Is Digestion the Key to Great Health
Healthy Living, Vol.5 No.11

Is Digestion the Key to Great Health? Healthy Living, Vol.5 No.11 We think with our gut. Our gut is our second brain. In Lake Charles, Louisiana, John Moreno, M.D., conducts the successful multi-faceted Lake Charles Advanced Medical Diagnostic Center, with two physician partners and other staff members. It is the largest practice of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) in the state of Louisiana. In fact, Dr. Moreno is the only practitioner of CAM in Louisiana who has been granted hospital privileges. "If a patient has any form of gastrointestinal problem, I start that person off with Primal DefenseTM, because the product first stabilizes and then corrects GI problems," says Dr. Moreno. "It is the one therapeutic item that I make use of routinely. The first improvement I normally see is an increase in the patient's energy level, and that's good because this individual is then able to recognize how well the product is working. Furthermore, within the first few weeks both constipation and diarrhea clear up. They just correct themselves. So the patient observes himself or herself getting better. Such an experience is important for winning a person's confidence." To illustrate the benefits of Primal DefenseTM with homeostatic soil organisms (HSOsTM), a fifty-year-old white woman, Ms. Kate Robarts, the city's most popular church organist, consulted Dr. Moreno because of her constant feeling of fatigue, muscle pain, short term memory difficulties, and a sense that in her words: "I think I'm dying." Although she did not exhibit any overt GI problems, Dr. Moreno is a deep believer that intestinal toxemia (see sidebar) may be the root cause of diverse human disease conditions. Even our mood and memory are affected by intestinal health. He started her on Primal DefenseTM, which corrects intestinal toxemia-perhaps one of the most under appreciated chronic maladies in modern medicine. "Her improvement started with a vast elevation in energy," notes Dr. Moreno. "Songs she had seemingly forgotten on the organ keyboard came back to her mind, and the music she sent forth was reflected as sounds of great joy. Everyone hearing her play knew that Kate Robarts was feeling better." "With her happiness restored, the lady has referred at least three dozen new patients to me," continues Dr. Moreno. "The music alone caused people to recognize that I had something going that was valuable treatment. Kate Robarts' case is the closest I've ever seen that could be described as a miracle response to a remedy I had prescribed." Intestinal Toxemia: An Inescapable Clinical Phenomenon There is no escaping the truism that a healthy gut is a key to well being. It will amaze many readers to learn that the gut has as many nerve endings as the human brain-that it is the gut that produces the body's greatest amounts of the serotonin (a hormone responsible for positive mood, social behavior, and appetite control). In his book The Second Brain (HarperCollins, 1998), Dr. Michael D. Gershon dubs the entire gastrointestinal system as the body's second nervous system. He notes, "The brain is not the only place in the body that's full of neurotransmitters. A hundred million neurotransmitters line the length of the gut, approximately the same number that is found in the brain… The brain in the bowel has got to work right or no one will have the luxury to think at all." In experimental studies, even when all nerves connecting the bowel to the brain and spinal cord were severed, "the law of the intestine" prevailed, and digestion continued. HSOsTM Relieve Intestinal Toxemia The first order of human detoxification must be to correct underlying imbalances between friendly and pathogenic bacteria. Some of the rarest helpers in this regard are no longer part of our diet, due to overuse of agricultural pesticides; household disinfectants; antibiotics; over processing of foods; and our loss of connection with the soil (e.g., fewer children playing on soil and more often on asphalt). Our environment is an important source of beneficial homeostatic soil organisms such as Bacillus subtilis and Bacillus lichenformis-which readily attack and eliminate or reduce populations of pathogenic bacteria. The Primal DefenseTM HSOsTM are a rich source of such soil organisms. More Case Histories Having practiced chiropractic manipulation and nutritional therapy in Indiana, Phyllis Wilson Confer, D.C. (now deceased) had been dispensing HSOsTM for her patients' serious health problems since 1989. She revealed her experiences to Donald Boys, Ph.D., of Indianapolis, former member of the Indiana House of Representatives and columnist for USA Today. At the time of her interview, Dr. Confer told Dr. Boys she had 50 patients taking HSOsTM. "One of my patients had exceedingly elevated blood triglycerides at 305 milligrams per deciliter (mg/dl)," she told Boys. "Six weeks later, after taking HSOs, her triglycerides dropped to a mere 151 mg/dl. I'm excited about the product. There are so many positive experiences associated with it." "For instance, I had another patient with an enlarged prostate (benign prostatic hyperplasia] who was scheduled for surgery [transurethral resection of the prostate gland]," she continued. "Some weeks before his calendar date to undergo the operation, I put this man on those same homeostatic soil organisms as an immune system booster so that he might heal faster. As a result of his taking the food supplement, his prostate gland shrank and the surgery was cancelled. My patient had made no alteration in his usual lifestyle except to take capsules of the soil organisms as a food supplement." Research on HSOsTM Carried Out in Mexico Meanwhile, in 1993, single-blind, placebo-controlled clinical investigations of the HSOsTM contained in Primal DefenseTM were conducted on a Mexican population at the Dispensario Medico, Partido de la Revolucion Democratica (Medical Dispensary of the PRD's Guanajuato State Branch), in Irapuato, Mexico. The first study investigated chronic hypercholesteremia in adult humans to learn if the condition would improve in a total population of 70 subjects. All of the patients exhibited blood cholesterol counts greater than 300 mg/dl. In his conclusion to the study, the Director of Dispensario Medico's Clinical Research Division wrote: "The administration of HSOTM capsules to 35 adult humans of the test group, suffering from chronic hypercholesteremia, appears to have reduced their total cholesterol count by not less than 25 percent whereas, results in a comparable control group, minus two dropouts, administered placebo capsules containing vegetal carbon, are, with one exception, not viable." More than a 25 percent reduction in overall cholesterol without drug therapy represents a huge and significant reduction. Using the same product as the test agent above, the second study investigated 70 subjects to determine whether there was an increase in energy levels and vitality in human adults of both sexes free of any diagnosed pathologies. Of the 35 test patients, 33 reported increased energy levels and a feeling of general well being. Among the placebo group, none of the 33 subjects remaining after two dropped out of the study, reported a positive response. This same Director of the Clinical Research Division noted that the administration of HSOTM capsules to 35 human adults of the test group, free of diagnosed pathologies, revealed that an amazingly high number-33 out of 35-achieved moderately increased red blood cell (RBC) counts and 31 of the 35 experienced increased hemoglobin (HGB) levels. Thirty-three of the 35 receiving HSOsTM in Primal DefenseTM reported remarkable increases in energy levels and vitality; 27 revealed conspicuous increases of mental agility in which they were asked to memorize three seven-digit numbers and were retested ten minutes later. Twenty-seven of the 35 receiving the HSOsTM remembered the numbers, but only three of 33 in the placebo group passed the retention test. None of the placebo subjects experienced increased energy or vitality. Only one out of the 33 human adults taking placebo revealed increases in their red blood cell count and only two increased their hemoglobin. That the gut plays a role in vitalizing blood oxygenation, red blood cell counts, and mental agility and memorization is most remarkable and makes the point with which we began this report: the gut is the body's second brain.