People often ask why I’m so vehemently opposed to vaccines and the overall pharmaceutical monopoly on medicine. In the first blog in this series I told the story of how I was injured by a flu vaccine as a 17 year old(1). This is the story of my second pharmaceuticaly induced brush with death in 1988 at the age of 35 when I lost my first farm and most of my life savings due to a misdiagnosed illness and an incorrect pharmaceutical prescription to treat that wrong diagnosis. That’s followed by a list of cutting edge functional doctors who have helped me overcome a chronic illness that was exacerbated by that second botched medical effort.
In my early thirties I began having a series of weird symptoms; mild vertigo, diarrhea alternating with constipation, lots of gas, loss of energy and other issues. The possibility of food allergies had come up in discussions with friends, so I went to see a well known homeopathic doctor in Phoenix they recommended, who was having good success treating people for allergies.
At my first trip to see this doctor, he hooked my left hand up to some new fangled electronic machine and, one at a time, had me hold dozens of little bottles of food samples in my right. The needle nearly pegged with every sample, indicating severe allergic reactions to… everything he tested me for. No harm done, but after the second visit he seemed at a loss to offer any solution.
Next I went to a conventional doctor who thought I might have picked up giardea in my travels in Latin America, so he sent me to a GI parasite specialist who took numerous stool samples over the course of about 6 months. All came back negative for giardea. Meanwhile, my symptoms became worse. I decided to try another doctor who also liked the idea of giardia, but decided to send me to another GI specialist. This GI guy, after sticking two fingers up my butt and reaming them around, left me with the worst case of hemorrhoids I’ve ever had in my life. Nothing was gleaned by that torture. I then went to another doctor who sent me to another GI specialist who wanted to do a colonoscopy. After the bad results of the previous anal probe, I refused the colonoscopy. (Fast forward to just a few years ago when my neighbor died from an infection caused by a pierced colon due to a colonoscopy.) All of these doctors were scattered around the Tucson area and as I learned later, had conspired to agree that I had giardea and that I should take two back to back courses of the wide spectrum antibiotic, flagyl. Although I’ve always been one to take the natural route whenever possible, my health was deteriorating and I was grabbing at straws, so I succumbed and took the flagyl. Before I even finished the second two week long course, I began to have terrible dizziness and began to vomit after every meal. Diarrhea was multiple times daily. Within a few months I was so weak I spent most days in bed. I began to lose weight rapidly and soon lost 1/3 of my rather slim body weight - 185 down to 130 (I’m 6’1”). This went on for about a year and a half, with many nights spent thinking the end was near.
By then I had to quickly sell my first farm for a pittance and spent much of that money and my life savings on these “doctors”… to no avail. In return for turning over my trust, losing my farm and my life savings, those doctors nearly killed me. I was so poor I had to move into a dive in Tucson. While living there my parents came to visit. At one point Mom and Dad were outside getting into their car and through a window I heard Mom tell Dad, “We’re going to lose Kyle”. At that time, I thought they were going to lose me as well.
One day I felt good enough to go to the Fourth Avenue Street Fair where I ran into a friend who hadn’t seen me since before I became sick. He told me I looked like a walking ghost. I told him I felt like one. He said he had a friend who was a great doctor. That friend got me in to see Dr. Andrew Weil (this was in 1989) who had just published his first best selling book. For those not familiar with him, Dr. Weil is one of the founders of integrative medicine, founded the Integrative Department of Medicine at the U of A in Tucson and has gone on to sell numerous best selling books. His early books on altered states of conciseness (paving the way for the avalanche of research happening now) were followed by numerous best selling books on self healing. He wasn’t doing any clinical work the two times I saw him, so we met at his house. After several hours of sitting cross legged on his living room floor listening to my story, he pegged my illness as Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS).
At that time IBS was considered to be rare in men. Not so anymore. IBS is sort of an umbrella under which several issues of the GI tract are often lumped, with Small Intestine Bacterial Overgrowth (SIBO) and Leaky Gut Syndrome being two of the leading representatives. These issues often stem from a wrecked gut microbiome. I’ve since learned that our microbiomes are under assault from all directions - stress, toxins in our food, emf’s and so on. But perhaps the most dangerous assault comes from the Medical Industrial Complex (MIC) and its 100 year long love affair with antibiotics. As the moniker implies, these drugs are designed to kill microbes, many of which circulate in and around our guts. Recent research shows these microbes - which are not a part of our genetic makeup - can number more than ten times the cells in our body. As the specialist in the human microbiome Dr. Tom O’Bryan likes to say, we are microbes having human experience. They play key roles in the function of our metabolism, our immune system, our psychological well being, and our over-all health. If our microbes are not happy, if they are being assailed by the toxins of what Edward Abbey called “our modern siphylization”, then we will not be well or happy.
As I was telling Dr. Weil my story and came to the part about the two courses of flagyl, he winced. Although I had an intuitive concern about taking the flagyl, Dr. Weil had been doing early research that indicated antibiotics were often more problematic than helpful. He was an early proponent of only using antibiotics in life or death situations and told me to say no to any doctor who ever tried to prescribe them to me again.
Interestingly, this can all be traced back to the argument that occurred in the 1860’s between Luis Pasteur and Antoine Bechamp: Is it about the microbes, Pasteur’s argument, or the terrain, Bechamp’s argument (“host” was his preferred term). Because Luis Pasture had some wealthy, influential friends, his argument won - not because he was right. Once those wealthy capitalists learned that Pasteurization could allow milk to be transported great distances without curdling, they saw nothing but dollar signs and jumped on board Pasteur’s germ theory campaign. The information that the loss of microbial diversity in Pasteurized milk has led to even greater health issues - especially allergies - has remained largely buried to this day.
The ‘all germs are bad’ paradigm held sway right through my years growing up in the 50’s and 60’s. One of the worst insults we cast as kids on someone we didn’t like was to accuse them of having germs. Jump ahead to the early 2000’s when new research began to show that the vast majority of human microbes are good and that the germaphobia instilled by the MIC since Luis Pasteur’s time was misplaced. Bechamp was right all along, it’s all about the terrain.
Turns out, just like weeds, bad microbes thrive in a disrupted environment, sidetracking the good ones. The reason weeds prefer growing in our garden verses out on the native landscape is because a garden is a disrupted environment. Typically the soil for a garden has been tilled in some fashion, disrupting not only the native vegetation, but the native microbiome in the soil as well. The relationship between plants, animals and soil microbes is a beneficially mutual one, a relationship that hubris cannot improve upon with machinery (tractors, rototillers etc) and chemicals. This would be the same type of hubris that led to germ theory and the imposition of Pasteurization and antibiotics and the loss of understanding about the importance of terrain. In the way a healthy, intact, native ecosystem with diverse, vibrant plant, animal and soil biome communities will have little or no weeds or disease, a person with a healthy, diverse, toxin free diet will have a healthy, diverse microbiome, providing a formidable terrain in which disease - including COVID-19 - will find it difficult to gain a foothold.
Today, the new war on microbes unleashed by unelected officials like Anthony Fauci, Bill Gates and Dr. Paul Offit - fanning the flames of fear and paranoia over the corona virus - is overshadowing the recent gains that have been made about the critical roles that microbes play in our bodies and the importance of cultivating a healthy terrain for them. Those unelected ‘officials’ have generated more negative impact on our lives over the past eight months than any elected official. Because they stand to make vast profits from the vaccines, they wont bother to tell you that we’re not getting sick because of a virus, we’re getting sick because our terrain is disrupted. A poor diet, toxins, emf’s, stress, pollution and so forth all serve to disrupt our native terrain and allow the weeds of chronic illness and disease to flourish. Sadly, with the new plague of fear gripping the world, we are now sliding back into the dark ages of my youth when the MIC and its dogmatic orthodoxy of germ theory ruled. By wearing masks, social distancing, using sanitizers, people are no longer exercising their immune systems(2). The MIC authorities have successfully used fear of the corona virus to instill a plague of fear. Germaphobia is one again as prevalent as it was in my youth.
Hermann Goring was Hitler’s right hand lieutenant. During the Nuremberg trials he was asked how the Nazis got the German people to comply with their savage rule. Goring responded, “The people can always be brought to do the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. Just tell them that they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.” We are not being attacked by a virus, we are suffering from a disrupted terrain due to a run-amok, capitalistic system that values profit over people.
Since my second ordeal with the MIC I’ve refused to have anything more to do with Big Pharma and its informal eugenics program. Big Pharma is more than happy to prescribe drugs that merely mask the symptoms of IBS. But of course you’ll be dependent on them for the rest of your greatly shortened life because they do nothing to cure the underlying causes - restoring terrain. How many millions of folks have gone to early graves because the MIC is addicted to it’s quick, easy, and highly profitable ‘band aid” approach with pharmaceutical drugs, and because it refuses to pursue true healing?
All of that is not to say that I don’t think conventional doctors have a place in our world. If I’m in a car accident and get busted up, by all means, rush me to the hospital. Modern ER rooms and surgeons can perform miracles. About 8 years ago a farm accident left me with a shattered patella in my left knee. It was put back together by a wonderful surgeon at Kino hospital in Tucson (thanks again Lutel). So no, I’m not some sort of medical luddite. Quite the opposite - I depend heavily on research science to glean information about how our bodies work and what nutritional requirements are needed to optimize health. But when it comes to treating chronic illness, I think the pharmaceutical model is little better than the snake oil salesmen who plied their trade by horse drawn wagon a mere 130 years ago.
Because the MIC has proven to be a poor arbiter of my health I no longer put the safekeeping of my health into their care, preferring to take charge of my own health. The internet has been a godsend in this regard. There are many great sources of information online about how to improve your terrain by avoiding stress and toxins and eating a good diet. If you’re not well and have had little luck with your conventional doctor, there are seven sites I recommend, most of them are by doctors who practice functional medicine. These functional doctors typically have a conventional medical degree and for various reasons have become disillusioned with the pharmaceutical model and have gone on to get secondary certificates in functional medicine. Functional medicine seeks to cure underlying causes via nutrition, avoiding toxins and pollution, lowering carb intake, increasing fat intake and lowering stress. In 1987 when I was seeing Dr. Andrew Weil, functional medicine did not exist. Since I’ve highlighted him in this blog, I should point out that sine he is an integrative doctor, he and other integrative doctors now embrace functional practices. Doctors who have gone through integrative programs take the approach that all avenues of healing should be on the table - vitamin and mineral supplements, herbs, acupuncture, chiropractic and so on - not just pharmaceuticals. This is a step in the right direction but, in my humble opinion, there is not enough emphasis on improving the terrain.
What follows is my list of the doctors I follow closely, in no particular order.
I like Dr. Mercola because he puts out a daily newsletter packed full of good information. Dr. Mercola is despised by the MIC - they seem to be terrified of his success. I see that as a good thing - anyone who is threatening to the MIC must be doing something right. He has written a number of best selling books, Fat For Fuel being one, and his website is the most popular health website in the world. mercola.com
In my previous article I referenced Dr. Tom Cowan and his new book The Contagion Myth. (Full disclosure - Dr. Cowan has purchased wildcrafted and agricultural food product from me in the past for his line of biodynamic food powders.) I first learned of Dr. Cowan when he was first interviewed by Dr. Mercola about one of his earlier books, Human Heart, Cosmic Heart. Turns out we both share a deep interest in the teachings of Rudolf Steiner, founder of biodynamic agriculture (1924), which was later watered down to become the organic food movement(3). Dr. Cowan harks back to the old style doctor who probes deeply and really gets to know his patient. He then uses whatever tools he feels will work best to treat them - a far cry from the one-drug-fits-all approach used by the MIC. Dr. Cowan has a newer youtube channel that - if it ever reaches a viral level - will likely be heavily censored by Google (youttube’s owner) due to the heretical nature of his topics. https://www.youtube.com/c/DrTomCowan/featured His line of biodynamic plant powders can be found here - https://www.drcowansgarden.com/ You can find The Contagion Myth here - https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Contagion-Myth/Thomas-S-Cowan/9781510764620
Although not a medical doctor, Sayer Ji is a brilliant researcher who, like me, has spent much of his life trying to hack his own chronic illness. His website greenmedinfo.com is one of the most popular alternative health news sites in the world. Sayer has collated over ten thousand herbal medical uses, available on his website. His wife, Dr. Kelly Brogan is a force to be reckoned with in her own right. She is the author of the best selling book A Mind Of Your Own, a cutting edge look into how nutrition affects mental health - https://kellybroganmd.com/amindofyourown/
Dr. Mark Hyman is the head of the Integrative Medicine Department at the prestigious Cleveland Clinic. He too is the author of several best selling books, Eat Fat Get Thin being a recent one. He has a great site at - https://drhyman.com/
I’ve referenced Dr. Tom O’Bryan in several blogs. Dr. Tom, as folks call him, was an early adopter of the functional medicine platform and is a strong proponent of terrain theory. He put together the popular online presentation “Gluten Summit” in 2013 that was influential in putting the final nails in the coffin of my love affair with grain products. https://drhyman.com/
Last but certainly not least, is Dr. Zack Bush who I find to be one of the more fascinating functional doctors in the US today. Dr. Bush has one of those minds that seeks solutions, not just answers. It comes as no surprise that he has founded his own research lab. He has such a profound understanding of the linkage between the health of the soil from whence our food comes, and human health, that he has partnered with farmers to found an organization called Farmers Footprint. You can find information about that and all of his other endeavors here - https://zachbushmd.com/
(1) https://secularheretic.substack.com/p/is-germ-theory-about-to-collapse
(2) https://duckduckgo.com/?q=george+carlin+on+the+immune+system&t=ffhp&iax=videos&ia=videos&iai=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DX29lF43mUlo
(3) http://erdakroft.com/Blogs/Entries/2017/8/8_A_brief_introduction_to_biodynamic_farming.html
What!?! No comments!!??? No Bravissimo! from your readers? Well, well, well. Let me be the first then to assure you that this article is one of the BEST I've read - EVER. Those 7 trustworthy, helpful info sources include 2 I'm familiar with and 5 others who are familiar names, but only names, whose work I will now look into.
My most trusted, helpful info source is not included in this list of 7. But it should be. And I bet you know who I mean.