Outside The Box of Conventional Medicine: History Shows Slow Progress for Functional, Integrative and Other Approaches

Do you ever see the information about 'outside the box' health and think 'that makes SO MUCH SENSE, why didn't I hear about that before now?' Or 'why isn't EVERYONE doing this already, if it's been known for a while?'.  I hope this topic will help provide some answers. This will likely be a topic I add onto and improve upon as time goes on. Just yesterday I spoke with an educated, thinking person who had heard about chemtrails and geoengineering -- saying 'you know, when you can't sleep and it's on the radio at 2 am', and they'd not bought into it because it seemed all the 'conspiracy theory stuff' was a factor.

Having been told in subtle and direct ways by the system that is in power acts like filters, and not just about 'conspiracy theory', in medical there's a term that's been made up called 'pseudo-science' which gets used in a way to make the types of medicine which cannot be funded to do 'real science' seem inferior. It's similar to rose colored glasses but the opposite effect. Think about any 'system' that has power, even in a household, such as two parents who are effective as a partnership governing the family. Do they 'conspire'? You bet they do! Is it always for 'good' reasons? Not always, but they usually think they're doing a good thing. And they're in power, so that's what the family system's reality becomes. 

Basically, it's just the way of the world that those in power have a lot of ability, particularly if they have money to hire a lot of "troops". On the Internet today, there are many people working who are not the people their profiles portray, and are known as 'trolls', or 'paid disinformation trolls'. Facebook had been such a marvelous place for people with medical concerns to go and learn and commune together that it was just a matter of time before it was invaded by them.

I intentionally accepted a request for 'friendship' from someone who was clearly suspicious in order to learn how they worked things, and I'm glad I did, it was very interesting and helped me to see just how pervasive it is on Facebook. And they weren't shut down by my efforts, which were substantial in terms of contacting individually every person that we had as mutuals in hopes they'd also 'report' and the profile would be taken down by Facebook. I saw that they were still running amok months later, and were being tagged into a conversation by someone who I really had not suspected was part of the operation, I thought they were a confused, cognitively imparied, middle aged woman who was legitimately fighting their medical condition. 

It's growing increasingly difficult for people to get information in a way they feel they can 'trust' the source(s), and know what to believe and not. So I hope to do my part for our YOUsers at Lumigrate and provide information on this thread about why progress has been so slow for these less expensive and sometimes immediately helpful techniques to flourish.  

I will suggest people go to the Marianne Williamson speech (which is transcribed) at the following link to see her interpretation within the context of the March Against Monstanto rally in Venice, California in May or 2013, but this is the way she says it about the systems involved:

"Now I’d like to take for a moment a little bit of historical context why women particularly, our issue related to GMOs. Before the advent of early Christendom in Europe, Pagan culture prevailed. And Pagan culture was one in which there was recognized a divine partnership between humanity and nature. And women particularly what would later be called the witches, the wise women, except there was nothing funny about what was done to those women. They held aloft the rituals in their communities that kept people in a sense of divine sacred partnership with the Earth and with the sky and with the rocks and with the trees and with the rivers and the lakes and the oceans. Those rituals were significant. They aligned all of us, meaning all of who we are with that sense of sacred partnership.

With the advent of early Ecclesiastic Christendom at that time, there was, among other things, inaugurated this huge dispensation which held that humanity was given nature as a gift by God to do with whatever it wanted. And so this twist of divine perception, this maladaptive perspective that we can manipulate nature, we can use nature, it’s okay to dominate nature. Now the best that that perspective can come up with is that we are to be like stewards of nature.

That’s important because once again what this conversation is about is our being effective. If we do argue the Biblical injunction that humanity should be proper stewards of nature, that will get you your right-wing Christians and Biblical crowd. If you really want to get something done, make sure that that’s an opening in your mind and in your heart. Not just to talk to people who agree with you, that’s not how you build a movement. Martin Luther King said, “You have very little morally persuasive power with people who can feel your underlying contempt.” And Gandhi said, “The end is inherent in the means.” Only if we are doing are own work, will we be able to rise collectively to a place where this can occur."  (See the entire speech or go view through the topic about the speech at Lumigrate in the forum on activism, proactivism, at www.lumigrate.com/forum/marianne-williamsons-passionate-speech-about-activism-peaceful-and-productive-manner

 

Lumigrate, from it's concept, has morphed before it even was created. Initially it seemed like there would be plenty of interest if we simply had outside the box information about 'fibromyalgia', but the providers giving presentations for our cameras for video got into other things after I was underway with deadlines, so we had peripheral seminars which applied: detoxification and cleansing for instance, and supplements and disease prevention, so I realized that Lumigrate really was more able to serve if it was about 'bringing a lot of things together and tying them together', such as 'integrate' means. Lighting the way, we were doing, hence the Lumi in Lumigrate. 

Orthomolecular Medicine's "Founder" Abram Hoffer, Including How Linus Pauling Became Involved

I want to provide this section of the topic at Lumigrate for our YOUsers and have taken the 'liberty' of doing as I often do when I find a gem within a great website, and giving MANY PROMPTS to 'see the sites' and follow the link to the source and see what else they have, or see it in it's original state on the source website so everyone knows I'm not doing more than making things more readable for brains that are medically impaired, fatigued, etc. Much of the 'midnight oil' goes on around the Internet because of people who aren't sleeping and they're up trying to figure out health information. So their brains aren't inclined to sleep, they're also not so inclined to get through long paragraphs. I also bold information that I think will appeal and apply to YOUsers. 

I was seeking to learn more about who was the founder of orthomolecular medicine when I found the website for FAME, which has the audio file as well as the transcribed version of the interview as a PDF to download. Knowing how THAT GOES for some people, I was hoping it was going to be placed in a way that is copyable, which is was. Seeings as it was a little difficult to read with long paragraphs, and has MUCH in it I would REALLY like YOUsers to see, I'm placing it here with some bolding, and I chopped things up more for easier reading. Again, please follow the link and see the FAIM website.

What's so neat for me personally about this; my first provider that figured out my food allergies was in Loveland, Colorado where they're based, but it was a few years before their founder created FAIM, which was originally about 'alternative' medicine and added/rebranded to include 'integrative' about the same time as I created Lumigrate way across the state of Colorado where I'd moved in 2004. AND I learned about 'pyroluria' when grabbing a link to a Loveland alcohol/drug treatment facility that uses functional medicine. They had it as one sentence in their 30 minute video, and in providing a transcribed writeup for those wishing to read when I created a topic about it for Lumigrate's YOUsers to know of this type of 'outside the box' drug treatment programs, I had to look it up and, seeing the definition and information at the first site, I said 'this is the missing link I think'! So it's come full circle again back to Loveland, Colorado. 

I was confused because one guy is credited with coining the term (Pauling) but another guy is credited with being the founder (Hoffer). Were they collaborators or competitors? Is this like Drs Alzheimer and Lewy, who were both finding similar information at the same time relative to dementia and brain tissues, with one becoming a household name, and the other virtually unheard of, despite that Lewy bodies are second under the #1 Alzheimer's plaques for causing dementia. I never had a patient with a LBD diagnosis, nor did I learn of it until my father's diagnosis in 2009, though I'd many times told medical teammates for the patients that I thought there was something yet 'undiscovered' because 'Parkinsons' wasn't seeming quite like the right diagnosis for MOST of the 'Parkinsons patients' we had.  

Related to orthomolecular medicine's history, in some places Abram Hoffer's name is brought into the conversation, such as when I was first creating information about 'pyroluria' and the MD whose video on YouTube I utilized as part of the content to provide at Lumigrate referred to him (and even specified it's pronounced 'Abraham' but spelled 'Abram', this was German/American Dietrich Klinghardt). Then you find out with further study that Nobel Peace Prize winner Linus Pauling was involved, and today there is a growing foundation with his name related to the underlying causes for chronic illnesses that's branching from the youthful end of the lifespan to the other end and dementia. With the underlying causes of issues similarly treated due to the same underlying reasons, it only makes sense!  So here's the interview, below, hopefully very readable to YOUsers, and the link where you can go and hear the interview, see photos, and naturally, see what ELSE is provided by the Foundation for Alternative and Integrative Medicine. www.faim.org/orthomolecularmedicine/abramhoffer.html

Transcript of Video Interview with Dr. Hoffer

___________________________________________________

The Institute for Functional Medicine (IFM)

Date: December 10, 2008

Location: Victoria, British Columbia

Interviewer: Dr. Jeffrey Bland, Founder, IFM

Interviewee: Dr. Abram Hoffer

JEFF BLAND: So this is a really special opportunity, Dr. Hoffer, for me. As you

probably know I have valued—as have literally tens of thousands of practitioners—from

your work and your insight. And to sit down here in your office in Victoria, British

Columbia and know that you are still practicing psychiatry at this level of wisdom that

you can bring to this discipline is absolutely amazing and something that we all aspire to

do in our own professional lives.

And not many of us will be as successful in creating a

whole new concept as you have been, but certainly your model of stick-to-it-ness and

discipline and dedication to your patients is a model for all of us. So I’d like to just start.

We can go all the way back, obviously, to before 1957, but 1957for me is where I started

my understanding of you by reading your first paper published on niacin and

schizophrenia.

ABRAM HOFFER: Right.

JB: So when I look back and I listen to your story I am reminded of so many interesting

things. We could call it fortuitous, or serendipitous, or directed. So here is a person, in

your case a gifted PhD in a chemical field, [who] understands about pellagra and niacin

as it relates to an entirely different field and discipline from that of psychiatry, then goes

to medicine and focuses on psychiatry, and then because of a creative mind makes the

connection. And as I recall from your paper, you were maybe the first group to talk about

the similarity between pellagra’s dementia being schizophreniform with schizophrenia.

AH: That’s correct.

JB: So that connection is a brilliant leap of abstraction to most people, but for you was

clearly obvious.

AH: It was so terribly obvious I didn’t ever think people would object. I thought I would

be looked upon as a hero. I thought, oh my God, they’re going to love me now. But at

that time I was very popular anyway because I was doing a lot of nonsense research that

didn’t mean anything. So as long as I published papers that had no meaning—you know

what I’m talking about—I was popular.

But after we published that first paper that you

read, guess what. They said, “Oh my God, that guy’s a heretic.” And at that time of

course, as you know, the tranquilizers came in, in ‘55, ‘56, ‘57, and they were financially

so rewarding to the big drug companies that they overwhelmed the whole field. And

today psychiatry is owned by the Big Pharm. That’s what’s happening in psychiatry

today.

JB: So as you made this discovery, I find it extraordinarily interesting from an

intellectual development perspective that you took the pre-pellagra’s dementia

connection to schizophrenia and then you asked questions about what other genetic

metabolism disorders that associate with nutrition can we think about that could have

central nervous system effects, like hyperhomocysteinemia. And then you talked about B6

and B12 and folate and so your model got extended, and it seemed to be able to be

mapped against many of these conditions.

AH: We had these informal meetings and this was a fantastic amount of information.

And that’s where we brought Linus Pauling in. I remember we had our meeting in

Vancouver at the home of Dr. Ross MacLean and there I am chairman of the meeting,

and as the chairman you’re not really supposed to do anything, you know, you’re

supposed to just sit there and be quiet and make sure things are running properly. So I’m

listening to all my colleagues, and there are ten of us reading their fantastic papers.

They’re talking about folic acid. They’re talking about B6. They’re talking about zinc.

Carl Pfeiffer, everyone. They’re presenting this amazing information.

So I said to myself,

isn’t this fantastic. Here is this meeting with very important information no one hears

about. We have to publish it. So David Hawkins is sitting on my right, and he’s a good

friend of mine. So “David,” I said to the group, “we have to publish a book.” So they

stopped, and since I’m the chairman they have to listen to me. That’s the power of the

chair. And I said “David, you are going to be the editor.” And he gulped. He said,

“What?” I said, “Don’t worry, we’ll help you. Each one of us will submit a chapter.” So

eventually David said okay, he thought he would do it.

So after a while, we started

organizing this book. Then it occurred to one of us (I don’t know who it was, it might

have been David) that maybe we could ask Linus Pauling to become an editor. I’m

talking about the book on orthomolecular psychiatry. David wrote to Pauling, and

Pauling said, yes he would on one condition, and the condition was that he would have to

approve of every paper that would appear in it. So of course said, “fantastic.” And that’s

how that book came out.

JB: So now you’ve talked about an epic chapter that I think propelled this whole model

that you birthed forward, and that was the 1968 publication in Science Magazine

authored by Pauling, the article “Orthomolecular Psychiatry.”

AH: Right.

JB: It seemed to put the discipline up on the big board. Did that change the visibility for

you of what you’d been doing?

AH: Yes it did. It gave it prestige. It also gave us a lot of work. But I remember what

happened, because I had not met Linus Pauling before then, but apparently he had been

getting letters from a large number of Americans who had heard about the vitamin

approach and were putting themselves on it and were getting some response. So he was

getting more interested, and it fitted in with his own basic concept of molecular medicine.

I think this had been gestating in his mind for some time. So one day I get a letter from

Linus Pauling: “Dear Dr. Hoffer,” and he said, “I am enclosing a manuscript that I

propose to send to Science. Would you please go over it to make sure you are properly

quoted.” Now isn’t that amazing?

So then he came along with the word. Now at that time we had been playing with the

word “megavitamin” therapy, which I didn’t really like so much because there’s no such

thing as a megavitamin, it just doesn’t exist. And when he published the paper I said there

is the answer. This term of Linus Pauling’s covers almost everything that we are going to

do. And since then I haven’t thought of anything better than the term orthomolecular. But

even amongst my colleagues they became very upset, because they were getting used to

the term megavitamin therapy. We had our own conservatives, as well as liberals in our

own group.

So I took on a major role. I said I am going to defend the word

orthomolecular until it kills me. It’s going to become the word. And since again since I

was chairman I had some prestige, and I was able to gradually force the word in. And

even with the Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine for many years people wanted me to

change the word because orthomolecular was very unpopular. I said so what? Of course

it’s unpopular, but we’re going to change that. And thank God, Jeff.

JB: Well let me just kind of bring this to a close saying that this concept of functional

medicine that we’ve been working on for about 20 years now, which tries to look at the

presaging direction towards disease before the person gets to disease—in other words

the dysfunction that precedes the pathology—is really rooted conceptually around the

principles of what we call our founding figures.

You are one of those founding figures.

This work, this construct, not only does it pertain obviously to psychiatric and

neurological health but it pertains to the health of the whole body.  This is a paradigm that

you’ve advanced, along with Williams and along with Dr. Pauling. These are

conceptual frames that change the way we view the patient in the exam room and how we

will manage them.

And on behalf of the whole Institute for Functional Medicine I want to

just personally thank you for the so many years of tireless, self-sacrificing work that

you’ve put into this, and I can say that your legacy as it pertains to this contribution will

remain rich, bright and warm and we will continue to hold the banner very high. We’re

going to fight these battles and we’re going to get rationality and truth to prevail. So

thank you very, very, much. It’s been a deep pleasure to share this time with you.

AH: Thank you, Jeff. Actually, all in all, it’s been kind of fun.