Difficulty Explaining Holistic Health Care

Holistic health Care: Those actions which improve a person’s overall health so as to facilitate rapid healing of health problems, and to create stable good health throughout their life.

Your friend gives you a condescending look and says, “Are you still going to that witch doctor?”

I don’t know why this particular line is so popular, but at least a thousand patients have told me someone asked them this at least once.

Whether it’s the witch doctor line or some other criticism, it seems that patients and practitioners of holistic health care must deal with skepticism and derision, even from well-meaning friends, family members and doctors. It’s not uncommon to have a spouse watch the complete turnaround of their partner’s health, and then express disbelief that their treatment had anything to do with the improvement that “would have happened anyway.”

I often talk to people who are confused about the whole concept of alternative health care… they understand that it must work, but for the life of them they can’t see how this could be. It just won’t square with their concepts of how health care functions.  No drugs? How in the world can that do anything?

So, I want to clarify one thing for you: WHY is there so much confusion about what I do, “holistic health care” compared to “traditional medicine.”

Seven Points: How Alternative or Holistic Health Care Works

1:  To recover from any health condition requires that the body must heal itself. Drugs and surgeries, when successful, make it possible for the body to heal. But no doctor has ever caused cells to regenerate or healing to occur. Doctors are facilitators of healing. Only the body itself can cause healing and health.

2: Your body is a closed system and must make do with only the resources that it has available. The healthier a body is, the more resources it has and the greater its resistance to illness and injury.  The healthier a body is, the less likely that body will be to become ill or injured and the faster that body will recover if it does have a problem.

3: THEREFORE: If a person is ill or injured, logic would dictate that this person should take actions to improve overall health in an effort to facilitate healing. Experience has shown that targeted stress reduction based on accurate testing can improve the body’s ability to heal… dramatically at times.

4: Holistic Health Care definition: Those actions which improve a person’s overall health so as to facilitate rapid healing of health problems, and to create stable good health throughout their life.

5: A person using holistic health care may boost their body’s ability to heal across the board, to the point that their body may heal from “medically un-treatable” and severe or long-term chronic health conditions.

6: If a person truly heals, then the underlying cause of their problem is reduced or eliminated and that person may no longer have to take drugs, even the “rest of your life” drugs. Properly done holistic health care has the potential to help an unhealthy person become healthy.

7: MOST IMPORTANTLY: Holistic health care has the potential to prevent a healthy person from becoming unhealthy, or to prevent a recovered person from getting ill again. It is the secret to avoiding health problems in the first place and to avoid relapses if one has gotten well.

Where the Confusion Comes From

Medical treatment is based on the emergency model: the cause of a problem is the problem itself. A cut that is gushing blood is the cause of the bleeding problem… yes it is! This model works very well for emergencies, and can save your life.

In a non-emergency chronic health problem, the medical model fails. High blood pressure is caused by… high blood pressure? Really? There is no treatable cause creating the high blood pressure?  Apparently not, as the treatment is a drug to lower blood pressure, taken for the rest of the person’s life. The holistic model would improve a person’s overall health until the body no longer had to have high blood pressure. The end result of this treatment would be: 1) No more blood pressure problems. 2) Overall better health: energy, attention, enjoyment of life. 3) Heightened resistance to developing additional health problems.

Your friend or family member making the “witch doctor” comment likely thinks that you believe that the supplements you are taking will replace your blood pressure meds. This is nonsense, but your friend can’t think with the idea of improved health ending health problems. They think that ONLY direct treatment of the problem could possibly be valid, therefore your holistic treatment must be a form of direct symptom treatment. You can see how this would confuse them: to them you are taking a whole-food supplement instead of a drug and expecting the same result.

Hope this helps!

Dr. Billiot

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Marriage vs. Health

Having a health problem sucks a lot already, but the stress your health may put on your marriage can make your life even more difficult.

Your symptoms can be tough on your spouse: You’re tired. You don’t sleep well. Your lab shows your adrenals are completely fatigued, so you can barely stay awake in the afternoons– and “definitely don’t talk to me early in the mornings.” Your hormones make you irritable, moody and you have no patience at all. You may cry at nothing, then just get angry and take someone’s head off. You may have absolutely no sex drive, and you may feel completely unattractive. Pain is tough on you, and your spouse may suffer as well, just knowing you’re hurting.

What to Do?

Here are a few ideas how to help with this situation as told to us repeatedly by thousands of patients over two decades:

  • Don’t make decisions for your spouse. YOU might not want to live with you, given all your problems, but he may consider it an honor to be your husband and just want to help you as much as he can. Advice from thousands of patients who have been there: LET HIM (and DON’T feel guilty, after all he’s doing what he wants to do).
  • Your health problem is a stress on your marriage, as are many other things that can happen in life. One solution: Stop worrying about the sources of stress and instead build your marriage to be strong enough to withstand them all.
    Here is an (apparently) little-known fact about marriages: They only continue to exist, because they are constantly-created things. You can buy a new dining room table, and expect it to be around for many years without having to do anything to keep it from going away. But once you get married, only constant creation of the marriage will keep it there. Heard the term “taken for granted”? Yep, that’s the one thing a marriage can’t withstand. It might not end in divorce, but the marriage will disappear.
    Just the recognition of this one fact can be the magic that will prevent the deterioration of your marriage and begin to make it stronger.
  • OK, so you agree that it makes sense to constantly create your marriage… so what should you do? One of the single most important things is recognizing your spouse’s life. For most people, nothing is truly complete until it’s recognized by someone else. If you fix a great meal but no one comments that they liked it… you may feel sad, and aren’t likely to give yourself the credit for making a great dinner. If you tell your spouse about your day and they just grunt, it’s almost like you aren’t really there!
    Try following these guidelines for a day and see if your marriage doesn’t change almost overnight: 

    • Acknowledge your spouse’s statements and comments by replying in a way that makes sure they know you heard and understood them while recognizing anything positive they are saying, and giving them credit for it. “Johnny got an A on his math today.”  “That’s great! You’ve really been helping him with his homework.” or “I had a bad fatigue day today, just exhausted all day.”  “Wow, I’m sorry. I know you did your job well anyway.”
    • Just hear and understand what they say, don’t try to solve their problems. Truly, most people just want to have someone listen to them and understand what they’ve said. Swear off any urge to jump in and try to solve the problem that your spouse only wants you to listen to. This can be difficult, but if you’ll just give it an experimental try and observe how much happier everyone is, you’ll stop the problem-solving.
    • Finally, just let your spouse be themselves. Find ways to compliment and acknowledge them just for being them, recognize those unique attributes that make your spouse who they are. After all, isn’t that why you got married?

Make Health Improvement a Family Project

“You can only be a victim of those things you can’t control.” –Dr. Billiot

I hate to quote myself, but this summarizes my philosophy of effective health care. My point here is to un-victimize your family by allowing them to get involved in your health improvement program. If they help, they are to some degree in control of this problem that affects them all so much. You can’t really protect them by trying to hide your problems, so why not let them help?

  • Bring them up to speed. Spouses can read your consultation report, which lists all your symptoms, stressed organs and allergies. Kids can be told a short kid-friendly version of “how we are all going to help mommy get healthier so she feels better.” Believe me, they KNOW you don’t feel good.
  • Explain how you are going to get better. Spouses can read the short EvecticsSM booklet. Kids don’t need theory, just tell them what you’re doing: supplements, diet, visits to the clinic.
  • Field Trip! If you haven’t already, bring everyone to one of your visits. Let us know beforehand so we can be prepared to explain what you’re doing and why.
  • Put your family on your diet. It’s easier to eat healthy if you’re not the only one. Your kids may gripe, but they can feel that their “dessert sacrifice” is to help mommy feel better. It’s all about making them involved and so giving them control.
  • Put them in the loop. When you write Success Stories, bring home a copy. If they are helping you, this is THEIR success as well as yours. Get us to give you a copy of your reevaluation interview and share your progress with your family. They’ll know where your progress is and what you still need to work on.

Please let me know your own experiences involving your family in your health improvement. I am always learning more to pass on to future patients.

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Heart Disease Prevention is Bogus

Shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted

This old adage means that you are doing something about a problem after the problem has already occurred.

I think it perfectly describes our current efforts at preventing heart disease.

How successfully are we preventing a disease that 48.5% of the population is suffering from? (2016 numbers). I’d say we are utterly failing.

The reason for this failure is that all the preventative measures are being taken to reduce the problem AFTER it’s already happened.

Example:

Here’s an invented scenario that’s similar to heart disease:

Disease:” Floor Rot.

Symptoms: Floor collapses under people’s feet causing injury and death.

Actual Cause: The roof leaks, and the constant water on the floor rots the floorboards.

“Official” Cause: “Floorboard Anemia” or weakness in the floor.

Floorboard Anemia Prevention:

(Suggestions are from the Floorboard Anemia Association). ?

  • Regular mopping of your floors to reduce water buildup.
  • Spreading around the medication “Sawdust” every day to sop up additional water.
  • Open Floorboard Surgery to replace rotting floorboards.
  • Dieting to lose weight so you’re less likely to break through the floor.

If “Floorboard Anemia” was injuring or killing 48.5% of the population and people were paying over $500 Billion annually to treat it, can you see how outrageous it might seem to make a statement like the title of this article? “Floorboard Anemia Prevention is Bogus?”

Can you see how radical it might sound to suggest fixing the roof if every pharmacy in the country was selling $500 a year in “Sawdust” medications to half the population? How about if every hospital in the country depended on the income from “Open Floorboard Surgery?”

“Fixing the Roof” of Cardiovascular Disease

Atherosclerosis is the most common cause of cardiovascular disease. (Link is to Mayo Clinic website)

Atherosclerosis is the buildup of fatty plaques in the arteries. Atherosclerosis is an inflammatory disease.

The “leaky roof” in heart disease is CHRONIC INFLAMMATION. If this leaky roof was repaired, heart disease from other sources would still exist, but as a minor health condition, not the #1 cause of death that it is today.

All About Inflammation

Inflammation is the response of the immune system to cellular damage and physical stress. It’s the process of repairing damage to your body. So, normal inflammation is a very good thing and is necessary to your continued health.

Health problems such as heart disease come from CHRONIC inflammation. Chronic just means that it doesn’t go away or keeps coming back.

Chronic inflammation comes from chronic sources of stress. When your body is constantly being damaged and can’t repair itself, the immune system will always be creating inflammation.

Some sources of chronic stress are obvious and can possibly be avoided:

  • Smoking
  • Obesity
  • Excessive alcohol or other drugs
  • Long-term exposure to irritants such as polluted air or industrial chemicals
  • Living under constant emotional stress

There are functional causes of chronic stress that lead to chronic inflammation as well:

  • Autoimmune diseases
  • Infections or injuries that never heal

A very common source of chronic inflammation that I see at the clinic is from damage to the lining of the intestines. (Link is to Harvard Medical School website). In an unhealthy intestine, the lining can weaken and allow toxins and bacteria to get into the bloodstream, causing chronic inflammation. In my 25 years of experience working with severe chronic health conditions, I have seen this digestive problem expand from being an occasional issue to one that affects most of my patients in one way or another.

Solutions to Chronic Inflammation

Chronic inflammation is the “leaky roof” of heart disease, but is also implicated in cancer, arthritis, diabetes, asthma and neurodegenerative diseases (such as Alzheimer’s).

Common symptoms that you might experience include fatigue, mouth sores, rashes, IBS symptoms, abdominal pain and chest pain. If you have one or more of these and they never go away, it’s likely caused by chronic inflammation.

I have developed effective solutions that have been proven with thousands of inflamed patients over more than two decades.

All these solutions are typically done together simultaneously:

First: Test to confirm the inflammation using nervous system testing and blood testing. This also sets a baseline, so I know how much improvement has occurred with objective measures.

Second: Handle obvious diet-related causes. I have worked out very successful ways of doing this that don’t cause stress, cravings or feeling deprived.

Third: Use clinical nutrition to give the body exactly what it tests for in the way of replacement parts and supplies so that it can de-stress and reduce its own inflammatory responses.

Fourth: Use very specific acupressure therapies to reduce stress (particularly if the person has inflammatory gut problems) and therefore reduce inflammation.

How Could You Assist Your Body to Heal?

Here is a free booklet you can read online in 30 minutes that will explain how your body can be assisted to heal itself successfully from many “permanent” medical conditions such as chronic inflammation.

Are You Fed Up with Medicine and Want Help?

I’d be happy to get you started on improving your health. If you’ll fill out a health assessment on this website, I’ll go over the clues with you on a free phone consult (limited to greater Atlanta area). This way you can get started doing something about your health problems quickly.

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