Living Healthier Longer

Being  a product of Rutgers University Pre-Med, Harvard Medical School, and  Stanford surgery specialty training has provided me one of the finest  medical training this world has to offer.  And I look with profound  respect at the accomplishments and continuing research carried on by my  colleagues.  But a number of storm clouds are brewing over traditional  Western medicine.  Increasingly sophisticated diagnostic technologies  and heroic surgical procedures have priced our medical care out of reach  for an increasing percentage of our population.  And the system often  loses sight of the whole person, as each specialist takes responsibility  only for his/her own narrow area of expertise without anyone addressing  the whole person and sadly, sometimes failing to make the right  diagnosis.  Patients often fear they are victims of an impersonal system  without a physician who really cares.

Perhaps  more troublesome is the fact that - despite the dramatic scientific  advances in diagnosis and in pharmaceutical management - actual studies  now show that this generation of Americans, perhaps for the first time  in recorded history, will not live as long as their parents.  And this  deterioration in longevity appears to be a continuing trend.

Concurrent  with this reversal of longevity is an interesting finding that more  than 100,000 Americans die every year from pharmaceutical drugs used as  directed.  And barely a month goes by before another much heralded  pharmaceutical is recalled or found to have unexpected long-term,  life-shortening effects.  And seldom appreciated is the fact that all  drugs are toxic to human cell function.  All of which raises the  question:  "How is Western medicine to find its way around the super  costs of diagnostic procedures, high priced pharmaceuticals and common  drug toxicities?"

All  of this has led to a belief among consumers that "we all must take  responsibility for our own health."  In other words, more and more  people no longer feel the system is trustworthy.  And hence the  startling statics discovered by Harvard Professor of Medicine, Dr. David  Eisenberg, that "more Americans now go to alternative care  practitioners than to all internists, general practitioners,   gynecologists, and pediatricians combined."

But  a new and exciting wind is blowing thru Western healthcare that offers a  hope never before seen.  This vision - that we might call "functional  medicine" - seeks to approach all the chronic degenerative diseases of  aging from an upstream vantage point that has the capability to test for  and then prevent the disease before it occurs downstream.  We're  talking here about the heart disease, stroke, obesity, diabetes, cancer,  autoimmune disorders, arthritis, senile dementia, Alzheimer's, and  more.

This  new vision, rather than waiting until serious disease has fully  expressed itself clinically, seeks to diagnose all these diseases  pre-clinically.  Then patients could be instructed in life-protecting  protocols -  to include healthier nutrition, modest exercise, and select  non-pharmaceutical natural supplements - that could prevent or  substantially forestall these chronic degenerative diseases and probably  the aging process itself.  It could also radically reduce the cost of  medical care and protect a wary public from the toxicity and  often-exorbitant cost of pharmaceuticals.

As  both a Board Certified Specialist Surgeon and more recently a Board  Certified Specialist in Anti-aging and Regenerative Medicine I believe  we now have the scientific databases available to accomplish this major  disease-preventing, life-enhancing, and life-lengthening vision.

I  know personally of several "super" nutritional supplements that support  and improve health far more effective than some of our most  widely-prescribed drugs.  This more functional, more natural, safer and  less costly path to "living healthier longer" is a vision that can bring  exciting new hope to millions.