We provide custom therapies for the prevention, healing and management of chronic and debilitating disorders.

Case Studies

Harry’s whole-person approach to healing involves carefully considering and weighing the many physical and psychological factors contributing to a client’s care. Here are just a few Case Studies to give you an idea of how Harry works to build a Whole-Person Care Protocol. These Care Studies are intended to give the reader an idea of how a protocol develops in relationship to how a patient presents. They are about the process of how a Practitioner of Natural Medicine works.

A 30 year old female presents with the following profile:

• Does not sleep well
• Does not eat breakfast
• Has a weight problem
• Her periods are irregular, with excessive bleeding and cramping
• Does not exercise
• Energy throughout the day is low to O.K., but never really good. Uses coffee 3-4x a day.

We worked with the following panel of tests:

• Blood Test:  She has been diagnosed by her physician as having Insulin Resistant syndrome (excess Insulin, Glucose, and Cortizol). The pattern is as such, high glucose, high triglycerides, high platelets, low HDL, high LDL. These numbers do not have to be flags, as they can present as high or low normally, and this syndrome is in gear.
• Hormone Saliva Tests:  Excess estrogen with high amounts of the stress hormone Cortisol
• Liver Clearance Test:  To see if the liver is breaking down and eliminating estrogen properly. Her ratios are off. Her body is not breaking down or eliminating estrogen well, they are remaining at high levels in her blood stream. These estrogen configurations are carcinogenic.
• Toxic Metal Hair analysis: She is running high amounts of copper and mercury.
• Full thyroid Panel:  She has been diagnosed by her physician as being hypo-thyroidal.

Whole-Person Care Protocol

Being that there are so many things happening, we cannot approach them all at the same time: we have to prioritize. Often when one thing is resolved a number of what appear to be disconnected symptoms follow. In this case, weight difficulties are created and enhanced by insulin resistance as well as the side effect of the medications. Everything we are doing is helping normalize insulin resistance. Insulin resistance syndrome has numerous patho-physiological and psyhcological effects;

1. Breakfast is a big deal. If they will not or do not have the time to eat breakfast, I will put them on a nutritionally dense smoothie. Not eating breakfast is grossly underrated in its overall negative effect inclusive of dietary induced stress response. We are trying to balance blood sugars and reduce insulin load. If these are far enough out, for long enough, insulin resistance will damage almost everything in us. It reeks havoc on the nervous and nuro-endocrine system. Blood sugar crashing through the ceiling or floor, prolonged and excessively high levels of insulin and glucose can induce panic. Her diet has to be scrutinized more closely. Often, women do not eat enough high quality protein and tend to gravitate towards refined carbohydrates and sugar. This pattern can produce excess weight gain, insomnia, and suppress morning appetite.
2. Sufficient and deep, restful sleep. Many of these individual symptoms are common. People who do not sleep well do not heal well. Being that this person has a disorder that affects her waking state  as  well as sleep, a global approach would be to use nervines during the day ( things that feed, calm and normalize the nervous system, without reducing the persons’ ability to focus and function normally) and hypnotic type herbs and supplements before bed ( stronger stuff to help sleep ). As an aside, I looked at this person’s posts on Facebook. Lots of anger and depression. Our body can only be beaten up for so long before it fights back. Part of getting people to sleep better is in calming down and draining a congested liver. It is also of primary focus when dealing with anger and depression. Generally these formulas also improve digestion, absorption, and elimination. This wing can be rolled into the nervine formula for the sake of efficiency and to simplify dosing schedules. In a broader sense, we are trying to reintroduce a very important circadian rhythm, one that impacts a number of other circadian rhythms in a big way. I often give formulas before bed that help blunt stress response by modifying excess cortisol and reestablish the normal rhythm of coritzol secretion. That rhythm is often inverted with insomnia.(can measure with saliva testing ).
3. Re-establishing normal menstrual cycle rhythm, reducing blood flow, clotting and cramping. There are many great formulas for this in Chinese Herbal Medicine. Something as simple as mild exercise, done regularly, will reduce cramping and help about 50 other things as well. Balancing hormones will improve sex drive. Adaptogenic herbs play a major role in reestablishing endocrine and nuro-endocrine balance.
4. Normalize thyroid. Many of the things happening to this women can create and enhance thyroid difficulties as well as to prevent it from healing( including toxic metals). Food for the thyroid include selenium, vit c, vit d, tyrosine, iodine, and iron.
5. Lower the high toxic metals count. We need copper for a number of things. It is very tightly regulated by our body for good reasons. Copper above normally low levels is an oxidative nightmare and it is central to process of growing new veins for cancer cells to feed themselves. Mercury is a nuro-toxin and is very damaging to the immune system as well.(too many mercury fillings are a problem). It is possible to chelate both of these toxic metals out of our system with natural medicine. Mercury will also impact thyroid.

Overall Assessment

Chinese medicine considers the brain to be a para-organ of the kidneys. The kidneys are greatly affected by long term fear.  The mind, as it relates to the life around us, is housed by the heart. When energy of the heart (Shen) is balanced, the mind is also. The liver is responsible for the even flow of energy throughout the body. In this protocol, we are doing all of this. The vestibular problem in the inner ear can be approached externally and internally with herbal medicine.

In this case it, change is slow, but consistent. This is common with constitutional problems that are complex and long term. Under these circumstances, if it was not already the case, I would recommend that this person be seeing an M.D. and Psychologist as well.  [/tab]

Case 2

A seventy four year old man presents with a history of severe kidney problems. He has to catherize himself 3-4 times per day to be able to vent urine. His energy is low, and he is losing support in his lower back and knees. He has kyphosis in his upper spine (curvature), making him look bent over.  He is beginning to lose motor control and has full body shaking attacks. His prostate is swollen (BPH). His health has continued to descend, although he has been self treating and seeing a well known hand healer. From where he is, the doctors cannot help him and are trying to mentally prepare him for lifelong dialysis.

Many people are reluctant to pursue recommended testing technology, which is a mistake. This is unfortunately the case here. Testing shows what you cannot possibly know without it and it creates a baseline to measure protocol results against. It also compromises the approach and takes away the ability to see other problems of a more subtle or silent nature. Cost is often cited as the problem. The tests most commonly recommended are not expensive.  Be that as it may, he is still my client and I will do my best to help.

He has the classic signs, in Chinese organ theory, of kidney weakness. The kidney controls bone and bone marrow in Chinese Medicine. The shaking and general feel of this person is that he is hanging on the edge of a pretty severe collapse of Kidney energy. When we began to strongly tone this area, these major symptoms immediately began to back down. This includes raising testosterone levels and lowering the general inflammatory state in his body as well as increasing free amino acids in the blood stream to help repair damaged tissue. He looks well and is doing well. He has begun to stand straighter and has begun to urinate freely.

Case 3

A 50 year old woman presents with what appears as an array of disconnected, idiopathic symptoms  (can’t figure out where it came from or why it is happening). She is a public speaker and fund raiser. After about 10 minutes of giving a speech she begins to get sick. She has to lie down and gets a low grade fever that lasts for up to 5 hours and she cannot urinate for up to 12 hours. She has a low grade cough, which gets worse when she lies on her side. When she eats raw fruits or vegetables, she gets an allergic reaction that manifests as sores in her mouth. She also suffers from acid reflux and is post menopausal. To help really complicate things, she was born premature and has some genetic defects. She has only one kidney and an improperly formed liver (size, shape, location). The Docs are baffled and keep going back to the idea that she has an infection of some sort. She has been tested for all kinds of offending agents with no luck.

This person has no infectious agents causing the problem. Her only kidney has begun to pro-lapse (a loss of tone, support to and from the structures around the kidney, which result in a small but significant physical shift in organ location). Pro-lapse is not that uncommon post-menopause. When it does occur it is usually bladder and or uterus. These women often suffer from repeated bladder or vaginal infections. The menopausal shift in hormone balance alter the suspensory tensile strength of supportive structures. Estrogen, and particularly progesterone play an important part in this area of maintaining tone. The first hormone that drops precipitously post menopause is progesterone. The use of supplemental hormones as a first choice is a poor one. The use of hormones is absolutely last (and then only bio identical hormones).  I try to get the body to do what it is supposed to do first, which is balance it hormones through a number of means with Natural Medicine. In this particular case of pro-lapse, body work in the direction of visceral manipulation (Osteopathic Medicine) can be very effective. That is the case here. As strange as this may sound to our western minds, there are herbs that have a lifting affect on this type of organ pro-lapse. They create more tone and lift. Chinese medicine calls it raising yang. Whatever the name or reason they work. These types of herbs are often contraindicated when people express upper body tension: tight lungs, tight jaw, tight shoulders and neck, etc.

She began to get better after the first session. Mostly less pain. Better again by the second session: can now stand and speak for longer periods without the problem of fever or urine retention. Her cough has resolved. I would like to add the personal note that when people get better fast, it’s the absolute best high there is for a practitioner. She has begun to take bitters before meals, which is helping the acid reflux and allergic response to raw fruit and vegetables. Next stop is raising Kidney Chi (adaptogenic herbs are brilliant in this area). In essence, this is hormone balancing ala Natural Medicine.

Case 4

A 53 year old woman presents with breast cancer. Her pathology and biopsy report show a 1 centimeter tumor in the right breast, a slow rate of division, that the cancer is still sensitive to estrogen and progesterone, nucleus is improperly developed, tumor is her2 positive (a growth factor receptor found in 30% of newly diagnosed breast cancer) and that it has invaded surrounding tissue (invasive ductal carcinoma, which takes an average of 20-25 years to develop to this stage and constitutes 70% of all newly diagnosed breast cancer). It is recommended by the Oncologist that she get a lumpectomy, radiation and chemo.

The lady agrees to the surgery but not the chemo or radiation.  She also decides to wait 2 months before going into surgery. When she gets her surgery she requests a live sample of the tumor be sent to a lab that tests chemo agents against the live cancer cells to see what drugs the cancer is sensitive to. This costs is out of pocket and very important to getting things right. This will not be done unless requested and is incomprehensible as to why. It needs to be part of standard procedure in order to reduce error.

In terms of surgery, there is a lot that can be done pre and post surgically to speed healing time and reduce inflammation and oxidative damage as well as help the body effectively remove administered drugs. This is a big deal as the surgery and the drugs can help promote the cancer (inflammation and oxidative damage).  She is released after the surgery and told if she does not pursue the oncologist’s protocol (chemo and radiation) there may be dire consequences.

The live tumor test results show that she is resistant to a number of chemo agents and being that the cancer is estrogen and her2 positive, there is also a very good chance that tamoxifen ( a drug recommended to her to take ) will not work. This patient asks for a number of blood tests from her Doctor, who in turn agrees to pursue half of them. She is now forced to go to an online lab and order the rest of the tests out of pocket. Extra test results show she has elevated glucose, insulin and that her blood quality is off (it is too thick ). Taking chemo without normalizing these easy to test for factors is taking unnecessary risks. All chemo raises clotting factors and with this kind of common profile, the chemo could increase those clotting factors to lethal levels and induce a clot which could very well kill the patient. She is low in Vit. D, repair blood proteins and has elevated homocysteine. Glucose, insulin and homocysteine at elevated levels induce inflammation, oxidative damage, accelerate cell division, and help to create multi drug resistance. Hair analysis, for toxic metals and trace mineral levels show high mercury and cadmium level and low zinc and magnesium levels. Further testing shows that she has some genetic anomalies that could cause severe problems in terms of drug reaction (that her body would not metabolize or detoxify a number of the recommended drugs properly). Genomic tests can be run on the original tumor sample to further profile the cancer. All the negative results can be normalized with proper intervention. This is exactly what this patient does.

After she gets her surgery, recovery is fast due to how she prepared for it. This takes away a large advantage that the cancer will use if it is allowed to (post surgical inflammation, oxidative damage and immune suppression). She decides to wait on the chemo and radiation and continues on a relatively aggressive protocol of natural medicine. She continues to blood test every 3-6 months in order to monitor the cancer. She is 12 years out with no sign of cancer. She continues to apply natural medicine (at this point protocol has transitioned to maintenance and is therefore much smaller) throughout this period as well as continued testing 1-2x year. She is actually much healthier than she was 12 years ago.