This latest edition of our newsletter starts with an update for you on Flu Prevention, given how much attention everyone seems to be giving this topic. I trust you’ll find it of value as you make your way through the fall and winter seasons.

As some of you may already know, there have been changes at the Fourfold Healing Clinic in the last six months. The team at the Clinic has expanded, we are updating the website and adding new features, and continue to improve the Community Supported Health (CSH) plan. I’ve asked Dara Crawford, latest addition to our team, to outline some of these changes for you. I’ve also asked Brooke Moen, Traditional Chinese Medicine and Acupuncture specialist, to tell you about her philosophy and practice for patients.

In addition to these reports, I want to discuss two very powerful books whose topics I think you will find interesting, some Recommended Reading for you. We’ve also got a delicious Nourishing Recipe from ForageSF, and information for Bay area residents on two exceptional women who are Nutritional Coaches and serve as Personal Chefs on a limited basis.

In the coming months, I will be traveling and speaking on everything from A1/A2 milk to cancer. I hope to have a chance to connect with you, whether it be at the Clinic, by phone or e-mail, at the Weston A. Price conference in Chicago in November, or the Fourfold Healing Conference in NH in January. I’m also quite excited about a series of online lectures I will be doing for the Growing Edge Institute.

Warmest wishes to you as we make our way together along the Fourfold Path to Healing.

Tom

IN THIS ISSUE

• Flu Prevention
• Changes at the Office (Dara Crawford)
• Acupuncture CSH (Brooke Moen)
• Book Reviews: Cancer Is A Fungus and The Vegetarian Myth
• Upcoming Events
• Nourishing Recipe from Forage SF
• Nutritional Coaching in the Bay Area

FLU PREVENTION

Every fall I get lots of questions from patients about what they should do about flu prevention and treatment. Every year around this time there is also building hype about the devastating effects of some particularly virulent flu strain, with major concern about the availability of flu vaccines. And every year, spring arrives and nothing much has happened. Some people got sick, most didn’t, the whole thing is forgotten for a few months, only to start all over in the fall.

This year, because of the swine flu (H1N1), the hype is especially virulent. Predictions of dire consequences and of impending mandatory vaccines with possible criminal charges for negligent naysayers pepper local newspapers and internet sites. People are told to go to their doctors at the first sign of the flu to find out if they in fact have the swine flu. The trouble with this is doctors actually can’t tell if a person has the swine flu or not from a usual history and physical. The only sure thing to come out of all this is that someone – well actually, pharmaceutical companies which are among the largest and most lucrative companies in the world – is making a fortune from these vaccines. I guess I could say, who wouldn’t like to make a product with no competition, no cost containment mechanism, and that the government forces everyone to buy. That’s almost as good a gig as the Federal Reserve bank, which gets to decide how much money to print, how much the government needs to borrow, and the interest rate the government has to pay for the privilege of borrowing this money.

The fact is that neither I nor anyone else can really separate the hype from the facts here. In situations like this, I take the cautious approach: I’ll believe it when I see it. Until then, the well-recognized side effects of vaccines loom large. Our immune system is constructed in a very specific way. It has two “arms”: a humoral arm which makes antibodies and therefore remembers what it has encountered, and a cell-mediated arm which identifies and digests foreign stuff, including micro-organisms and some toxins. Natural infection activates both arms. The cell-mediated arm digests the micro-organisms and clears them through fever, rash, mucus, etc. The humoral arm remembers, so we don’t get sick again from these same organisms. The enemy of this well-functioning system is to be infected but not clear the organisms, which sets up unresolved foreign elements in our blood. Many think these become the later cause of such things as auto-immune illness.

The basic problem with vaccines is that they deliberately bypass the cell-mediated arm (otherwise people would be sick) and activate the humoral arm. A lifetime of this is strongly associated with diseases of lowered cell-mediated immunity, specifically cancer and auto-immune illness. Every culture that has adopted widespread vaccine programs inevitably deals with epidemic-like rates of these two categories of illness. This doesn’t even address the issue of the simple toxicity that comes from injecting thimerosol, formaldehyde, dead viruses, etc., into our blood stream. Many organizations have documented the toxicity of these products and their association with chronic illness. Suffice it to say, the vaccine approach to dealing with illness is a switching-type-of-illness strategy rather than a preventing-illness strategy. Personally, I’m not thrilled by the types of illnesses that are provoked by vaccines.

My prevention strategy for flu is fairly simple, and I have outlined it in newsletters before. First, adequate vitamins A and D have been strongly associated with flu prevention and better outcomes in past studies (see the vitamin D council for further info). A good prevention strategy is 1 tsp of cod liver oil and 2,000 – 5,000 IU per day of vitamin D3, depending on blood tests, throughout the fall and winter. In addition, elderberries are a proven flu prevention remedy, particularly elderberry/thyme syrup at 1 tsp twice per day in the flu season. Congaplex from Standard Process can also help with prevention and treatment, with a dose of 3 to 9 capsules per day depending on the patient’s age.

People still will get sick no matter what we do, but hopefully by using these strategies and avoiding vaccines, we can manage acute illness in the way our bodies were designed to do, without either great debility from the flu or having our prevention strategy actually foster worse illnesses for us in the future.

FOURFOLD CLINIC UPDATE by Dara Crawford

Since May of this year, working with the fantastic team at the Fourfold Clinic, I have spent many hours talking with patients and getting to know them and their families. Feedback has been incredibly important in helping us to formulate new strategies to provide better patient care. In addition to working at the front desk, as part of our commitment to continuing this dialogue, I will be updating the website and managing Dr. Cowan’s web presence. I look forward to your suggestions on how to continually improve the Clinic.

CSH and Fee Changes:
The Community Supported Healthcare (CSH) plan has been an incredible experiment in providing affordable healthcare for everyone, regardless of income. As an ongoing project, we have had to make changes along the way, and we will be making more changes beginning in November. First, we will be raising the minimum monthly payment to $25. If you are currently paying less than $25 per month for the CSH, we will be contacting you sometime in October to make sure that you are aware of the change and to ensure that you would still like to participate. At the minimum, this means that after the first appointment, you will be paying $125 for six months of unlimited access to Dr. Cowan. This continues to be a bargain and far below what any local private practice physicians charge.

We will also be raising the rates for all first-time appointments by $25. So, a first time phone appointment under the CSH plan will now be $200. A first time office appointment (not CSH) will be $300. A first time phone appointment (not CSH) will be $275. All of this information can be found under the “Community Supported Healthcare” tab on the Fourfold Healing website.

The Community Supported Healthcare plan has been expanded to include acupuncture as well. For those of you who live or work in the San Francisco Bay, this is exciting news. Brooke Moen, the Fourfold Healing Clinic’s acupuncturist, has become quite busy since she began offering her services as part of the Community Supported Healthcare plan. The CSH rates for acupuncture range from $100-$200 a month for unlimited acupuncture treatments. If you sign up for the CSH acupuncture plan, there is no additional cost for the first appointment, and just like the CSH plan for Dr. Cowan, you decide what you can afford to pay per month. If you’re interested in acupuncture treatments, call or e-mail Brooke soon because her availability will surely become more limited once the word gets out. (brooke@brookemoen.com or www.brookemoen.com)

Fourfold Healing Website and New Media:
We’ve been listening to your questions and feedback and are working to make the website easier to navigate and to make our office more web-friendly. So far we have created a page that explains the Community Supported Healthcare (CSH) program and the various payment options and rates. We also know that many of you appreciate the fact that you can e-mail Dr. Cowan directly (drcowansoffice@yahoo.com) with brief questions and updates. We’ve built upon that idea and added have added an e-mail address (frontdesk@fourfoldhealing.com) that you can use to contact the front desk directly. Karen, Sabine, and I will be happy to answer any questions you may have via this e-mail address.

We’ve also added three new web-based features to www.fourfoldhealing.com, under the Contact tab. First, you can now request an appointment online. Just fill out the form and press submit and we will either e-mail or call you with some potential dates and times. Secondly, you can request supplement and prescription medication refills online – in fact, this is the simplest and quickest way to request a refill. Just fill in the name of the medication, dosage and quantity you need refilled and we will get right to it. Often patients leave voicemail messages requesting refills, which can lead to days of phone tag and confusion for everyone. We’re hoping to make the whole process quicker and easier for everyone with the new online option. Finally, if you have a health question for Dr. Cowan that doesn’t require an appointment, you can ask him using the “Ask Dr. Cowan a Question” link, which will email your question directly to Dr. Cowan. All of these new features are under the Contact tab on the home page at www.fourfoldhealing.com. We hope you’ll visit the site and give them a try.

We’re also pleased to announce that you can keep updated on the latest information related to Dr. Cowan and his work on Twitter at 4foldhealing. We will be posting information about relevant articles and research, current events, and upcoming appearances, so if you’re already “tweeting”, start following 4foldhealing to receive our updates.

TCM AND ACUPUNCTURE AT THE FOURFOLD CLINIC by Brooke Moen

At the Fourfold Clinic, we are experimenting with the best way to take care of patients. One attempt is to add my services to the Community Supported Healthcare Plan. With this, we’ve been talking about community health and what that means. To me, it is the idea that illness is not an isolated incident, nor does it happen in a vacuum. Rather, it is part of a larger context of cause and effect patterns. As we have seen in the world particularly as of late, symptoms — cultural, economic, or physiological — are part of a larger system. Nature provides the best teacher of such symbiosis; it is the ultimate example of community.

This is the foundation of Traditional Chinese Medicine, which I’d like to share with you. For thousands of years, practitioners have been looking to nature to learn how elements and systems function. Without modern distractions such as media, or the advantage of current medical tools (such as imaging or blood tests), the Chinese utilized our most powerful human tools of observation and analysis. Acting as the first scientists, they felt the pulse, looked at the tongue, and developed a sophisticated system of diagnosis, using metaphors based in nature to describe patterns of health and illness. They took hundreds of herbs over hundreds of years and noticed the specific effects. They developed Acupuncture; the insertion of fine needles at various points on the body, which are part of a specific point prescription, to treat an organism’s carefully diagnosed imbalance. And lucky for us, they wrote it all down.

As a lifetime student of this complex medicine and its wise worldview, I feel honored to utilize its tools of Acupuncture and herbal medicine to help patients feel better. However, a major part of community health that I’m learning from Chinese Medicine’s Taoist roots is that the practitioner’s job is not to “bestow health” upon a patient. Rather, I am a partner in the patient’s journey of “unlearning.” Together, we peel back layers of conditioning (physical, mental, and/or emotional), to facilitate a person’s intelligence coming forward. By intelligence, I mean an innate knowing; the body and soul understand how to be healthy.

As an example of how this works, I’ll explain what one of my teachers means when he says “Give them feet.” All traditional healing systems emphasize digestion; help the patient digest and you improve assimilation. Many of you have experienced this with efforts to heal your gut with GAPS, among other things. But assimilation means more than just digesting food and processing nutrients. Its how life is taken in, processed, and transformed into energy. So if I can help a patient digest, assimilate life, I help to put his feet on the ground. I help him strengthen his ability to discriminate, trust his inner logic, and make decisions based on his natural “appetite,” rather than logic outside himself.

Another story shows how healing is community by nature, and is related to the idea of “nailing one foot to the ground.” We all have a sense of the importance of routine, particularly if we spend any time with the elderly or infants. And as part of the Fourfold Principles, Dr. Cowan has taught us much about rhythm and regularity. I often instruct patients to start by eating the same breakfast around the same time every morning, or in some cases, just eating breakfast. This may sound simplistic, but a survey conducted at a school of Chinese Medicine illustrates the power of this concept. Essentially, Hispanic patients who ate a daily staple of beans, rice and corn were compared to Euro-American patients who did not have a daily staple, and the Hispanic patients responded to Acupuncture and herbal medicine much more quickly and successfully.

Guided by this philosophy of creating stability and facilitating trust in a person’s innate wisdom, my treatments consist of three basic elements. The first is talking with a patient about her life. I listen to her experience, and encourage her to help me understand what she most needs. We talk about how the little things we do every day are powerful in the long run; like drops in a bucket, what we add slowly but surely over a lifetime will determine the bucket of health we carry around. Along these lines, recommendations such as drinking bone broth, doing abdominal massage, resting in the afternoon, and abiding by the seasons are discussed. How to nourish one self is a guiding principle. And since healing through food is a cornerstone of treatment at our clinic, I help patients understand how to do this.

The second element of treatment is Acupuncture. From a Western Medical viewpoint, it encourages the release of endorphins, which supports the all-important immune system. The Chinese Medical perspective can also put it simply; Acupuncture either moves what’s stuck, slows down hyper-function, fires up hypo-function, or in most cases, a bit of each. For the patient, this means lying down, having 3-8 fine needles inserted, resting (often sleeping) for 30-40 minutes, then waking feeling very relaxed. Many patients describe the post-acupuncture feeling as calm, yet energized.

The third element of treatment is herbal prescription. The Chinese Medical Pharmacopoeia consists of around 400 herbs, which are combined specifically for the patient’s constitution, symptoms, and how each herb compliments another. I use Spring Wind Dispensary, an herbal pharmacy where I once worked, because I trust the safety and sustainability of their products.

Treatment might consist of any or all of these three elements, depending on the patient. The idea is always to be assisting you with calibrating to the seasons (meaning rhythm of time cycles more than weather) through eating, resting, and taking herbs, so imbalance or disease will pass through, rather than becoming chronic. In some cases, regular Acupuncture sets up the body to better accept Dr. Cowan’s treatment protocols. In others, well-timed treatments address specific pathologies such as menstrual difficulties or an injury. Some focus on the counseling aspect, while others work on a deeper level, helping the body let go of past or current issues that are difficult to access mentally or emotionally.

I hope this glimpse into community medicine has been interesting and useful. I’d like to think I’m addressing a good question I often get, “does Acupuncture work?” My answer is that it’s not magic, its medicine. This is the spirit of community health; rather than isolating a person and her symptom, instead let’s consider a broader picture of health. In China, when someone was sick, everyone in the family would take herbs and drink rice porridge, even when the ill person could not. This is the spirit I hope to foster at Fourfold, and I welcome you to take a seat at the table. Please call me at 415.420.3447 to learn more.

RECOMMENDED READING from Dr. Cowan

I don’t usually review two books in the same newsletter but there are some hidden but compelling similarities in these two books, The Vegetarian Myth and Cancer is a Fungus, that made me feel like I should. In many ways, it is the link between these two books that is the probably the most fascinating story.

The Vegetarian Myth by Lierre Keith
Very occasionally powerful, life-changing books are written that give one the palpable sense that “if people would only listen” the world might be a different place. The Vegetarian Myth by Lierre Keith is one such book. In this book Lierre essentially tells two intertwined stories. One is the story of the deterioration of her own health as a direct result of adopting a vegan diet. The second is the related tale of the destruction of our planet essentially as a result of the widespread adoption of agriculture, specifically agriculture based on the growing of grains. Her central premise is that, unlike what we are all led to believe, the absolute worst thing that could ever befall humans or the earth is if we all adopted a vegetarian or, worse yet, a vegan diet. To many, this is such an unbelievable head spinner that they simply will not even be able to entertain the ideas that are presented by Lierre. The ideas, the argument she presents to make her case are powerful, coherent and irrefutable – grains and in fact a grain-based (i.e. vegetarian) diet are literally killing us all.

First, the ecological argument. We are told that the biggest users of fresh water and the most wasteful, ecologically speaking, food we can eat is meat. We are told that if instead of feeding grains to cows to get meat, which is anyway poison for us to eat, we should feed that grain to people thereby feeding at least 30 people with a grain-based diet for every one person we can feed on a meat-based diet. We are told to eat low on the food chain to conserve resources and be ecologically friendly. And, finally and crucially we hear people proudly announce they don’t eat anything with faces as a sign that they are living out their deeply held convictions about social justice. The facts actually tell a completely different story.

Imagine the Middle East 10,000 years ago when the only people living in what we now call Iraq, Lebanon, Israel, Egypt, etc., were nomadic hunter-gatherer types. This area was referred to as a paradise; it was lush, fecund; Lebanon was the land of the cedar forests. The area between the Tigris and Euphrates was literally paradise on earth. Then came agriculture, specifically the growing of grains. As happens where grains are grown and irrigation is used, the soil began to lose its vitality, the humous layer was lost. The irrigation and the converting of perennial grasses and the animals that live on these grasses to annual crops is akin to mining the nutrients and the fertility out of the soil. Without sufficient animal manure and animal bodies to put nutrients back into the soil, without the annual flooding of the plains that is stopped when irrigation systems are used, the land loses its nutrients, the soil becomes more salty and, as evidenced in the Middle East, eventually, inevitably the land becomes a desert. Lierre describes this process in intimate detail so the reader is left with no doubt that in human history, whenever the transition from perennial grass-based land – alongside naturally flowing lakes and rivers, co-existing with verdant forests – is converted into grain based agriculture, the inevitable result is everything dies. Everything – the plants, the insects, the wild animals and eventually the people.

Think of our own Great Plains. A brief 300 years ago this was a vast territory of perennial grass-based prairie, supporting millions of diverse forms of animals, plants and people for thousands of years. In fact over those thousands of years, the soil, the land that is our only home, was getting healthier and healthier. Estimates show that the topsoil layer of the unspoiled Great Plains was in some places more than 12 feet deep, a vast reservoir of fertility, of health of possibility for seemingly endless life on earth for a multitude of plants and animal beings. Along came grains and their “evil” cousin soya beans (the vegan diet and food processors’ darling). By this time agriculture had become more sophisticated, no more planting grains with sticks and burying fish in the soil, the green revolution. A blink of an eye later in terms of earth time, the Great Plains have become a literal wasteland. The only tall grass prairie left is confined to a few museums, the topsoil is in many places just a few inches thick; the animal and plant species extinctions are estimated between 20 to 40 percent. The human community is impoverished, the rivers are poisoned and the food is not worth eating. A few years of drought and we have a literal dustbowl as the few inches of topsoil left blows out towards California. Some would say this unspeakable tragedy is a result of commercial (chemical) agriculture and that what we need is a return to organics. They are wrong. In fact the first great dustbowl on the plains happened before there even was such a thing as chemical agriculture. No, as Lierre shows, this is the inevitable result of grain-based agriculture. It happens in every circumstance, at different speeds for sure, but in every instance where perennial grasses are converted to annual food crops, particularly grains.

If this wasn’t reason enough for conscientious people to shun a grain-based diet, Lierre spends the second half of the book detailing the negative health repercussions from adopting a grain-based, vegetarian or vegan diet. For those familiar with the work of the Weston A. Price foundation or The Four Fold Path to Healing, this will come as no surprise. What will be eye-opening for many is a detailed chart that compares the physiology of meat eaters with that of herbivores. If you still have any doubts that humans are literally physiologically required to live on mostly an animal food diet, I recommend checking out this enlightening chart. Lierre has done her homework. She references many studies that have been done in the last 100 years documenting the superior health outcomes, the absence of chronic disease, and the total absence of cancer and heart disease in people who eat the food that comes naturally out of a perennially based grass and forest system. What do these people eat? What is the “human” diet, the diet that works back to heal the land? Conveniently it is one diet, called the GAPS diet. As probably more than a hundred of my patients can attest, those who have literally regained their health as a result of the GAPS diet, it is no surprise that the very diet that can heal so many sick people is the very diet that,when applied to agriculture, can heal a “sick” earth.

Get this book, read it, pass it to your friends, especially your vegetarian friends, for as Lierre often says in our current situation, it is not enough any more to just have good intentions. You also have to be informed about what it is you are fighting for.

Cancer is a Fungus by Tulio Simoncini
In the last year, Cancer is a Fungus has become the hot new story in cancer. That alone made it worth exploring for me. The book is written by Italian oncologist Tulio Simoncini, who after his medical and oncology training, began to see conventional oncology treatment as basically a house of cards. As he explored deeper, he began to question not only the success of conventional oncology treatments, especially chemotherapy and radiation, but the entire scientific basis of our current view of cancer. An unquestioned “truth” in conventional oncology theory is that cancer is a genetic defect that arises as a mutation in a single cell and then grows from this single cell stock to first form the primary tumor and then metastasize to the other organs in the body.

This understanding of cancer in conventional oncology is the philosophical basis for all of our current therapies. That is, if we catch the cancer early, when it is still just a primary tumor, we remove this mutated cell mass and cure the cancer. If the cancer has spread we try to kill it with poison (chemotherapy), radiation, hormones or more lately specialized genetic products (i.e. Herceptin). After investigating the history of this theory and the dismal success rate for this type of therapy, Dr. Simoncini came to the startling conclusion that this whole genetic mutation theory is totally incorrect. This apparently rocked his life. His initial response to this revelation was to go back to university to study philosophy, apparently with the question of how is it that we as a “culture” decide that certain things are true. The first part of Cancer is a Fungus is the exploration of why we think certain things and in certain ways.

The second section of the book is the exploration of the history of how oncologists came to believe in the genetic defect/errant cell theory and the evidence that it is incorrect. Dr. Simoncini quotes from current oncology texts such as “the mechanism through which chromosomal alterations occur is to date unknown” to try to demonstrate that the proof that cancer is a genetic defect is simply unproven hypothesis. He then turns to current therapies in oncology and, using actual numbers from conventional literature, shows that the success rate for treating cancer is somewhere in the 2-5% range – in other words about the same as random events mixed with a strong placebo response. His conclusion is that the basic theories of our current approach to oncology and the treatments that have resulted from these theories are a dismal failure and should be abandoned.

Dr. Simoncini then turns to discuss his “revolutionary” theory in oncology which is that the vast percentage of cancers are actually nothing more than infections with the fungus we call candida albicans. This same fungus that causes vaginal infections in women, opportunistic infections in AIDS patients and skin rashes in many people is fingered by Dr. Simonicini as the sole cause of the vast majority of cancers. As evidence, he explains in detail the life cycle of candida and how it actually causes disease in humans. He points to research in various oncology journals suggesting that when pathologists look for candida in human tumors they find it in anywhere from 79% to 97% of the cases. And, finally he points out that in nature, especially plants, almost all tumors (e.g. of trees) are known to be caused by a variety of fungal infections. Fungal masses become tumors; when the host defenses slip, they spread; they are almost impossible to get rid of by the organism without some sort of intervention, and they are remarkably pleomorphic in their appearance. Dr. Simoncini makes a solid case that cancer is not some big scary multi-factorial mystery. Rather it is simply a combination of a weakened host and its subsequent invasion with candida albicans.

Finally, we get to the part of the book that makes the rest relevant. This is the section, backed up by written histories, pathology reports and in some cases actual CT scans or other x-rays (some are on his website www.cancerfungus.com) where Dr. Simoncini relates how when he treats his cancer patients with the appropriate anti-fungal therapy somewhere around 90% of his patients will be “cured” of their cancer. Among the cases he presents include cancer of the pancreas, melanomas, lung cancer and a variety of the cancers known to have particularly poor prognoses. The surprising part of the therapy, well actually shocking part, is that the treatment he uses is high dose of a concentrated baking soda solution injected via intra-arterial catheter directly into the tumor/fungal mass. This means in the case of a cancer of the pancreas you must instill the baking soda directly into the pancreatic artery. This is, of course, a fairly complex procedure requiring the skills of surgeons and radiologist trained in this technique. Currently, as far as I know, the only place this therapy is available is with Dr. Simoncini’s group in Italy but his intention is to make his case and literally revolutionize the treatment of oncology patients around the world with his simple and straightforward approach.

Two questions arise at this point. First, is it true that you can cure most cancer patients with this baking soda approach which, as he points out, literally proves that cancer is either a fungus (baking soda is a good anti-fungal defect) or maybe a baking soda deficiency (unlikely)? And second, what does this have to do with The Vegetarian Myth? Tackling the second question, what is striking about this is that when you put together GAPS theory, low-dose naltrexone theory, and the basic story of The Vegetarian Myth, what emerges is that pre-civilized humans simply never got cancer. Civilization is essentially the process of turning complex and stable diverse ecologies into large fields of grain. Another way of saying this is we convert the diverse nutrients from the soil into carbohydrate and opiate-producing factories. This degrades the ecology of the earth and turns us into weakened (from the opiates), obese (from the excess sugars), poisoned (form the modern agriculture techniques) beings. Our strong susceptibility to chronic yeast infections is a result of the above three factors. Put this all together and cancer does start to look like a fungal infection. Unfortunately, I can’t confirm the baking soda treatment from personal experience; if anyone has a personal experience, I would love to hear about it. What I do know is that the more determined I get to restore the ecology of my patients, including getting rid of candida, the better the results overall. Dr. Simoncini makes a strong case that baking soda is the most direct way. I use and have used other ways of improving host defenses and affecting candida besides baking soda. Regardless, Cancer is a Fungus has piqued my interest and helped me see that fundamentally we in the GAPS and WAPF movement are on the right track.

NOURISHING RECIPE from Iso Rabins of forageSF

Heirloom Tomato Ragu with Wild Boar over Fresh Pasta
We cooked this dish at our underground Wild Boar Dinner in San Francisco in September. Thanks to Ellen Roggerman for input on the sauce. For this dish we used orange and red heirloom tomatoes from Balakian Farms near San Francisco, and wild boar from…well that’s a bit of a secret. The first thing you want to do is start the wild boar cooking. That’s what is going to take most of your time in this dish.
We used several shoulders of boar in this instance (because that’s what we had), but other cuts that respond well to slow cooking, or even ground meat, could work.
Ingredients:
1 10-lb boar shoulder (or several smaller ones)
garlic
salt and pepper to taste
olive oil
1 C red wine
2 white onions
5 lb heirloom tomatoes of different colors (hint: if you want to get heirlooms cheap, go just as the farmers market is closing, we got these for $1/lb)
coriander, herb salt
Sucanat to taste

Wild game has a tendency to dry out more than cultivated meat, so slow braising is key. Preheat oven to 300 degrees, then coat the meat in a rub of garlic, thyme, and olive oil. Place in large stew-pot or baking dish, cover well, and cook…for 4 hours. Check on the meat every hour or so, to see how it’s looking. The meat is done when it is falling apart. Take the pan out of the oven, and remove meat to separate plate to rest. Pour off all but 2 Tbsp of liquid from pan, add wine and cook over high heat, scraping bottom of pan to remove cracklings, cook down for three minutes. This can be used to add an intensity of flavor to the pasta sauce, or saved in the fridge (keeps about a week) to flavor another dish.

For the Sauce:
First I cut the heirlooms into segments using a 3:1 ratio of orange to red heirlooms. The orange heirlooms taste amazingly bright and sweet so I use some red heirlooms to give the flavor more backbone or base. Heat a good amount of olive oil in a pan. Brown chopped garlic and add onions and salt. Allow onions to get soft and translucent. Add almost all of your orange tomato segments and then slowly add in red tomatoes in stages. Turn burner down to medium. As the tomatoes release their juices, watch the color. If it starts turning too brown, add more orange tomatoes.

Add coriander, herb salt, and kosher salt to taste. Cook for 30-40 minutes until tomatoes are very soft and lots of juice has come out. Let cool and then blend with an immersion blender (if you don’t have one, using a blender in batches works too). Keep the ragu somewhat chunky: you don’t need to blend it very thin but also don’t want big pieces of skin. Return to pot and heat. Add more coriander and salt if desired. If flavors aren’t coming together well, try adding a bit of sucanat, 1/2 teaspoon at a time. Take the wild boar that has been resting, and pull apart as you would pulled pork. Add to sauce, and cook a further 10 minutes to blend flavors. Serve over fresh whole grain pasta or brown rice.

Iso Rabins is the founder of forageSF, a wild foods business/community in San Francisco that provides a monthly box of all local, sustainably foraged wild foods to its Bay Area members. In addition to the CSF (Community Supported Forage), forageSF leads guided edible plant walks to teach people about the abundance of wild edibles just beyond their yards. You can find Iso and forageSF at www.forageSF.com

FOR BAY AREA RESIDENTS

A Note from Personal Chefs and Nutritional Coaches Anna Mollow and Jane Hyman-Herman

We are personal chefs and nutritional coaches in Sonoma County, California. Our delicious, nutrient-dense foods are made using locally grown organic or “beyond organic” ingredients and traditional food-preparation methods. We will personally prepare for you just about any traditional food you may request: stews, casseroles, soups, kimchi, sauerkraut, pickles, bone broth, yogurt, kombucha, liver pate, mayonnaise, and lacto-fermented tonics. We specialize in creating entrees and baked goods to be eaten on the GAPS diet.

In addition to food preparation, we offer nutritional coaching. Our approach differs from that of most nutritional consultants: rather than advocating weight loss or restrictions on calories, carbohydrates, or fat, we help you incorporate more satisfying, nourishing foods into your diet.
For more information, please call us at 707.528.4554 (11am- 11pm PST) or write to us at uncommonculturesfoods@gmail.com.

UPCOMING CONFERENCES AND SPEAKING ENGAGEMENTS

The Weston A. Price Foundation’s Wise Traditions Conference, “Honoring the Sacred Foods”, is coming up in just a few weeks, November 13th through November 16th just outside Chicago in Schaumberg, Illinois. Dr. Cowan will be discussing cancer from the perspective of the work of Weston A. Price, including a description of the “true” cause of cancer and exploring the shortfalls of conventional diagnosis (including biopsy) and treatment. He will also provide a review of holistic treatments for cancer including diet, supplements and herbs, with an in-depth look at the use of Iscador (mistletoe extract) in successful European treatment protocols. For more information and to register, go to www.westonaprice.org and click on the link to “Conferences” under Get Involved.

Dr. Cowan will also be speaking at The Fourfold Healing Conference in Nashua, New
Hampshire, from January 29-31, 2010 alongside Sally Fallon and Jaimen McMillan. This is
an incredible opportunity to spend time with the authors of The Fourfold Path to
Healing and to learn more about their unique viewpoints on nutrition, movement, and
health. Health professionals, dietitians, nutritionists, and anyone else with an interest
in the health and well-being of their friends and family should attend this conference.
More information about the Fourfold Path to Healing Conference can be found
on the Fourfold Healing website. If you’re interested in helping spread the
word about the conference, we’ve also set up a Facebook page for the conference
(http://www.facebook.com/pages/Nashua-NH/The-Fourfold-Path-to-Healing-
Conference/145047436751). If you’re on Facebook, “Become a Fan” and suggest that
your friends do the same so we can spread the word about this exciting weekend of
education and discussions.

This spring Dr. Cowan and The Growing Edge Institute will team up to present a six-week, internet-based series of lectures entitled “Healing From the Inside Out”. The Growing Edge Institute is an innovative online learning institution and community. Past speakers have included Eckhart Tolle and Starhawk. This spring Dr. Cowan will discuss a variety of topics including the causes and treatments of gut disorders, heart disease, cancer, and much more. Each week he will spend one to two hours discussing these topics, after which he will be available to answer your e-mail and online questions. We are very excited about the opportunity to work with the Growing Edge Institute and we will post more information as we determine the exact dates and time for the course.

Tom Cowan

The Devil in the Milk

I have been involved in thinking about the medicinal aspects of cow’s milk virtually my entire career. As one four-year-old child pointed out to me many years ago, “Mommy, I know why he always talks about milk, his name is Cow—an.” So, I guess this milk “obsession” is no surprise.
The obsession started in earnest about 25 years ago when I read the book The Milk of Human Kindness Is Not Pasteurized by maverick physician William Campbell Douglass, MD. This was one of the most influential books I have ever read. I became convinced that a large part of the disease in this country is related to the way we handle, or rather mishandle, milk and milk products. Raw and cultured dairy products from healthy grass-fed cows are one of the healthiest foods people have ever eaten. It is the very foundation of western civilization (not that this is necessarily so good). On the other hand, pasteurized, particularly low-fat, milk products have caused more disease than perhaps any other substance people are generally in contact with. This view was re- enforced when I met and joined up with Sally Fallon and learned the principles of the Weston A. Price Foundation. End of story, I thought – I could stop thinking about milk.
Over the years, every once in a while Sally would say to me, “You know we have the wrong cows here.” I had also heard this from assorted bio-dynamic farmers but didn’t really know what to make of this or whether this was a medical issue I should be tackling. All along, though, something was not quite right. It remained unmistakably true that many of my patients, in spite of eating only the proper dairy products, still had illness and still seemed not to tolerate milk. Truth be told, for most of my adult life I myself couldn’t drink any kind of raw milk without feeling a bit sick and congested. Somehow my story with milk wasn’t quite finished.
Along came the GAPS diet (Gut and Psychology Syndrome) and the use of low dose naltrexone, both of which I have described in previous Fourfold newsletters, but the relevance here is that many patients only improved and recovered when they eliminated milk (but not other dairy products) from their diets and took a medicine that stimulated endogenous (one’s own) endorphin production. Then, a further nudge on this topic showed up about a month ago. I was asked to consider writing the foreword to a book called The Devil in the Milk, written by agribusiness professor and farm-management consultant Keith Woodford. In this book Dr. Woodford lays out the theory that there is a devil in some of our milk, and this is something we need to come to grips with. Here is a brief synopsis of the main thesis of his book.
Milk consists of three parts: 1) fat or cream, 2) whey, and 3) milk solids. For this story we are only concerned about the milk solid part, as the fat and whey don’t have this “devil”. The milk solid part is composed of many different proteins which have their own names, lactose, and other sugars. It is the protein part of the solid we’re interested in. One of these proteins is called casein, of which there are many different types, but the one casein we are interested is the predominant protein called beta- casein.
As you may or may not know, all proteins are long chains of amino acids that have many “branches” coming off different parts of the main chain. Beta casein is a 229 chain of amino acids with a proline at number 67 – at least the proline is there in “old- fashioned” cows. These cows with proline at number 67 are called A2 cows and are the older breeds of cows (e.g. Jerseys, Asian and African cows). Some five thousand years ago, a mutation occurred in this proline amino acid, converting it to histidine. Cows that have this mutated beta casein are called A1 cows, and include breeds like Holstein.
The side chain that comes off this amino acid is called BCM 7. BCM 7 is a small protein (called a peptide) that is a very powerful opiate and has some undesirable effects on animals and humans. What’s important here is that proline has a strong bond to BCM 7 which helps keep it from getting into the milk, so that essentially no BCM 7 is found in the urine, blood or GI tract of old-fashioned A2 cows. On the other hand, histidine, the mutated protein, only weakly holds on to BCM 7, so it is liberated in the GI tract of animals and humans who drink A1 cow milk, and it is found in significant quantity in the blood and urine of these animals.

This opiate BCM 7 has been shown in the research outlined in the book to cause neurological impairment in animals and people exposed to it, especially autistic and schizophrenic changes. BCM 7 interferes with the immune response, and injecting BCM 7 in animal models has been shown to provoke Type 1 diabetes. Dr. Woodford presents research showing a direct correlation between a population’s exposure to A1 cow’s milk and incidence of auto-immune disease, heart disease (BCM 7 has a pro-inflammatory effect on the blood vessels), type 1 diabetes, autism, and schizophrenia. What really caught my eye is that BCM 7 selectively binds to the epithelial cells in the mucus membranes (i.e. the nose) and stimulates mucus secretion.
For reasons which are unclear historically, once this mutation occurred many thousand years ago, the A1 beta casein gene spread rapidly in many countries in the western world. Some have speculated that the reason for this wide spread of A1 cows is that the calves drinking A1 cows milk and exposed to the opiate BCM7 are more docile than their traditional brethren (in effect, they were stoned). This is only speculation, of course. But what is true is that basically all American dairy cows have this mutated beta-casein and are predominantly A1 cows.
The amazing thing for me is that all these years Sally was right: it’s not the fat, it’s not the whey, and it’s not raw milk. Consider French cheese – mostly due to culinary snobbery, the French never accepted these A1 breeds of cow, claiming they have lousy milk. Voila, they have good milk and cheese. Our issue in America is that we have the wrong cows. When you take A1 cow milk away, and stimulate our own endorphins instead of the toxic opiate of BCM 7, some amazing health benefits ensue.
So what are we all to do with this? Does this mean no one should drink US raw cow’s milk? One saving grace, as expressed in The Devil in the Milk, is that the absorption of BCM 7 is much less in people with a healthy GI tract. This also parallels the ideas of GAPS theory which talks a lot about this. BCM 7 is also not found in goat’s or sheep’s milk, so these types of milk might be better tolerated.
One final point: we now have one more thing to put on our activism to-do list. Dr. Woodford explains that it is fairly straightforward to switch a herd to become an all A2 herd. No genetic engineering is needed, no fancy tests, just one simple test of the Beta-casein and it can be done. Hopefully, when this becomes widespread we will end up with a truly safe and healthy milk supply. Then maybe I should just change my name.

Connecting Super-Slow, NLP, Golf and Fourfold Healing

As mentioned above, this newsletter is meant to introduce a few ideas and people I have been working with over the past year, in particular those whose ideas have helped bring major improvements in my life and in the lives of many of my patients. The first concept is super slow weight training. Pete Kinkead, with whom I have worked for over a year, explains the history and theory of super-slow training in article below, and I would like to make a few medical remarks about this method.
The idea that high intensity weight training has profound physiological effects is very well established in the medical literature. The changes that occur seem all to be the result of the body’s mobilization in response to injury that occurs with high intensity training. Perhaps this mobilization response’s greatest effect is that, in order to repair the self-induced damage, a whole cascade of repair hormones, particularly growth hormone, are increased as a result of each workout. Growth hormone works to build up muscle and bone, lowers blood sugar, reduces chronic inflammation, and is as close to an anti-aging tonic as there is. Giving someone growth hormone is possible, but the risk in that is provoking excessive growth, i.e. cancer. There is no such risk when the growth hormone is stimulated by the high intensity activity of super slow weight training where it is made by our own glands.

Super slow training is also helpful for injured joints, as the inevitable muscle strengthening that results is often helpful in relieving pain and disability in the corresponding joint. The bone activation effect make super slow a good treatment for osteoporosis, which actually was one of its original indications. Super slow weight training may not be for the faint of heart but for those willing to put forth the effort, there are huge and varied benefits to be gained.
Terry Rowles, my golf coach who hails originally from England, is also a practitioner of Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) and one of the lead students of the founder of NLP. While I’m no expert on the history of NLP, I do know the surprising effect it has had on my playing golf. Using unusual exercises, Terry identifies areas in my game that cause me emotional and then physiological stress. All golfers, in fact all people in stressful situations, go through a host of strong physiological responses that, at the least, make it impossible to perform to one’s best. The key here is to try to break the chain of those responses.
Stress, of course, happens regularly in the game of life, and is in many people’s minds one of the root causes of illness. We get stuck in stress responses, triggered by a myriad of events, people, thoughts, etc.; these responses become habitual, and then our bodies and minds under-perform. Try as we might to “relax”, we become even more tense, more convinced that we can’t do whatever the task is in front of us. Working with Terry and his NLP-based exercises helps break this whole chain of events. The task that has been troubling can be seen in a new light, and we can then perform to our best capacity. This pattern is a crucial aspect of healing – stepping out of the way and letting the wisdom of our body shine through – and is a much more fun and invigorating way to go through life.
We’re pleased to hear from both Pete Kinkead and Terry Rowles about how these concepts work. Read on…

Introducing Slow Cadence Strength Training

The fast track to fitness is to go slow! If you are seeking to achieve and maintain an optimal level of physical fitness in the most efficient and effective manner possible (and who isn’t?), I urge you to discover the secret that I and many athletes and fitness professionals have recently found: the fastest way to get fit is to go slow. Very slow.
What I’m referring to is called slow motion or slow cadence strength training, and not only is it remarkably effective, but it offers convenience to those who are serious about their health but unwilling or unable to devote large amounts of time to fitness activity. This method of training requires commitment and hard work, but at the same time is intuitive and uncomplicated. It was the discovery of this methodology that led me to leave my corporate career and enter the fitness industry, and I greatly enjoy watching our clients experience unprecedented results with just one 20-minute training session per week.
Obtaining and maintaining our optimal fitness takes time and patience and comes down to two simple requirements: good nutrition and proper exercise. The body was designed or has evolved to get everything it needs from food and exercise, yet most of us continually try to shortcut what nature has already perfected. Huge industries have been created to sell us the latest innovation in fitness shortcuts, be it pharmaceutical, mechanical, or electronic.

I don’t mean to spoil the party, but no shortcut exists. Innovation has its place, and modern exercise equipment helps us exercise in a safer and more efficient manner. Furthermore, healthy food is more easily accessible than ever before and in wide varieties to those who seek it. But no gizmo, machine, supplement, or überfood will compensate for an unhealthy diet or a lack of proper exercise. I’ll leave nutrition education to respected authorities like Dr. Tom Cowan, but will address instead what it means to exercise.
Most exercise falls into one of two categories: steady- state or “cardio” exercise, and resistance or strength training. The former refers to low or medium intensity activity performed for extended periods of time and is considered beneficial for fat reduction, cardiovascular and respiratory health, and overall endurance. Resistance or strength training is associated with using weight or other resistive force against the movement of skeletal muscles in order to develop strength through muscular hypertrophy: the increase in cross-sectional area of muscle fibers.
I don’t dispute the benefits of steady-state exercise, but it does not appreciably stimulate muscular strength and the repetitive movements and inertial forces common to many such activities can be conducive to joint and connective tissue injuries.
It’s my contention that strength training is the most critical component of any serious fitness program. In addition to the obvious advantages of looking and feeling stronger, strength training also provides the following short- and long-term benefits:

- injury prevention and rehabilitation
- prevention of muscle and bone loss due to aging
- prevention of diseases such as adult onset diabetes, colon cancer, and osteoporosis
- lowered resting blood pressure
- reduction in body fat through increased resting metabolism
- relief of chronic back pain and arthritis pain
- and yes, cardiovascular fitness!
Simply lifting weight until we are tired or have performed some prescribed number of exercise repetitions does not constitute strength training, yet that is precisely how many people conduct their workouts. Since muscle tissue consumes calories even while at rest, the body will not build nor maintain any more muscle than it believes is required for survival, preferring instead to store unused energy as fat. If we want to build more muscle and strength than our daily routines require, we must make the body believe it’s not strong enough. To accomplish this, we must fatigue each muscle group to the point where it can no longer perform the work asked of it. We refer to this fatigue threshold as muscle failure, and it is the objective of each and every exercise.
Muscles create movement through the contraction of muscle fibers. There are several types of muscle fibers with varying characteristics, but what’s important to know is that some of them may recover and contract again in a matter of seconds if allowed to rest, and that the number of fibers activated is limited to what is required to perform the work at hand. The more quickly we can fatigue all available muscle fibers, the more efficient an exercise is in terms of time and work required.

The two factors that will defeat or unnecessarily extend an exercise are rest and momentum. Resting or pausing during an exercise will allow partial recovery and re-recruitment of muscle fibers, leaving others unused during the movement. Momentum is the tendency of a body in motion to stay in motion, and is a function of velocity. The faster we move in an exercise, the less force our muscles have to produce and the longer we have to work to reach failure. To eliminate or minimize rest and momentum in an exercise, we must perform it very slowly and continuously until failure is achieved. This is the key distinction between slow cadence strength training and other methods.
In addition there are two other primary reasons for moving slowly during strength building exercise:

1. Reducing acceleration greatly minimizes the risk of injury
2. Moving slowly increases the number of muscle fibers activated and the frequency that motor impulses are fired, thereby increasing muscle tension and subsequent growth stimulus
Just how slow you should move will depend on your physiology and the type of exercise equipment you’re using, but roughly we’re talking about 15-25 seconds for each complete repetition. This is about one-tenth to one-fifth the speed employed in most traditional training programs. Furthermore, there are no periods of rest within a given set of exercise. The muscles should be under load and working continuously until they can no longer continue. The weight or resistance setting should be adjusted such that failure is achieved within 90-120 seconds. With the exercise time held somewhat constant by adjusting the resistance, the amount of resistance then becomes the primary indicator of strength, and you’ll be pleased to see it increase steadily between workouts. At this pace, a full body workout consisting of 5-7 exercises can be completed in less than 20 minutes. Working a muscle group to failure is a challenging and intense effort, but without the intensity there can be no growth.
Once muscle failure is achieved, the stimulus for growth has been established and the body will respond without further incentive. Our job at this point is to let the body recover from the exercise and develop stronger muscle tissue in anticipation of further stress. For this reason, we perform just one set of exercise for each major muscle group at each workout, and then let the body recover before training again.
Muscle fatigue represents a mild physiological trauma which simply requires time to heal, just as a laceration or any other mild injury. The practice of training at a frequency greater than an individual’s recovery time is known as overtraining and can severely impede progress. Generally speaking, recovery time is approximately 2-3 days for people new to strength training and increases over time as workout intensity and neuromuscular efficiency are improved. Most of our clients train just once each week with significant results. While we strongly encourage clients to participate in other physical activity throughout the rest of the week, it is best to minimize very strenuous activity or at least space it several days away from scheduled training sessions so as not to impede proper recovery.
A viable slow cadence training program ought to include:

1. A distraction-free environment with consistent lighting, human occupancy, and cool temperature to prevent overheating
2. A consistent routine encompassing one set of exercise for each major muscle group, performed in the same order during each workout and with minimal rest in between sets
3. Each exercise is performed slowly through a full range of motion without rest according to established protocol and with proper form until muscle failure is achieved
4. Accurate and consistent tracking of all weights lifted and the amount of time before failure is reached
5. Sessions must be brief and infrequent, ranging from 20-40 minutes in duration and allowing ample recovery time of 3-7 days between workouts, depending on workout intensity and individual progress
A slow cadence workout is best performed on high quality, friction-free exercise equipment, but the methodology can be applied effectively to almost any apparatus or with no equipment at all. The workout can be performed without supervision, but a qualified trainer is strongly recommended if feasible. A skilled trainer provides guidance, education, safety, progress tracking, and accountability, all of which are crucial to a successful strength training program. However, it’s vital that the commitment to fitness be internally motivated and that we take personal responsibility for the work we are performing and the ensuing results.
Health, vitality, and time are our most precious resources, and an efficient fitness regimen is vital to preserving all three. The method I’ve described is neither new nor revolutionary and is rapidly growing in popularity, but is still relatively obscure among vast choices in fitness programs and facilities. I strongly encourage you to seek out and explore this training method for yourself, and am confident you will find it rewarding and effective regardless of your fitness goals. There are many excellent books on the subject, and we are more than happy to help you source trainers and facilities in your area or provide guidance for a personalized workout that you can perform at home.
Pete Kinkead is the owner/operator of Body Mastery Strength Training in San Francisco. He is SuperSlow Trained & Tested, a member of the IDEA Health & Fitness Association, and is Reality Therapy Certified. You can reach him at 415.265.6070 or info@bodymastery.net.

NLP and Golf

Although this is an article written by a golf coach about a golf theme, my studies and experience of what makes a golfer perform well have taken me into fields which have more to do with human beings and human performance generally, rather than golf specifically. So if you find that you are challenged in an area of your life, or that you would like to perform better in a certain context, then substitute the word golf for that area of your life where you would like an improved level of performance, and you can use the information in this article to throw some light onto that area of your life.
Before I start, it is interesting to set the context. I learned about the field of NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) from my friend and mentor, Dr. John Grinder, the co-founder of NLP. One of the most memorable lessons that I learned from him, and that he learned from renowned cultural anthropologist Gregory Bateson, was this:

Case 1: If you have two billiard balls on a billiard table, and Ball 1 travels towards Ball 2 at a given speed, it is possible using a scientific equation to predict where the Ball 2 will end up.

Case 2: If, in the second case, you imagine (don’t try this at home) you have a person and a dog or cat, and the person were to kick the cat or dog, then would it be possible to predict the landing area of the animal?
While this is a light-hearted example, it is important to remember anything that requires us to work with living systems (human beings) is operating in the world of cats and dogs. The Newtonian approach to predicting billiard balls does not respect the cybernetic systems that regulate our very existence. Cats and dogs as well as human beings operate in a world where there are many variables that affect our behavior at any point in time.
Golf is a complex sport. Tiger Woods’ driver is moving at around 125mph when it strikes the ball, and this will send the ball to a distance of over 300 yards. As you can imagine, if the face of the club is pointing a few degrees away from the target at this speed, then the ball will travel off line by a significant amount, costing the golfer extra shots and lots of money! Imagine trying to consciously control the swing at this speed and at these fine tolerances. In fact due to the time that the signals from our senses actually take to reach our awareness, the club and our body are no longer where we think they are – the club may be up to 6 feet away from where we think it is.
As I write this article, I think back to this week to illustrate how I use NLP to coach golf. I was coaching a client on the PGA tour at the LA Open. He was having some putting problems. There were a number of possible interventions at different levels that I could have made to assist him in putting better. In order to be precise and to make the largest change with the smallest intervention, I listened to his story. He had a number of problems:

1. His wrist was breaking down (leading to off line putts).
2. This would normally occur when he would “freeze” over the ball.
3. Freezing would occur when he was not confident that he had made a good decision prior to putting his ball.
I could have chosen to fix his wrist movement, but as any good doctor knows, this would be fixing the symptom. Remembering that we are cats and dogs, not billiard balls, choosing the line of the putt is best done with the help of the subconscious rather than by more conscious interventions. The cause in the case he presented was “lack of confidence.” If we could fix that then he would be confident, would not freeze and his wrist would not break down.
The system that I use is known in New Code NLP as the Chain of Excellence. It presupposes that the mind and body are linked (sorry, Descartes).

The Chain of Excellence looks like this:

Breathing (shallow upper chest breathing)
Physiology (freezing/stiff)
State (lack of confidence)
Performance (missed putts through wrist breakdown)

Performance (in this case putting) is affected by the state of the client; the state is affected by the physiology of the client, and the physiology is affected by his breathing.
As a coach I use exercises which enable a client to optimize his or her breathing, physiology, and state in order to affect performance. I can then associate and anchor this state back into his or her context (in this case my client’s putting) so that he can perform more effectively. In this client’s case, this exercise normalized his breathing pattern, freed up his physiology, which improved his confidence and his swing.
In order to make these changes quickly and effectively, the games are best performed with a coach. However, the principle behind this change is that we can use optimum states to make changes in problem contexts. For example, if you are a runner, then think about your challenges while running to maximize the personal resources available to you. If you are not a runner, taking a walk or doing something in your life that makes you feel great prior to resolving a problem is an easy way to make a positive change.
Here is a drill that you can do to change a problem state associated with a context in your life.

Breath of Life

1. Imagine two circles on the ground, Circle 1 and Circle 2

2. Step into Circle 1 and imagine a context where you would like to improve your performance. See what you see in that situation, hear what you hear, and feel the sensations attached to that context.

3. Step out of Circle 1 and shake off any sensations attached to that context (small hops or spinning around will help here).

4. Step into Circle 2 and do the following breathing cycle for about 10 cycles.
Breathe in for 5 seconds duration
Hold for 5 seconds
Breathe out for 5 seconds
Hold for 5 seconds
Repeat 10 times

5. Without hesitation, step back into Circle 1 and into the original imagined context, then take a moment to sense how the pictures, sounds and internal sensations have changed. Imagining this context in this state will have an effect of “bridging” or connecting your optimized physiology to the future context.
Terry Rowles is a holistic golf coach and NLP Master Practitioner who adopts an integrated approach to golf improvement to make minimal change for maximum results. At his indoor golf studio in San Francisco’s financial district, he offers programs to all levels of golfers. Contact him at info@terryrowles.com.

References:
Chain of Excellence excerpted from Whisp ering in the Wind by Dr. John Grinder and Carmen Bostic St Clair. The Breath of Life drill was developed by John Grinder.

New and Ancient Wisdom – Fourfold Healing Conference

On the weekend of January 30, 2009, more than 200 mothers, fathers, educators, health care practitioners and students gathered at the beautiful Westford Regency Hotel and Conference Center in the small New England town of Westford, MA for the 5th Annual Fourfold Healing Conference sponsored by New Trends, the publisher of The Fourfold Path to Healing and Nourishing Traditions.
Tom Cowan, principal author, and co-authors Sally Fallon and Jaimen McMillan are each stellar educators and practitioners, but when they come together, the synergy invites us to embrace an understanding of health and wellness as individuals and as a community of fellow beings that transcends what each does alone and goes beyond what we could have imagined. This is the Fourfold Path: nutrition, therapeutics, movement and meditation.
Tom offers us a way of understanding the physical body and hence the natural remedies that will help us re-member when we experience dis-ease. Sally with her incredible power point presentation teaches the brilliant work of Dr. Weston A. Price, helping us to understand how to feed ourselves and our families in the way that nourishes and satisfies the physical, mental and emotional body, allowing for manifestation of the true potential of the human being. Jaimen introduces us to his work, Spacial Dynamics, the interplay of the human being in space, the medium we live in like a fish lives in water. Through working with the space we inhabit, we can heal our physical and emotional bodies and learn to interact with fellow human beings in a harmonious way. Meditation follows and is the “space” we are invited to embrace and engage in as we continue on the path to healing so skillfully and compassionately revealed to us by this dynamic trio.
The weekend began Friday at 6pm with registration expertly carried out by Paul Frank, who also organizes the Wise Traditions Conferences. An opening reception welcomed us and gave us an opportunity to meet and mingle with old and new friends. This reception featured Nourishing Traditions appetizers: shrimp, salmon ceviche, Braunsweiger atop sourdough bread with crème fraiche and traditional pickles, roasted vegetables, local raw milk cheeses, delicious locally made ginger devotion Kombucha, and a special cheese cake offered by Chef Jim Glen. Introduction and presentations by Tom, Sally and Jaimen followed, giving us a glimpse into what the next two days would be bringing. Jaimen’s leaping down the aisle and onto the stage truly set the tone for this uplifting weekend.
While we were gathering, the generous sponsors Grainfi elds Australia, U.S. Wellness Meats, Green Pastures, New Trends Publishing and Radiant Life, along with exhibitors Weston A. Price Foundation, Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund, Gut and Psychology Syndrome, Holistic Dynamics, Dr. Rodd Stockwell’s Holistic Medical Practice, Miller’s Organic Farm, Pure Indian Foods, Groton Wellness, Zukay Live Foods and Katalyst Kombucha/Real Pickles were setting up their tables in the hall. The information and products these remarkable businesses and farms bring make it easier for us to embrace the practices introduced to us. Plus, the samples and good nature of all the exhibitors created a very festive atmosphere.
Saturday and Sunday both began with a gathering before group and individual sessions. The first session on Saturday was the group session with Jaimen introducing us to Spacial Dynamics. All 200 of us filled the room which made moving about in the “library”, the “workshop” and especially in the “bedroom” interesting and helped us awaken to the concept that we are both our physical bodies as well as the space around us. The next session had us choosing lectures with Tom or Sally or continuing with Jaimen’s movement exercises. After the delicious beef stew and apple crisp lunch (if you didn’t feel the need to take a long nap!), we gathered for the group session with Tom who, as only Tom does, presented a fantastic talk about something new to us, “the Devil in the Milk”. The last session of the day once again allowed us to follow our interest in diet, therapeutics or movement.
Sunday began with the group session featuring Sally’s amazing introduction of Dr. Price and her in- depth research and knowledge of the food industry. One can never go “back” after this! The remaining two sessions on either side of the incredible salmon and pumpkin pie lunch allowed us to be with Jaimen, Sally or Tom, either to follow one track the entire time or to experience each of them. Seems that one needs to attend Fourfold at least three times to begin to be satisfied!

The closing hour found us gathered together once again as Tom invited us to share personal stories of how we have been touched by this information while he, Sally and Jaimen respectfully listened. Tears flowed from many who shared how their lives and the lives of their loved ones have been enriched and healed.
One of the truly wonderful aspects of the weekend was the food. From the first meeting with Chef Jim Glen and the hotel’s program director, Mia Green, we were welcomed to help them understand our dietary requests. Sally laid out a delicious menu and sent the chef a copy of Nourishing Traditions. He started reading it and shared that the information was certainly different but that he was very open to trying it.

U.S. Wellness Meats generously donated the Braunsweiger and beef stew meat and Vital Choice Seafoods offered the salmon for both the ceviche and Sunday’s lunch. We received many outside donations of cheese, breads, vegetables, Kombucha, sauerkraut, butter, cream and fruit. Chef Jim was happy to use these contributions, and he even researched and obtained products from his distributors that met our needs. He began emailing questions: “Is cornstarch okay?” or “I couldn’t find coconut oil from the distributor. Can you get me some?” He was pleased to use arrowroot powder and Groton Wellness sent over a bottle of Radiant Life’s Coconut oil! He was especially interested in Real Pickles’ sauerkraut which didn’t need to be heated. And when the Kombucha arrived, he took a few bottles to the kitchen to share with his staff as they were really curious about it! He also was open to preparing soaked oatmeal, Nourishing Traditions pancakes, using organic eggs, and serving real maple syrup, cultured butter and sourdough breads at the regular hotel breakfast buffet. He was in awe at the oatmeal consumption!
Because of both his interest and his skills, Chef Jim and his wonderful staff created some of the most delicious and satisfying meals ever enjoyed at a conference. And, most amazingly, after the conference, we received a thank you from him sharing that in all his years as a chef, he had never written a thank you to a guest. He said he was “enlightened and educated by the experience” and that he found “staff and guests to be some of the nicest down to earth people I have dealt with.” Perhaps this says it all.

The Fourfold Healing Conference is unique and reaches out to not only those who attend it but to all who come in touch with this invitation to examine and embrace our lives with what may initially seem like new information but is really ancient wisdom.

Next year’s conference will be in southern New Hampshire. Hope to see you there!
Beth Ingham is an organic farmer, Whole Health Educator and Certified Nutritionist who lives in northern Massachusetts. She has been learning from Tom Cowan since 1993 and embracing Nourishing Traditions since 1997.

email: newsletter@fourfoldhealing.com
web: http://www.fourfoldhealing.com

Many months have passed since our last newsletter was sent to you. Our sincerest apologies for the delay (and we hope you missed us at least a little). We plan to be more active in coming months in sharing insights and practical information with you about the Fourfold Path to Healing.

This edition pays special attention to GAPS challenges, and includes one patient’s very compelling story of his serious bout with gastrointestinal issues and how things have turned around for him.

We start this issue by sharing with you tips and insights on how to stay healthy during this winter season. As well, we have an update on our Community Supported Healthcare Plan (CSH), available to all my patients. And of course, no newsletter is complete with a nourishing and delicious recipe.

Do you have a story about how you have been helped by any of our therapies or diets? Would you like to share that story with others? We’re looking for brief patient stories (approximately 750 words) to use in upcoming newsletters, with your permisssion of course. We’re also looking for people willing to share their email address for us to provide to future patients who would like to communicate with a patient who has experienced a similar situation. Please send your story, your email and your thoughts directly to me at drcowansoffice@yahoo.com.

I also want to personally invite you to join us at the next Fourfold Healing Conference in Westford, Massachusetts on Jan 30-Feb 1, 2009 – coming right up! Sally Fallon, Jaimen McMillan and I will be hosting this incredible weekend of dynamic discussions, presentations and lectures. It’s not too late to register. I hope to see you there.

We appreciate receiving your comments about our newsletter and our efforts, and hope you’ll continue to share with us as we continue along the Fourfold Path to Healing.

Warmly,
Tom Cowan

	Staying Healthy in Winter

	FOCUS: GAPS Diet

	One Patient’s Experience With Ulcerative Colitis and the Gaps Diet

	Nourishing Recipe: Roasted Butternut Squash Soup

	CSH Update

	Fourfold Healing Conference in Westwood MA

The drug Naltrexone has been in use for many years. It is classified as an opiate receptor antagonist, as its action is to block the many opiate receptors in our bodies. For a person with an acute heroin overdose, a single dose of 50 mg of Naltrexone reverses this almost immediately. As a matter of fact, in the 1970s Naltrexone at a dose of 50 mg was used before methadone to detox drug addicts from opiates. Its use was eventually abandoned because it was so effective at blocking these receptors that the person felt terrible, apparently from having their endogenous endorphin receptors (which use the same receptors as heroin and the other opiates) significantly blocked.

An addiction specialist in New York City, Dr. Bihari, when using Naltrexone in this way, began to notice that many of his addicts who were also sick with AIDS had very low endogenous endorphin levels. Subsequently, it was clearly demonstrated that the endorphins we produce in our bodies (by the pituitary and adrenal glands) are the master regulators of immune function. The endorphins seem to control Natural Killer cells, cell-mediated immunity, white blood cell activation and a host of other immune functions. Dr. Bhiari then noticed that if he gave a very low dose of Naltrexone right before bedtime to people suffering from illnesses of immune function, this stimulated their production of endorphins, and the disease, over time, would remit. This was particularly effective in many auto-immune diseases, Multiple Sclerosis, Crohn’s disease, chronic fatigue syndrome and cancer. Over the years the approach was refined, the indications expanded and papers were written confirming its complete absence of toxicity and effectiveness.

The interesting thing about the Naltrexone story from the Fourfold Healing perspective is that, while low dose Naltrexone is the most effective agent in elevating endorphin levels we know of, other things have also been shown to raise these levels. These include exercise, acupuncture, diet (well, chocolate specifically), and iscador. In fact, these protocols are among the various modalities we will be offering at our clinic. For more information about low dose Naltrexone, visit the website lowdosenaltrexone.org. If you have further questions, please feel free to email or call the office for an appointment.

I have examined most of the available writings of Burkitt over the years, and in doing so, I must say there are some confusing issues surrounding the so-called fiber theory. The most important has to do with one of the tribes with this absence of bowel diseases that Burkitt studied, the Masai people in East Africa. The Masai have been studied not only for their perfect bowel health, but their robust health in general, particularly with regard to heart disease. The curious thing about the Masai with respect to the fiber theory is that these people achieved this perfect GI health, and their diets have exactly zero amount of fiber. The Masai are cattle herders, and their entire diet consists of blood, meat and “sour” milk. In fact, they are supposedly disdainful of eating plants, saying this is food fit only for their cattle.

This and other similar stories would by any account pose serious questions about the fiber theory of bowel health. It is true that many African tribes do have a high fiber diet, but clearly this is NOT the unifying factor across the varied African tribes. If it’s not fiber, then what could it be? One possible answer is related to the climate they live in, for Africans could be considered the masters of lacto-fermentation. In fact, African tribes didn’t consume a large proportion of their food until it had been cultured for many days. Examples of this cultured food include Ogi, a fermented millet porridge, the staple in much of West Africa; cultured yams; cultured milk (they actually refused to drink milk that had not been cultured for at least three days); a kind of beer made from cultured grains, and many other cultured products. It is not incorrect to say that “culturing” was the predominant and, in some cases, exclusive method of preserving food throughout much of Africa.

Viewed through the modern scientific lens, the relationship between cultured food and bowel health is coming into clear focus. Cultured foods contain the good bacteria that normally colonize our intestines. The foods they are contained in have the nutrients (often called probiotics) that sustain these beneficial bacteria. The cultures are alive, eaten daily, and we now know that at least 90% of the bulk of the stool consists of good bacteria. The functions of the good bacteria in our gut include synthesizing B vitamins; producing antibiotic-type chemicals that prevent local and systemic infection; producing acetylcholine needed for maintenance of the health of the bowel wall; normalizing immune function, and on and on. It is not hyperbole to state that one of the fundamental requirements of good health is to have a healthy ecosystem in our gut. Without this, we and our GI tract are literally defense-less.

In my practice, and in the practice of the Nourishing Traditions diet, we make great use of techniques for the lactofermentation of food. We soak and ferment grains, dairy products, drinks and the all important vegetables, which we make into sauerkraut. In fact, a diet without the daily use of lacto-fermented foods to me is a deficient diet, one that lacks a key ingredient for the maintenance of good health. The addition of liberal amounts of these foods to the diet is the first step in the treatment of any of the various bowel diseases that plague so many people in our culture.

There are also other steps to take in treating such illnesses, including Crohn’s disease, which is an intense immunologically-based inflammation of the colon. We can use the probiotic preparation Mutaflor, which is a type of E. Coli that was found in soldiers in WWI who were resistant to cholera. Since that time, it has been cultured, purified and used for more than 30 years with patients suffering from various illnesses of the colon. We can also add the Standard Process preparation called Okra-Pepsin which helps in the digestive processes and strengthening the walls of the colon. And finally, as I describe below in this newsletter, low dose Naltrexone has been shown in a recent study to put more than 70% of patients with Crohn’s disease into remission due to its effect on the immunological events underlying Crohn’s.

With these therapies and the Nourishing Traditions diet, there is significant hope for those suffering from gastro-intestinal illnesses, and in particular for the otherwise devastating consequences of Crohn’s disease.

I make frittatas all the time, using whatever produce I find in season at the farmers market. Asparagus is the great herald of spring, and so this is a perfect Egg Moon recipe.

• 1 small bunch asparagus, about 3/4 pound
• 1 large or two small leeks
• 2 tablespoons butter
• 1 tablespoon filtered water
• 4 hen’s eggs from family farm chickens, or 1–2 goose eggs, or 3-4 duck eggs
• 1/3 cup cream, half-and-half, or whole milk (from a family dairy, if possible)
• 1/4 cup grated cheese such as cheddar or Monterey Jack, or crumbled feta (cheese is optional)
• 1/4 – 1/2 teaspoon sea salt, or to taste
• Pepper, freshly ground
• Nutmeg—a little grated fresh, or 1/8 teaspoon powdered

Preheat oven to 300º.

Break off tough ends of asparagus. Cut asparagus into 1” pieces on the diagonal.

Slice leeks in thick rounds and put in a bowl of cold water and mix to get the dirt out.

Melt butter in an oven-safe skillet (cast iron or stainless steel), and when it’s hot lift the leeks out of the water in handfuls, shaking off excess water, and put in the pan. Sauté over medium heat until just soft.

Add the asparagus pieces to the pan along with about a tablespoon of water. Cover the pan and allow the asparagus to steam for 1-3 minutes, until just tender.

Meanwhile, mix together the eggs with cream, milk, or combination.

Add the salt, pepper, and nutmeg. (Note: Because I trust my source for eggs, I always taste my raw egg mixture to check if it’s salty enough. For my palate, the egg mixture should be salty enough to taste the salt, yet not overly salty.)

Add the asparagus to the pan and pour the egg mixture over, then add in the cheese, pressing it gently into the eggs. Let cook on stovetop over low heat a few minutes, and then transfer to the oven and bake until the eggs are just set—this may take as few as 5 minutes. (You can also finish under a broiler, as long as the pan isn’t too deep and you keep a close eye to make sure it doesn’t burn).

Remove from oven, allow to cool for a minute or two, and slice and eat. Serve with salad and good bread, and maybe a few new potatoes.

Full Moon Feast: Food and the Hunger for Connection — book by Jessica Prentice

Jessica Prentice is both a professional chef and a passionate home cook. She currently conducts cooking classes, writes a monthly New Moon Newsletter on her Wise Food Ways website, and offers monthly Full Moon Feasts in the Bay Area. She is a Bay Area chapter head for the Weston A Price Foundation for wise traditions in food, farming, and the healing arts, and a founding member of Three Stone Hearth, a community kitchen in the Bay area. Her new book, Full Moon Feast, is about food and culture.

Recipe adapted from Full Moon Feast: Food and the Hunger for Connection by Jessica Prentice. Copyright Jessica Prentice 2006 Chelsea Green Publishing Co. Used with permission.

My current strategy for preventing winter sickness and flu is to have all my patients take the cod liver oil/butter oil mixture from Green Pastures (available from Radiant Life or drrons.com) and, on top of this, add 2,000 IU/day of plain Vitamin D3 (cholecalciferol). Then at the first sign of a cold or flu I have my patients take an additional 20,000 IU of vitamin D3, as a one-time dose, then continue with the cod liver oil/butter oil mixture, stopping the extra D3, and then repeat the one-time 20,000 IU dose after one week if they are not totally better.

In addition, I have found that taking preventative doses of Echinacea premium tablets from Mediherb (a division of Standard Process), 2 tablets per day, along with the Standard Process Immuplex 2 capsules twice per day has helped many of my patients decrease the frequency and/or severity of their colds and flus. Again, if in spite of this one does get sick, in addition to the above vitamin D3 protocol I give a three-day course of Echinacea (or Andrographis comp — also from Mediherb), 3 tablets, 4 times per day and switch the Immuplex to the acute version called Congaplex, given at a dose of 3 capsules, 4-6 times per day for three days. Many times, we can break the flu cycle with this protocol and convert a 2-3 week ordeal with an subsequent bronchitis to a less harmful, less onerous course of the illness. This protocol is especially helpful for children who tend to get sick, and for the elderly for whom sickness is often more of a burden.

These medicines can be obtained through any health care practitioner who works with Standard Process medicines.

The first hurdle to cross in Byron Katie’s book is the most important and perplexing: Is it really correct to love what is? This is an especially poignant and important question in a medical context. Is it true that, if you suffer from crippling and painful rheumatoid arthritis, you should “love” this situation with all its attendant pain and disability? Or what if you have life-threatening cancer or heart disease? Does this mean you’re supposed to love that as well? After all, this is “what is”. Interestingly, popular culture and conventional thinking tell us that patients who do best are those who fight against their disease. We are never supposed to accept this sickness, which is tantamount to giving up.

Or what about the inmates at San Quentin? Are they supposed to love their life in what are unquestionably inhumane and degrading circumstances? Isn’t it even a little arrogant for those in good health and relatively well-off to preach to those less fortunate that they should love their unfortunate situation?

The question of “loving what is” is also a practical matter for us. Many patients come to me precisely because they are unhappy with their health and want to make positive changes in their lives. Am I supposed to say, “It’s fine, just love your pain, you’ll be fine”.

Obviously, this subject is very complex. Through a series of directed questions that Katie has developed, she leads the reader in the discovery of the deeper meaning in any of the events that happen to us, the so-called positive or negative events. In fact, on deeper inspection through these questions, we see the whole concept of positive or negative events evaporate and begin to see life as amazing series of spiritually meaningful events. Through her questions, the reader gets deeper into meaning, purpose and true insights into our lives. Over time, using these questions as guides, Katie describes how you will begin to come to acceptance about your life, seeing your own life as a kind of spiritual journey full of joy and purpose. Using these questions to examine pain and illness can leads you to understanding, joy and profound insight into your life.

This stands in direct opposition to the approach that counsels us to “fight” our illness. I can only say that in my 20-plus years of medical practice, I am inclined to believe that Katie’s approach is by far the most productive in the actual recovery from illness. In fact, it seems to be true that my patients who fight against their illness seem to have so much trouble, while those who come to insight and acceptance tend to do better. There is no obvious reason why this should be so but I have seen it many, many times in my practice. Loving What Is is one of the tools we can use in our healing, as we practice acceptance and insight in our daily lives.

For more information on Byron Katie, visit The Work website.

Ingredients:

• 1/3 cup wild rice
• 1 cup water
• 1 Tablespoon yogurt
• 2 Tablespoons olive oil, schmaltz or other fat
• 1 onion, diced or one large leek, cut into rounds
• 3 stalks celery, diced
• 2 carrots, diced
• 1 quart chicken broth (see page XX), or more for a thinner soup (you can also thin it out with water)
• 1 bouquet garni (an herb bundle tied with string) including a bay leaf and any or all of the following: a sprig of thyme, a sprig of sage, a sprig of parsley, a rosemary stem
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• about 1 cup of chicken, either cooked or raw, cut into bite-sized pieces

Procedure:

1. Put the wild rice in a jar and add the water and yogurt. Place in a warm place and allow to sit for at least 7 hours.
2. In a heavy bottomed pot, heat the oil or fat over medium heat. When the fat is hot, add the onion or leek and sauté until it begins to turn translucent.
3. Add the celery and sauté for a minute or two, then add the carrots and continue sautéing for a few minutes.
4. Strain the wild rice and rinse thoroughly. Add to the sauté along with the broth, the bouquet garni, and the salt.
5. Turn heat to high, bring to a boil, then reduce to a simmer.
6. Simmer, covered, over low heat until the wild rice is soft.
7. Add chicken and simmer a few minutes more.
8. Remove bouquet garni and add salt and pepper to taste.

Full Moon Feast: Food and the Hunger for Connection — book by Jessica Prentice

Jessica Prentice is both a professional chef and a passionate home cook. She currently conducts cooking classes, writes a monthly New Moon Newsletter on her Wise Food Ways website, and offers monthly Full Moon Feasts in the Bay Area. She is a Bay Area chapter head for the Weston A Price Foundation for wise traditions in food, farming, and the healing arts, and a founding member of Three Stone Hearth, a community kitchen in the Bay area. Her new book, Full Moon Feast, is about food and culture.

Recipe adapted from Full Moon Feast: Food and the Hunger for Connection by Jessica Prentice. Copyright Jessica Prentice 2006 Chelsea Green Publishing Co. Used with permission.

In the normal course of a viral infection, both arms of the immune system are involved. As an example, with chickenpox we see signs of activation of the cellular arm with the fever, mucus, cough and rash that characterize this illness. As with most viral infections, the signs of the illness are almost identical in type, if not in severity, across all people. In other words, chickenpox almost always gives the same type of rash, lasts the same length of time, etc., no matter who gets the illness. Next, the humoral immune system is activated, and six weeks later antibodies are produced which impart life-long immunity to the illness.

With this new disease of AIDS, the interpretation of how the viral immune system works seemed to change. For the first time we were being told that, even though every case of AIDS was caused by the same virus, there were many possible manifestations of this viral disease. And, shocking to me at the time, I remember distinctly finding out that the diagnosis of the illness was based on a test that detected antibodies in the blood to the HIV virus. What?! I had been taught for years that when we produce antibodies to a virus, this means we are immune to that virus. Why now, all of sudden, does detecting antibodies to a virus mean it is the virus making us sick? For me, this would be akin to saying that the German measles virus, when contracted by adults, can cause a kind of arthritis. With that line of “logic” when a middle-aged person comes in complaining of joint pains, we would do an antibody test, discover the antibodies (because the person did have German measles as a child) and then pronounce that it must be the German measles virus that is causing the illness. This is a mis-interpretation. We generally assume that the fact that we have antibodies mean we are immune. Why would it be different for HIV?

Subsequently other unusual facts and diagnostic discrepancies started to emerge from the AIDS crisis. We were told that the HIV virus was contracted through sexual or blood born contact. This was not the first such micro-organism to have this characteristic. All sexually-transmitted diseases are, of course, transmitted only through direct sexual contact, including herpes, Chlamydia, syphilis, gonorrhea, and many others. However, unlike AIDS, all of these illnesses share the characteristic of being almost equally present in both males and females. With AIDS, at least in the US, for the first time a sexually-transmitted illness has stayed almost predominantly within one sexual group, that is gay men (over 90% of the deaths in the US have been in gay men).

Additionally, with other blood-born illness such as hepatitis C, many cases are eventually found among the medical profession, due to the risk of inadvertently spreading the virus through needle sticks, a risk predominantly born by medical and dental workers. Inexplicably, with AIDS, as far as I know, only two dentists in the entire 25-year history of AIDS have contracted AIDS with no other risk factors (gay male, IV drug abuser, etc.). This, of course, might lead us to the question whether these two dentists were completely forthcoming in their answers about their risk factors.

The final unusual diagnostic discrepancy of the AIDS epidemic was that over the years, numerous patients, supposedly numbering in the thousands, who were found to suffer from the full blown AIDS illness, had no detectable levels of antibodies in their blood. In fact, they had no evidence of any sort of having a viral infection, even antibodies, but because they had all the AIDS symptoms, it was assumed that they must have had the virus at least at some point. This was an unprecedented conclusion.

Sometime in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the safe sex campaign began, and at the same time we saw as the introduction of the different categories of AIDS drugs, each supposedly targeting different aspects of the virus’s life cycle. What was once considered an early death sentence became a manageable disease, albeit with many unpleasant and even life-threatening consequences. This brings us to the present, where the dire consequences of the AIDS epidemic predicted in this country have largely proved to be unfounded. Back in the 1980s we were told that unless a vaccine was quickly discovered, we were basically doomed as a species because the virus would quickly spread throughout the heterosexual population, as had other sexually transmitted diseases. Twenty-five years later there is no vaccine in sight, there have been rare illness in those without risk factors (i.e. gay men, IV drug use, co-existing other sexually transmitted illness, malnutrition, etc) and, even today, fewer people die of AIDS in this country than in car accidents or of alcoholism.

But what about Africa? Don’t the AIDS experts tell us that unless massive action is taken the HIV virus will soon wipe out the economies and viability of different cultures in many African countries? Again, some inconsistencies exist in these predictions. For starters, people in Africa are rarely actually tested for the HIV virus when they are either screened or diagnosed with AIDS. The cases, as in this country, almost uniformly occur in people with other risk factors for illness. These include the some of the same risk factors of gay male sex, IV drug abuse, malnutrition, co-existing sexually transmitted illness. But they also include the specifically African issues of TB, malaria, as well as many other unchecked infectious illness existing in people highly exposed to environmental toxins amid a huge burden of poverty and social unrest. As with most illness, if one examines the epidemiological data, the best conclusion one can draw is that the poorer, the more malnourished, the more exposed to TB, malaria, toxic waste, and social disharmony that a person or culture experiences, the more likely they are to get sick with AIDS. This is highly unusual way for a virus to behave, one from which we supposedly have no natural defenses. These and many other issues surrounding the AIDS controversy have been extensively documented in all sorts of sources over the past twenty years. I would refer all my readers to the book by Christine Maggiore, What If Everything You Thought You Knew About AIDS Was Wrong?, the website www.virusmyth.org, and the article in the March 2006 issue of Harper’s magazine about the inconsistencies of the AIDS-HIV connection and the problem with the HIV drugs (available online at www.harpers.org/OutOfControl.html).

This is not a closed case. Many questions remain that need to be answered, and more to be asked. As we gear up to spend almost unlimited resources fighting this virus, it behooves us all to find out more about the facts behind this perplexing epidemic.