Standard Process

My Personal Standard Process Story

My ulcerative colitis diagnosis in 1992 motivated me to find another way to treat it outside the conventional medicine model of Pharma, as deemed by my Dr. to be the one and only way to manage my issue, for life. I changed my nutrition patterns from frozen dinner lean cuisines to eating fresh foods. My doc said nutrition had nothing to do with it. I was further set on the natural medicine path through my cousin Kevin Clark with acupuncture and Chinese herbs. However, my symptoms would fade in and out over the years, though they never returned to what they were in the beginning. You can read more about this and how I came to acupuncture in my bio.

What is not in my bio is my interest in using nutritional support.

I will never forget driving to Orlando and back on a Sunday in the mid 1990s to hear the Father of Functional Medicine, Dr. Jeffrey Bland speak for Metagenics. He said, “ When we take a med, we turn the psychological function of what we’re treating over to the med. That function will rely on the med, and will no longer function naturally on it’s own.”

Why not support the function with nutrition and herbs before intervening with a synthetic med ? Why do we even require food for energy and function ? Because our bodies recognize real food as being of the same source.

Of course there are times when we need to intervene with a med for a chronic issue because a function may not be what it once was for a variety of reasons. In many cases, we can retrain these functions. If you consider that we need to train for practically everything we learn throughout our lives, then why not our metabolism and physiology ? I have seen cases where doctors started taking their patients off some of their meds because their bodies were receiving so many mixed signals, that their physiology became confused and began to break down. Whatever the function may be, it’s does not work isolation. It ’s a link in a chain of functions that gives and receives in relationship to other functions. With this, the med has the potential to disrupt the chain that shows up sooner or later as side affects. We are as strong as our weakest link. The same applies for exogenous hormone replacement.

As I’ve quoted elsewhere;

Before there’s inflammation there’s a degenerative disease in process. Before there’s degenerative disease there’s disordered nutrition. Disorder: Disrupt the systemic functioning of____________in this case; human health & wellbeing.

I digress…back to my Standard Process Story

I went on to open my acupuncture practice and always incorporated nutritional support with lines such as Metagenics who were later bought by Amway. Others such as Apex, Xymogen, Biotics offered local cont Ed. I took every opportunity to attend weekend seminars with outstanding teachers to train on how to use them. However, what I later learned is that these supp lines are primarily synthetic. Their end product is so far from it’s original natural state, that they don’t do much to actually heal the issue for the long term.

I was introduced to Standard Process by Dr. Ronda Nelson, Phd in nutrition science. She taught for Diagnostics, the first saliva testing lab. I sought her counsel because I had seen some of my other teachers for help with my energy and digestive issues. I made little progress and spent a lot of $$. I was exhausted, I had a cold that wouldn’t lift, I was gaining weight and felt more out of control of my health than ever while in my mid 50s. This had never happened before, I’d always been able to resolve it. My Saliva Adrenal Stress Index panel was flat lined, worse than any patient I had tested in my practice. Dr. Ronda told me that in her experience the supps I was using didn’t work and that I needed to use Standard Process. She gave me a protocol. I was consistent because I wanted to feel better. It worked, it took awhile because I was starting from what felt like zero. Nine months later I could honestly say I felt a significant shift towards the better. I lost weight and my energy returned.

That was 12 years ago. I have done lots of training on how to use this line of over 300 products. It’s a language that I have invested much time energy and $$ to learn. My efficacy in helping my patients with them has improved over the years. I still take every opportunity to learn more.

What became clear to me after a few years into my acupuncture practice; if nutrition patterns are insufficient, the acupuncture is less likely to work, improvements take longer or don’t sustain. It’s also important to realize that the older we get, the more attention we have to pay to our nutrition patterns. The earlier we incorporate them into your daily lives, we increase the odds to live healthier longer, better able to adapt and recover from whatever challenges we may meet along our path.

I am very comprehensive in my practice because I want my patients to get better. That is why I continue to educate myself, and feel comfortable treating most anything. Sometimes patients don’t need or want to go further than acupuncture to resolve pain or other issues. I’m good with that. But, if I think you need more, I’m going to tell you. It’s always your choice. I am only here to help.