News Coverage of H1N1 and Health Care Generally

Mardy's Note: This is a piece originally written in the fall of 2009 which in fall of 2011 I am amending to make it more consistent with current, 2011 Lumigrate-ness. 

There is a lot of awareness and scrutiny right now -- perhaps 'criticism' related to what the media is providing us with for information.  I thought it would be interesting to add something here about our recent experience with The Denver Post doing a story about influenza. 

About two weeks ago, I saw that The Denver Post had a section cover story about H1N1 and knew I had just posted a blog about intestinal health, which included the VERY important information that a lot of your immune system's health goes on in the intestines.  I contacted Nancy, their Staff Writer (reporter) for the Western Slope of Colorado, a neat gal I'd met a couple of months before at a fundraiser event; I thought perhaps she was interested in alternatives related to influenza and she (and her editor) were!  It was literally one of those days where the response was almost immediate AND it was "and we want it yesterday".  So I flew into action. 

I arranged for Nancy and I to meet the next morning before their usual patient care time, with Dr. Scott Rollins (MD and founder/owner of the Integrative Medicine Center of Western Colorado, founded in the beginning of 2008) and Dr. Christopher Lepisto (ND, who moved his practice from downtown Grand Junction to 'The IMC' in early 2008, as did I, from the Primary Care Partners building. Lumigrate's office moved to a neighboring space and we put in a studio in order to be able to 'work into' the hour here or there time that the providers were willing to give to record video for Lumigrate's launch, which occurred in March of 2009. Once that occurred, it was just a matter of time and work on my part to 'get Lumigrate out there' and known, attracting in more readers/follower/users and providers, so this story was a very BIG DEAL for Lumigrate! and I want to thank Nancy for doing such a GRATE job!).  

Everyone was right on time and we had about a one hour meeting, where we set her up with a lot of information -- I have a bookshelf I like to loan things out from, they had good handouts, etc. I was learning a whole lot in the hour, and had set up some of the scenario by having mentioned in emails with her initially that my mother's grandfather was a physician in Chicago in the 1918/19 Spanish flu epidemic -- an area particularly hard hit.  He didn't have one patient die because of the 'poison cocktails' he prescribed, was the legend handed down to me by my mother.  

Poison cocktails were milk with a very small amount of iodine drops.  I recall being a very little girl and being given two or three drops, my mother would take five drops, and thinking it was so absurd that the bottle she was using had a drawing of skulls and crossbones and was kept up high out of reach of the child (me).  Nancy has a real 'style' if you follow her work, which I do now, and she leads in and out with the human 'person' story and in between covers the facts and makes it really a 'good read'.  

During the interview, I perceived my role was primarily to facilitate getting the information from the doctors' cache of information into the air so Nancy could report about it.  By then, I'd had the privilege of spending hundreds of hours learning from the two doctors in the preceding years of meetings and seminars.  But, she turned to me as we were wrapping things up and looked into my eyes and asked me whether I'd take poison cocktails.  That was not a simple answer which could be given in the time we had to discuss my response: "No, because I use an iodine supplement now -- I'm no longer deficient in iodine!".  So I simply said, as the story shows at the end, something vague that I thought would be a good statement to make if I was going to be quoted. 

Then I gave her a tour of "The IMC", since the doctors had patients at 9:00 and I was essentially used by the IMC to do outreach and marketing for the overall clinic and concepts/education it provided.  On the shelves of items they sell to patients, was Iodoral, the iodine supplement I take, although there are others.   

This made me think that maybe part of the reason I embraced and sought out alternative treatement for my own health conditions starting back in 1989, was that my mother included something 'outside the regular medicine cabinet 'box'!  

Dr. Rollins had some interesting facts about adrenal fatigue being shown in the 1918 epidemic to have been a factor, which is VERY interesting since that is now known to be one of the things causing the cascade of symptoms in fibromyalgia.   And Nancy did include that in the article, I was happy to see, as well as some of the information Dr. Lepisto had provided. 

At the conclusion of the interview, she said it was a state-wide story and she would need a resource from the 'other side of the mountains'.  I happened to have communicated earlier in the year with a true innovator of medicine in the Front Range and United States, Milton Hammerly, MD. He'd been my physician in 1997/8 when I was first an occupational therapist and moved to Denver and was sick literally immediately upon starting 'the grind' of working in skilled nursing -- lots of germs, long hours AND most importantly, having to be at work at 6 am so stopping my sleep at 4:30 in the morning was NOT conducive to my 'adrenals'.  My health rapidly spiraled downwards and he pulled me out of it through innovative techniques.   He readily agreed to be a source for Nancy and within an hour they communicated and I was included in his follow up email which went over what he had said in the interview by phone and then added onto that with some other things he thought she might want to include.

I was very pleased to see the information about vitamin D that he supplied was used in the story, and with enough detail to be helpful. That's really what we all want at the end of the day -- information got out, was read and hopefully utilized. I know that MANY people I grew up with in the Denver area saw the story, and I can only hope they saved the article or look it up online when they start getting symptoms and then think 'if I'd only acted upon this when I read about in the fall and gotten a leg up.'  Better late than never.  OR perhaps it's best to say "Live and Learn! Learn and Live BETTER!!"

Since we don't get the paper version of The Denver Post in this part of the state anymore, except on Sundays, I actually knew the story had run only because I mentioned the benefits of vitamin D at a gathering on the Monday of Labor Day weekend.  I was joking when someone commented about the high fat in the dip they brought and I said 'but the important thing is it has Vitamin D in it and that's good for your immune system for influenza!'  The host had read the online Denver Post article earlier in the day, but didn't connect that it was ME the story lead in and out with, as he'd only heard my name and thought I was 'Marty' or 'Marti', and didn't know my last name. The hostess, who was actually the birthday girl, is keenly aware of the media for getting messages out, and was bouncing up and down in her seat next to me when I had said 'that might be the story I was part of'.  Sure enough it WAS.  So that was really FUN and interesting to see how it comes down to people being IN PERSON to talk about something and have information go forward sometime.  

To read the 'comments' left by readers at the end of the online version is really interesting.... There is clearly a 'split' of people who really are receptive and welcoming to this type of information and those who are in the conventional medicine belief system. There was one really hostile comment that implied that I'm supposed to get some tin foil out and cover my head and NOT watch the sunset tonight because the Earth is flat. Maybe for Halloween I'll work that into a costume idea. 

Nancy was offered references to the facts that were shared by the doctors but I don't think adding all that 'detail' makes a story readable.  But it does seem that the readership was kind of asking for more references and validation and it might have disspelled them somewhat had there been more mention of who the doctors or I am, and how credible the resources were that Nancy worked from. 

But this obvious 'split' in the readers who commented on the story brings up an interesting concept related to validation and scientific methods.  It has been our 'way of doing business' for so many years -- get an idea, do a study to prove the effectiveness before having it be accepted and utilized.  Which is great, but then how long does it take for improvements and change to happen?  Years.  And that's really good to have going on and to keep up with and all, but sometimes, maybe we can work from concepts that make sense, the foundations of which have been proven in the past but be able to move forward with treating health more progressively SOONER.  

I used to work on a research project dealing with air quality and visibility at Colorado State University for the National Park Service: it's expensive, so that is why many of these things never get 'validated'!  It took years to put in place 'the big' study they accomplished (which led to the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990).  Perhaps finding more balance to these things in the future will allow health care to move forward faster -- looking at the reasoning and if something makes sense and then also looking for faster ways to get feedback and validation on something.  

I'll be continuing to bring you more information on the topic of influenza and getting your health up overall, and in the mean time, please DO read the very informative article now that you know more about the story behind the story.    AND read the comments under it and put in yours if you like!  It's one way YOU can contribute to health care 'reform'! In the mean time, I hope this has helped you understand more about how the information we get from these sources comes from beginning to end.

www.denverpost.com/breakingnews/ci_13284305