Science-Based vs. Trial-and-Error Nutrition

It can now be demonstrated by objective clinical indicators that there is no patient whose health problem does not have a nutritional component. This is because there is no health problem that does not involve some form of metabolic imbalance. In other words, regardless of the ultimate cause of a patient’s suffering, pain or disease, once the condition has become symptomatic, the symptoms expressed will respond to some degree to nutritional therapeutic intervention, if that intervention is able to intrude upon the metabolic imbalances associated with that patient’s symptoms. This focus on metabolic balancing makes nutrition a clinical tool with universal application and almost unlimited potential.

BIOLOGICAL INDIVIDUALITY

It has often been said that no two people are alike. Even the most casual look at the people around you reveals a diversity of sizes, shapes, personalities and levels of health. You are seeing merely the outward manifestations of internal chemical differences. In other words, the physical, mental and emotional qualities expressed by people are a reflection of their individual body chemistries; and different body chemistries mean different nutrition requirements to maintain metabolic balance and to enable that individual to fully express his innate potential.

For example, someone may eat a breakfast of sausage, eggs and home fries and feel great, running in high gear for hours. That same breakfast might cause another individual to feel like crawling back into bed, and might have someone else running for the antacids.

Your nutritional needs are likely to be quite different than many people you know. Furthermore, your nutritional needs may be different today than they were six months ago or will be six months hence.

Understanding this KEY CONCEPT of biological individuality gives you a new way to look at nutrition. Any time you read an article or hear a lecture promoting “the ideal diet” whether it is a high protein diet, a complex carbohydrate diet, a vegetarian diet, or whatever you can justifiably reject or challenge every word of it. The key concept of biological individuality is being ignored. It is high time all of us in the field of clinical nutrition give up the search for this magical, mystical “ideal diet”. Their simply is no such thing.

Furthermore, anytime you encounter an article or lecture promoting a particular food as a “health food”, certain to work wonders for the health and well-being of every man, woman and child, ignore and/or research it as well. Or, if a particular vitamin or mineral is being touted as good for this or that disease or condition, ignore it. Any two people are likely to have a dramatically different reaction to a food, or to a nutritional supplement. The sad truth is, in both the lay and the professional literature, biological individuality is rarely considered. All we are offered is vitamin B6 to cure this zinc to cure that, and so on. You must verify the concept of biological individuality. It is seen that no two people, even if they present the same disease or condition, are alike.

SCIENTIFIC ANALYSIS VS. EMPIRICISM

That does that word, “empiricism” mean to you? You can think of empiricism as a fancy word for trial and error; trial and error based upon educated guesses. While empirical clinical techniques may be scientifically derived, they are not often scientifically applied. To illustrate; Vitamin C has been demonstrated to have a statistically significant effect in benefiting the common cold. This information about vitamin C has been derived based on scientific studies. However, there are no objective scientific indicators by which a clinician can apply this information about Vitamin C to patients who have a common cold.

Prescribing vitamin C for a patient with a cold is really done on a trial and error and/or an educated guess basis. As you will learn there are several metabolic imbalances that are indeed helped measurably by therapeutic doses of Vitamin C. If a hypothetical patient with the common cold has succumbed to this cold because of a lowered resistance associated with one of those biochemical imbalances, the vitamin C supplementation will always help this patient to fight off the cold. There are, however, at least 3 or 4 metabolic imbalances that are actually exacerbated by the therapeutic doses of Vitamin C. Suppose now that your hypothetical cold patient is suffering a decrease in immune resistance associated with one of these metabolic imbalances. Will prescribing Vitamin C help this patient? No. Quite the contrary, it will, in throwing this patient’s body chemistry further off balance, actually prolong the battle to overcome the cold symptoms.

This failure to recognize biological individuality is the fatal flaw of most scientific studies references by your typical clinical nutritionist. The statistically significant group whose condition benefits from the nutrient under study must have some quality which distinguishes it from the unresponsive group. Using a scientific analysis to determine a patient’s needs is the KEY CONCEPT distinguishing scientific analysis from empirical health care.

When clinicians employ empirical methods they are directed in their therapeutic efforts only by the subjective response of the patient. When you employ scientific analysis methods you are directed in your therapeutic efforts by objectively measured changes in your patient’s body chemistry.

PATIENT-SPECIFIC VS. DISEASE-SPECIFIC

The perfect example of empirical methods is the practice of allopathic (traditional) medicine, medicine being essentially a disease-specific approach to patient care. In other words, it is known empirically that a specific disease or condition has a certain probability of responding to a particular therapy. The therapy is implemented and the patient’s subjective response is awaited. The empirical trial may be a success, or may prove to be in error, in which case a second clinical trial is prescribed, and so on.

This empirical, disease-specific approach is the road taken by virtually all of today’s researchers in clinical nutrition. The goal apparently is to match each of the thousands of names diseases and conditions with a nutritional cure or nutritional protocol. There is a much betterapproach. Whatever merits empiricism has in the practice of medicine, it is neither the simplest not the most efficacious way to practice clinical nutrition. The third of our KEY CONCEPTS, patient-specific vs. disease-specific, truly sets the scientific analysis apart from the standard approach to clinical nutrition. Scientific analysis offers a viable alternative to disease-specific empiricism, namely a patient-specific scientific analysis.

This patient-specific approach will allow you to do with scientific analysis what could not be achieved with other forms of clinical nutrition. In just a few minutes you can perform and evaluate over 50 different tests on a patient and thus determine exactly what foods make that patient stronger and what foods make him susceptible to disease. You will also know exactly which nutrition supplements will make him healthy and which will actually make him weaker. Scientific Analysis testing is the one scientific way to determine the biological individuality of each of your patients.

Scientific Analysis testing is a holistic clinical nutrition system. Most other nutrition systems that claim to be natural and holistic are merely trying to treat diseases with vitamins and minerals, using them as medicines. The true meaning of the word holistic is treating the person, not treating his disease-and that is what Scientific Analysis testing achieves.

COMPREHENSIVE AND OBJECTIVE TESTING

If a patient-specific, scientific analysis is our goal, how do we achieve it? Clearly, prescription of a patient-specific nutrition regimen must be dependent upon a comprehensive evaluation of that patient. Furthermore, the patient evaluation must be achieved via objective testing procedures.

Scientific Analysis offers an analytical system by which to achieve a comprehensive patient evaluation. That system is based upon objective clinical data. The data is derived from 2 sources:
a. Tests of vital signs and neuro-endocrine reflexes.
b. Tests of urine and saliva chemistries

Much clinical experience was accumulated demonstrating the clinical extremes found for each of these different urine and saliva chemistries and each of the different vital signs and neuro-endocrine reflexes. It became apparent that groups or patterns of abnormal test results would tend to occur simultaneously. For example, it most often occurred that high urine PH was accompanied by low urine specific gravity. Before long these simultaneously occurring patterns of abnormal test results could be labeled. In other words, one pattern of abnormalities corresponded to an acid condition, another pattern related to cardio renal disease, and so on. After years of clinical testing, patterns of aberrant test results associated with several fundamental metabolic control systems were defined.
These fundamental control systems are ubiquitous, playing a role in virtually every state of health or disease. Thus, a comprehensive, objective means of evaluating functional metabolic control in each patient has been achieved.

CONCLUSION:

Billions of dollars are spent in America yearly by patients trying to achieve optimum health. Countless thousands of articles and books have been written to address diseases and health challenges. It must be emphasized that No two people on this planet have the same identical needs for the care or treatment of a disease and one must realize that is someone needs nutritional support it must be correlated with the specific biological individuality of that patient which is in constant change on a minute by minute basis. That is why one should seek out the health care provider qualified to properly evaluate the patients ever changing needs for the treatment of disease.