HIN

I went to an Arthritis Foundation breakfast today, at the behest of my buddy Dr. Fred. He very purposefully seated me next to a friend, a rheumatologist who specializes in Lyme disease. We're both into alternative medicine was Fred's thinking and would enjoy talking to each other. Well, Fred as usual was very clever and I had a great time talking to his friend. The friend was aware of CR and was taking resveratrol. He has an herbalist on his staff and talked about how she has taught him how different "wellness medicine" is from conventional medicine. I taught him a tiny bit about CR and he shared his theories on rheumatoid arthritis - which he believes is an infectious condition caused by something like the Lyme disease bacterium. He was very downtrodden about the fact that the medical establishment is so invested in the auto-immune hypothesis for RA. It reminded me of Aubrey and the gerontologists. In fact, there are lots of Aubreys out there in the medical world who have a worthy alternative hypothesis about medicine - especially for conditions where a cure is very elusive (in Aubrey's case elusive is an understatement) - who cannot get funding from the very conservative research community.

We also discussed the fact that you cannot really do double blind controlled studies on wellness. Wellness is about maintaining a balanced and highly functioning body. It's not about taking a sick person and giving them a vitamin to see if they get well, which seems to be the way most studies are conducted on vitamins. You can't do a wellness placebo. There will be no "gold standard". Wellness research is going to have to be about population studies and actually understanding the details of how the human body works through tools like microarray testing. Doctors and researchers that continue to devalue wellness because there is no "valid" research just don't get it.

It would be great to create a "HIN" - the opposite of the NIH - that funded research by people who have ideas that are not aligned with conventional medical thinking - like the one on an infectious basis for rheumatoid arthritis. This is not at all like NCCAM - National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine - a part of NIH that funds studies on complementary and alternative medicine. I'm talking about conventional medicine that is unorthodox. Things like ulcers being caused by h. pylori. For researchers who are thinking out of the box.

And, it would need to not be about cashing in on the results, because my contention is that this type of research is often not funded because there would be no money in the result. There's a big business in treating chronic RA victims who will need a lifetime of care. If it was infectious - and curable - why - it would cease to be a chronic condition. Drug companies don't really like to research antibiotics. They are one time events and don't make the big bucks like medications for chronic conditions. I really think that many of our most mysterious and incurable conditions are caused by infection or nutritional deficiencies. Or nutritional insults - like hydrogenated fats.

That reminds me of a fascinating theory I heard today from a fellow gardener. He said that there is supposedly bacteria in dirt that causes your body to release serotonin. Digging around in the dirt with your hands is a very effective way to make contact with it. You know, I really think this may be true! I have always found weeding to be very soothing and pleasurable. And I always love planting! I never wear gloves even though it wrecks my fingernails and takes me days to get out all the dirt. I keep fantasizing about how I will build my herb garden below my deck in Austin. It's my number one home improvement. I must have dirt to play in. I always thought it was the satisfaction that comes from seeing the new little plants or the nicely weeded garden. But, it could be a real physical thing. As far-fetched as this theory sounds, it would be survival enhancing to have a built in mechanism that makes us like to dig plants and plant things.