Medicines and Supplements

The following information is complementary to my Diet and Nutrition information sheet, in which I tried to make clear which foods I consider to be of the best quality for maintaining good health and promoting healing. In this piece, I do the same on the subjects of medicines and supplements. As with food, achieving optimal health or recovering from an illness requires bringing as much thought and insight to bear on this subject as is possible. We cannot afford to make the mistake of using unbalanced vitamins or inferior quality medicines in this quest for improved health. Currently, I use medicines and supplements from five sources. I would like to explain why I believe that these are the best sources of medicines and supplements available. But before I do that, I would like to talk about my general therapeutic strategy.

My Therapeutic Strategy
 Generally, after I see a patient, listen to his or her story, and do whatever exams and tests are necessary, I then prescribe a course of treatment. It is important to know that I am not so much trying to fix what is wrong, but rather to strengthen patients so that out of their own forces they can begin to overcome whatever medical problems they came to see me about. I strive to do this without resorting to synthetic medicines if at all possible. The course of the treatment is usually as follows.

  • A diet is suggested.

  • Standard process medicines are given to supplement the whole food nutrients that I think will increase the patient’s ability to heal.

  • I often will prescribe a Standard Process glandular medicine to augment the function of the gland I think is in need of support.

  • Finally, I use Mediherb herbal extracts (the bottle of liquid) for their specific medicinal actions. For example, in a patient with repeated infections I may give Echinacea and Goldenseal. For a patient with anxiety, I may add Kava extract to the liquid. Finally, I often will supplement this liquid herbal extract with one of Mediherb’s herbal extract tablets to enhance the effect of the herbal treatment. Most often with the herbal treatment I prescribe medicines in three week intervals.

Medicines should be taken as directed as closely as possible. Just before the three weeks are up, the patient should call to discuss his or her progress. Often I will slightly tweak the formula to make it more effective. Treatments generally last between two to 12 months, depending on the condition and the patient’s response to treatment. Patients should expect to see some definite improvement in their condition within the first six weeks.

Now on to the supplements and medicines that I use in my treatments.

Weleda, Wala and Uriel medicines
 Weleda, Wala, and now Uriel are the major anthroposophical medicine companies in the world today. These firms make a wide variety of natural medicines, skin care products and products for personal use. Both Weleda and Wala have been in existence for more than 50 years and employ some of the most enlightened and rigorous quality-control standards possible. As an example, Wala workers handpick all of the plants they use and perform all the homeopathic dilutions by hand, instead of using the big mechanical shakers employed by most homeopathic manufacturers. The plants used by all three of these companies are either picked in the wild under strict environmental guidelines, or are grown in a biodynamic way.
There are no better quality natural medicines available. I typically use medicines from these companies to treat a wide variety of acute problems (pneumodorons for coughs), to support organ function (hepatodoron for liver support), or for treating cancer (Iscador). These medicines are generally available by prescription only through physicians well-versed in the methods of anthroposophical medicine.
Note: WALA has recently stopped supplying medicines in the U.S.

Standard Process
I often ask my patients to stop all their usual vitamins and supplements, and to replace them with carefully chosen products from Standard Process. Why? Let me use the example of vitamin C to illustrate my reasoning. Many take some form of vitamin C supplementation, either all the time or when they feel ill. These people are often surprised to hear me say that, not only are they not doing themselves any good, they may actually be causing harm by taking the usual forms of vitamin C. Ascorbic acid, often erroneously called vitamin C, is a potent natural preservative found in small amounts in plants and in some animal tissues. It is an essential nutrient for humans, as we are unable to synthesize vitamin C on our own. Ascorbic acid is always found in nature as an organic mixture, which includes such things as magnesium, manganese, bioflavonoid, rutin and many other organic compounds. In order to be effective in us it must have all these other cofactors present, not just the ascorbic acid. Most vitamin C products, with very few exceptions, strip the ascorbic acid part of the complex and call this vitamin C. It is not; it is only ascorbic acid, actually the preservative part of the vitamin C complex. This ascorbic acid is then given in enormous quantities, far more than is ever found in natural food, and far more than our bodies can safely use. Not only can we not use these huge quantities of ascorbic acid, but our bodies also are forced to call on its own reserves to join with this ascorbic acid. This draws upon and eventually depletes our bodies of these other vital nutrients that make up the vitamin C complex.
Standard Process is one of only two companies that I know of that doesn’t make this mistake. When Standard Process puts vitamin C in their products, it is always the whole plant or animal extract dehydrated at low heat to preserve the integrity of the complex. Starting with vitamin C-rich sources such as rose hips, acerola berries, buckwheat shoots and animal adrenal glands, each tablet will contain only about 2-10 mg of ascorbic acid, which by federal decree is labeled as the vitamin C content. In fact, one cannot get more than about 15 mg of vitamin C into a normal-sized tablet. All the pills with more than this are nothing more than chemical ascorbic acid which, as I said, is a chemical preservative that we have no business ingesting in such huge amounts.
The same argument holds for all the other vitamins and all the other Standard Process products. This company is the only one I know of that grows much of its own source material on its organic farm in Wisconsin, processes the whole mineral, plant, and animal extracts at low heat, and puts them into appropriate supplement form. In addition, Standard Process has innovative products not found anywhere else. Two examples are the Wulzen anti-stiffness factor, isolated in the 1950s as the factor that prevents osteoarthritis, and a variety of whole organ extracts, used for centuries to combat various illnesses. It has been rare in my experience for patients not to notice improvements in their health when placed on the appropriate Standard Process supplements. Like other anthroposophical medicines, Standard Process products are available only through a health care provider.

Mediherb
With herbal medicines so commonly available in health food stores and even pharmacies, why choose a particular line of herbal products? Mediherb, an Australian company founded by Kerry Bone and distributed in the U.S. by Standard Process, is the most reliable producer of high quality herbal extracts that I know of.
The difference between Mediherb and all other herbal products lies in two particular areas. First, Mediherb guarantees that the material in your bottle is not only from the herb it says it is from but contains at minimum the amount of active ingredients listed on the bottle. It is the only herbal company that guarantees that it uses the whole herb or herb part and provides a known quantity of active ingredient. No other company combines this commitment to both wholeness and attention to active ingredients.
Second, Mediherb provides extracts, unlike most other herbal companies which use tinctures. Extracts are at least five times more concentrated than tinctures and are much more in line with the doses used both by traditional herbalists and in modern pharmacological studies. Often people who say they had no results using other herbs find that getting the right quality and quantity of the proper herb makes all the difference.

Women’s International Pharmacy and Carlson’s
Two companies I routinely work with are for very specific items only. I prescribe hormones from Women’s International Pharmacy, a reliable supplier of natural hormone products. In particular, I prescribe tri-est, a mixture of three estrogens that mimic the normal female estrogens, and progesterone cream. It also has testosterone and many other hormonal products.
I use the Carlson’s for its vitamin D capsules. Vitamin D is a nutrient often deficient in American diets, a deficiency which leads to a myriad of problems. Vitamin D is critical for calcium absorption from the GI tract, and calcium is needed for many processes in our bodies, including the regulation of the pH or acid-base balance of the body. If the pH is off, all of our biological functions are impaired. For this reason I give many patients extra vitamin D and calcium. As I described with vitamin C, we should use only vitamin D that is a whole-food extract. The most concentrated source of vitamin D is fish liver oil, and I often recommend that people use cod liver oil. In situations where more vitamin D is needed, I prescribe Carlson’s vitamin D.

I hope this information helps to answer any questions about the types of medicines and the therapeutic strategy that I use. If anyone has any other questions about the supplements I give or any other medicines being taken, please contact me by phone or email. For links and phone numbers for these companies, go to our Resources page.