Monthly Archives: November 2018
Doctors are seldom taught the cause of a chronic disease in medical school. Medical students memorize thousands of named diseases, findings, and syndromes; and the co-morbid conditions for each. They learn to observe, document and treat symptoms. Medicine has divided diseases, symptoms, and syndromes into so many differently named diseases, that no one person can know it all, which requires specialization after medical school. Specialization makes the quantity of medical knowledge more manageable, and at the same time impedes discovery…..
Working in the South Valley, Dr. Merchant was able to gain extensive experience in parasitic disease, and observe the long term effects of chronic parasitic disease. He observed patients with parasitic disease had reduced absorption of nutrients, lowered immunity, recurrent infection, and ultimately developed a chronic disease. He recognized, whether parasite or pathogen, the patients experienced an infectious cascade. Acute infection became a chronic infection, and chronic infection evolved into a chronic disease over years or decades. His experience in…..
In the late 1970’s, Dr. Merchant started his medical career at a low income clinic in the South Valley. The patients drank from shallow water wells adjacent to septic tanks, in an area where the water table was very shallow. Dr. Merchant observed frequent gastrointestinal complaints and that the patients were sicker, and sicker younger, than expected. He realized the patients suffered from intestinal parasites, a topic barely discussed in medical school. No one wanted to know or hear the…..
Animals and people get the same chronic diseases. If a particular pathogen attacks in a particular way and causes a chronic disease in animals, it will attack humans in the same way and cause the same disease in humans. Animals are thought to carry as many as 350 varieties of chlamydia, and most of the types are not yet discovered or understood. Different types of chlamydia are associated with specific animals, including both domestic and wild animals. Chlamydia pathogens cause…..
Animals have been domesticated for more than 10,000 years. Close contact between humans and animals allowed animal pathogens to enter the human microbiome. Chlamydia pathogens are immortal intracellular animal pathogens that live inside human cells. Chlamydia pathogens were transmitted from animals-to-humans; and evolved into forms capable of transmission from animal-to-human, from human-to-animal, and from animal-to-animal. Animals can also transmit different types of parasites to humans, and shed parasites on the ground and in water sources. Cats are the only known…..
The fountain of youth is not necessarily something to be found. The fountain of youth is avoiding pathogens that shorten life. It is something to work for with diet, exercise and a normal body weight. It is found in a healthy microbiome that fights off disease, and by appropriately and promptly treating pathogens that shorten life.
The history of medicine has brought many theories to explain disease. Hippocrates was the first to say diseases had a cause and diseases were not sent from God. Then came the punitive theory, that diseases were a punishment for behavior. Then came the miasma theory, that diseases came from the air and environment. Then came the theory of spontaneous generation. Then came the germ theory. Then came the theories of inflammation, abnormal proteins, and genetic abnormalities. All of these theories…..
Medical specialties must collaborate to discover the causes of chronic disease. Chronic diseases may start years or decades before the diagnosis. The original root cause may not be part of the specialty treating a chronic disease, or even within the knowledge set of the specialty treating the chronic disease. Answers can be found by combining specialty knowledge and looking at the patient as a whole, rather than seeing the patient as body parts or as a disease state.
Dr. Barry Marshall proved the spiral curved bacteria H-pylori caused stomach ulcers, by infecting himself with H-pylori, and then treating himself with clarithromycin and bismuth salts to cure himself. Dr. Marshall first published his findings in 1983, and published his results again in 1987. Yet, doctors failed to implement this knowledge into practice, to benefit patients. In 1988, Dr. Marshall said (e)veryone was against me but I knew I was right. The National Enquirer reported on Dr. Marshall’s discovery, on…..
Jack Blount, MD reported in Rheumatoid Diseases: Cured at Last, 1982, how difficult it was to watch the suffering around him, knowing he could help and he was unable to provide the help. We felt the same emotions watching suffering around us from chronic disease, knowing we could help but unable to provide the help. While watching the suffering around us we also observed unprecedented success in Dr. Merchant’s patients with diseases without known causes and thought not treatable. Our…..