I am blogging in no particular order, simply going off of the topic I feel I can comment on at a time. Here is Mimi's:

Mimi's Question:

I am curious with your busy schedule how you and Dr. Boaz can stay abreast of the latest research to determine what new information might be incorporated into your practice, and which things are not relevant, or are simply addressed differently, because of the different paradigm that you treat under, as compared to western practitioners. Two examples of big BUZZ in the gut-healing health conversations are Histamine Intollerance (need to determine if body is over-reacting to histamine foods with "allergy" type reactions, remove the foods, fix the digestive and immune issues so body can tolerate histamines again): High histamine foods include, leftover cooked chicken, egg whites, and spinach! The other example is Soil Based Organism supplements to improve gut diversity. Natasha Trenev (Natren Founder) was very critical of SBOs about 6 years ago, but now there is a recent double-blind, placebo controlled prospective study showing good improvements in gut health with SBOs and that the Trenev's concerns about active spore formation in the gut with these supplements were premature. Also, the SBO supplements are all very different. I realize and undersand that research-wise, and clinically, the homo-lacting fermenting (non-gas producing) type bacteria (single strain, such as the amazing Natren line) are still the gold standard and have the most research behind them, but many health care practitioners are reporting good success with some of these SBO formulas for gut healing. So how do you manage all the new information? THANKS!!

MY ANSWER:  

I am uncertain as to how to go about answering this question because it seems that is more pointed towards questioning how it is Boaz and I manage our time in the clinic and outside of it which is completely irrelevant within this forum and perhaps at all.

Our unique practice is based on Chinese medicine, a system that is thousands of years old. However, it is coupled with other supplements that are all applied under the comprehensive umbrella of our integrated approach.This is something no one else has done before us and what I wrote my doctorate about. We are innovators who have created this integrative paradigm of treatment. The way in which we have done that over our 18 years of practice is by relevant clinical research combined with clinical experience. As a matter of fact, I was using SBOs and countless other probiotics as early as 1996 and consistenly had better results with Natren, although there are certain cases in which I do use other probiotics (not SBOs). Everything we have done in the clinic is based on our own research over all of these years of practice. Some of these things have managed to stay on board and others have been let go of or are only used in specific cases.

We are not focusing on the symptoms. We are focusing on the individual that has those symptoms taking into account life style, emotions, stresses, specific patient history and much more. We are treating you and not the disease.

As for diet-histamines are only one of many problems that exist when the immune system is hyper-sensitive and hyper-reactive as with IC. How you address that problem depends on what your methods are. One aspect of our unique system is the diet we developed based on withholding subtances that contribute to that person's imbalance. It is built in a specific way for a specific reason. The progression of the list is intentional. Each practitioner has their own unique approach that they feel comfortable with, as we have ours.

But what I always say, there ARE no quick easy fixes to this problem. Before the work that we are doing now, there were no fixes. People had IC and were a mess for life. They were getting hydrodistentions and dialatitions and cocktails instilled into their bladders and were on terrible medications. With each year it is in existence, we conitnuously strive to further develop and improve our system. In fact, over the years our work has not been following other people, but focusing on the development of our own innovative protocols where they did not exist before paving the way for others to follow.