The management philosophy I advocate, Lean Thinking [LINK HERE], adheres to a principle popularized by Dr. W. Edwards Deming, “Continuous Improvement.” [LINK HERE] He stated as his fifth point of 14 points for the transformation of management,
“5. Improve constantly and forever the system of production and service, to improve quality and productivity, and thus constantly decrease costs.”
As I have explained in past blogs, the restoration to health strategy (RtH) I envision has a nutritional component that I believe is critical to overcoming the behaviors (positive, neutral and negative) and poor health outcomes for adults with childhood acquired trauma (ACAT). I started thinking this way when I came across research indicating a relationship between vitamin D3 deficiencies and depression, and a linkage between Omega 3 deficiencies and suicide/violence. An article by a psychiatrist has led me on a continuous improvement pathway. Here is what she said about mental illness and psychotropic medication.
“We need to break the populace out of its spell, reject the serotonin meme, and start looking at depression (and anxiety, and bipolar, and schizophrenia, and OCD, etc) for what they are – disparate expressions of a body struggling to adapt to a stressor. We need to identify vulnerabilities, modifiable exposures, and support basic cellular function, detox, and immune response. This is personalized medicine, where these abstract labels become meaningless because they only address the "what" of the symptoms" in an impressionistic, non-specific manner. One as helpful as saying the fever is the disease, and Tylenol the cure. Psychiatry's swan song has been sung…listen for its plaintive wail.” -- Dr. Kelly Brogan [LINK HERE]
When I was younger, I used to relate everything to my experience (anecdotal evidence). I wasn’t trained in the scientific method. My training is as an advocate (lawyer), and I was fairly good at it. It took me quite a while to overcome my training and think like a scientist. I credit my 12 years of Lean Thinking practice for the transformation. That being said, I have had three fairly serious bouts of depression in my life. I did not take any medication; in fact, I did not see a mental health professional at all. I did recover from each episode after a period of a few months. I see now that some studies have found that depression was something we used to heal from naturally. We get the information we value from personal experience, and how we dealt with it (cultural training?), from trusted informants (social relationships?) and popular sources (information technology). And once we have the data, we have to fight our biases and prejudices to accept it. Dr. Brogan is a pioneer, following in the footsteps of Dr. Abram Hoffer.
Dr. Hoffer was the physician who made Bill W., a co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, aware of the benefits of niacinamide in treating the cravings of alcoholism. [LINK HERE] The link is a video featuring Dr. Hoffer discussing his association with Bill W. Dr. Hoffer discusses at around 8:20 minutes the need for doing an examination of the biochemistry of an alcoholic and to change their diet to one that doesn’t make them sick. I feel we need to do the same protocol with ACAT patients. The nutrition component of RtH can help address deficiencies and, if further work is warranted with the patient/client, help the work be successful.
As I wrote in an earlier blog, gut bacteria is seen now as having a link to the brain through the vagus nerve. [LINK HERE]
I am hopeful that, as we move forward to address the childhood acquired trauma epidemic, we can begin to understand how involved good nutrition is with good mental health. I see all of the effort addressing resilience, and wish that we would understand that the outcome of what we believe is resilience might actually be doing something right, like eating properly, encouraging the right gut bacteria, exercising and learning the stress management tools that are already out there.
In the video with Dr. Hoffer, he tells us about how doctors attacked Bill W. and said he didn’t have the credentials to discuss the topic. Yet doctors are not experts in nutrition [LINK HERE], and make many mistakes in their practice [LINK HERE]. Research attributes over 250,000 deaths annually to medical error. And the statistics report only the deaths. The article states that the severe injuries caused by medical error might be 40 times the death rate, or about 10 million errors.
I don’t want to be an alarmist. But I do want to note that some psychiatrists are leaving the heavy duty industrial use of psychotropic medications. And having worked in the medical field as an executive, I know that the stresses of medicine are substantial. And in my own life, I have experienced it through my family. One child went to two dermatologists to discover the source of his hand localized eczema. He was told he had dyshidrotic eczema and prescribed a topical cream. When I started investigating potential causes, I discovered that contact dermatitis could be related to a heavy metal allergy, and looked up the testing available, which is a patch test. We located a highly regarded dermatologist to see if a patch test was warranted. It was. Two allergens were identified—nickel and cobalt. On the last day of the test, lesions were noted on the hand and cultured. The revealed a staph infection. After a course of antibiotics, the symptoms abated, and now the dermatologist is working to eliminate the reasons for the hand eczema. The end result is not a fatal error, but one that prolonged the anxiety and discomfort for a number of years. Oh, and his energy levels have increased as the antibiotics helped the body fight the infection.
Unfortunately, many of the issues seen in a medical facility have ACAT at its root, and they are not addressed. That’s why RtH is designed to be introduced in medical facilities with a team of physicians, behavioral health specialists and nutritionists trained to root out medical, nutritional and behavioral issues in order to start a holistic course of treatment.
We are on the frontline of change, and I hope what I wrote is of some benefit to you as you advocate for that change.
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