Ayurveda and Traditional Chinese Medicine, but while eastern healing traditions embrace massage, they do not specifically mention the manipulation of bones, joints, ligaments or tendons.  A few ‘bonesetters’ gained wide renown for impressive cures in England.  One example is Sally Mapp, who called herself Crazy Sal and garnered enough attention during her itinerant wanderings that her ‘admirable cures’ were described in the Gentleman’s Quarterly in 1736.  Some have even interpreted the writings of Galen and Hippocrates as evidence that they practiced manual medicine two thousand years ago.

Physicians, including specialists, are not currently taught how to treat musculoskeletal pain using effective manual techniques.  If it is not a fracture, a dislocation or something that can be seen on an MRI, it is referred to physiotherapists or left to the tincture of time.  This leaves the vast majority of people with pain without a solution.  What they really need is not pain killers, sleeping pills, anti-inflammatories, counseling or anti-depressants.  They need to be cured, and most people who know about manual medicine and can afford to pay for it find it there.  It certainly does not fix everything – nothing does – but sometimes all that is needed is a skilled pair of hands.  

She was looking forward to living near the coast, but she confessed that when she takes her four-year-old daughter to the beach, she doesn’t let her swim in the ocean.  She is The Deepwater Horizon has captured the hearts and minds of millions of people

The pollution of New York waterways is legendary.  Most famous is the PCB pollution of the Hudson River, courtesy of General Electric. Between 1947 and 1977, two of their capacitor manufacturing plants dumped 1.3 million pounds of PCBs into the river.  It was designated a hazardous waste site by the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA), also known as the Superfund.  This pollution made the fish so toxic that it led to a fishing ban within 30km of the river.  The Superfund site has been an ongoing cleanup project for almost 40 years.  The Great Lakes are chock-full of PCBs from decades of industrial dumping on both sides of the Canada-US border.

The Bronx River, which travels north into their neighborhood, has been plagued for decades by pollution coming from stormwater runoff.  This leads to sewage being dumped into the river when it rains, a major problem that we are also suffering in Ottawa.  Environment Canada has recently decriminalized the dumping of raw sewage into rivers, which gives cities free rein to take as long as they like to fix problems like these.  In each of the past four years, almost 1 billion liters of sewage from our toilets have been dumped into the Ottawa River when it rains.

We rarely hear about oceanfront beaches in terms of chemical pollution, even when they are downstream from industrial dumping.  This is because the ocean is such a vast storage tank, allowing toxins to seemingly disappear.  When sun-worshippers are warned to avoid a specific beach, it is usually because of bacterial growth from bird droppings. 

This is typical short-sightedness that we need to move beyond – in Canada we consider our water safe if it causes no problems within a few days of drinking it.  There is currently a campaign promoting tap water use in the city of Ottawa, which you may have seen on the sides of buses or on billboards.  I find this campaign amusing, because of the sewage we are dumping in our water supply – and because over 30% of the people who live in our city are drinking from lead-contaminated pipes.  While there are plans to upgrade this infrastructure slowly over the next 40-50 years, the problem is not addressed more urgently because it is simply too expensive to fix.

Every day, in thousands of places around the world, toxic waste is spilling into our oceans, rivers and lakes.  Those chemicals and toxins will ultimately find their way into our bodies.  And they mess with our machinery.  They disrupt hormone function, they contribute to cancer and they likely affect immune and nervous system function and irritability. 

Ours is one of a number of integrative medicine practices whose treatment includes detoxification.  This is a controversial subject that many physicians do not yet consider worthwhile – including many integrative doctors.  Although the science linking toxins and health is still in its infancy, it makes sense.  It is ridiculous to think that we can be healthy if we live in a dirty world.  It is clear that healthy plants can only grow in fertile soil – and it is not possible to produce healthy humans in a dirty world.

This was bound to happen. When the human race is engaged in constantly digging and drilling, pumping and piping, extracting and finally burning this potent thick residue all over the planet, something is going to get spilled once in a while.

Now let's talk health. The volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in crude oil are an important group of toxins that increase cancer risk and have also been linked to several cancers, the diabetes epidemic, cardiovascular disease and a wide range of pregnancy-related problems, including miscarriage. Acute exposure of the kind that triggers asthma attacks and skin rashes is unlikely, but low-level exposure in people living near the coast is likely. Some experts have said the VOCs evaporate offshore so people living nearby are 'relatively safe'.

Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs) are also present in crude oil. These are the toxic chemicals that are produced when meat is cooked at high temperature - and they have replaced saturated fat as the most likely reason why people who eat more meat appear to get more cancer. The fish in the area will likely be full of these for years to come, and so people probably won't want to eat Atlantic fish for a long, long time.

One of the ways that the Coast Guard is dealing with the oil slick is to burn it. This will release much more particulate matter (PM) than that released by your car, because this is crude oil being burned in the open air. PM is the most dangerous part of air pollution, causing high blood pressure and heart attacks, lung disease and other disorders of chronic inflammation. People involved in the cleanup will be most affected by all these toxic compounds, but millions of people living in eastern states will also likely be at increased risk for many years to come.

Is there is a bright side to this disaster? The fantastic efforts to get at every last drop of oil on this planet are now being called into question. Many in the oil industry are desperate to see this mess cleaned up quickly and efficiently without consequences ... because if it isn't it might mean no more offshore oil drilling. Barack Obama has put a moratorium on offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico - for now. A planned project of the coast of Newfoundland will require offshore rigs that are almost twice as deep as the one that is burning. The politicians in Newfoundland say they were 'assured by Chevron' that there were safeguards in place, but it turns out that there is no such thing. The real problem, in the end, is that the human race still burns too much coal, gas and oil.

I am not very interested in XMRV.  For one thing, two other studies found no increased incidence of XMRV in CFS patients.  For another, this is just the latest in a series of viruses that have been associated with CFS. Almost a dozen viruses have been implicated over the years.

The reason that viruses seem to be repeatedly associated with this disorder is that it causes - or is caused by - a disturbed immune system.  This makes people more prone to chronic infection or more prone to being affected by viral infections.  

I don't want to belabour this point here, because there is a detailed summary of our thoughts on CFS in the spring issue of our newsletter.  But I think Health Canada has it wrong.

The alkaline diet is an approach to healthy eating that is based on the notion that some foods generate harmful acids in the body. It has been said by several authors of popular diet books that these acids create problems for cells that affect their health, and create inflammation in the body that can lead to many diseases.

Our conventional medical training taught us that changes in pH in the body were a dangerous thing. The medical term for this kind of change is metabolic acidosis, and it is a sign of serious, possibly life-threatening disease. So the notion that people could be walking around with metabolic acidosis from poor diet would seem ridiculous to most physicians. Until now.

Harvard researchers examined blood test results from 4525 healthy adults who participated in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey from 1999 to 2005. This survey, known as NHANES, is one of the most important public health interventions conducted in the world. It has been the source of hundreds of important insights about health and the causes of disease.

The authors found that healthy adults who had very subtle increases in a measurement called an anion gap were also more likely to have a higher white blood cell count, a higher C-reactive protein and a higher platelet count, mean platelet volume and ferritin. All of these are important markers of inflammation, and have been correlated with increased risk of cardiovascular disease, cancer and all-cause mortality.

What this means in english is that the anion gap measures the amount of acid in the body, and it appears that some people are walking around with too much acid. While this does not prove that diet can affect acidity, it is a profoundly important idea that should make most doctors' heads spin.

Acid is likely a trigger of inflammation because bacteria make acids as their waste products. So it would make sense that when the body detects acids, it assumes you have an infection. It is known that an acid environment activates neutrophils and the complement system, which are important parts of the immune system. Virtually all of the chronic diseases of mankind can be traced back to inflammation, another example of evolution gone wrong in the modern world. The system that was designed to keep us alive is now killing us slowly.

The authors propose that the cause of the increased anion gap in their study was organic anions. These might come from anywhere, including undiagnosed infections, allergies, emotional trauma, genetic defects or any of the other root causes of disease. But any biochemistry student will tell you that food can generate acid in the body.

Our European colleagues who practice what they call Biological Medicine are strong proponents of an alkaline diet as part of what they call milieu therapy. This approach seeks to improve cell health by improving the cellular environment. Makes sense, no? It is still to soon to say that the benefits of an alkaline diet have been proven, but I am definitely more comfortable recommending this diet to my patients.

I am standing on Avenida Tiradentes, named after a gruesome Latin revolutionary whose name came from his penchant for pulling out the teeth of his enemies.   Roberto Pastoriza is the cross street, named for a revolutionary martyr who brought down Trujillo on June 14.  I have come from the Zona Colonial, the oldest old city in the New World.  This is where Columbus landed, and the scattered ruins – the oldest church, the oldest fortress, the oldest university – all look almost Roman.  Though there is astonishing history here, it remains run down and uninteresting, still early in the cycle of rebirth that tourism brings to such places.

I have visited the medicinal plant market, but it was nothing to write home about.  Natural medicine is very widely used here, but it is pretty run-of-the-mill.  No aboriginal voodoo, no famous healers, just lots of traditional remedies that come from the grandmothers.  Coconut for blood pressure, corn silk for the kidneys, artichoke for the liver, aloe for the skin ... they are used throughout the Caribbean.  In truth, I think the most potent medicine these folks have to teach us about is happiness.

I have been here only a few days, but I have made friends.  I invite conversations by asking for directions, even when I know where I am going.  Sometimes I ask for the time, even when I couldn’t care less what time it is.  Here the responses are filled with laughter, with questions, with humanity.  The people I met on the street have invited me for dinner, they have brought me to their homes, I have met their families.  These blessings were common in the golden age of travel, but they are not common anymore.  It takes me by surprise and sweetens the city so that I almost don’t notice the smog.   Almost.

In our world, people are offering structured classes in laughter medicine.  Groups of people get together with a 'teacher' who helps them laugh.  Leading-edge centres are advising people with serious illnesses to watch funny movies.  Patch Adams created a storm of controversy and inspired books and a Hollywood film - all because he made his patients laugh.  This new medicine needs to be prescribed because our busy, over-scheduled, hyper-stressed lives leave no room for random tomfoolery or spontaneous hilarity. 

I left Santo Domingo to spend the weekend on the northern coast.  I have come to Cabarete, a windswept coastal town that is filled with Europeans.  They are surfing, windsurfing, kite-surfing and paddle-surfing.  This last one is new to me, but apparently it’s all the rage.  I will have a lesson tomorrow to see what all the fuss is about.  Tonight I walked along the sea, breathing deeply from the warm air and enjoying it.   Soon I will be heading back to the big city to catch a flight to Havana. 

I will be visiting the internationally renowned Center for Neurologic Restoration (CIREN).  The Cubans went through a difficult period without medicines or equipment, thanks to the US trade embargo.  As a result, thousands of doctors across the country turned en masse to plants, acupuncture, manual medicine and anything else they could think of that might help their patients.  The result is an integrative healthcare model that many say might inspire the rest of the world – so I will investigate.  My patients don't like it when I am away for too long, but I never come back empty-handed ... I am always looking for new ideas and innovative treatments.

Details to follow.  Hasta luego.

The reason for this operation is to harvest show dolphins for Sea World and dozens of 'swim with dolphins' operations around the world. Swimming with dolphins makes people feel good, and studies have even documented an anti-depressant effect that lasts for days. 

It appears to be partly related to the sound waves that dolphins create in their heads, with a highly specialized bone that creates a kind of sonar they use to navigate.  These sound waves seem to create alpha waves in the brain that are associated with well-being.

The show dolphins that are selected for this purpose are worth over $150,000.  Those that don't make the cut get slaughtered and their meat is sold in the village.  This depressing farce is made even more obscene when we are told by the film's narrators about the mercury in dolphin meat.

In Canada and the US, the 'legal' limit of mercury in seafood is 1 part per million - or 1 microgram per gram.  Most canned tuna and many other fish contain more than this, but this is not the point. 

Dolphin meat contains 2000 parts per million of mercury.  My jaw dropped when I heard this number.  It is not that surprising, really, when one considers that they are at the top of the oceanic food chain. 

I actually laughed out loud when I learned what the dolphin 'fishermen' have been doing to win over the townsfolk - they donate the dolphin meat to provide free lunches for the local schoolchildren.

This is the same country that hid the mercury poisoning at Minamata Bay that killed and maimed thousands of people in the 1950s.  I talked about that mass poisoning and Minamata disease - the name given to mercury-related neurotoxicity - at a lecture I gave recently at a medical conference on mercury.  It is surprising how little most physicians know about mercury.

We take mercury, lead and other toxic metals out of people with chelation therapy.  This has made me very interested in the overall subject of detoxification - and why we have all these poisons in our bodies in the first place.  So I was happy to find out about  www.GotMercury.org, a website that raises awareness about how toxic seafood has become.

I never would have eaten it anyway, but I now know that dolphin meat is highly toxic.  I also advise our patients to avoid tuna, swordfish, marlin, shark and many other large fish that have very high mercury levels.  That's right - don't eat tuna.

This is a bit of a sad story, but we should end it on a high note - it appears that the overwhelming public response to the film has made a difference.  There does not appear to be a dolphin slaughter at The Cove this year.

Everything we do in medicine is currently focused on diagnosis.  The process begins when a person notices that their body is behaving abnormally and seeks professional help.  These problems are called symptoms – things like cough, chest pain, headache or fever – and they are clues.  The doctor takes a medical history to uncover any other important symptoms, and performs a physical examination to look for physical abnormalities that are also clues – these are called signs.  

Based on these clues, doctors generate a mental list of all the possible ‘diseases’.  That list is called a differential diagnosis, and it forms the basis of further testing.  This might involve laboratory evaluation to measure the levels of hundreds of substances in the blood, urine and other tissues and fluids.  For just over a century, it has included taking pictures of different parts of the body using X-ray, ultrasound, CT scan or MRI techniques.  A new era promises genetic testing and many other specialized techniques.

The goal of all of this activity is to arrive at a diagnosis.  This is how doctors understand health problems, and how they select your treatment.  Doctors obviously do not treat osteoarthritis in the same way that they treat schizophrenia or asthma.  If you know your diagnosis, you can look it up on the internet and learn everything that doctors know and more.  You can learn what the typical symptoms are, when it usually occurs, how prevalent it is, who is most likely to get it, what the X-rays look like and blood tests show, how it is officially diagnosed and – more importantly – how it is treated.

If you have an infection, antibiotics kill it.  If you have high blood pressure, you are given drugs to lower it.  If you are depressed, you take antidepressants.  Tumors are cut out, low iron is replaced, absent hormones are prescribed, pain is treated with pain killers and sedatives treat insomnia.  It is more effective in some cases than others, but it is always incomplete.  It is incomplete because modern medicine treats what you have, but it does not address why you have it.

This must be a part of the new medicine.  

While early medicine attributed many problems to such things as bad humours or evil spirits, it evolved into a paradigm of treating a diagnosis. For centuries, doctors were taught that there was one cause for each disease, and it was the challenge of our profession to find that cause and eradicate it, thereby curing the patient.

This made sense in its time, since most of the illnesses that doctors treated were caused by infectious micro-organisms such as tuberculosis and cholera. It doesn’t work so well anymore.  The reason is that most ‘diseases’ are not diseases at all.  They are simply patterns of dysfunction.

Let’s say you have a leak in your roof.  The damage after a heavy rain will depend on how your house leans, where the leak is, how your foundation was built, etc.  You might see water damage on your sofa, your basement floor, your bathroom ceiling or your closet clothes.  What would you think of a repairman who told you that you had ‘sofa disease’, insisted that you need to repair or replace your sofa … but did nothing about your roof?

That is how we practice medicine today.  In most cases, the root causes of illness are ignored.  We have lots of scientific evidence linking these factors to most chronic diseases, and we pay lip service to some of them, but less than 1% of our health care dollars are used to deal with them.  They include emotional traumas, psychological stress, poor nutrition, lack of exercise and sunlight, physical injuries, surgical scars, toxic metals and chemicals, chronic infections, harmful electromagnetic fields and genetic variations – and they are implicated in virtually all the diseases that afflict man.

When you consider that our way of life and our physical, mental and emotional environment are all becoming more and more unhealthy, it should come as no surprise that most diseases are on the rise.  The solution is not more drugs and surgery.  

First and foremost should come prevention.  Taxing junk food and polluting industries, subsidizing vegetables and promoting exercise at school and work, teaching children and adults to meditate and regulating industrial chemicals are just as important as paying for doctors, hospitals and drugs.  There is ample research supporting this kind of medicine, but it is largely ignored.  

Next comes natural medicines.  Plant-based nutrition represents a huge health resource, and many supplements and herbs are proven to be safer and more effective than drugs – at a fraction of the cost.   Chronic pain causes so much suffering, but most patients are only offered drugs to treat the pain – only a small minority have the money and knowledge to seek real treatment from manual medicine providers and other healers.  We have helped hundreds of people return to health without drugs.

The good news is that the new medicine is easy.  While there are thousands of diseases, they are all caused by the same few things.  They are the root causes of all disease.  How they affect the body is even simpler – in most cases, it is about the three control systems of the body – the nervous system, the endocrine (hormone) system and the immune system.  They all work together, and their common action is the focus of the new field of psycho-neuro-endo-immunology.  

Medical specialists, with their hyper-focus on one small part of the body, do not appreciate these links yet.  Integrative physicians who see the body as a whole cannot help but look at things this way.  And slowly, we are beginning to treat the causes of the problem AND the problem itself.

Implementing this new understanding of how and why people get sick can radically improve the health of people around the world.  But changing the way the ‘experts’ think is no small task.  I firmly believe that this revolution will not come from doctors – it will come from patients.  And it has already begun.  The internet allows anyone to find the answers.  Seek and ye shall find.

During that time, I have been fortunate enough to be able to help many people with health problems that their doctors could not solve.  We have worked together to find and treat hidden infections, nutritional deficiencies, hormone imbalances and heavy metal and other toxicities.  Although I have learned a great deal from healers around the world and at the many international conferences and seminars I have attended, my best teachers have been my patients.

Although I am proud of the knowledge and skills I have acquired, one of the things I still struggle with is allergies.   I am not referring to the garden-variety allergies that most people are familiar with – hay fever and sinus congestion are just the tip of the iceberg.  What I am talking about is part of an epidemic. Problems like asthma and eczema, irritable bowel syndrome, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome and multiple chemical sensitivity are the most obvious allergy-related diseases.  Another group of disorders that is strongly linked to allergy is developmental delay; this includes autism, ADHD and Asperger’s syndrome.

Unfortunately, conventional medicine is completely missing the boat on allergy.  Organizations of specialists trained in Allergy and Immunology have been very outspoken in their criticism of ‘unconventional’ allergy testing and treatment.  This includes IgG food allergy testing, provocation-neutralization testing, lymphocyte response assays, electrodermal testing using computer technologies like the VegaTest, and other energetic techniques such as applied kinesiology, NAET and BOSS.  

One big reason for this feeling is that these numerous techniques don’t always agree with each other.  Sometimes patients get different results using different tests, and sometimes they get different results using the same test on different days.  While this is often interpreted as proof that the tests are not reliable, this is not necessarily the case.  

In fact, allergy – also known as hypersensitivity – actually changes from minute to minute and from day to day.  It is a response generated by the nervous system and the immune system working together.  I call these the control systems.  If you have been drinking caffeine, have had a stressful day at the office, have not slept well or you ate something you are allergic to for breakfast, your control systems will be more sensitive.

More importantly, although many health problems can be greatly improved by treating allergies, allergy is just a symptom.  This is a critical point in terms of getting to the root of the problem.  If you suffer from allergy-related health problems, the important question to ask is this: why are your control systems overly sensitive?  

Conventional allergists have no answer to this question.  Environmental physicians trained by the American Academy of Environmental Medicine (AAEM) believe that the main cause is toxic overload combined with nutritional deficiency and genes that put you at risk.  In some patients, emotional factors make the nervous system more sensitive to allergens.  In some patients, treating infections seems to greatly improve allergic symptoms – presumably by de-sensitizing the immune system.

One of the benefits of the kind of medicine I practice is that although it is more difficult, it makes everything easier.  The reason is that instead of treating the thousands of different ‘diseases’ and ‘syndromes’, I now focus more and more on treating the handful of root causes that lead to all of them.   

The handful of root causes includes:

•    toxins
•    emotional trauma and stress
•    infections
•    physical injuries
•    lack of exercise
•    nutritional problems and deficiency
•    genetics

These problems are the root causes of disease.  When they are present, they lead to dysfunction of the nervous system, the immune system and the hormone system – the control systems of the body.  This dysfunction results in a handful of processes  - one of which is allergy - that together can explain virtually all human illnesses.

Here is the point: compared to the other functional problems I treat, allergy is tough to fix.  This is only partly because it is still not completely understood.  It is also because it requires a lot of infrastructure.  Specially trained staff, equipment, hundreds of different allergen extracts, knowledge of products, devices and other resources to help the most sensitive patients dodge the biggest landmines in an increasingly toxic world.

Dr Jennifer Armstrong, a colleague and friend who runs the Ottawa Environmental Health Clinic, is one of the world’s most experienced physicians when it comes to treating patients with complex and severe allergy-related symptoms.  She has been a very helpful teacher and guide, and not surprisingly, her sophisticated practice has a 3-year waiting list.

Thankfully, it works.  People get better.  People who have been written off by their doctors and the dozens of specialists who have had nothing to offer gradually find themselves living a better life.  This is the greatest reward of practicing this kind of medicine.  Another benefit is that, although it is not easy, it is never boring.

We are committed to this vision, not just because it is a good idea.  We have many patients who are very chemically sensitive, and they suffer in most buildings because of poor air quality.  We also want to build a family of practitioners who are healthy and happy working at the Seekers Centre.

It was shocking to me to learn how much of a risk indoor air quality can be.  My education as an integrative physician has included lots of training in healing modalities like acupuncture, mind-body medicine, herbal remedies, functional medicine and other principles.  I am becoming more and more interested in environmental medicine because it helps answer one of the most basic questions I have about my patients:  why are they sick in the first place?

In the design of our new facility, we are addressing issues like preventing the buildup of mold and dust.  We are trying to avoid electromagnetic field (EMF) pollution and construction materials that will release toxic volatile organic chemicals (VOCs).  Many issues are relevant to healthy construction ... a movement that began in Germany over 40 years ago, who called it Bau-Biologie.   

I recently learned that our mattress is treated with a pesticide called Ultra Fresh.  I was glad to hear that it was not treated with PBDE, a flame retardant that has been banned because it promotes cancer and thyroid disorders, yet is found at toxic levels in many women's breast milk.  Still, I was wondering what Ultra Fresh was.  Their website did not reveal its identity, but assured that it must be safe since it was approved by the EPA.

In fact, there are over 80,000 chemicals in use and practically none of them have ever been tested for safety.  Unless a chemical is going to be added to food, no testing is required.  Several highly publicized studies have shown that politicians in the US and Canada had over 200 hazardous chemicals in their body tissues.

The human race is getting sicker.  Several cancers are on the rise.  Immune system disorders are increasing exponentially.  Autism is the most famous modern epidemic, but mental illness is also increasing rapidly.  These finely tuned control systems - the nervous system, the immune system and the hormone system - are the ones that chemicals damage first.

This new project gives me hope, but there is much work to be done.  Chemicals are a part of our everyday lives, so we cannot live without them.  But they are making us sick.  This is a complicated issue, and we need to find our way back to health.  Hopefully our future has not been stolen forever.

We knew what to expect because some of us had been there before.  The biggest problems by far were diarrhea and malnutrition.  We saw scores of infants and children, brought in by their mothers and grandmothers.  Some lived in the village, but many had walked several hours to see the Canadian doctors.  They were barefoot and tired, but always very grateful and sincere.   

We saw many of the same problems that we would see back home – diabetes, high blood pressure, arthritis and back pain – but almost everyone was treated for parasites.  Poor sanitation and dirty water are the cause, making the subject of worms a running joke during the trip. One older lady chuckled when I asked about them.  “Of course I have worms”, she said.  “Everyone has worms.”  Reminded us all that the miracle of modern medicine might be more about flushing toilets and treated water.

There were definitely problems with the trip.  Only a few of us spoke Spanish, which was a second language for these indigenous people whose native tongue is Ngobe Bugle.  A few people got sick with amoebas or fever, but they are all fine now.  We almost got stuck in the village as rainstorms grounded the boats, and then almost got stuck in New York as a snowstorm grounded the planes.  The living was simple, the facilities sparse.  But we swam in the river, we sang at night, and we gazed at stars like young children.  It was a delight.

I spent my off-hours poking around the village asking about medicinal plants.  They are generally wary of strangers and not keen to share their ‘secrets’ but one of the medicine men in town worked for the clinic, so we had a few exchanges.  Like many of the others I have known, he got his knowledge in his dreams.  They do not have a strong tradition of shared knowledge of plants – like the Chinese, Indian and Tibetan systems.  In the end, the best contact I made was with Dr. Mahabir Gupta, a professor of Pharmacy at the University of Panama who specializes in rainforest plants.  We will discuss a collaboration on a future visit.

It is ironic that in the first world, ‘alternative medicine’ tends to be the medicine of the rich.  These people tend to be more educated, open-minded ‘seekers’ who have the time and money to invest in their health and think about things like prevention and holistic health.  In Panama and many of the other parts of the world, plants are the medicine of the poor.  Over 80% of the world’s people cannot afford pharmaceutical drugs.  They use plants because they are available.  They have local ‘doctors’ because their people do not go to university.  Their knowledge is often oral because they cannot read or write.  And yet they have managed to find medicines that our richest, most well-endowed institutions have not.  Medicines that work.

If medicine is to truly serve mankind, it cannot limit itself to medicines that only the rich can afford.  After spending years working and traveling with medicine men in developing countries, I brought their teachings home.  Strange to find myself only able to offer them to people with money to spare.  Strange indeed.

There are a lot of different tests and treatments I make use of when taking care of patients, I have decided to take a special interest in detoxification of heavy metals.  This is partly because it is best done by intravenous therapy, which is not so easy to get in the average holistic clinic.  Mostly, it is because of my environmental interests. 

I have written before, and will probably write again, about the failure of our governments to protect us from companies that carelessly dump poisons into the air, water and soil we need to survive.  Not surprisingly, these poisons eventually end up in our kidneys, our brains and our blood vessels, altering the function of our nervous systems, our hormones and our immune systems. 

There are some steps people can take to minimize their exposure, but the truth is that there is no escape.   Lead, mercury, cadmium and arsenic are just a few of the toxic metals that are in all of us.  Uranium, nickel, platinum, silver, barium ... it is downright weird.  Because of air currents meandering northward and a diet rich in big fatty fish, the Inuit are loaded with these toxins.  

The problem with all the research done to date is that it measures levels of toxins in blood, urine or hair.  Recent studies suggest that they are totally inaccurate measurements of what is actually bound to your tissues.  So we are doing this study with David Lean, a world-renowned environmental toxicologist who has published over 200 papers - most of them about mercury.  We hope to establish the IV chelation challenge that, which we and most integrative physicians recognize is the gold standard, as the new research standard for measuring toxic metals in the body.  We also want to treat a few toxic Inuit in Iqaluit to show that we can take those metals out of them.

We need to stop this madness.  We need a government with the foresight and the strength to take care of our country ... and our planet.  We need strong rules protecting us from poisons.  Many economists have proposed that we need to include the environmental and health costs - of mining, logging, refining, chemical processing, fertilizing, driving and other dirty activities - into their final price.  If we used these real prices, the tar sands in Alberta would be shut down tomorrow.  Compact fluorescent lightbulbs would be abandoned (they contain mercury). 

And to be honest, we would enter a deep recession.  It would be painful, but it is the only chance we have.  Otherwise we are headed for an even bigger mess.  But I'm getting off topic ...

I am excited to start this new project that will hopefully bring us closer to a cleaner world.

While he explained the importance of his work in the talk, he was most excited about the promise of genetic cardiology.  He painted a picture of a brave new world  - using genetic testing using DNA microarray technology – in which heart disease was a thing of the past.  He actually spoke of eradicating heart disease.  He showed us slides comparing the lifespan of various mammals, informing us that there are some whales that live to be almost 200 years old.  Humans could easily live that long, he said.  

The audience was not a scientific one, so it was an easy sell.  The room was filled with young business leaders who were members of a Foundation that supported the Institute’s work.   But with all due respect to Dr. Roberts, the idea that genetic testing will somehow eradicate heart disease is nothing short of ludicrous.  

The Heart Institute has developed an international reputation as a Centre for Excellence in Cardiology.  This has been established on many fronts, but one interesting area of research they have been involved in is air pollution.  One category of poisons that can make our air unhealthy is the fine bits of non-combusted gasoline that float around and can be inhaled; they are referred to as particulate matter.  

The Heart Institute has published several papers demonstrating that breathing bad air affects the health of blood vessels.  One of these was called the Bus Stop Study, and it found that breathing the air at a bus stop on a busy Ottawa street for fifteen minutes affected something called endothelial function.  This study supports other large-scale epidemiologic studies in many different countries that have consistently shown that people who live or work near busy streets are more likely to die of heart attacks and strokes.  This has mostly been attributed to particulate matter, and the risk is about 30%.

Discovering a gene that increases cardiac risk is big news.  It is sexy.  It allows other researchers to get busy finding out what that gene makes.  It opens the door for pharmaceutical companies to hire researchers to make drugs based on whatever that gene makes.  A new kind of heart pill gets drugmakers salivating.  It could mean a $100 billion market.  Let’s face it - air pollution is boring.

Exercise is boring.  Meditation is a yawn.  Pomegranate, green tea and fish oil have not garnered much excitement.  But guess what?  They all have more of an impact on heart disease risk than 9p21.  If you are concerned about heart disease, don’t wait for the future of genetics to save you.  Technology is an incredible tool and it will most definitely continue to help us find new ways of patching up our sick, diseased body parts and putting us back together again.  

All the king’s horses and all the king’s men may find a way to put Humpty Dumpty together again, but if he never sat on the wall in the first place, he never would have had that fall.  Alternative practitioners often criticize western medicine by saying it is more about ‘sick care’ than ‘health care’.  This is true – and if you are sick you should be glad.  But sick care is only part of the solution.  

Cardiovascular disease – which includes heart attack, stroke and all the other problems caused by unhealthy blood vessels - is one of the biggest causes of death and disability in our society.   This was not the case 50 years ago.  Natural food free of chemicals, regular physical activity, sunshine, times of silence and rest … these are all important.  They are increasingly rare.  Our way of life is making us sick, and things are only getting worse.  Fortunately, a few enlightened people are becoming better, empowered by a growing body of science that can help them learn how to take care of themselves.

Be one of them.

Always aware that time is of the essence, I have been preparing to take our work to the next level.  I have envisioned a way to make integration between western and alternative medicine a reality.  A centre that combines family doctors with a wide range of experts in many alternative therapies, one that combines pharmaceutical drugs with herbs and vitamins, surgery and massage, blood tests and energy healing, physiotherapy and meditation, aerobics and yoga.

Easier said than done.  I have found myself visiting places for rent and places for sale, talking with designers, bankers and accountants, conducting job interviews and strategy meetings, and fretting about the economic downturn while struggling with record-low commercial vacancy rates.  This is not what I do best.  Creating change takes hard work, but creating a new model of health care looks like it will take very very hard work.  

I find myself wondering whether I might have more of an impact by focusing on creating change in other ways.  The response to our newsletter has been overwhelming, and one that is subscription-based and targets doctors could have a wider impact and create change globally.  It is immensely satisfying to get feedback about your work from someone thousands of miles away.  

Here is another scenario – online consulations.  Wireless technology has made these a reality for thousands of specialists in Canada and around the world.  There is no reason why this could not work for our practice.  On some level, I know there is no replacement for a long, thorough consultation with a knowledgeable physician who can do a proper physical examination, order tests and treat you on the spot.

It is difficult to reconcile speaking out against air pollution when your real estate search is restricted to places that have ample parking.  I wonder if my patients would rather see me from the comfort of their homes, and if this convenience might offset the fact that we are not in the same room. Maybe these thoughts are nothing more than me getting cold feet – or maybe there is more than one way to transform medicine.  We will see.

Omega-3-enriched foods are not equivalent to fish oil, because they contain ALA - an omega-3 we can use very little of.  It has other benefits but does not replace fish oil. Evidence suggests 1-2 grams of DHA and EPA a day are good for the heart and brain - and higher doses treat rheumatoid arthritis and other inflammatory disorders.  Be careful if you take coumadin - they may increase bleeding.

From now on, I will mention Kernig's sign when I lecture medical students on integrative medicine.  This new way of seeing the body as a whole is not just a feel-good catchphrase, it is a paradigm shift in how we think about the way the body works.  Integrative medicine is not just about using herbs and yoga alongside drugs and surgery.  It explains how different parts of the body affect each other.

Every single doctor in the world knows that you can diagnose an infection in the brain using an examination technique involving the foot.  Why it so impossible for an acupuncture needle in the foot to treat a migraine headache?  The tissues of the foot are long sinews wrapped in a sheath that runs from head to toe.  The parts of the body are not distinct - they are integrated.

Integrative medicine also requires us to stop diagnosing syndromes and start identifying the disease processes themselves.  Chronic inflammation is linked to Alzheimer's, depression, diabetes, heart disease, obesity, arthritis and host of other diseases - which is why exercise and vegetables seem to improve so many conditions.  

We need to focus less on the different parts of the body that suffer damage - and more on the systems that actually inflict the damage - hormones, the immune system and the nervous system.  Medicine acknowledges some of the root causes of this damage - things like poor nutrition, sedentary lifestyle, physical injury and poor psychology.  Others are terribly underestimated - such as toxic chemicals, chronic infection and chemical and food sensitivities.

Many of my integrative physician colleagues despair of the reductionist thinking that pervades our over-specialized profession.  Patients are sent scrambling from the heart doctor to the kidney doctor to the eye doctor, and these disciplines have become so complex and technical that they are beyond the understanding of the average GP.  

Medicine will change.  It has to because integrative medicine is truth.  The body is not just a bunch of parts.  It is one.  Body, mind and spirit.

Then there are the old schoolers.  Their kid is sick and they want a prescription.  They just want whatever it takes to get rid of the thing that is making their son or daughter cry and sneeze and cough and whine to go away as soon as possible.  Their stubbornness is based on the assumption that the worst thing that could happen is that the drugs don't work.  They assume they have nothing to lose.

Most doctors don't like to overprescribe antibiotics.  But they do.  The reason is simple - talking to patients takes patience and time.  It is a lot faster and easier to write a prescription than it is to explain why it isn't necessary.  In teaching hospitals and some group family medicine practices, where doctors are paid a salary or an hourly wage, this is more likely to happen.  In most cases, though, doctors get paid per patient.  Human nature being what it is, when time is money, money usually wins.  They also assume there is little harm done.

The physicians that stick to their guns are good communicators.  They use effective body language, maintain eye contact, show concern and diligence to inspire trust.  They need this help because the message they use is a feeble one:  your child doesn't really need this drug - and it might cause antibiotic resistance or some side-effects.

I don't have any problem with parents anymore, because my message is much more clear - antibiotics kill the immune system.  Eighty percent of it is in the gut, and it needs the bacteria living there to function normally.  Kill the bacteria in the gut, and you risk 'screwing up' the immune system.  The end result could be asthma, eczema or some other serious autoimmune disease.  This is not yet completely proven, but there are many lines of clinical evidence that support it.  This very powerful argument is still unknown to 99% of physicians. 

The problem with combining technology and free-market capitalism is that anyone looking to make a buck can ruin it for everyone.  This is not just true of the pharmaceutical industy - other fine examples of innovation gone wrong are nuclear weapons, online poker and the shopping channel.  So don't blame the drug companies - don't blame the doctors - just be careful out there.

Idyllic places where people can get several days or weeks of healthy food, clean air, therapeutic exercise, mental rest, education and intensive therapy have existed for centuries.  Traditionally based around spas and thermal baths, they were the precursors of modern hospitals.  But as any physician who has spent enough time in a hospital can tell you, our hospitals have strayed quite far from this ideal.

One of the things that I liked most about their approach to healing is that it is truly integrative.  Their physicians have all undergone orthodox medical training, which makes it possible to take the essential parts of all the different alternative healing systems and put them together in a coherent manner.  Ayurvedic and homeopathic principles address constitution, biological dentistry identifies oral sources of infection or toxicity, meridian theory potentiates injection treatments and a wide range of therapies are used in a rational way.  This is much more effective than simply mastering one approach and using it to treat all diseases.

Another important part of the equation is that people had made the effort to go there.  They had decided that their health was enough of a priority that it was worth devoting time, energy and money to healing their particular illness.  When combined with trust in their doctor and a belief that his or her treatments will be effective, this contributes a huge amount to the success of any approach.  It is a tragedy that these powerful tools for harnessing the healing power of intention and the mind are dismissed by modern medicine as a ‘placebo effect’ that researchers consider a scientific nuisance that must be discounted.

I had a very interesting conversation with Dr Thomas Rau at a little Italian restaurant one evening.  He has been the medical director of the clinic for several years and has written a few books outlining their approach to nutrition and biological medicine.  I was enjoying a very tasty mushroom risotto when he asked me a question that disappointed, but did not surprise me.  

He said that the Paracelsus Clinic has treated patients from many countries, but those who came from three specific countries – England, Australia and Canada – all seemed to have the same confused approach. They all seemed to believe that their government doctors and hospitals provided the highest level of care, and that if a therapy was not universally available and government-sponsored, it must not be very useful.  He asked if this was my experience, and how this could be so.

I laughed, and assured him that this was something we have also struggled with at the Seekers Centre.  There is something unique about a universal health care system that makes it seem like a national treasure, and many Canadians still cling to the belief that they can trust ‘the system’ to do what is best for them when they get sick.  Perhaps these people also convince themselves that public high schools offer the very best education, that all of our laws make perfect sense or that the asphalt on our roads is as smooth as it could be.

There are some pieces of the puzzle that are missing from the Paracelsus approach; the biggest one is education.  They do not show people how to buy groceries or how to cook for health.  They do not teach yoga, aerobics, resistance training or make any effort to put physical activity into their patients’ daily lives.  Ideally there would also include a structured approach to meditation or mindfulness-based stress reduction.   

Another limitation is cost.  While it is clear that this kind of place does not come cheap, most of the patients I met were either wealthy or they had made a significant sacrifice to be there.  Some of our intravenous therapies are also costly, but when I suggest to patients that they compare it to the cost of renovating their home or repairing their car, they have a light-bulb moment that puts things into a new perspective.  You only have one life, so caring for it should not be in the same ballpark as a pair of shoes or dinner at a restaurant.

Some of the things I learned at the Paracelsus Clinic will be benefiting our patients right away.  Others will need to be explored further when I return to Europe in the fall for the European Congress of Biological Medicine in Germany.  Visits to places like this are a real treat for me, because even though we are providing great care, the seeking never stops.

While it is a great idea to protect people from Bisphenol A, it is just one of thousands of chemicals that are polluting our bodies. Blood from newborn babies' umbilical cords has been found to contain over 200 industrial chemicals and most of our bodies are just as deeply contaminated.Breast milk is still considered the most nutritious food in infancy, but it is also one of the most chemically polluted food sources on the planet.

There are many chemicals with a lot of potential risk that are not banned yet. Most are studied one by one, but we know very little about what effect they have on our bodies in combination. For some reason, these chemicals are allowed to remain in our midst until there is solid evidence that they are harmful. Health Canada proposes to apply the opposite rule to natural supplements - they will only allow them if they are proven safe. This is an absurd contradiction.

Minimizing your risk of exposure to chemicals can be a full-time job in the modern world. Sticking to natural, organic foods low on the food chain (vegetarian is best) is a good start. Helping your body's natural detoxification processes with exercise, water, fiber, and a natural medicines can help.

When I came across The Fluoride Deception, a book written by a New York-based investigative journalist named Christopher Bryson, I decided the time to look into it had come. One must be careful about drawing conclusions based on one person’s story, but this exhaustively researched and annotated book is very convincing. The portrait that Bryson paints is definitely a conspiracy.

Bryson offers evidence of the health risks of fluoride and claims that they were known for many years. He asserts that fluoride was essential to the massive aluminum and steel industries – and the uranium used in the World War II Manhattan Project that built the atomic bomb. He then provides disturbing evidence that these powerful industry and government forces were behind the water fluoridation initiative – to minimize the risk of a rising tide of lawsuits filed by factory employees and people in surrounding communities.

I was most disturbed by his account of the problems faced by the Mohawk community of Akwesasne. I have spent time taking care of these people, and can attest to the rampant diabetes and heart disease, behavioural problems, joint and muscle pains and general debility that they suffer from. There is a Reynolds Aluminum plant on the shore of the St. Lawrence river that has been a smoking gun for years. The Mohawks filed a lawsuit against Reynolds for polluting their homeland, but they lost their case. Bryson claims that Reynolds hid the evidence that proved how much fluoride they had been dumping.

The evidence is difficult to argue with. The book refers to public documents in which an American Dental Association says they would secure ‘sufficient research data’ to justify a $25,000 donation from General Motors, who had patented Freon, a refrigerant made with fluoride. One of their directors was named Kettering, and there is a world-class research institute in his name. GM also funded much of the apparently weak research asserting that fluoride inhalation was safe.

Bryson also reminds us that much of the fluoride research was funded by the Mellon Institute. I did not know that Andrew Mellon, the magnate who founded Alcoa, was personally involved. Mellon paid Trendley Dean to conduct the initial research suggesting that people living in areas with more naturally-occuring fluoride in their water supply had fewer cavities.

Even more disturbing, but not surprising, is the involvement of the US government. It seems that they were very dependent on fluoride for enriching uranium and transporting it. Bryson quotes documents that suggest a cover-up of diseased factory workers and nearby farmers whose orchards were blighted by toxic fluoride-rich pollution. I was surprised to learn that several of the leading scientists promoting water fluoridation were working on the atomic bomb during the second World War effort, that many fluoride conferences were personally organized by Roosevelt’s science advisor, a former Alcoa lawyer.

Fluoride toothpaste does prevent cavities. It seems to promote the formation of fluorapatite, which strengthens their enamel coating. It also kills the bacteria that cause cavities. But putting it on your teeth is very different from ingesting it. There is a warning on toothpaste that it should not be ingested. One dental researcher at the University of Toronto was quoted as saying that fluoride toothpaste should only be available to children by prescription. This is based on research linked it to hormone problems, poor iodine absorption and increased risk of certain cancers.

The city of Ottawa adds 0.8 parts per million of fluoride to our drinking water. The same is done in most cities in North America. But our teeth are apparently no healthier than those of Europeans, who do not add fluoride to their water. The whole campaign to add fluoride to water was based on improvements in dental health seen after fluoride was added to the water in an American town called Newburgh. Bryson quotes research suggesting that, in fact, these improvements were due to better nutrition and the use of antibiotics, and that people’s teeth improved just as much in towns that did not add fluoride to the water.

I must admit that Bryson’s dramatic allegations are unusual, but the depth of his research and the detail of his references is impressive. I am left feeling a bit skeptical, but mostly disturbed. Although we sometimes read disturbing news stories about the pharmaceutical industry influencing medical research, it pales in comparison to this story. I have searched the medical literature to find research supporting the addition of fluoride to the water supply, and there isn’t much to find. Perhaps this issue will be revisited in the future, but until then, those of you drinking well water might be better off.

My personal concern for the environment is not new; my first academic accolade was my ninth grade science fair project on the greenhouse effect. A friend and I put potted plants in one-gallon pickling jars, and added some dry ice to one of them to raise the CO2 levels inside. It was a pretty lame experiment, but it was the beginning of my concern for the planet. I chose to channel my efforts into caring for people because I figured that caring for the planet was largely a lost cause. Sadly, I still do.

The reason is simple: people are the problem, and that problem is growing. It is not just a question of overpopulation anymore – the bigger issue is rising standards of living. Our knee-jerk reaction is to say that this is a good thing, but it is what will ultimately bring the Earth to its knees. Two billion people in China and India feel that they have as much right to cars, appliances and steak as they do in America. Conspicuous consumption is the order of the day for the growing number of millionaires in Asia.

There is a limit to how far people will go to protect the environment. I am stunned by the number of people still driving SUVs. Very few are willing to take the bus to work to be more green. How many would be willing to do their part by eating less? How many would give up having children to reduce greenhouse gases?

There is a very good reason to think that we will fail to prevent accelerating climate change and the havoc it will cause. It’s the economy, stupid. The global economy is dependent on growth that continues forever and ever. A shrinking economy is assumed to be a disaster. The word recession conjures images of suffering, pain and some kind of fundamental problem that has to somehow be corrected.

Recession is the only thing that can save us. Not a little one – a big one. Fewer people driving fewer cars, eating less food and buying less stuff. Fewer buildings and cities, less mining and tree-cutting, less fertilizer and pesticides, fewer boats, planes, trains and trucks moving people and things from one part of the world to another. Human economic activity is what is ruining the planet we depend on to survive. Less of all of it is the only hope we have.

We are learning. People are changing. Governments and corporations are slowly learning to value the air, the water, the forests and the fish. I have a feeling that it will take a lot of suffering to get there, but eventually we will come to an insight that the world’s indigenous peoples realized long ago. We don’t just live on the Earth, we are a part of it. This is why many of them gave the Earth the same name – they called her Mother.

I came looking for medicinal plants. It is not my first time learning about the healing flora that indigenous peoples have used for centuries, but this time my goal is a little different. We are in the northeast corner of the country, in a massive forested area known as Tortuguero, to survey the natural populations of some plants for export.

The idea is that too much of the rainforest is being destroyed to clear land for agriculture – mundane commercial crops like soy or bananas. When this happens in a country that boasts the highest level of biodiversity on the planet, hundreds of species can be lost in the process. If local people can be recruited to sustainably harvest naturally occurring plants, the forest suddenly becomes a precious resource to them – one worth protecting.

I have been traveling with a professor at the University of Ottawa who is studying Souroubea simpetela, a plant that shows promise in the treatment of anxiety and stress. My most promising candidate is Momordica charantia, a plant whose bitter melon has been shown in human clinical trials to lower blood sugar and improve diabetes. There are hundreds of plants in the tropics with a long history of medicinal use in India, China, Africa and the Americas.

It makes sense that tropical plants are much more potent medicines than those growing in temperate climates. The competition for survival is much more intense here – insects, frogs, birds and animals are literally piled into these rainforests – which creates the pressure that fuels natural selection. This is how plants evolve interesting, complex molecules like insecticides, antioxidants, pheromones and other phytochemicals that help them compete in the ecological rat-race of the jungle.

The key is to find a way to convince local people to harvest the plant sustainably. This is difficult when they are struggling to survive, and requires guidance from someone who understands the long-term value of a healthy forest. History is littered with stories of massive tracts of forest that have been raped to extract every last plant of value. This has been the case since the first contact with the West, in which the bark of the cinchona tree helped the Spanish conquistadores survive malaria. It pales in comparison to their mistreatment of the local people, but it continues unabated.

This is simply because of a lack of consciousness. We have the utmost respect for human life, cherishing it above all else. This respect is based on a time when there were a few tribes of humans struggling to eke out a survival in a harsh, unforgiving natural world. Today, the human race is better described as an infestation, with six billion humans spreading out into every corner of the globe. We might wish to reconsider our priorities, and start cherishing the natural world instead of destroying it. Religious leaders might consider preaching about the sacredness of all life, and our duty to be stewards of God’s creatures.

Finding a human medicine in an unassuming vine growing in Costa Rica is a powerful revelation that all living things are connected.

This is an embarrassment of leadership.

The Harper government has done absolutely nothing to stem the flow of fumes from the Oil Sands, one of the biggest furnaces of climate change on the planet. They have not done anything of substance to deal with energy consumption in Canada, which is among the highest on the planet. They have demonstrated a similar lack of vision and leadership in dealing with any of the other problems affecting health and the environment.

The regulation of toxic chemicals in our food and other products is proceeding at a painful crawl. Perhaps this should become a municipal issue. Maybe our rivers and fish, which are polluted with mercury and other toxic metals, should be the responsibility of some non-governmental organization. Certainly our forests are not their job anymore, which is why they have reduced the budget and staffing of the Ministry of Natural Resources that once looked after them. We may soon see the day when every suburb or neighborhood will decide whether or not the soldiers in their community should stay in Afghanistan.

Around the world, Canada is a symbol of pristine wilderness, of clean air and pure water and vast tracts of unspoiled land. We have the opportunity to lead the world to a sustainable future, but our government's silence at home has been a deafening failure. Their backwardness and sidestepping on the global stage have been a monumental embarrassment.

Climate change and environmental degradation are widely recognized as the single biggest threat to the economic well-being and the survival of humanity. Billions of people will be affected, including Canadians. Ignoring and avoiding this threat because of the pain it might cause is as inexcusable as turning a blind eye to the Holocaust. Any leader of vision would recognize that now is not the time to deliberate, argue or weigh our options. Now is the time to act, swiftly and decisively, and history will look harshly on any man or woman who fails to answer the call.

Good for British Columbia. Shame on Canada.

We recently had some professionals come to our main office to measure electromagnetic fields (EMF).  Many people don’t know that these fields even exist, and their importance is just beginning to be accepted, amidst a lot of controversy.  My interest in them was not academic; for several months I had been experiencing headaches, and they only seemed to come after I spent a lot of time in one particular part of the building.  

I suspected EMF as a possible cause because of what I already knew from integrative medicine conferences I had attended.  There is not much research documenting their health effects, but there are a few interested clinicians.  They have many case reports of bizarre neurologic syndromes and symptoms that greatly improved or, in some cases, completely disappeared when EMF problems were found and fixed.

Luckily, some of the most experienced and well-equipped people in North America are in Ottawa.  They run an outfit called Essentia that helps people with so-called electrical sensitivity by conducting surveys to find potential sources of EMF and find ways to eliminate them.  Unfortunately, they seem to be a voice in the darkness.  Utility companies and the telecommunications industry have a strong incentive to keep this potential health risk under the radar (pardon the pun).

For those of you who think this must all be nonsense, think again.  The body is full of wires; they are called nerves.  The heart and brain generate electricity.  There is a measurable electromagnetic field around the body.  There is a lot of research documenting the impact of electricity and magnetic fields on human health.  

Although cell phones probably do not cause cancer, they most definitely affect brain function.  A study of Spanish teens found changes in their PET scans (a measure of brain function) on the side of the head closest to the phone.  This persisted for up to 30 minutes after a 60-second phone call.  EMF exposure has been linked to an increased risk of ALS or Lou Gehrig's disease and to low sperm counts and male infertility.  People who are electrically sensitive have been shown to report worse symptoms when they are exposed to the radiation that comes from cell phones.

Static magnets (the kind we use on our fridges) create a different kind of field than the field created by an electric current.  There is a lot of research documenting the beneficial effects of static magnets on pain, particularly pain caused by osteoarthritis of the knee.  And fascinating research has shown that people suffering from depression who got an MRI of their heads – just to make sure their symptoms were not caused by a brain tumor or other lesion – got somewhat better after the test.  Subsequent research has suggested that the powerful magnetic field had a therapeutic effect similar to the somewhat more barbaric electroshock therapy that has been used for decades.

In the case of the doctor’s headaches, a significant field was found running along the floor just under our feet.  As is done in many homes, the copper water pipes were used to ground the current supplying the whole house.  When this was disconnected, the headaches disappeared.  This was not a double-blind study, but in this case, seeing was believing.  The permanent solution was to send the current outside to be grounded safely on the lawn.

Electrical sensitivity is a vastly under-recognized and under-diagnosed cause of neurologic and immune symptoms.  If your symptoms seem to be worse in one particular place than in others, consider the possibility that EMF pollution is to blame.  It is just one more hazard of life in the modern age that the enlightened person should keep in mind.

This is the biggest problem with evidence-based medicine.  Doctors rely on clinical trials to tell them which treatments work and which ones don’t.  This is a good thing, but it leaves doctors and patients at the mercy of drug companies, because they pay for the research.  They are the only ones who can afford to, because drugs are protected by patents.  A successful drug is worth billions of dollars, so you can’t really blame them for not publishing negative trials.

But you can blame them.  These clinical trials are supposed to be tools of research, not tools for marketers.  Conducting dozens of clinical trials and only publishing the good ones is not just bad science – it is fraud.  This study is likely to make millions of people feel angry and betrayed.  Doctors feel just as angry and betrayed.  

The medical profession knows that this problem exists, and leaders are taking some steps to deal with it.  For one, the big medical journals will not publish a study unless it was registered from its inception.  This makes it more difficult to hide negative trials. There are also new strict guidelines that keep drug companies from influencing researchers.  This influence is still pervasive and insidious, but it is a step in the right direction.

There is still a major problem here: if drug companies are paying for most of the research, doctors will rely on patented drugs to treat most of their patients’ problems.  What about the alternatives?  Who will pay to study them?

There isn’t an antidepressant in the world that can compete with regular exercise.  What about walks in the park?  The benefits of a pet or caring for plants?  Meditation or prayer?  There are studies suggesting that depression can be treated with vitamin B12, folic acid, St John’s wort, 5-HTP, SAMe.  These approaches are far cheaper and potentially less toxic than the SSRI family of antidepressant drugs.

The problem is that none of these alternatives are patent-protected.  No one owns the rights to sell them the way drug companies own the rights to sell drugs.  So why would anyone spend hundreds of millions of dollars testing their potential?  Sadly, the good of mankind has no value in our modern world of dollars and cents.

So who will study these alternatives? Our governments certainly have a reason.  Forget about the fact that we created them to make our lives better.  The incentive is not so starry-eyed and idealistic.  A much more compelling reason for them to pay for this kind of research is that they pay for healthcare.  They pay the drug companies.  In the search for the best medicines, governments and insurance companies are the only other entities with billions at stake.  

Leaders with vision in the world of health care, be they in the public or private sector, should invest in alternative medicine research.  This is the only way to level the playing field against the juggernaut of industry-sponsored pharmaceutical research.  In an interview with CBC radio, the lead author of the antidepressant study said he would not be surprised if the same was true about many other kinds of drugs.  Neither would I. Make no mistake - I am not anti-drug or anti-medicine.  I am simply pro-truth.

In terms of integrative medicine, Sedona was our first real point of interest.  In recent years, it has become somewhat of a mecca for people involved in healing, consciousness and personal development.  This might be partly because of the gorgeously surreal pillars of luminous red rock that surround it, but Sedona is most famous for its energy.  

According to the New Age community based here, there are four spots in the area – they are called vortices ¬– where the earth’s ‘energy’ is particularly strong.  Although this energy has never been scientifically measured, it is said to be the same subtle magnetic force that imbues all living things.  It has certainly been a magnet for angel-seekers, crystal-bearers and psychic channelers from far and wide.

Although it is clear that many of these people don’t really know what they are talking about, much less what they are doing, the relationship between energy,   healing and consciousness is nothing to laugh about.  It is clear that all matter is just energy, and there are a lot of experiments that suggest that the human mind can affect the processes of other living things by means that are still poorly understood.

Many ancient healing traditions have believed this to be true for millennia.  Many people have learned that this energy - whether it is called Qi in China or Prana in India – has been described in detail and manipulated by people trained to heal sickness and disease.  They understand the human body’s energy to be constantly flowing, with more of it concentrated in places they call chakras.

I was surprised to learn that this belief system exists among the Hopi - the oldest living indigenous culture in North America. The Book of the Hopi is a collection of  personal accounts of Hopi elders compiled and translated by Frank Waters in the first half of the twentieth century.  If it is to be believed, these people have a  belief system that recognizes many astonishing things.  They speak of the last great Ice Age and the reversal of the magnetic poles of the earth that took place over twenty thousand years ago.  They describe an eastward migration across an ocean that corresponds to recent DNA evidence linking American tribes to Maori peoples across the Pacific.  And they describe the existence of energy centres in the body.  They perceived five – not seven – but their medicine men apparently manipulated this energy to treat disease.

The word chakra has become synonymous with nonsense – with flaky, unscientific new-age gobbledygook.  This is unfortunate, considering its potential importance.  There is not yet enough evidence to state with a clear scientific conscience that healing energy can treat disease, but it seems to me that there is reason to believe that such a thing might exist.  And to investigate it much more deeply.

Just for the record – we both felt something at the Cathedral Rock vortex in Sedona.  We also had very interesting dreams.

The impact of the money that is generated by the Oil Sands industry is everywhere.  I spoke to people from other provinces and countries far and wide who had flocked to the city that promised an unlimited amount of work – and things could not be better for them.  I noticed sushi restaurants, cigar lounges and martini bars that seem to have popped up everywhere to cater to the wealthy.  Though I was battling cold weather that made Ottawa seem balmy, I stopped often at massive pieces of art on display in dozens of galleries.  The owners told me that most of the pieces end up in the boardrooms and homes of the 'oil people'.

No one in Calgary is complaining, but many of us are concerned about the dark side of all that prosperity.  I am afraid that the Oil Sands will be remembered as one of the most irresponsible undertakings in Canadian – and human – history.  I won’t get into the statistics, but it is a dirty business.  It gobbles up so much electricity that a nuclear power plant is underway to supply the industry.  The people living downstream along the once-great Mackenzie river are riddled with once-rare cancers in astonishing numbers.  And the great cloud of smoke that is pumped into the sky is one of the biggest sources of global warming on Earth.  We should be ashamed.

Of course we need to drive – and of course people need jobs.  But we also need air and water and food. A storm has just destroyed 70% of the citrus crop in the western United States.  Water levels in many of the world’s freshwater lakes are falling and Bangladesh is just plain disappearing.  The leaders of the world’s wealthiest nations – the people who are in the best position to save humanity from the massive problems that climate change will cause – have basically done nothing but make empty promises.

We need to get our energy from somewhere else.  We need to spend hundreds of billions of dollars to make this happen.  And we need to do it yesterday.  But this will not happen unless people demand that their governments make the difficult decision to shift massive human and financial resources to this absolutely critical challenge.

What does all of this have to do with disposable headphones?  They were given to me on my return flight home.  I used them to watch a film on my own personal LCD screen.  When the flight attendant picked them up before landing, he tossed them in a trash bin.  Stunned, I asked if they were really throwing them away.  He assured me that it was the most hygienic thing to do. The headphones were made of plastice - which comes from petroleum.

Air Canada’s in-flight magazine proudly states that their fleet runs over 2000 flights daily.  You do the math.  Fifty pairs of headphones on two thousand planes is one hundred thousand per day.  I tried to imagine what a pile of 36 million headphones would look like, and imagined one of those heaps of plastic and metal refuse for every year that Air Canada is in business.  I have no doubt that my grandchildren will shake their heads in awe at our folly.