Helen Keller: “The heresy of one age becomes the orthodoxy of the next.”

Is it time to quit viewing EDTA chelation therapy for heart disease as medical heresy, and start using on a more wide spread basis in this new age of medicine?

This is Part 2 of Effective Alternatives for Treating Cardiovascular Disease – EDTA Chelation as Front-Runner.

Trial to Assess Chelation Therapy, TACT trial: We discuss this placebo-controlled trial sponsored by the National Institute of Health. This research is worthwhile, but in our opinion we already have enough empirical and research-based evidence to be offering intravenous EDTA chelation therapy to cardiovascular disease patients now. Regardless, and unfortunately, it appears that the so-called ‘quack busters’ - the phony ‘experts’ from the ‘National Council Against Health Fraud’ - are trying to sabotage the TACT trial in attempt to expunge this safe, simple, effective and inexpensive alternative treatment for cardiovascular diseases. Next week we shine the TGM spotlight on the ‘quack busters.’

EDTA Monograph by Cardiologist Dr. Stephen Olmstead: “The preponderance of clinical reports in the medical literature support a claim of efficacy for symptomatic angina, intermittent claudication and critical leg ischemia.” Note: we are currently trying to get in touch with Dr. Olmstead to find a digital version of the Monograph and link to it from the TGM website.

EDTA Chelation Therapy as ‘Holistic’ Therapy: EDTA is not a ‘natural’ product. It is an artificial, synthetic drug. However, one could argue that it is a ‘holistic’ therapy since it is infused systemically, and reaches and potentially detoxifies heavy metals from most of our tissues and organs.

EDTA Package Insert Altered by Abbott Labs to Remove Cardiovascular Disease as an Indication for the Drug: Even by the 1960s existing evidence for EDTAs efficacy to treat cardiovascular disease was enough for Abbott Labs to include it as one of the ‘indications’ for the drug. Later the language was arbitrarily changed, stating that EDTA is ‘not’ indicated for this purpose. To the best of our knowledge, this mysterious manipulation of medical product information is unprecedented in medical history.

Off-Label Drug Legislation the Result of One Doctor’s Fight Against the FDA to Be Able to Offer EDTA Chelation to His Patients. In 1981, during a ‘David and Goliath’ type battle, Dr. Ray Evers from Alabama fought the US Food and Drug Administration for his right to use EDTA to treat his patients with cardiovascular disease. With EDTA in his ’sling’ he toppled the FDA. The federal court ruling in favor of Dr. Evers stated that the FDA’s arguments against Dr. Evers were “nonsensical.” This was a huge victory for patients and the advancement of good medicine not only because it lessened the FDA’s tyranny against our medical freedoms, but also because it resulted in today’s doctors’ ability to prescribe drugs ‘off-label.’ This means we  can now legally use any medication for any purpose, even though that purpose – that ‘indication’ – is not necessarily approved by the FDA. All this because of Dr. Ever’s fight for EDTA! Kevin asks the logical question: Why was the FDA trying to regulate an Alabama doctor’s medical practice? And Dr. Douglass asks: What political influences – what constituencies/vested interests – may have teamed up with the FDA to start that battle against EDTA and Dr. Evers in the first place? We’ll may never know.

Dr. Rogers vs. the Florida State Board of Medical Examiners: Dr. Robert Rogers, MD fought the Florida Medical Board all the way to the Florida Supreme Court over his right to provide EDTA to his patients with cardiovascular disease, and won. The Florida Supreme Court ruled that the action of the Florida medical board restraining Dr. Rogers from utilization of chelation therapy for his patients was “an arbitrary and unreasonable exercise of the state’s police power.”

Negative Published Studies On EDTA Chelation Therapy For Treating Cardiovascular Disease: There have been six negative studies. We discuss them, and how they all either have major irregularities from a scientific standpoint, or have negative conclusions even though the results reported in the studies were positive. For an excellent online resource with commentary and analysis of each one of the studies, go to http://www.drcranton.com/chelation.htm And as we’ve mentioned on previous shows, a good resource for finding physicians who are likely to be offering intravenous EDTA is the organization American College for Advancement in Medicine at acam.org.

Good Medicine Word Of The Week: Off-label use - in commemoration of Dr. Ray Evers and his ‘David and Goliath’ fight against the FDA. Now American physicians can use EDTA, and any other drugs, for purposes other than what the FDA approves them for.

Next week: If intravenous EDTA chelation really is a safe, effective and inexpensive alternative to bypass surgery and angioplasty, do you think there might be attempts by conventional medicine to squelch it? We’ll shine the TGM spotlight on the phoney ‘quack busters‘ and the so-called National Councel Against Health Fraud (or is it the ‘National Councel of Health Frauds’?) in their obvious efforts to supress the TACT trial and our access to EDTA chelation therapy for treating heart disease.

Part I of Effective Alternatives for Treating Cardiovascular Disease – EDTA Chelation as Front-Runner

Dr. Douglass Interview with Dr. Ronald Hoffman on Health Talk, WOR Radio 710, New York City, N.Y., discussing the relative worthlessness of bypass surgery and angioplasty for stable heart disease. Click here to listen.

EDTA chelation therapy could result in profound health care cost savings, which are sorely needed with the current financial crisis the world is in. And with the prospects of massive tax increases and socialized medicine under an Obama administration probably doesn’t make the outlook much better. An example of research showing the potential cost savings from EDTA chelation comes from a study done by Danish physician Dr. Clause Hancke: 90% of his patients who were on the waiting list for getting coronary artery bypass surgery or leg amputation due to poor circulation to their legs, were able to cancel their surgeries after a course of intravenous EDTA chelation treatments. Imagine the potential for financial savings and real health improvements.

Basics of EDTA Chelation: EDTA – Ethylene-diamine-tetra-acetate - is one of many ‘chelating agents’. The ‘chel’ (pronounced keel) in chelation (”kee-LAY-shun”) comes from the Greek for ‘claw.’ Chelating agents, chelation drugs ‘claw’ strongly onto metals and minerals in our blood, cells, tissues and organs and are then ‘flushed’ out of the body, primarily through the kidneys. The attraction between EDTA, and say lead (or other positively charged atoms) is through electromagnetic forces, not ‘covalent’ chemical bonding. EDTA’s has varying attractions for different metals. For example, if an EDTA-calcium complex comes into the presence of lead, the EDTA will have a higher electromagnetic attraction for lead and thereby preferentially bind to the lead, and release the calcium in to the body, allowing for the efficient removal of lead through the kidneys (and a small amount of elimination through the bowels). It is a true ‘detoxification’ therapy.

EDTA chelation therapy is not ‘natural.’ It is a synthetic amino acid approved by the FDA for treating lead toxicity, not cardiovascular disease. Use of EDTA for treating cardiovascular disease is considered ‘off-label’ use of the drug. The controversy of EDTA chelation is primarily around the financial implications it has, as a replacement for bypass surgery and angioplasty. Listeners will recall from last week that entire ‘industries’ have been built around bypass surgery and angioplasty, and that these two procedures do not extend life or even decrease the rate of subsequent heart attacks in people with stable heart disease.

History of EDTA Chelation for Treating Cardiovascular Disease: The benefits were discovered serendipitously in the 1950s. Cardiologist Dr. Norman C. Clarke reported that while treating a patient for lead toxicity who happened to have angina symptoms at the time, that the patient told Dr. Clarke that his chest pains lessened. Dr. Clarke reported his earliest findings – his empirical, experience-based discoveries – in the American Journal of Medical Sciences and the American Journal of Cardiology. Since then, numerous studies and clinical reports have been published supporting EDTA’s efficacy for the treatment of cardiovascular disease. An excellent resource for finding published studies on EDTA chelation for cardiovascular disease: Saunder’s textbook, Cardiovascular Drug Therapy chapter titled “Magnesium EDTA Chelation.” Other resources: www.drcranton.com/chelation.htm and www.acam.org.

Scientific studies on EDTA Chelation for Cardiovascular Disease. We discuss a few of the published studies. It appears, in general, from the research and from clinical experience (when treating patients who are not diabetic and who do not smoke cigarettes), that 75%-90% of patients experience significant improvement in their symptoms, such as chest pain and exercise-induced leg pain, after a course of intravenous EDTA chelation treatments. Some research supports EDTA chelation as being of benefit to cerebrovascular disease too (improving arterial circulation to the brain). The ultimate question becomes, when is the evidence enough?

Good medicine word of the week: EDTA chelation - the intravenous administration of an FDA-approved drug, used ‘off-label,’ for the treatment of cardiovascular diseases, including poor circulation to the heart, legs and brain; to the entire body, in fact.

Next Week: Part II Effective Alternatives for Treating Cardiovascular Disease – EDTA chelation as Front-Runner! Maverick doctors challenged legally by state and federal governments win their cases thereby foiling attempts to take away our freedoms to use EDTA chelation for treating cardiovascular disease.

Title for the show: Treating Cardiovascular Disease - Conventional Approaches Not Working.

What is Cardiovascular Disease? ‘Cardio’ for heart. ‘Vascular’ for vessel. Cardiovascular disease generally means the obstruction of arteries - the vessels that deliver oxygen and other nutrients to all of our cells and tissues. This includes obstruction of the arteries to the heart: the coronary arteries; arteries to the brain: the carotid arteries; arteries to the legs: the peripheral arteries. In fact every single artery in the body can become obstructed as a result of atherosclerosis (‘hardening of the arteries’).

Medical Economics of Cardiology and Cardiovascular Surgery Trumps Evidence-Based Medicine: According to current scientific evidence, surgical intervention with bypass surgery or angioplasty does not improve the health outcomes of patients with stable coronary artery disease.

A. Case Against CABG.
The scientific evidence generally does not support the use of ‘bypass surgery’ (coronary artery bypass grafting, CABG) for the treatment of patients with stable angina: a pattern of recurring chest discomfort, that is not worsening in frequency, duration, quality, location, severity, etc. This is in contrast to unstable angina.

Studies:
1. Eleven Year Survival in the Veterans Administration Randomized Trial of Coronary Bypass Surgery for Stable Angina, The Veterans Administration Coronary Artery Bypass Surgery Cooperative Study Group: Eleven (11) year study done at 13 different veterans hospitals showed that patients who undergo bypass surgery have the same survival rates as patients who have only medical management, without surgery. New England Journal of Medicine 1977; 311:1333-1339.

2. European Coronary Artery Surgery Study Group, Long-Term Results  of a Prospective Randomized Study of Coronary Artery Bypass Surgery in  Stable Angina Pectoris: This study found a slight, statistically insignificant increase in survival rate in bypass surgery patients. Lancet 1982; Nov.27, pp 1173-1180.

3. Ten-Year Follow-up of Survival and Myocardial Infarction in the Randomized Coronary Artery Surgery Study: Results were similar to those of the Veterans study (#1 above). Circulation 1990; 82:1629-1646.

B. Case Against Angioplasty: COURAGE Trial.
This study of 2,300 patients with stable coronary disease (stable angina) shows that angioplasty and stents do not prolong life, or even prevent heart attacks in most of these cases. This was discovered by comparing the outcomes of patients with stable angina who had angioplasty, with the outcomes of the patients who had only medical therapy (no surgical intervention). New England Journal of Medicine 2007, March 26.

Conclusion: despite the widespread belief that angioplasty and stenting cuts down on heart attacks and death, it’s never been shown to do that in patients with stable coronary disease.

Important note of caution: For patients having heart attacks – myocardial infarction – or unstable angina, the angioplasty procedure or bypass surgery may be life saving in those cases. It is thought that about 50% of all deaths from heart attacks occur within 1 hour of the start of symptoms, often before the patient gets to the hospital. If you experience chest pain that is new, worsening or not lessening in severity, call 911 immediately.

To Intervene or Not to Intervene: How do the world’s doctors treat stable angina (stable coronary artery disease)? In this 2007 New England Journal of Medicine survey of over 7600 doctors, essentially 60% (57%) of them recommended surgical intervention: angioplasty or bypass surgery. The other 40% (43%) recommended the more conservative approach: medical management alone, thus ‘bypassing bypass’ and ‘avoiding angioplasty.’ Australia and Oceania win as the most conservative areas globally, with essentially 55% of the surveyed doctors recommending the ‘medicine-only’ approach, compared to the rest of world at around 45% with the same recommendation. Click here to view the excellent Clinical Decisions Interactive by Drs. Susan Cheng and John Jarcho.

Belief System and Mantra Sometimes Necessary in Conventional, Allopathic Medicine: “The benefits outweigh the risks and costs; The benefits outweigh the risks and costs!” - even if the evidence may not support that belief.

Consequences of Ignoring or Regarding Evidence-based Medicine, Evidence-based Cardiology:

A. Ignoring: “…an ‘industry’ is being built around this operation - coronary bypass surgery: the creation of facilities for open heart operations in community hospitals…and proliferation of catheterization and angiography suites…the expansion and development of training opportunities in clinical cardiology, cardiovascular surgery and cardiovascular radiology. This rapidly growing enterprise is developing a momentum and constituency of its own, and as time passes, it will be progressively more difficult and costly to curtail it materially…. The financial implications of CABG are profound…. The enormous funds already being devoted to this procedure divert support available for other, perhaps more necessary, aspects of medical care.” Eugene Braunwald, M.D., Professor Emeritus of Medicine and Cardiology at Harvard Medical School. New England Journal of Medicine 1977; 297(12):661-663.

B. Regarding: The COURAGE trial and the studies on bypass surgery cited above should lead us to improve the way we treat all patients with stable coronary artery disease. Now that would be good medicine. But will we regard and act upon the scientific evidence, or continue to largely ignore it?

Next Week: Intravenous EDTA chelation therapy for the treatment of cardiovascular disease. The conclusion in the New England Journal of Medicine survey above said many of the doctors surveyed from around the world expressed how important it is for doctors to discuss with their patients all treatment options and their possible outcomes. But are all the treatment options being discussed? If not, why not? Let’s look at and regard the scientific evidence for one option some doctors think is part of a good ‘Integrative Medicine’ approach to treating cardiovascular disease: EDTA chelation therapy.

Good Medicine Word Of The Week: Angioplasty – the process of mechanically opening a partially or completely obstructed artery by inflating a balloon to squash the obstructing material (the ‘atherosclerotic plaque’).

Brief recap from last week: The concepts of the duality of matter and light, as particles and waves. And the concept that we humans are ‘beings of light.’ And we touch upon the use of using light energy for health and healing, and the book Into the Light by William Campbell Douglass II, MD.

Electron Loss Results in Damaging Free Radical Formation: Free radicals result from the process of oxidation, loss of electrons. Free radicals are unbalanced atomic or molecular species that wreak havoc on our tissues, particularly our cell membranes. Kevin likens free radicals to tops spinning out of balance. The unpaired electrons of free radicals are highly unstable, highly reactive, and they’re likely to result in unwanted chemical reactions resulting in damage to our cell membranes - key to the mechanism of cell death.

Possible Anti-Aging Interventions: We discuss the antioxidant vitamins and other antioxidant substances, and the important balance and synergy between them all. We also mention interventions like lifestyle approaches. Also: caloric restriction, optimal balance of our hormones, stem cell therapy and chelation therapy to remove pro-oxidant heavy metals (lead, cadmium, arsenic, mercury).

Genes, Antioxidant Enzymes, Telomeres and Stopping the ‘Age Clock’: The genes we inherited from our parents code for the four main antioxidant enzymes in our cells. The proper functioning of these antioxidant enzymes is critical for protecting us from the ravages of oxidation, free radical damage and aging. The four antioxidant enzymes require the minerals selenium, zinc and copper to function properly. The genetics of anti-aging also involves the concept of cellular senescence and the limited ability for our cells to continue to divide, regenerate and replace themselves.  We discuss the programmed shortening of our genes’ telomeres, ‘Hayflick’s clock,’ and how we may someday be able to prevent the shortening of our telomeres for anti-aging purposes.

Why not just live hard, enjoy life and die early, if necessary, for ‘living the good life’? It’s not just about length of life, but quality of life, lived as many years as possible, because quality and length of life are two sides of the same coin and directly proportional to each other.

Oxidative Stress: Mechanism of Cell Death Clarified - Breaking research from Germany. Read the article to learn how oxidation, free radical formation, decreased cellular concentrations of glutathione, and oxidation of the fatty acid arachidonic acid in our cell membranes, are involved in the cellular signaling for apoptosis, programmed cell death. Bottom line with this research: The molecular mechanism of cell death  has been ‘decrypted,’ and oxidative stress is the basis. And critically important to TGM listeners: The cell death could be completely prevented by vitamin E!

Good Medicine Word Of The Week: Oxidative Stress – the underlying process by which we age and die. The antioxidant strategies we’ll continue to discuss on TGM are key to health promotion and ‘anti-aging.’

Next week’s show: Our first installment of Heart of Health - do you have one?

Send TGM #11 to a friend: click here.

Anti-Aging Medicine is the Empiricism of Today: Contemporary empirically-minded doctors are largely willing to use experience-based evidence as the basis for offering so-called ‘anti-aging’ therapies to their patients. On the opposite extreme, the rationalist, allopathically minded doctors are prone to think and say, “Show me the controlled trials, and give me the FDA’s approval, and then and only then will I recommend the therapy to my patients!” This latter mindset essentially excludes the use of natural, bioenergetic therapeutic approaches and allows for Pharmaceutical-based ‘monopoly medicine’ to predominate - as evidenced by Wyeth Pharmaceutical’s recent attempt to restrict our access to the natural ‘bio-identical’ hormones (as covered on earlier shows).

Best Name for the New Medicine: Anti-Aging Medicine or Integrative Medicine? We think it’s Integrative Medicine – integrating the best evidence-based therapies from all medical disciplines, because that’s what’s probably going to provide us with the strongest ‘anti-aging’ benefits and outcomes.

Aging is the Process By Which We Get Older - And What Process is That? The loss of electrons, ‘oxidation’ and resultant damage from free radicals is fundamental. Add oxidative damage to a weak ‘longevity phenotype‘ and you have the genetic-plus-environmental recipe for early aging and disease. The idea is to take people at any age, in any degree of health, and minimize the oxidative damage going on at the cellular level, so as to promote their health. Better health likely means increased life span, and better quality of life in all realms.

We’re All Electromagnetic Beings Living on and Affected by Electromagnetic Earth. And the future of ‘Anti-Aging’ medicine is bioenergetic medicine, regardless of religion and politics. We know that all matter,  including our bodies, has a wave–particle duality similar to photons of light and light waves of energy. Under the appropriate conditions, electrons and other matter can act with ‘complementarity’ - as either particles or waves - just like light does. This is all part and parcel to the whole area of quantum mechanics, where matter, including your body, is comprised entirely of waves of energy or particles of matter, with both states being ‘merely’ local condensations of the quantum field. Matter is energy; energy is matter, based on the speed of light squared. It’s time to start focusing on, and emphasizing more, the bioenergetic therapies for anti-aging, health and healing.The sooner medicine catches up to the science, the better off we’ll be.

Good Medicine Word of the Week: Oxidation - the loss of electrons from our atoms and molecules.

Next week’s show: We continue to discuss oxidation, and why preventing this loss of electrons – these elementary particles, or waves – and preventing the formation of free radicals as a result, is so important to prevent or slow the ravages of aging. Also how some of the vitamins - and some other natural substances – are really important to quench the ravages of what ages us.

Send TGM #10 to a friend: click here.

Title for this show: New Media for the New Medicine

New Media Expo:
Anyone interested in the new media - the recent portable, digital, networked information and communication technologies, like podcasting, videocasting, online streaming and blogging - should consider attending the New Media Expo next year.

New Media Means More Good Medicines:
Never before in the history of medicine have we been able to report on medical news and information without boundaries, restrictions or controls. With podcasting there are literally infinite numbers of potential ‘channels and stations’ through which medical truths can be promulgated inexpensively to a global audience. A product we discuss on this show is Cholestin produced by the company Pharmanex (we’d love to have them as a sponsor someday). Cholestin is a safe, inexpensive alternative to the statin drugs, like Lipitor, but it’s a natural ‘red yeast rice’ ferment product which is not patentable and therefore will never likely garner enough profit for Pharmanex, to compete with statin drug advertisements in the ‘old media’ - TV, terrestrial radio and print publications most widely read by doctors. What may be even worse for Cholestin is that the pharmaceutical industry’s front agency, the FDA, is actually trying to label red yeast rice products as drugs, so that the products can be FDA-controlled and more likely to be restricted from competing with the statin drugs. Despite those threats, here’s good news for good medicine: with this new media production, TGM, we are able to get the word out about Cholestin - and about a lot of other good medicines - to a global audience!

New Media Moves Maverick Therapies Into Mainstream - Including Cancer Cures:
If there were a simple, safe, evidence-based cure for cancer do you think it would make the mainstream (’old’) media news today? There is such a cure. No mainstream media outlets are talking about it, but we’re talking about it here on the TGM podcast/webcast. The therapy is an immune system-based approach that mirrors the clear biological model of pregnancy and the onset of labor: the cancer patient rejects, expels the cancer tumor using a biological process similar to the way the mother ultimately rejects, expels the fetus from the womb during delivery. It’s a really powerful and well-documented cancer therapy that’s been around for over 20 years: a simple blood filtration technique developed by oncologist Dr. Rigdon Lentz to remove serum blocking factors produced by the cancer. With this approach to treating cancer the patient is not receiving any systemically toxic drugs or being zapped with high-intensity nuclear radiation, or any radiation for that matter. Instead, the procedure simply filters out factors in the patient’s blood which are blocking, preventing, the immune system from doing its job of attacking and devouring the cancer. Our immune system knows when we have cancer. That’s why during pathology in medical school every single slide of cancer we studied was infiltrated with white blood cells (especially lymphocytes), and that’s why some people have so-called ‘spontaneous remissions’ of their cancer. But in so many cases of cancer, the immune system is blocked by the blocking factors produced by the cancer, so the immune system cells can’t  aggressively and thoroughly attack and kill the cancer. Remove the blocking factors from the blood and you remove the ‘force field’ blocking the immune system attack on the cancer. Dramatic tumor ‘necrolysis’ results. We’ll cover the ‘Lentz Therapy’ in  detail during our upcoming Answers to Cancers installments. The point with this for today’s show is that thanks to the new media we’re able to get the word out about this historically important news, this cure for cancer!

Next week: Our first installment of Amazing Aging. What is aging? Is there really such a thing as ‘anti-aging’ medicine? What can you do to fight the ravages of aging in order to live as healthfully as possible for as long as possible?

Good Medicine Word of the Week: New Media (for the advancement of good medicine). And we’re thankful to have the freedom to use the new media to share insights, knowlege and understanding about good medicine here on That’s Good Medicine!

Send TGM #9 to a friend: click here.

Title for this show: Best model for your medicine, which one and why?

FDA Approval-Based Medicine: The Worst Model for Medicine. Only recently in medical history we’ve been  locked into this drug-pharmaceutical-based model for health care. And it’s probably medical history’s worst model. We should have an entirely separate agency for the evaluation and approval of natural, non-patentable products. The Germans have one: German Commission E.

Natural Products Grandfathered into Our FDA-Approval-Based Health Care Often Discovered Serendipitously. A few examples inclde include penicillin, aspirin, coumadin and EDTA. Another is nattokinase, a possibly safer alternative to coumadin.

Disease Control Does Not Mean Health Promotion. Drugs control various diseases, but they generally only do so by blocking chemical receptors on our cells or inhibit our enzymes.

Importance of Vitamins as Co-Factors in Enzymes. The function of the B-vitamins and many minerals is to serve as ‘co-factors’ inside the enzymes for their proper function for optimal health.

Importance of Adaptogens. These are well documented herbs that increase our resistance to stress, fatigue and anxiety. Examples: ginseng, ashwagandha, cordyceps and a number of mushrooms. We’ll cover them all here on That’s Good Medicine.

Next week: Humankind’s historic progress in finding the end of aging. And here’s history in the making: FDA being sued by a tenacious group of public health advocates because of the agency’s ongoing support of the American Dental Association and the use of mercury amalgams for dental fillings.

Good Medicine word of the week: Adaptogens - single natural botanical products that promote health.

Send TGM #8 to a friend: click here.

Show title, as an analogy: Bio-identical hormones are to medicine today as Homeopathic remedies were to medicine in the 1800s, in the Historic Struggle Between Empiricism and Rationalism.

Bias and Error in MSNBC Story, Mainstream Doctors Join Anti-Aging Bandwagon. We discuss flaws in the story that are of importance to our listeners

Contemporary Doctors Moving Toward Empiricism on the E-to-R Spectrum: The current shift in thinking from rationalism to empiricism is exemplified by the growing numbers of ‘anti-aging’ doctors, and the growth of other integrative medicine professional organizations – such as the American College for the Advancement of Medicine (ACAM) - embracing many healing approaches (not just ‘anti-aging’).

The Growing Use of Bio-identical Hormones: They’re among the most potent and powerful therapies in the modern-day empiricist’s medicine bag. The natural, normal hormone-receptor electromagnetic interactions are specific and delicate. Why should we be predominately using the foreign, ‘space alien,’ ‘designer drug’ hormones provided by the pharmaceutical industry, instead of the natural, bio-identical hormones?

Anti-Aging Medicine = Modern-Day Empiricism, and Big Pharma Not Happy About It. Wyeth pharmaceuticals petitioned the FDA to regulate compounding pharmacies - our only source of the bioidentical hormones prescribed by integrative medicine doctors. Wyeth’s was successful: In January the FDA ordered a number of compounding pharmacies to stop using one of the three, normal, natural, bio-identical female hormones, estriol, in their compounded products. This is unprecedented in the history of medicine. It’s an obvious attack by a pharmaceutical giant colluding with the FDA. This latest assault on ‘natural medicine’ is part of the ongoing empiricist versus rationalist tensions throughout medical history.

Big Pharma Via FDA Violating our Constitutional Rights? The FDA also ordered the compounding pharmacies to stop using the term “bio-identical” in their hormone replacement formulas. Now, like never before in the history of medicine, we need the new media of podcasting - and probably the likes of Congressman Ron Paul - to protect our medical freedoms, significantly limit government corruption by the pharmaceutical industry and allow for the advancement of good medicine. We need to continually remind ourselves and our government officials: They work for us.

Take Action through the American Association for Health Freedom (AAHF): The FDA has banned the importation of the bio-identical, female hormone estriol into the United States, but a U.S. House resolution deemed FDA’s ban on estriol to be “not in the public interest.” CLICK HERE to: tell your members of Congress to protect your access to natural, bio-identical hormone replacement therapy and to sponsor H. Con. Res. 342.

Good Medicine Word of the Week: Bio-identical hormones. They’re chemical messengers that have the same exact, unique structure that our bodies make naturally, and for which we have perfectly matching receptors on each of our cells. This is in contrast with pharmaceutical hormones: designer drugs with molecular structures similar enough to result in a similar effects on our cell receptors, but still without the same ‘perfect fit’ that the natural hormones have with our receptors. From earlier show: ’space alien’ molecules have ’space alien effects.’

Next Week’s Show: Historical importance of medical serendipity, adaptogens (natural anti-stress medicines), and much more.

Send TGM #7 to a friend: click here.

Show Title: History Repeating: Empirically Minded Doctors Increasing Despite Political and Economic Disadvantages

Mainstream Doctors Join Anti-Aging Bandwagon (MSNBC.com): Highlights the “often bitter tension” between conventional medicine (rationalist minded doctors) and the empiricist minded doctors (’anti-aging’ physicians - the largest aggregate of empirically minded contemporary ‘integrative medicine’ doctors today).

Analogy: ‘Anti-aging medicine is to FDA-approval-based medicine now as homeopathy was to allopathic medicine in the 1800s. The same vested interests don’t want to see natural, integrative medicine flourish today.

Prime therapy of concern to modern day drug companies and rationalists : Bio-identical hormones.

Hierarchy of Scientific Study Types from ‘Empiricism to Rationalism’: Case studies, animal experiments, expert opinions, descriptive reports, epidimiology studies, expert concensus, cohort or case-control analyses, non-randomized and randomized controlled trials.

Greatest Obstacle to Mainstreaming Integrative Medicine: Financial Limitations. Big Pharma has more money for: 1) marketing on mainstream media, 2) FDA/AMA/medical board schmoozing, and 3) congressional lobbying. In 2007 the pharmaceutical industry was Washington’s largest lobbying force, according to report by Center for Public Integrity. What was Pharma’s ‘ROI’? They squashed recent Congressional efforts to restrict drug media advertising.

Is ‘Anti-Aging’ Medicine ‘Just About Physicians Trying to Boost Their Income’? That’s what one ‘ivory tower’ doctor said in the MSNBC.com story. Boosting income is part of it, but more important is the steadily growing public demand for therapeutic approaches that promote health.

Are the Rationalist Drug-Oriented Doctors More Mechanically Minded/The Empiricist Integrative Medicine Doctors More Bio-Energetically Minded? One thing the MSNBC story got right was that “most conventional doctors are mechanics. They fix things.” Those are the rationalist physicians of today. Most empirically-minded doctors tend to be healers of the psyche, the nervous system, the endocrine system and the all-important immunological system ( Psychoneuroimmunology, PNI as it’s called). And which therapeutic approaches probably hold greatest promise for the future of our health, healing, prevention and ‘anti-aging’? Bioenergetic approaches.

Good Medicine Word of the Week: Anti-Aging Medicine - the realm of modern-day empiricists. But a better name is Integrative Medicine.

Next Week’s Show: 4th installment of History of Healing – History of Killing. We’ll explore how Big Pharma is in cahoots with the FDA, violating our constitutional rights.

Send TGM #6 to a friend: click here.

Title for this installment: Experiences in Empiricism - Past and Present.

Introduction: “The beautiful rests on the foundations of the necessary,” Ralph Waldo Emerson. Thanks for being part of the early TGM experience as we continue to lay the necessary foundation for what we think is beautiful, good medicine. Empirically minded doctors throughout history have had the mindset that evidence from experience – if the evidence has born the test of time – is just as valuable as evidence supported by rigorous scientific research. The practitioners who are more rationalist-minded tend to believe – rationalize – that we shouldn’t offer any therapy unless: A) it’s undergone the gamut of scientific studies to ‘prove’ that it’s safe and effective; and B) unless we’ve fully defined the therapy’s mechanism of action. This is neither practical nor realistic for the advancement of good medicine.

Empiricism at Work Historically: The Homeopaths Introduced Nitroglycerin to Medicine.
Nitroglycerin is a perfect case in point for our discussion today, because back in the 1800s, before the FDA even existed, it was introduced into medicine empirically, not based on controlled scientific studies. And we need to credit and thank the Homeopaths – the chief empiricists of that time – for the fact that the good medicine has been grandfathered into our modern-day ‘standard of care.’

If the Homeopaths Introduced Nitroglycerin into Medicine Today:
The current ‘FDA-Approval-Based’ health care model (the approval of drugs, ‘space alien molecules’) largely controls our health care and it fosters and epitomizes the rationalist mindset. It’s possible that if nitroglycerin were discovered today that we’d never get the medication through the FDA approval process and included in our therapeutic armamentarium.

EDTA Chelation: Contemporary Example of Empirically-Based Therapy.
The NIH Trial to Assess Chelation Therapy (TACT) for the treatment of cardiovascular did not come about as a result of a pharmaceutical company wanting to get approval for a promising cardiovascular drug, since Abbot lab’s patent on EDTA expired a long time ago. Instead, the NIH trial was initiated largely as a result of public pressure on the NIH – pressure by innovative, contemporary, empirically-minded doctors and their satisfied patients – to get approval for a non-patentable, and thus non-prevailing therapy that empirically really works (based on the historical experiences of doctors and their patients).

Modern-Day Medical Mavericks and Chelation Therapy:
Even to get to the point of now having the NIH trial, a lot of good doctors, empirically-minded practitioners - history’s recent medical heretics – have fought really hard to be able to offer EDTA chelation to their patients.

Insights From Informal Polling of Contemporary Empiricists at ACAM Meetings:
If the vast majority of doctors offering intravenous EDTA chelation to their cardiovascular disease patients (with chest pain and claudication) indicate during a ’straw pole’ that they see – experience – dramatic improvements in their patients, does this really mean anything? To the empirically minded doctor, probably: yes. To the rationalist minded doctor: probably not. The different frames of reference and perceptions regarding the value of empirical evidence illustrate the tension between the empiricists and the rationalists throughout medical history.

Echoes From the Wilds of Good Medicine: Thank you Steve from Arizona for feedback and insights.

Good Medicine Word of the Week: Empiricism - the frame of thought, the mindset for medicine, that experience-based evidence throughout medical history - not necessarily just controlled clinical trials - are really important and valid aspects of good, evidence-based medicine.

Next week’s show: The 3rd installment of History of Healing–History of Killing, with more necessary insights to lay the foundation for TGM.

Good medicine is a beautiful thing. Thanks for being part of it with us!

Send TGM #5 to a friend: click here.

Title for this installment: Empiricism versus Rationalism: The tension continues on the medical front lines, and will never end.

To continue to lay the foundation for That’s Good Medicine, lets talk about:

Why we baby boomers should know and understand medical history: The disadvantage of men not knowing the past is that they do not know the present. History is a hill or high point of vantage, from which alone men see…the age in which they are living. [G. K. Chesterton (1874 - 1936)]. We need to know the past to understand what’s really good medicine! The history of allopathic medicine (conventional, orthodox medicine) has been largely one of suppression both in its therapeutic approaches and politics. And some very important historical milestones are simply left out from most medical history timelines.

Empiricism’ versus ‘Rationalism’: critical foundational concepts for our listeners:

Empiricists - past and present - recognize that medicine is largely based on experience, not rigorous science. Most of our current therapies and therapeutic approaches are not based on scientific studies, nor do we know exactly how a lot of what we do even works, but we use it anyway. The empiricist says, “That’s okay, as long as it works, and it’s safe.”

Rationalist-minded practitioners on the other hand ‘rationalize’ that under all (or most) circumstances – even independent of experience - we should and must define the rationale for every therapeutic approach before we can offer it to our patients. This is neither practical nor possible.

The ongoing tension between empirically-minded practitioners and the rationalists is epitomized historically by the homeopaths versus the druggists, the druggers -  the conventional doctors of the day who have the AMA/rationalist mentality.

Bottom line: 1) Our system of health care, and all systems of health care, have evolved primarily from doctors’ experiences with their patients – real life experimentation figuratively speaking – not from scientific research studies on humans or other animals; 2) TGM listeners’ high point of vantage should allow them to see that the empiricist versus rationalist concept is really a spectrum (not black or white), with each healthcare practitioner poised, in his thinking, at some point between the two poles; 3) The history of medicine is characterized by a perpetual tension between the two ways of thinking, providing a yin-yang balance; 4) Key for the advancement of good medicine is for doctors to find the right spot on the spectrum between empiricism and rationalism, because too much of either is not good medicine.

Echoes from the Wilds of Good Medicine (listener feedback). Lisa from Louisiana wrote:

“I have listened to your first few episodes and I am very excited that you are doing this for us who are out there looking for ways to take our health into our own hands by searching for information. I must comment on one thing though: Your target audience. I understand that the majority of your listeners may be baby boomers but don’t forget about those of us out there who do not fit into that category. I, for instance, am 37 yrs old and have lived with Ulcerative Colitis [UC] for 13 years. Keep up the good work. I’m looking forward to you next show.”

Thanks Lisa. Please always know that we Baby Boomers (from the love generation) welcome you and all other X-Geners to TGM!

Integrative Medicine Approaches for Ulcerative Colitis: At Kevin’s insistence, in response to Lisa’s feedback, we mention a few integrative medicine approaches for UC, which we’ll cover in depth on future shows, and the new discovery that UC is caused from an immune deficiency - more specifically and importantly, it occurs from autoimmunity. It’s an auto-immune condition due to dysbiosis in the gut when white blood cells capture antigens of foreign microbes and activate the immune defenses. This emphasizes the critical importance of gastrointestinal health and the potential for probiotics for health and healing!

Good Medicine Word of the Week: Rationalism: the belief that under all or most circumstances we must use scientific studies to fully define the rationale for every therapeutic approach, before we can offer it to our patients. This is not rational for the advancement of good medicine!

Next week’s show: 2nd installment of History of Healing-History of Killing. Nitroglycerine is a really good medicine. Is our current use of it based on scientific studies? Which empiricists of the 1800s are responsible for our current use nitroglycerine? The homeopaths! We’ll also discuss: why contemporary doctors are positioning themselves more and more toward the pole of empiricism; the concept of health promotion versus disease control; and why the new model of health care that we’re currently dominated by – the FDA Approval-Based Health Care’ Model - is not good medicine.

Send TGM #4 to a friend: click here.