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7 Keys to UltraWellness

Introduction

Discovering the Origin of Disease and the Source of Health...
or How Your Body Really Works and How to Discover Why You are Sick and
How You Can Achieve UltraWellness

January 2007
Mark Hyman, MD

“How extremely stupid not to have thought of that.”
T.H. Huxley's reaction to the reading of The Origin of Species

“I didn’t know how bad I was feeling until I started feeling better.”

That is what my patients tell me every day. They go from being ill, or just well to an experience of UltraWellness.

Most people don’t know how poorly they feel until they feel better. In fact most of us don’t recognize that annoying symptoms of fatigue, digestive problems, aches and pains, allergies, headaches, and more are simply early clues to impending disease that will disable and kill us.

Do you know that most heart disease starts in the womb, that you can detect brain changes in teenagers that can predict the development of Alzheimer’s, that blood tests in children can predict who will develop diabetes later in life, and that most cancers take over 30 years to grow to the size they can be detected? How can we address problems that we don’t even know we have?

One in three Americans has some type of chronic disease – and most of the rest of us are headed toward one. Most of us don’t feel as well as should or could if understood how to care for and feed our bodies the way they were designed.

Conventional medicine helps at the very end stage of disease. If you are very sick, have an emergency, break a bone or have a raging infection, then, yes, conventional acute care medicine is the right solution. As a former emergency room doctor and the husband of an orthopedic surgeon, I am glad we have this care when we need it.

But when I worked in the emergency room, I felt I was saving people just before (or sometimes after) they were washed DOWNSTREAM over the waterfall to their death. I began to ask what led them to this point –what happened UPSTREAM in the process of disease and illness. What were the real causes of disease? If I could answer that question, then I thought, I might be able to help prevent disease in the first place.

The early influences on my thinking - from Asian philosophy, to nutritional biochemistry, to the study of ecology and ecosystems – all helped me form a new different view of health and disease.

I am one doctor who is part of a movement that is on the leading edge of an entire shift in our scientific model of disease. It is called systems medicine or functional medicine.

It provides a way of understanding all the influences on our biology that are at the root of illness – and how our lifestyle and environment interact with our genes to create imbalance or balance that are the real determinants of disease or health.

This medical view does not reduce symptoms and diseases to their component parts and traditional specialties, but studies the entire ecology of the body and its environment.

I have practiced this model for over 12 years and seen miracle after miracle, day after day. People don’t only get relief from symptoms, they get truly well. That is why I have called this approach to health UltraWellness.

It is the answer to the crisis we find ourselves in - an increasing epidemic of chronic disease and an impending economic collapse as more of our resources are put toward caring for the chronically ill.

Today medicine is in a serious predicament. The way we understand health and disease no longer reflects biological reality, or the biological laws of nature. We need to understand that diseases are not fixed things that you catch or just show up out of context, but are related to the environment, your diet, your genes and lifestyle.

We need to understand that our body is an ecosystem and is part of a larger ecosystem – and understanding how all the parts relate and what disturbs our ecological balance is more important than naming the disease, then blaming the name for the problem and thinking a drug will fix the disease.

For example, depression does not cause depression and doesn’t just show up without cause or reason, but is related to a web of forces that we can influence and affect.

We are good at naming diseases, then blaming the name for the problem, then finding a drug that matches the name. I call this the “naming and blaming” game.

What systems medicine, functional medicine and UltraWellness is about is “thinking and linking” – seeing all the patterns and relationships that make sense of your whole story – your lifestyle, stresses, genes, environment and how they interact with your biology to create imbalances that lead to disease.

Our current way of thinking is outdated, wrong and will not help us address our declining health as individuals or a society.

That’s why we are making no progress and even backsliding when it comes to addressing chronic disease.

Let’s look at the data.

Chronic diseases affect 125 million Americans. That means in the average family of three, at least one person has a chronic disease. We are seeing an epidemic of autoimmune (24 million Americans), allergic (50 million Americans), and asthmatic (30 million Americans) diseases in this country. In addition, twenty percent of Americans (or about 60 million people) have irritable bowel syndrome.

In fact nearly every modern disease—from autoimmune diseases, to allergic diseases, to digestive problems, to heart disease, cancer, obesity, diabetes, and dementia—is increasing. One in 3 children born today will have type 2 diabetes. One in two people over 85 will develop dementia.

These problems are increasing in the population at a dramatic rate. And they affect everyone, either personally or through the suffering of someone close to them.

Every day in my office, I see patients who feel alive again after expecting to suffer their whole life from chronic problems- bad digestion, headaches, fatigue, arthritis, allergies, hormonal problems, obesity, heart disease, depression and more.

And within a few months (or even weeks), their lives open up again. This week alone, I spoke to a 27-year-old woman could not lose weight and was constantly tired, who finally effortlessly lost 20 pounds by getting treatment for her mercury toxicity.

And there was the 78 year old woman who felt she was on her way out with fatigue and memory loss and joint pains and bad digestion, who now works out every day, is full of energy. She has a whole new life by simply treating her nutritional deficiencies and helping her get back in balance.

Or the 30-year-old woman with PMS, migraines, stomachaches, acne and polycystic ovarian syndrome who is completely better after getting her system back in balance.

Or the 47-year-old woman with chronic sinus infections and fatigue who hasn’t had a problem all winter. And that was accomplished in just part of one day!

The reality is that most of us don’t know how bad we feel until we start feeling better. We accept chronic symptoms as a necessary part of life. That is just not necessary. We have solutions today that you are not hearing about.

What I have learned in the last 20 years of seeing patients, studying the scientific literature, combining my knowledge and observations with other doctors who are also practicing systems and functional medicine, and applying it in my practice, I am committed to sharing with you because it works.

It is not perfect, nor can it address 100% of health problems 100% of the time, but it is a better mousetrap!

This is the promise of UltraWellness – the opportunity to cure or dramatically improve chronic problems poorly addressed by conventional medicine, and to discover vital, vibrant good health at any age.

With my 7 Keys to UltraWellness educational lessons, I will cover each of the 7 fundamental new principles or concepts or systems that help me navigate to the underlying causes of disease and that will help you achieve UltraWellness.

These concepts are my new roadmap in the landscape of health and disease and I will share them with you so you can take advantage of them today. This is the future of medicine now and will help you transform your health, and contribute to the transformation of our sick care system to a health care system!

• In the first article, I will explain how everything in our environment interacts with our genes to create health or disease – our diet, nutritional status, air, water, microorganisms, exercise, trauma, psychosocial factors, environmental toxins and radiation.
• In the second article, I will explain how most of us have smoldering hidden inflammation that will kill you until you learn how to control it.
• In the third article, I will show you how your hormones and brain chemistry influence nearly every aspect of your health, why they get out of balance and how to get them back in balance.
• In the fourth article, I will review how your digestive system is at the core of your health, why it breaks down and how to repair it.
• In the fifth article, I will explain how toxins and problems with our detoxification or waste management systems lead to chronic health problems and how to optimize your detoxification system.
• In the sixth article, you will learn the importance of energy – how we make it, why we lose it and how to create more of it!
• And finally in the seventh article, we will focus on how the mind interacts with the body and the body interacts with the mind to influence and affect every other system in the body.

Remember – these are really not all separate systems. They are part of a web of function and physiology that is at the root of the way your feel, health and disease.

This revolutionary new way of thinking about health and disease will guide your toward something many of you have given up on experiencing – UltraWellness.

Once you achieve UltraWellness, you’ll never want to go back.

I encourage you to read all of these important articles and start your road to UltraWellness immediately.

To your good health,

Mark Hyman M.D.

Naturally, we would love to have you visit us at our Lennox, MA. UltraWellness Center if you would like to experience the healing power of UltraWellness first hand. If you are interested in information on becoming a patient please (Click here).