It is generally agreed that a majority of all chronic illness, including cancer, is caused by the interplay between our genes and various environmental factors (the impact of smoking on lung and vascular disease is an obvious example).  Twenty-First Century Medicine shows us that our personal state of health is a balancing act between the genes our parents gave us and what we eat, drink and breathe, and where and how we live. Our genes might protect us against certain factors (we all know people who smoke like chimneys and live to be 90), or make us vulnerable to things other people can tolerate (e.g., chemical sensitivity). But whether our genes are strong or weak, they may lead to health in a healthy situation and life style, or to illness in an unhealthy one. And if they lead us to illness, that can often be reversed. Our genes seem to be biological tendencies which are influenced toward health or disease by what we consume and do.

 

Almost any disease in the textbook of medicine is potentially an environmental illness. Most people who seek an environmental doctor have already failed conventional medicine. This includes people with conditions like chronic fatigue, chemical sensitivity and various "psychosomatic" conditions, but also includes more common diagnoses, like high blood pressure, vasculitis and other cardiovascular conditions, allergy, asthma and immune conditions, endocrine disorders including diabetes, thyroid, adrenal and other hormonal disorders, neurological and behavioral problems including autism, and a wide range of gastrointestinal conditions, including chronic hepatitis and inflammatory bowel disease.

 

Not all of these conditions can be cured, but many of them can be made better through finding causative factors (toxins, heavy metals, etc) and treating them physiologically and biochemically.

 

More and more diseases seem to fit on a wheel, so to speak, with inflammation and oxidative injury at the center and specific diagnoses on the rim. Increasingly, it seems that the diagnosis you end up with has more to do with your native tendencies than with the specific cause. This works both ways: two people can be exposed to the same toxin but develop totally different diseases; two people can get exactly the same symptoms from two radically different causes. This is why we prefer to treat the cause, rather than just the symptoms. Often times, with effective attention to the cause, we can eliminate or greatly improve the symptoms, even cure them altogether. And that's the ultimate goal: superb health without pills.