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I get a huge number of requests for more information about my philosophy of health and healing; where it came from, and why people believe that my approach is the medicine of the future: hence the amusing title of “The Future Doc.”

My belief in an “integrated” approach to health and healing, that engages the physical, psychological, social, subtle and spiritual aspects of life is not confined to the treatment and personal growth of individuals. It also encompasses ecology, sociology and business practices. In many respects I have followed a similar path to Ken Wilber, but while he has been the theorist par excellence, whose ideas are now being test-driven in a multitude of different applications, I started from personal perception and clinical practice. I talk about some of the origins of my work in Healing, Meaning and Purpose.

It is well-known that I had the privilege of working with the Prince’s Foundation for Integrated Medicine, which is now the Foundation for Integrated Health, and I recently came across this statement by His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales in the magazine Temenos that beautifully summarizes the philosophy that underlies the entire approach.

“As I have grown older I have gradually come to realize that my entire life so far has been motivated by a desire to heal – to heal the dismembered landscape and the poisoned soil; the cruelly shattered townscape, where harmony has been replaced by cacophony; to heal the divisions between intuitive and rational thought, between mind, body and soul, so that the temple of our humanity can once again be lit by a sacred flame; to level the monstrous artificial barrier erected between Tradition and Modernity and, above all, to heal the mortally wounded soul that, alone, can give us warning of the folly of playing God and of believing that knowledge on its own is a substitute for wisdom.”

Most of us realize that the world has become terribly unbalanced, with an extraordinary over-emphasis on the intellect and a tacit assumption that the world is an object to be plundered. In the halls of academia, “heart,” “intuition” and “soul” have often become dirty words, even though it is difficult to see how we can repair our imbalanced world without acknowledging the importance of all of them. This is not to decry the importance of reasoning, but it is an appeal to acknowledge the existence of the soul, to heal our connection with and to listen to her intuitive urgings.

Prince Charles has also said that,

“In medicine, as in architecture, the doctrine of man as a machine has held sway. God was declared dead – I remember it happening. The soul was declared moribund and redundant. Ancient well-tried therapies and diagnostic techniques were simply abandoned and thrown away. The balance of the rational and the intuitive was destroyed.”

I totally agree, and it is this balance that we have to restore.

Our lives depend on it.

Regular readers will know that I sometimes review books at Amazon.

I only review around 10% of the books that I read, and they are ones that I think are consistent with my aims of improving the quality and quantity of our lives. I belong to the “If you cannot say something nice, say nothing” school, so I don’t review a book unless it is special and brings something new to the table. Unless somebody has written something that is just plain wrong!

A few months ago I was at a meeting in New York and met a man named Kurek Ashley. I have met more than my fair share of people from every continent, and it is not often than someone impresses me: Kurek did. Not because he was a larger than life person, but because of his heart and soul. I asked to have a look at his book, which at that stage was not published. It really surprised me, and I read it twice in once weekend while shuffling to and from the West Coast.

The book is published today as How Would Love Respond?: Imagine If You Were Given a Gift So Powerful That You Knew You Had to Share It with the World, and I was so impressed that I helped with the launch.

Here is what I had to say in my review,

“When I was first asked to examine this book several months ago, I was not sure what to expect.

I had been told that Kurek Ashley was a kind of antipodean Tony Robbins. Nothing wrong with that: I have a great deal of respect for Tony’s work. I then heard that Kurek had been in movies, held a record for fire walking and had helped a volleyball team to an Olympic gold medal, as well as propelling forward the lives of countless other people in all walks of life.

So I thought that I knew what I was getting: some sort of high-energy motivator. Then I met the author and discovered something very different. Certainly he is passionate, highly energetic and always positive. But there was another quality to him as well: he had a completely unexpected humility and clarity about what he wants to do for other people. I don’t often meet someone with such evident integrity. He told an amazing story of being involved in the most terrible tragedy in which his best friend was killed. But then the dead friend reappeared to him and asked for his help. I had wondered whether he might have had some kind of breakdown. Instead I found a man who is remarkably level headed, and who has absolutely no reason to tell a story that could have damaged his reputation. Far from having had a breakdown, he had experienced a breakthrough. So for all these reasons I was eager to read this book and discover more of the story and Kurek’s message.

I only review a small number of the books that I read, and I am not given to hyperbole, but Kurek’s book is magnificent! The fact that I read it twice is unusual enough in itself. The book begins with an amazingly candid story of hardship and tragedy, and of the incredible series of experiences that ultimately transformed Kurek into someone very different. He becomes a shining example of what can happen to someone who opens his or her heart and mind. Though he became known as a motivator, as you read the book it becomes clear that he now inspires people to transform themselves in the most extraordinary way. This is a not just another feel good book. It presents a precise map for creating a different kind of life, and one that is in the reach of most of us. I really do believe that it will change many lives.”

I would also suggest that you have a look here.

As part of the celebration of the launch, experts from all over the world who have read and been moved by the book have contributed gifts and bonuses. They are all interesting, and many will likely to of value to anyone reading this. I have offered two eBooks and a set of audios.

This is a bit of blurb that was written about my piece:

A Cutting-edge Course in Integrated Health

First there was “folk” medicine. Then there was “alternative”, then “complementary” and finally “integrative” medicine. What comes next? The answer is Integrated Health.

Robert Stuberg – the well-known expert in personal development – had this to say about Integrated Health, “It’s not every day that a new program comes along that covers new and uncharted territory. If you have enjoyed any of Deepak Chopra’s material, you are going to love this. It’s the next step.”

Richard G. Petty, MD is a world-renowned physician who has spent more than 35 years working with thousands of experts throughout the world who are creating a scientifically credible blend of the best of modern medicine with traditional and natural methods of healing to create a new science of health and well-being.

Professor Richard Petty is a biochemist, endocrinologist, neurologist, psychiatrist and advisor to the Prince of Wales’ Foundation for Integrated Health. He is also a recognized expert on nutrition, acupuncture, homeopathy and herbal medicine who has taught at many major universities on five continents.

During the thirty years that he was in full time clinical practice, people in all walks of life, including royalty, politicians, captains of industry and many famous musicians, dancers and artists – as well as other healthcare professionals – sought his opinion. After watching a popular show on television, a grateful patient recently described Dr. Petty as “The real Dr. House!”

For this launch Dr. Petty is – for the first and only time – making available a very special Course in Integrated Health. It contains a completely revised special deluxe version of his latest sixty thousand-word masterpiece, Healing, Meaning and Purpose. It also includes a full study guide with session summaries, questions and answers. In addition, the Course contains a set of full color illustrations; over eight hundred references, scores of carefully selected websites and over an hour of specially recorded audio files that have been described as “incredibly powerful” and “mind blowing.” The Course is complemented by a collection of five hundred extraordinarily profound and inspirational messages to illustrate and amplify the core material. Dr. Petty has carefully selected them from his personal collection of over 48,000.

Until today, this entire Course has only been available to Professor Petty’s private students. This will be the only time that this whole package will be offered to members of the public. It is hard to calculate its value, but if sold separately it would be priced at $297.

In addition, the first 100 people who take advantage of this very special offer will also be given free access to participate in one of his group coaching sessions. These last for one and a half to two hours. Though most sessions are accompanied by a set of handouts, this time together is a great deal more than an information download: many people describe them as unique and even life-changing experiences. Students normally pay $97 for each session, and many people have waited for more than a year to study with Dr. Petty.

Feel free to have a look and see what you think.

Although textbooks and pharmaceutical company literature often claim that the biological component of depression has been clearly defined, the fact is that we still have no certain knowledge about the molecular and biochemical disturbances in depressive disorders. Furthermore, our theories of how antidepressants are constantly being revised, and it is now thought likely that these drugs have several mechanisms of action.

There is an interesting study from the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Medicine and Maryland Psychiatric Research Center in Baltimore in today’s issue of the Journal of Neuroscience.

They have discovered that a change in the location of a protein in the brain could serve as a biomarker for depression. This is exceptionally important, since it may give us a simple and rapid laboratory test to identify patients with depression and, more importantly, to predict clinical response to specific antidepressants.

Over the last few years this same team of researchers, and others around the globe, have been examining a protein named Gs alpha that activates adenylyl cyclase. Adenylyl cyclase is a link in signal transduction that is in part responsible for the action of neurotransmitters including serotonin. Instead of just looking at the biochemical properties of the protein, they have also been looking at the way that it moves in the cell membrane, which in turn impacts the way in which neurotransmitters act on cells.

In both rats and cultured brain cells, Gs alpha changes its location in response to antidepressants, moving out of lipid “rafts” in the cell membrane, to areas of the membrane that allow more efficient communication among membrane components responsible for the action of neurotransmitters. Both antidepressant and antipsychotic drugs have been shown to concentrate in these lipid rafts.

In this new study, brain samples from depressed people who had committed suicide were compared with controls who had no history of psychiatric disorders. Although the total amount of Gs alpha was the same in the depressed and non-depressed, in people with depression, Gs alpha was stuck in these lipid “rafts.” Therefore the protein is unable to do its job of mediating the action of neurotransmitters. Antidepressants have the opposite effect, moving it to regions of the membrane where it can do its work. The localization of other G proteins was not different.

This is such a robust finding, that identifying the location of Gs alpha in the cell membrane may provide an objective diagnosis of depression and second, whether someone is responding to the chosen antidepressant therapy.

The senior author in this research is Mark Rasenick, who is distinguished university professor of physiology and biophysics and psychiatry at the University of Illinois. He described the lipid “rafts” and the importance of the findings like this:

“These “rafts” are thick, viscous, almost gluey areas, that either facilitate or impede communication between membrane molecules… When Gs alpha is caught in these lipid raft domains, its ability to couple with and activate adenylyl cyclase is markedly reduced. Antidepressants help to move the Gs alpha out of these rafts and facilitate the action of certain neurotransmitters.”

He goes on to say,

“This test could serve to predict the efficacy of antidepressant therapy quickly, within four to five days, sparing patients the agony of waiting a month or more to find out if they are on the correct therapeutic regimen.”

The findings may also help explain two old puzzles:

• Why do antidepressants take so long to work?
• Why do such chemically different compounds produce similar clinical effects?

Further studies to confirm and expand these findings, and to examine the clinical utility of the test.

Placebos can be powerful things, whether they come wrapped in a nicely colored box, or take the form of an enthusiastic clinician.

Dan Ariely, a behavioral economist at Duke University, and author of the excellent new book Predictably Irrational has written a letter in this week’s issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association in which he suggests that pill costing ten cents is not as effective at preventing pain as a $2.50 pill, even when they are identical placebos.

Ariely and a team of collaborators at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology recruited 82 people to participate in a study in which light electric shocks were administered to participants’ wrists to measure their subjective rating of pain. The 82 study subjects were tested before getting the placebo and after. Half the participants were given a brochure describing the pill as a newly approved painkiller that cost $2.50 per dose. The other half was given a brochure describing it as marked down to 10 cents, without saying why.

• In the full-price group, 85 percent of subjects experienced a reduction in pain after taking the placebo.
• In the low-price group, 61 percent said the pain was less.

Although simple and small, the experiment raises some large questions.

As Dr. Ariely says,

“Physicians want to think it’s the medicine and not their enthusiasm about a particular drug that makes a drug more therapeutically effective, but now we really have to worry about the nuances of interaction between patients and physicians.”

The results are consistent with previous data about how people perceive quality and how they anticipate therapeutic effects. What is interesting here is the combination of the price-sensitive consumer expectation with the placebo effect of being told that a pill works.

Would it help if prescription medications offer cues from packaging, rather than coming in indistinguishable brown bottles?

Is there a way of giving people cheaper or generic medications without them thinking they will not work?

As Dr Ariely says,

“At the very least, doctors should be able to use their enthusiasm for a medication as part of the therapy. They have a huge potential to use these quality cues to be more effective.”

Wise words!

“It requires a great deal of faith for a man to be cured by his own placebos.”
–John L. McClenahan (American Physician and Writer, 1935-)

“Your thoughts are like the seeds you plant in your garden. Your beliefs are like the soil in which you plant these seeds.”
–Louise Hay (American Spiritual Teacher, 1927-)

“Change your beliefs and you change your destiny.”
–Sterling Welling Sill (Elder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, 1903-1994)

Diabetes mellitus can be a devastating illness, especially when it comes on suddenly in a child or adolescent. In young people it is usually so-called Type 1, or insulin-dependent diabetes, an autoimmune disease in which the immune system attacks the insulin-producing beta cells in the pancreas. The disease can have a major impact on the whole family, and sometimes people forget the way in which it can affect siblings whose needs often need to be subordinated to the needs of the newly diagnosed young person.

And here is an important point: even when it appears suddenly, the disease process may have been going on for some time before the clinical symptoms appear. By the time that blood glucose levels begin to rise, it usually implies that the damage to the insulin-producing cells in the pancreas has reached a critical point, and the chance of recovery is low. Anything that we can do to prevent the disease from progressing to the point of producing symptoms would be immensely helpful, and that starts with early recognition before the pancreatic damage has reached critical.

Although we now understand a great deal about the interplay of genetic, environmental and immunological factors that may lead to the illness, this knowledge has so far not helped us very much. There has been a tremendous need to try and identify the early stages of the disease, but that goal has been elusive.

In a study published in the Journal of Immunology researchers from the University of Queensland’s Diamantina Institute for Cancer, Immunology and Metabolic Medicine, are developing a simple test that may predict whether a child will develop Type 1 diabetes. They have identified a cellular pathway known as NF-kappa B that is activated in certain blood cells – monocytes and dendritic cells – of people with Type 1 diabetes.

In healthy people monocytes remain quiescent unless they are activated by an infection or other stressor. Then the NF-kappa B pathway gets activated.

In people with Type 1 diabetes things work the other way round: monocyte NF-kappa B was already activated in the blood, and when exposed to infection the pathway shut down. This tells us that there is a problem of immune control that may cause diabetes to develop in children. It is this monocyte abnormality that will hopefully form the basis of a diagnostic test.

This work is assuming more urgency since there are several trials of diabetes vaccines underway, and if successful, it may become possible to identify and intervene in children at risk of Type 1 diabetes before it occurs.

In addition, understanding why the immune system loses control before the disease starts should open up a number of new options for prevention and treatment.

I have talked at some length about the possible link between toxoplasmosis and some forms of mental illness, but there is also another side to toxoplasmosis: the Toxoplasma gondii parasite infects nearly one-third of all humans: more than two billion people worldwide. In the United States alone, congenital toxoplasmosis occurs in an estimated 1 per 5,000 births a year and can cause severe vision loss, brain damage and even death. The human cost is incalculable, and in dollars and cents, it has been estimated that the annual cost of caring for these children may exceed $1 billion.

Toxoplasma gondii is carried by some cats and it is said that an infected cat can excrete up to 20 million oocysts over a period of two weeks, and every single oocyst is infectious. They are tenacious and can remain infectious in water for up to six months and in warm moist soil for a year of more.

Toxoplasma infects humans through three main routes:

• Consumption of undercooked, infected meat
• Ingestion of T. gondii oocysts in food, through accidental contamination from cat litter
• Finally, a newly infected pregnant woman may pass the infection to her fetus, hence the warning that pregnant women should not clean the cat box

Not only is toxoplasmosis the most common parasitic infection in the world, but also it can cause particular problems in people with compromised immune systems, for instance people with cancer, autoimmune disease, AIDS or transplant recipients.

It is even possible for people with normal immune systems to suffer major organ damage from chronic infections. Eye disease leading to loss of sight can be caused both a primary infection and as a result of infection transmitted from mother to child. Damage to other organs has recently caused deaths among otherwise healthy young people during epidemics in Surinam and French Guiana.

The parasites that cause malaria are related to Toxoplasma gondii, and a new drug that will soon enter clinical trials for the treatment of malaria also appears to be 10 times more effective than the current gold-standard treatment of toxoplasmosis, a combination of the drugs pyrimethamine and sulfadiazine.

In the March issue of PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases, a research team based at the University of Chicago Medical Center reports that the drug, known as JPC-2056, is extremely effective against Toxoplasma gondii, both in cell culture and in mice, and apparently without the toxicity associated with the current standard treatment.

The drug works inhibiting the action of the from of the enzyme dihydrofolate reductase (DHFR) that is produced by the family of parasites that includes those that cause toxoplasmosis and malaria, and in cell culture studies, the drug appears actually to kill the parasite, rather than simply preventing its replication. This is very important: not only do most of the current medications have a good many side effects, they have little effect on Toxoplasma during certain phases of its life cycle. It can hunker down in the quiescent cystic phase and wait until the antibiotics are gone.

Rima McLeod, professor of ophthalmology and specialist in infectious diseases at the University of Chicago said,

“JPC-2056 has the potential to replace the standard treatment of pyrimethamine and sulfadiazine. Taken by mouth, is easily absorbed, bioavailable, and relatively nontoxic. In tissue culture and in mice, it was rapidly effective, markedly reducing numbers of parasites within just a few days.”

JPC-2056 is not a new drug. It was developed in the late 1980s by teams led by Wilbur Milhous and Dennis Kyle of the Walter Reed Army Institute for Research and David Jacobus of Jacobus Pharmaceutical Company. The original version was quite toxic, but the researchers found ways to reduce the toxicity and developed an oral version of the drug. Clinical trials using JPC-2056 to treat malaria are scheduled to begin later this year.

I am very happy to report that my friend Jeff Garton’s new book – Career Contentment: Don’t Settle for Anything Less – has just come out.

As you will see from my review, I just love the book, and it is amazing how Jeff’s work and mine fit together.

We are going to be having a panel discussion about the book on www.Business.VoiceAmerica.com on Thursday March 6th at 3PM Eastern, which is noon Pacific time. The discussion is also going to be archived for people in other time zones. I plan to put up a link as soon as it is available.

There is a nice press release here.

I hope that you can listen in: I think that you will get a lot of food for thought!

“Contentment is natural wealth, luxury is artificial poverty.”
-Socrates (Greek Philosopher, 469-388 B.C.E.)

We recently discussed the importance of forgiveness on health. Over the years studies have shown that men tend to be more vengeful than women, presumably because they have been taught from childhood to empathize with others and build relationships. Though there could yet be a biological basis for this difference.

New data from Case Western Reserve University, Florida State University, Arizona State and Hope College published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology suggests that forgiveness does not come naturally for both sexes. Psychologist Julie Juola Exline’s research indicates that men have a harder time forgiving than women do. However that can change if men develop empathy toward an offender by seeing they may also be capable of similar actions. That empathy closes the gender gap and men become less vengeful.

The authors conducted seven forgiveness-related studies (1,2,3,4,5,6,7) between 1998 and 2005 that involved more than1,400 college students: Gender differences have been a robust finding.

The studies used hypothetical situations, actual recalled offenses, individual and group situations and surveys to study the ability to forgive. When men were asked to recall offenses they had committed themselves, they became less vengeful toward people who had offended them. Women started at a lower baseline for vengeance, but thinking about their own transgressions had no effect on levels of unforgiving. When women were asked to recall a similar offense in relation to the other’s offense, women felt guilty and tended to magnify the other’s offense.

The researchers found that people of both genders are more forgiving when they see themselves as capable of committing a similar action; it tends to make the offense seem smaller and increases empathic understanding of the offense. Therefore people similar to the offenders and therefore more forgiving attitudes.

The ability to identify with the offender and forgive also happens in intergroup conflicts. In a study on forgiveness of the 9/11 terrorists Exline comments that,

“When people could envision their own government committing acts similar to those of the terrorists, they were less vengeful. For example, they were less likely to believe that perpetrators should be killed on the spot or given the death penalty, and they were more supportive of negotiations and economic aid.”

It is not difficult to see that prosecution and defense attorneys are going to study this data carefully. It will likely come into play during jury selection processes.

And I am going to think about it the next time that I am called upon to serve on a medical school interview board.

“An eye for an eye will only serve to make the whole world blind.”
–Mahatma Gandhi (Indian Nationalist and World Teacher, 1869-1948)

“And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God, for Christ’s sake, hath forgiven you.”
–The Bible (Ephesians 4:32)

“Everyone and everything I see will lean toward me and bless me. I will recognize in everyone my dearest friend. What could there be to fear in a world that I have forgiven, that has forgiven me?”
–A Course in Miracles (Book of Spiritual Principles Scribed by Dr. Helen Schucman between 1965 and 1975, and First Published in 1976)

For anyone interested in publishing and promoting book, the John Kremer website and blog are essential reading.

John has just published this extraordinary video, and I thought that I would pass it on.