By Darren Schmidt
For many years now, reports have shown that the American medical system could be doing more harm than good. One study even found that conventional medicine was the leading cause of death in the United States. It’s also impacting Americans financially. For many years, it has been the biggest cause of personal bankruptcy.
My purpose in life is to help reverse this by bankrupting drug companies by getting lots of sick people well.
“At one particular seminar, I “got it” when the speaker explained how a nutritional deficiency causes a symptom. Ah-ha! That’s why Americans are so sick, I thought.”
While a chiropractic student, I went to two seminars a month for two years outside of school. I was searching for what heals a person’s body quickly, effectively, permanently, and at the lowest cost. At one particular seminar, I “got it” when the speaker explained how a nutritional deficiency causes a symptom. Ah-ha! That’s why Americans are so sick, I thought.
Now as a chiropractor who focuses on nutrition, I do what the body needs to get healthy. I find the cause of the problem and fix that. This is the proper way to address long-term health problems rather than trying to erase symptoms with chemicals, which is what our conventional medical community does. Medications are needed to save lives after trauma and in emergency rooms, but for a condition that lasts more than three months or a non-life threatening condition, nutrition is the best tool to get rid of it. Ideally, all of us would do a little bit every day to improve our health, so there would be a large buffer between ourselves and disease.
Getting rid of symptoms is actually an easy thing to do with nutrition. It’s also easy with medications. But it’s the rebuilding and correcting of the body’s tissue that determines your future health. Using pills to manipulate how our body functions is the current state of disease and symptom care. Working with the body to help it heal is the smarter approach.
“Using pills to manipulate how our body functions is the current state of disease and symptom care. Working with the body to help it heal is the smarter approach.”
When you feed the body the nutrients it wants, it starts to heal itself. The body is always trying to heal itself. It doesn’t heal when there are barriers present. When we remove these barriers, we improve function. Barriers include toxins or the deficiency of nutrients.
We want to help the body function the way it was designed.
Proper functioning leads to less stress, less inflammation, less immune challenges, and less toxicity. Happiness is a result of being able to cope and adapt to the world without breaking down. What we are trying to establish or re-establish with nutritional healing is functionality.
What we do is investigate: we look for what the body is doing compared to what it is designed to do. We look for the barriers to recovery, for the breakdown in function, and then we look for the quickest path back to proper function. The body was designed to be healthy and be able to adapt to the stress it encounters in life — whether that stress be chemical, emotional, or structural. Any breakdown in function breaks down our adaptability. And adaptation to the stress we encounter in life is our truest measure of immunity.
We are feeding bodies, and they feel better without drugs. Take depression for instance. Conventional healthcare uses drugs to treat it, but there are dozens of causes of depression that may be alleviated with nutrition. Depression has lifted when we’ve added whole food B vitamins, fed the heart Hawthorne (an herb), eliminated sugar, added vitamin D, added red meat to the diet, or stopped soy. Usually, there is not just one cure but rather a combination of new choices that allows the body to function better.
This pattern is true for basically all conditions. We have stopped allergies by restoring proper organ functioning. Here are some examples of what has worked: using fenugreek (an herb), cleaning out the liver with supplements, using detoxifying footbaths, getting rid of parasites in the sinuses, stopping dairy in the diet, or eating dried radishes. We have fixed the function of the heart by clearing out arteries with whole food vitamin C, low carb diets, increasing or adding healthy fats to the diet, eliminating parasites, or supplementing iodine. Symptoms that go away include heaviness of the extremities, heartburn, fatigue, depression, high blood pressure, and swelling.
“We look for the barriers to recovery, for the breakdown in function, and then we look for the quickest path back to proper function.”
There are many ways to potentially return the body to proper functioning. Knowing what to use, in the right order, for the right amount of time, is where a good doctor’s expertise lies. Below are three subjects in natural healthcare that make a huge difference in how the body functions.
Salt is essential to have in your diet. However, there are two kinds of salt — refined table salt and unrefined natural salt. In table salt, all the nutrients have been removed and aluminum has been added, which has been linked to imbalances and disruptions in normal body functions. Real, unrefined salt contains over 80 minerals. It is highly nutritious and has been known to lower blood pressure. It is essential to eat unrefined salt regularly.
Unrefined sea salt can actually reduce blood pressure. When shopping, it’s good to understand labeling. For instance, reverse osmosis and distilled water are “de-ionized,” which means there are no minerals left. In other words, the life has been taken out of that water. Ions, electrolytes, minerals, and unrefined salt equal life, so drink good filtered water that has minerals, and even add healthy salt if you want.
Another key nutrient that helps improve and maintain health is iodine. Iodine is one of the most fascinating, intelligent, powerful, and sometimes finicky nutrients I have worked with. When your body is replete (filled up) with iodine, it blocks the poisonous elements bromine, chlorine, and fluorine. You can get iodine from ocean fish, seaweed, and iodine pills. I have seen it raise I.Q., add muscular strength, increase endurance, increase happiness, and cause weight loss.
The third key subject is herbs. Herbs make your body smarter and positively affect your DNA. When you eat “only nutrition” — like fats, proteins, and carbohydrates — without herbs and spices, think of the nutrients as just “sitting there.” It has been proven that herbs direct nutrients to go to different places throughout the body, like a traffic cop. Herbs also get into our DNA to make changes. The field of study is called epigenetics. Native Americans had access to and used hundreds or thousands of herbs in the wild. We seem to only have two herbs: ketchup and catsup. Use more variety!
Nutrition is a crucial part of healthy living. To decrease our reliance on the medical system, it is important to work daily at improving health. If you don’t, your body will experience the consequences, and others will be happy to take charge of your future. Spend money on good food and supplements now or pay insurmountable medical expenses later. Take the smart approach and work with the body to help it heal and function at its best each day.
Darren Schmidt has been in practice since 1997. He is a chiropractor who specializes in nutrition. He has specialized training as an advanced trained practitioner and teacher of Nutrition Response Testing. In 2000, he opened The Nutritional Healing Center in Ann Arbor, which is located at 3610 W. Liberty Road, 48103. For more information visit, www.thenutritionalhealingcenter.com or call (734) 302-7575.
