Patient Heal Thyself

Introduction

Everyone flocks to see today’s heroes play music to thousands of adoring fans, or dunk a basketball with thunderous power, or glide their way to Olympic gold in the downhill skiing finals. We see these modern day heroes, musicians, athletes, and actors at their best, at their shining moments, standing on the crest of the mountain looking down at the rest of us. But think for a moment. These heroes each put in thousands of hours of sweat, toil and failures with no screaming fans to encourage them. They made sacrifices far beyond what any of us have made. They swam hundreds of laps in cold pools in the wee hours of the morning while we were still asleep. They played music in dingy clubs to a handful of people who weren’t even paying attention to them. They practiced day in and day out, even when their friends were out having fun. The common denominator in the lives of these superstars was an insatiable drive and determination to succeed. The truth is that the chance of any one of us becoming a rock star, or an all-star basketball player or an Olympic gold medalist is smaller than winning the lottery.

I believe that the process of overcoming an incurable illness is much the same as training for and winning the Olympics. The individuals who have the courage to take charge of their own health, have the unending determination and make the near impossible sacrifices it takes to be one of the select few who beat illness and choose life are today’s true heroes.

My own healing journey from death’s door to a return to super health was not an easy one. I made a lot of mistakes along the way. But I know in the end that my journey produced lasting changes in my life, and I hope that by sharing what I have learned with you, you can take charge of your own health and realize your body’s phenomenal potential.

In the midst of life’s trials and tribulations, we often ask why God would allow us to go through such ordeals. But I now know more than ever, God would never allow anyone to suffer like I did without a divine plan.

The fact is, I went through a real life hell and nearly died. And I truly believe that this was part of God’s plan so that I might become your teacher and show you, as well as others, how to regain your birthright of great health.

In the pages that follow, you will learn the health secrets that allowed our ancestors to live long, disease-free lives. You will learn how to regain your health if you’ve lost it or how to maintain the excellent health that you currently enjoy and even slow premature aging.

But let me warn you. Some of the recommendations in this book may surprise you. In fact, many of my instructions fly in the face of what they are telling you. The they I’m referring to are the American Medical Association, American Heart Association, American Cancer Society, American Dietetic Association, and many governmental agencies. If a politically correct approach to health and nutrition is what you’re looking for, you’ve come to the wrong place. If you’re looking for an optimal health plan for you and your family that is validated by history, science and our Creator, then buckle up; you’re in for a wild ride!

If I had to boil my message down to one sentence, it would be this: No matter what health challenges plague you today, there is hope for an answer. It’s time to get armed with powerful truths from our Creator. It’s time to provide your body with the nutritional tools it needs to regenerate from head to toe. The time is now. Patient, heal thyself!

—Jordan Rubin, N.M.D., Ph.D.

Jupiter, Florida, October 1, 2002

Part I–

Enter the

Garden of Life

CHAPTER ONE

The Journey

There I was, standing on the field at Doak Campell Stadium at Florida State University doing the tomahawk chop with my fellow cheerleaders and 80,000 screaming fans as our Seminoles marched their way to their first ever National Championship. Life couldn’t have been better. I was an 18-year-old freshman on an academic and athletic scholarship, with more friends than I could spend time with and a member of a great fraternity. In my spare time, I was a soloist in a traveling singing group and a quarterback for my intramural football team. I lived with seven of my friends in a house just outside of campus. Life was great.

Then, it happened.

It was 1994, the summer after my freshman year, and I was working as a counselor at a day camp to earn extra money. I remember the afternoon I first started getting sick. I was riding on a bus with the kids at camp. I was feeling sleepy which was very unusual for me. I usually had an energy level that rivaled the Energizer Bunny. I just kept going, and going and going. At one point, while riding on the bus, I actually fell asleep. Jordan, Jordan! Wake up! One of the kids was shaking me to wake me up, which was embarrassing. Unfortunately, falling asleep at inopportune times such as this became a regular occurrence for me. I also became frequently tired during the day and lacked energy.

Shortly after my noticeable loss of energy, I remember getting terrible stomach cramps that had me running to the bathroom several times a day with diarrhea. Before long, frequent trips to the toilet were routine for me. But even though I was feeling lousy, I didn’t want to admit it to myself. Getting sick didn’t really fit into my schedule, if you know what I mean. In fact, I even decided to attend a week-long overnight camp, in spite of my need to be close to a toilet. What was I thinking! Camping out in the summer heat of Florida is tough enough on a healthy person. My nausea was making me feel even worse, and the usual camp chow wasn’t helping. I found myself gulping iced tea and beating a wellworn path to the outdoor bathrooms.

The next fact I want to tell you is quite startling. In seven days, I lost twenty pounds. That’s twenty pounds in seven days. For some people, losing twenty pounds in a week could be a dream come true. But for me, it was a nightmare. I remember trying to tackle a friend of mine during a camp football game, and getting trampled. I realized how much weaker I had become. At this point, I had to face reality to a certain extent. Something was really wrong with me.

Like a seasick passenger on a long bumpy boat ride, my upset stomach was now constant. I became completely dehydrated; my mouth felt like I had a large ball of cotton stuffed in it, and my gums were riddled with canker sores and ulcers.

I had become so sick and fatigued that I couldn’t even make it through one week of overnight camp. I had to have someone drive me four hours home to Palm Beach Gardens. When I got there, I was in denial. I hugged my mom and dad and did a darn good job of hiding my illness from my parents (which was sort of dumb since my father is a doctor). Actually, I had to hide my illness. If my parents had any idea how sick I really was, they would have made me go to the hospital. Or worse, they would not have let me go back to school, and the new semester started in only ten days. This was my sophomore year, and I wasn’t about to start late. I was sure that if I could hang on until school started, everything would be fine. I just needed to get back into the swing of things.

Without telling my parents, I visited a family doctor in our community on my own. I detailed my symptoms—the nausea, constant diarrhea, weight loss, cotton-mouth, and fatigue. That was just the beginning of my list.

The doctor put me through a series of tests looking for viruses, including the AIDS virus; none were detected. He ordered a stool culture that came back negative and prescribed a course of antibiotics for me to take. Neither the doctor nor I ever asked why I had developed these severe digestive problems. Looking back, I sure wish I or someone else had. I mean, I don’t want to sound like a bad sport or an ungrateful patient, but when something goes wrong, it is often a good idea to find out why. I guess doctors are so busy these days just trying to get through their patient loads that they frequently prescribe whatever is covered by insurance and will get rid of the symptoms. It’s sort of like putting a lot of makeup over a facial blemish. It works (sort of).

In any event, I took the antibiotics with me on my return to school and started taking them. Unfortunately, my condition only worsened, and I began experiencing even more severe gastrointestinal problems.

I did everything I could to ignore what was happening to my body. I kept busy by trying to go to class, but I had to discontinue all of my extracurricular activities. I was forced to quit the cheerleading squad and the fraternity. I also had to quit studying to pass my American College of Sports Medicine exam in preparation for becoming a fitness professional.

I weighed about 145 pounds at that time, down from my normal 175 to 180 pounds. As the days went by, things only worsened. I was falling apart. I was running fevers of 104 degrees every night. I barely slept because I was getting up to run to the bathroom all night.

To make matters worse, my gastrointestinal problems had become systemic, affecting my joints. My hip constantly popped out of its socket whenever I did anything. I would suffer minor dislocations even getting in and out of cars. I remember the situation became so severe that my hip popped out once as I was walking to class. I was forced to turn around and go back to my house. At that point, leaving school seemed inevitable.

I mentioned previously that my father is a doctor. He is a naturopath and chiropractor who was in the first class of students at the National College of Naturopathic Medicine in Portland, Oregon. In fact, I’ve been told that I was the first child in the United States in the modern era to be delivered at home by naturopathic students. As a naturopath, my father was taught to work with the whole person and to use safe and natural, nontoxic healing methods.

My father had given me a cache of dietary supplements to take with me back to college. Exploring this collection one afternoon, I found probiotics, digestive enzymes, and many other herbal and nutritional dietary products. I didn’t know much about nutritional supplements. I did, however, believe that these products would help me get well. I guess I made myself believe that.

That began my magical mystery tour of alternative medicine. These first nutritional supplements I started using were only the beginning for me. I also tried different diets. After I discovered that the cotton feeling in my mouth was oral thrush, which was linked with candida infection, I tried several anticandida diets. My father also put me on the Specific Carbohydrate Diet. It has been purported to have been used successfully by many people to treat Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis, irritable bowel syndrome, celiac disease, cystic fibrosis, and chronic diarrhea.

The premise of the diet is that damage done to intestinal walls by bacterial/fungal overgrowth is part of a vicious cycle that wreaks havoc with the body’s health and immunity. The diet attempts to eliminate the type of carbohydrates such as grains, sugar, dairy, corn and potatoes that tend to nourish these bad bacteria and fungal species. This diet often helps to lower their populations and restores the body’s balance or inner ecology. I tried to stop eating sugar, molasses, sucrose, high fructose corn syrup, or any other processed sugars. I tried to avoid corn, wheat, barley, oats, rye, rice, and other grains. I tried to avoid starchy foods such as potatoes, yams, and parsnips. I was told to forget milk and certain cheeses. Pasta was also a food of my past. That was just the beginning of the dietary restrictions.

The Specific Carbohydrate Diet may have helped some. Trouble was, I didn’t have the self-discipline necessary to stay on a diet as rigorous as the Specific Carbohydrate Diet. Well, let me amend that statement. I could stay on the diet for periods of time—until my roommate who worked at a sorority house brought home leftovers from the kitchen—then, all of the sudden, I was not on a diet anymore (though promising to get back on it as soon as I was through pigging out).

I was hungry all the time. I had a ravenous appetite, but I only wanted to eat foods that tasted good to me which, of course, happened to not be healthy. Yet, no matter how much I ate, I continued to lose weight.

When you are as sick as I was, toilet locations become an obsession. No matter where I went, I had to know where the bathrooms were. Even if I felt well enough to go out with friends, I wouldn’t go unless I knew that a toilet would be nearby. Long car rides were definitely out. Things can get kind of crazy when your daily plans are dominated by the question, Where’s the bathroom? This may sound funny to most people, but not to the millions of people who suffer as I did.

I finally broke down and called my parents and told them how sick I really was. They were very concerned and made plans for me to fly home the next day. I walked in the door with a temperature of 105 degrees.

My dad took one look at me, packed the bathtub with ice cubes and dunked me in ice-cold water. I remember freezing in the ice water and overhearing my father crying out to my mother, My God, I don’t want my son to die.

I was confused. I didn’t know what was happening. All I could think about was that I didn’t want to die. I wanted to return to school. I wanted my old life back.

The very next morning, my father and mother took me to the emergency room. It was the first time I had ever been in a hospital. Unfortunately, it wouldn’t be my last. I was hoping it would be a quick visit. I’d get some cure all medication and be on my way back to school.

My quick visit lasted two weeks. During this period, I would lie in bed with an IV pole attached to each arm, delivering intravenous antibiotics and nutrients, and watch TV. I got even more depressed because this was the time of the Oklahoma City bombing.

The doctors prescribed antibiotics and antiparasitic drugs that had to be given intravenously for maximum effect. To add to this, my body was so overridden by infection that it had become terribly inflamed. To combat this, I was prescribed two heavy-duty, highly toxic steroid medications, hydrocortisone and prednisone. I was given every kind of test imaginable. I got more x-rays in those two weeks than most people get in a lifetime. Both my upper and lower gastrointestinal tracts were scanned—and believe me, these weren’t the usual short bursts of radiation you get with dental x-rays. I felt like radiologists were conducting an in-depth tour of my gut.

I was told that I had Crohn’s colitis. Crohn’s disease is a condition primarily involving the small bowel and proximal colon that causes the intestinal wall to thicken and cause narrowing of the bowel channel, blocking the intestinal tract. The result is abnormal membrane function, including nutrient malabsorption. I had an even worse variation of the disease. The doctors noted I had marked duodenitis, an inflammation of the duodenum, which is at the beginning of the small intestine, coupled with widespread inflammation through my large and small intestine. Although less than one percent of Crohn’s disease patients specifically experience duodenitis, it appeared that I was one of the chosen few with both duodenal and total colonic inflammation.

At this point, the doctor ordered total parenterel nutrition (TPN). This is where nutrients are delivered intravenously directly into the bloodstream. I was rampant with infection, inflammation, and pain.

Crohn’s disease was a much worse diagnosis than I had imagined. I was not in a very good state of mind at this point—especially when the doctor told me the disease was incurable. Patients with Crohn’s disease experience frequent and progressive symptoms of abdominal pain, diarrhea, and extreme weight loss as seen in other wasting conditions such as cancer and AIDS. Many patients experience premature death. How’s that for making you feel hopeful about your diagnosis! One thing was for sure, I was going to have to take medication if I wanted to stay alive. Yet, the side effects of the medications that keep you alive can be almost as bad as the disease itself.

Bowel diseases are on the rise. According to some literature, 85 percent of Americans have had a digestive problem of some kind. Crohn’s disease, these experts argue, may eventually surpass ulcers as the number one digestive problem in the United States. The number of Americans who suffer from Crohn’s disease has never been satisfactorily recorded, but is somewhere between 400,000 and 1,000,000. Each year, at least 20,000 Americans are clinically diagnosed as having Crohn’s disease. Meanwhile, a good 20 percent of Americans have been diagnosed with irritable bowel syndrome. And, of course, we all know that sales of heartburn medications are booming.

Although today I can speak with experience and knowledge about bowel disease, at the end of 1994, I was just a 19-year-old suffering from a chronic disease I was told would require a lifetime of medication and who was very confused about how my entire life got so turned upside down in a matter of months. I didn’t know anyone with this Crohn’s disease and didn’t even know where to go for help. I was too embarrassed to even tell my friends what my symptoms were. When they asked what was going on, I just told them I was sick. I refused to go into detail.

I left the hospital and returned home still desperately hoping to improve enough to return to school in a few weeks. I thought that there must be some kind of magic bullet that would get me well. But this new existence via medications was not a good one. True, I was no longer being given intravenous drugs, but this was only because the doctor now had my prednisone and other medications administered orally. What a dangerous drug prednisone is. That first day on it, I was hallucinating. I began crying. I was emotionally wrought. I also was taking asacol (Mesalamine), an anti-inflammatory used to treat ulcerative colitis, and two more antimicrobials, metronidazole (Flagyl) and fluconazole (Diflucan), for what had become a chronic case of thrush. To ensure I improved, the doctors also put me on ciprofloxacin (Cipro), which we now know is also prescribed for anthrax. Because a side effect of prednisone is heartburn, I had to be put on ranitidine (Zantac).

The worst part of this ordeal was that I wasn’t getting better. I was still using the toilet a dozen to thirty times a day. Most of my stools were now bloody.

The nighttime was worse. You don’t know what sleep deprivation is until you experience chronic nocturnal diarrhea. The trips to the bathroom began at about five every evening and went on all night every 45 minutes to an hour. If I got more than an hour of sleep during the entire night, it was a miracle. The cramps were often so intense that I wanted to pull my hair out or bang my head against the wall. I existed in a state of fatigue and exhaustion.

Not surprisingly, I almost completely lacked iron. In fact, at one point, I went more than an entire year with an almost unheard of serum iron level of 0. My serum levels of the blood protein albumin were so low they indicated my body was suffering from a severe wasting disease (cachexia). This was quite serious on both accounts. Iron is an essential component of hemoglobin, the oxygen-carrying protein in the blood. Iron is normally obtained through food in our diet and by the recycling of iron from old red blood cells. Iron deficiency or anemia means the tissues are receiving inadequate oxygen. Part of the cause was malabsorption syndrome. It was also a symptom of the polypharmacy approach to my condition the doctors had prescribed.

As for my albumin levels, this test helped to determine that not enough protein was being absorbed by my body. Albumin is the protein of the highest concentration in plasma. Albumin transports many small molecules in the blood (for example, bilirubin, calcium, progesterone, and drugs). It is also of prime importance in maintaining the oncotic pressure of the blood (that is, keeping the fluid from leaking out into the tissues). Low albumin levels also often indicate malnutrition. I was definitely malnourished.

Before my illness, I had never been hospitalized. Remember, I was born at home. In fact, I had never even set foot in a hospital until I got sick at age 19.

On a side note, I was vaccinated for the first time at age fifteen. I had the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine. This vaccine had gone from a dead cell to a live cell vaccine sometime around 1987. The live measles vaccine has been suggested by some scientists to be linked to Crohn’s disease (as well as autism and pervasive developmental disorder). In fact, a study by Dr. Andrew Wakefield and colleagues from the Royal Free Hospital, published in the February 28, 1998 issue of The Lancet, suggests there may be a link between the vaccine and Crohn’s disease, as well as other inflammatory bowel conditions—and that even autism is linked with MMR. Perhaps the MMR vaccine was a cause of my illness. I will never know for sure.

As I recall my eating habits in the two years prior to my illness, I can say that I consumed more dairy products than I had previously in my life, including commercial frozen yogurt. I also ate my fair share of sugar. Of course, this seemed totally logical to me, since I believed that fat, not sugar, was the dietary culprit responsible for all manner of illness. Later on, I’m going to explain why I believe both cow’s milk and over-consumption of carbohydrates are major causes of disease, though I do believe the properly prepared dairy products and high-quality carbohydrates that are part of the Maker’s Diet, as described in this book, are invaluable to our health.

But, for now, let me say that most people are not aware that cow’s milk-based dairy products can be contaminated with the Mycobacterium avium subspecies paratuberculosis (MAP) microorganism. Scientific research has been conducted in the United States and Europe that demonstrates that Mycobacterium avium subspecies paratuberculosis causes a chronic and fatal intestinal disease in a wide range of animal species. Mycobacterium avium subspecies paratuberculosis has, on at least one occasion, been suspected of crossing the species barrier to cause disease in a human. In fact, we now know that MAP has been implicated in causing human Crohn’s disease.

But while the MMR vaccine or the consumption of large amounts of dairy may have played a role in the onset of my condition, I truly believe one of the exacerbating influences on my condition was my high carbohydrate, low fat diet. The body’s gastrointestinal tract or gut is a key to optimum health. If your gastrointestinal tract isn’t at optimal health, your overall health is compromised. This is true for everyone.

And the key to gastrointestinal health is our balance of good to pathogenic or bad bacteria. Put simply, bad bacteria in the gut love the types of sugary, high-carbohydrate and refined foods in the modern diet. I had started eating large amounts of these kinds of foods when I went away to college. It was the bad bacteria that got the head start in repopulating the barren property within my gut that was left after my friendly bacteria were decimated by the large doses of antibiotics I had taken.

The growth of yeast, fungi, parasites and disease-causing bacteria within my gut had seriously damaged my gut lining, promoted absorption of internally produced toxins, and impaired absorption of nutrients. With this bacterial imbalance (dysbiosis) also came the breakdown of my body’s immune barrier. You might not know that the gastrointestinal tract is critical to the body’s immune function; yet, the gut is where most of the body’s antibody-producing cells reside. To put it bluntly, my dysbiosis led to a host of debilitating illnesses. During my illness I had all of the following conditions:

Chronic candidiasis (4+) (the absolute worst rating given for candida from the Great Smokies, Metametrix and Doctor’s Data diagnostic laboratories, which test for such conditions). I also had an elevated candida titer, which is a measurement of blood levels of the yeast.

Infestation by Entamoeba histolytica, also known as amebic dysentery.

Cryptosporidiosis, yet another cause of intestinal illness, caused by a protozoa infection in the gastrointestinal tract.

Incipient diabetes with extremely poor circulation (my whole lower leg was purple).

Jaundice, besides other liver and gallbladder problems.

Insomnia. The most I ever slept continuously was an hour and fifteen minutes.

Hair loss. I was nineteen. (Need I say more?)

Endocarditis (heart infection).

Eye inflammation.

Prostate and bladder infections.

Chronic electrolyte imbalance due to dehydration. Electrolytes are salts in the body that conduct electricity and maintain healthy heart and kidney function.

Elevated C-reactive protein, indicative of chronic inflammation and bacterial infection, as well as increased susceptibility to heart attack and stroke risk.

Anemia. Anemia results when too few red blood cells are present in the bloodstream and insufficient oxygen reaches muscle tissues and organs.

Chronic fatigue. I had all the symptoms of this mysterious, debilitating ailment—unceasing fatigue, headaches, weakness, aching in my muscles and joints, and the inability to concentrate.

Arthritis. Arthritis inflames the joints and causes stiffness and pain. The disease in my case was autoimmune in origin—resulting from the immune system mistakenly attacking itself. (Not surprisingly, it is thought that Crohn’s disease might also be autoimmune in origin and, perhaps, my body had begun attacking itself in the joints.)

Leukocytosis. This is caused by an abnormal increase in white blood cells. There are various types of white blood cells that normally appear in the blood. While each has a unique immune function, the take-home message here is that any inflammatory condition, such as Crohn’s or rheumatoid arthritis or an overall bodily state of infection or acute stress, will result in an increased production of white blood cells. This usually entails increased numbers of cells and an increase in the percentage of immature cells.

Malabsorption syndrome. I could not assimilate the nutrients in the food I ate.

Because of my dad’s naturopathy and chiropractic background, I had it in me to try natural methods that I hoped would turn on my body’s healing response. So, not long after I was discharged from the hospital, my father and I made the decision to try to find natural pathways to do just that.

I tried everything. And I do mean everything. My getting well became an obsession for both my dad and me. Together we began a search around the world that took me to 70 health practitioners from seven different countries, including medical doctors, chiropractors, immunologists, acupuncturists, homeopaths, herbalists, nutritionists, and dieticians.

I mentioned my experience with the Specific Carbohydrate Diet. At this point I still believed that it could have helped me if I had stayed on it perfectly with no deviations. So I decided to try it one more time. I became a strict devotee and even consulted daily on the phone with Elaine Gottschall. She had worked with a physician, Elson Haas, to heal her own daughter of ulcerative colitis, a disease very similar to Crohn’s disease. I stayed on the diet with fanatical adherence for three to six months, three different times. I was told it had helped a lot of people. But, unfortunately, it didn’t work for me.

I must have tried every diet that has ever been written about. I consulted with some of the foremost practitioners and diet experts throughout the world. I visited Dr. Robert Atkins of the world famous Atkins Center in Manhattan and Atkins Diet. I met with California-based eicosanoid guru Barry Sears, Ph.D., author of The Zone. I contacted Jeffrey Bland, Ph.D., a highly regarded functional medicine expert and used his detoxification/elimination diet. No luck. Each of these health professionals was extremely knowledgeable and highly educated. They truly wanted to help. I knew they were sincere and that their diets had many solid underpinnings. But something was missing because none of them were able to help. I kept searching.

I estimate that over the course of about two years my father spent $150,000 on natural health treatments. I took dozens of probiotic formulas, as well as enzyme, fiber, anti-candida and antiparasitic formulas. At one point I was taking upwards of six bottles a day of extremely expensive probiotics; one of these products sold for two dollars a capsule and was delivered in a special oil matrix carrier. I remember using two bottles of powdered acidophilus a day, two bottles of bifidus, and two bottles of bulgaricus—mind you, every day. One product alone, the two-dollars-a-capsule oil matrix product, was at a dosage of thirty capsules a day. I wanted to get better. I wanted to end the pain. So I was willing to try anything and everything.

Someone told me my liver was the problem. I tried liver detoxification. I read about live cell therapy. I did cell therapy with injectable sheep cells taken from sheep embryos. The health expert who provided the products told me that in the United Kingdom he had cured some 250 Crohn’s disease patients. The needles were huge. I read that cabbage juice was good for the gut and that it was rich in organic sulfur compounds, so I ingested large amounts of cabbage juice. I used more detoxification formulas. I did retention enemas and colonics and more liver detoxification, including several rounds on Dr. Bland’s detoxification programs. I tried glandulars from every conceivable organ. I used injectable vitamins and minerals. For this regimen, I was instructed to inject myself seven times a day. I used a needle reserved for insulin injections. I had become so emaciated that when I injected myself in the shoulders and the sides of my hip, I could feel the needle hitting bone.

I used injectable thymus gland extract. I consumed wheat grass juice. I tried Chinese herbs, Peruvian herbs, Japanese kampo, olive leaf extract, and shark cartilage. I tried macrobiotics. I used nitrogenated soy. I visited alternative cancer clinics in Mexico and Germany. Often, I returned worse than when I began. Every doctor who treated me characterized my appearance as that of a Nazi concentration camp survivor.

My search for an answer for my Crohn’s disease sent me further and further from home. I traveled to clinics all over the world, oftentimes in a wheel chair. As I mentioned, I went to the offices of 70 health professionals from seven different countries—in Europe, South America, Mexico, and Canada. As my search grew more frantic and desperate, at times I was grasping for straws. I tried two or three treatments that no rational person would consider. I know what it’s like to be desperate, willing to try anything. I tried almost 500 different miracle products. I was the victim—and I choose that word carefully—of many well-meaning network marketing distributors of health products who made outrageous and unfounded claims. So much of what passes for scientifically validated nutritional supplementation is shamelessly promoted through network marketing or multi-level marketing and truly has little, if any, scientific substance. The goal of too many of these companies is to brainwash their network into believing what they have will cure anything and everything—for a price. The companies fill their marketers’ brains with outlandish claims from scientists for hire and know they can get away with it because they are usually operating well below the detection level of federal regulators. There’s undoubtedly some good stuff out there. But there is also a lot of hype and flash that isn’t worth your time or money and may actually be injurious to your health. I know from firsthand experience.

I did different IV treatments. I took something called adrenal cortical extract, or ACE, an extract of bovine adrenal gland that is thought to possess the powers of hydrocortisone and was once used extensively in medicine. Only belatedly did I learn many such batches were contaminated with Mycobacterium abscessus, a rapidly growing bacterium distantly related to the tuberculosis organism.

My dad, reading health magazines and calling colleagues, found all kinds of clinics and therapies for me to try. The number of machines that were hooked up to my body could fill a science fiction novel! I tried various forms of electro-dermal screening (EDS). Let me tell you about EDS. It is a form of computerized information gathering, based on physics. A blunt, noninvasive electric probe is placed at specific points on the patient’s hands, face or feet, corresponding to acupuncture points at the beginning or end of the energy meridians. Minute electrical discharges from these points serve as information signals about the condition of the body’s organs and systems. These signals are useful to the health practitioner in evaluating and developing a treatment plan. It is said that EDS can test for over 20,000 substances and find the underlying causes of illness and an appropriate treatment plan. Among these are: allergens, amino acids, botanicals, cosmetics, digestives, enzymes, essential oils, food additives, foods, geopathic stress, glandulars, hazardous wastes, heavy metals, herbicides, homeopathic remedies, household products, isotopes, miasmas (a vaporous exhalation formerly believed to cause disease), minerals, parasites, elements, pesticides, phenols, and pollutants, to name a few of the substances and causes of illness. Supposedly, according to one doctor who probed me with his EDS machine, my illness was due to electromagnetic fields in my house. I had to sleep in a steel cage that was put around my room. At night, I began to shut off the TV and clocks—all electrical devises. I don’t need to tell you whether this worked. I think you know the answer.

This was all weird science, and it could only have come from the outer reaches of the alternative health field. Another so-called alternative health practitioner who treated me said I was sensitive to the movements of a certain satellite that orbited the Earth every ten years. He said I was one of the rare, unlucky people that the satellite influenced—and that I would have to wait a considerable period of time before the satellite left the Earth’s orbit. Needless to say I was no longer a fan of the space program.

I tried applied kinesiology, a type of chiropractic where different tests for muscle strength and weakness are done on points of your body. I utilized acupuncture and homeopathy.

Taking various medications and supplements was my life. Unless I was visiting a doctor, which I did several times a week, I stayed home. I sat in my chair fantasizing by watching cooking shows. I felt a special bond with Chef Emeril.

I also read—just about every piece of literature and book about health that I could get my hands on. I read over 300 books on health and nutrition during my illness. I continuously puzzled over what products to use and which products could help me.

I didn’t just read health books. I often went to the doctor who wrote the book and consulted in person with that doctor. If I couldn’t get the top person, I wasn’t interested. All the doctors and health practitioners I visited said they could cure me in a short period of time. They had never failed to cure their patients, they said. All of them made promises they couldn’t keep. I’m not saying their claims were totally unfounded. I’m sure they believed in their work, but it turns out that very few of them have clinical validation to verify their claims. But my willingness to believe them and put all my faith in them demonstrates what people who are desperately ill go through.

Because I was so weak, traveling from clinic to clinic, especially by airplane, was an ordeal. I oftentimes got bladder as well as eye infections. At one point, as I sat in my seat waiting for an airplane to take off, I said to myself, If this plane went down, it wouldn’t be that bad. It was a sick thought, but it shows my mentality during the darkest days. I was not suicidal, but I just couldn’t handle the pain anymore. I reasoned that, if I died, at least I could join my Creator.

I hit rock-bottom on a trip to Germany, where I went to take yet another herbal IV treatment. At that time, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) did not permit this supplement to be imported, so I had to go to Germany to take it. The timing for a trip to Germany couldn’t have been worse. I was weaning myself from medications. I had gotten off prednisone, but I experienced a complete adrenal shock. I couldn’t catch my breath. My mother accompanied me to the German clinic. All the way there, a 28-hour trip including planes and trains, one nightmare event after another occurred. I missed a train by a few minutes because my mom and I couldn’t manage to drag our luggage through the station on time. Because we missed the train, we were stuck in the station for six hours. All the time I was running around looking for a bathroom.

The German doctor made an interesting diagnosis. He concluded that my problem rested with my immune system. Certain parts of my immune system were overactive and certain parts were underactive. My mom and dad still had to pay for my medical bills, so staying in Germany to care for me wasn’t an option. My mother, a schoolteacher, had to return to work, and she left me in