Dr. Crippen is the author of this book and also a practicing chiropractor. His journey into a cure for his migraines led to his expertise on holistic health. This form of medicine treats the body as a whole, instead of just throwing medications at symptoms and hoping they go away.

Anyone who has had a health problem that doctors were unable to help you with can strongly relate to Dr. Crippen’s story that he tells in this book, of searching for answers and being unable to find them in a broken system.

I can strongly relate to this. When my health fell apart in 2014-2016, I had all sorts of crazy symptoms. Thankfully, I had one provider who thought outside of the box. If it weren’t for this one cardiologist I had, I would have never figured out that it was one part of my diet causing all of my problems. (In my case, it was gluten, and you read more about that here.)

So without further ado, here is Dr. Crippen. He is sharing with us a snippet directly from from his new book, Timeless Youth.

***Disclaimer: If you purchase through Amazon links on my site, I do collect advertising fees.***

“Most of the fundamental ideas of science are essentially simple, and may, as a rule, be expressed in a language comprehensible to everyone.”

ALBERT EINSTEIN

Dr. Lisa Saunders, a medical doctor, journalist, and professor at the Yale School of Medicine, whose New York Times column “Diagnosis” was the inspiration for the TV show House, wrote:

“A decade ago, I stood alongside my 99 fellow freshmen as we were welcomed into the ranks of medicine in a ‘white coat ceremony.’ Here, on our first day of med school, we were presented with the short white coats that proclaimed us part of the mystery and the discipline of medicine. During that ceremony, the dean said something that was repeated throughout my education: half of what we teach you here is wrong – unfortunately, we don’t know which half.”

That quote, often repeated by the Dean of the Yale School of Medicine, was originally spoken by Charles Sidney Burwell, a past Dean of the Faculty of Medicine at Harvard, over 50 years ago. It is just as true today as when it was first spoken.

This book will explain why half of what is taught in medical school is wrong.

What if there was a better way? What if, instead of starting with disease and the parts and pieces that make up the body, we started instead with the principles that were true in the beginning and are still true today? 

The first principle of holistic health is The Yellowstone Principle: The Whole Is Greater Than the Sum of Its Parts

In the early 1990s, conservationists with Yellowstone National Park faced a titanic problem. Over the previous 70 years, an ecosystem that was once in balance was spiraling out of control, and conservationists were at a loss to reverse the trend.

One obvious symptom of the change was the ballooning population of elk. But this wasn’t the only change. Many of the trees were losing their bark, which led to a decline in the aspens and cottonwoods. Also, the songbird population had decreased.

Other changes in the Yellowstone ecosystem included a decrease in the beaver population, erosion of the streams, and a decrease in river animals such as muskrats, ducks, fish, reptiles, and amphibians — many symptoms of a diseased ecosystem.

All the symptoms of change, from beavers to rivers to elk, were connected by a single cause.

The ballooning population of elk led to an overgrazing of tree bark, which led to fewer aspens and cottonwoods, destroying the habitat of the songbirds and providing less wood for beavers to make their dams. Fewer dams resulted in erosion of the streams, and a reduced habitat for muskrats, ducks, fish, reptiles, and amphibians. Naturalists hoped they could attack the problem at its source — the growing elk population.

In the 1930s, the park services started trapping and moving the elk out of the park, and then, when that didn’t work, shooting them. This went on for decades. While one symptom improved (the population of elk did decrease) the other symptoms, the trees, birds, and beavers were largely unchanged.

What should be done next?

Plant more aspen and cottonwood trees? Introduce more beavers into the park? Dredge the streams and rivers to restore the wildlife habitats? All were logical — capable of treating one symptom or another — but none would restore balance to the ecosystem.

Why? Because, as the conservationists learned, the solution to the changes in Yellowstone would only be found by understanding the ecosystem as a whole, and not a disparate set of unconnected symptoms.

While the changes in Yellowstone’s landscape were becoming more apparent in the 1990s, the change started in the early 1900s.

When the U.S. Park Service took control of Yellowstone from the U.S. Army in 1916, they systematically killed all the wolves in the park, killing all 134 over the next 10 years. From this point until the early 1990s, there were no wolves in Yellowstone as wolves were a deemed a threat to cattle and livestock.

To make the ecosystem whole once again, naturalists could either kill more elk, plant more trees, add fish, feed songbirds, build dams, or, quite simply, they could reintroduce wolves.

Fourteen wolves were reintroduced in 1995 and 17 more the following year. Thirty-one total wolves were added to a 2.2-million-acre national park spanning parts of Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho.

This seemingly small addition produced a series of remarkable changes.

First, the wolves, a natural predator of the elk, helped thin the elk population.

Then, the potential threat of being eaten changed the behavior of the elk. The elk moved from the valleys and the gorges, where they could be easily hunted, to the areas of heavy timber. This allowed the bare areas of the valleys and gorges to regenerate.

Songbirds and migratory birds returned to the new regenerating trees. The beavers, with their food source of trees restored, began to proliferate. More beavers led to more dams. Otters, muskrats, ducks, and fish that relied on the dams for habitats returned.

Increasing vegetation stabilized the riverbanks, reversed the erosion in the riverbeds, and created a healthier ecosystem.

The changes in Yellowstone could not be understood by looking at only one species, one location, or one plant. The interventions aimed at treating a single problem produced only short-lived changes, and none restored health to the whole.

Instead, to restore balance to the ecosystem, all the pieces must be considered as parts of the whole, where every part impacts every other part.

Just as an ecosystem is made up of many individual plants and animals, of a variety of species, each independent yet interconnected, the human body is also made of many independent parts — cells, organs, tissues, and systems, that interconnect to form a whole.

This idea of holism fits within the context of nature. When we introduce wolves back into Yellowstone, we accept the cascade of changes as natural consequences. In nature, we understand that a change to one part affects the whole.

But somehow, along the way, we started to view the body as separate from nature.

Instead of seeing the body as a whole ecosystem, the way we might with a national park like Yellowstone, allopathic medicine treats the body as if it operates according to a different set of rules.

The body, the thinking goes, is not a whole but instead a collection of parts. This is called reductionism, the idea that a complex system can be understood by understanding the pieces that make it up. It is this thinking that lets us to cut out a cancer from the body without changing the conditions that led it to grow in the first place.

Reductionistic thinking lets us take an antibiotic for a cold — often without knowing if the symptoms are even caused by bacteria — instead of asking why the immune system did not fight off the bug in the first place.

In another context, reductionistic thinking allows for the surgical replacement of a knee without evaluating the health of the whole.

Specifically, without asking how and why the knee degenerated in the first place. And no, getting older is not a sufficient reason to have a bad knee. My favorite questions for patients who use the “I’m just getting old, Doc” explanation for knee pain is to ask, politely of course, “Well, if that is the case, how old is your good knee?”

The idea of reductionism is not universal, but it is foundational to the medical idea of health. Perhaps, it came from the Industrial Revolution with its proliferation of machines to increase output and its concurrent migration into cities and out of nature.

Or, perhaps, from the revamping of medical education that occurred after the Flexner Report, in 1910, with its increased focus on scientific research in the basic sciences like physiology and biochemistry (both of which focus on the parts of the body rather than the whole) at the expense of holism. However it happened, the medical idea of health mandates that we see the human body as a collection of parts, separate from nature.

This change had a profound effect on our health.

It is the difference between shooting elk and restoring wolves.

The idea of thinking of the health of the whole is foundational to how we see nature.

We do not need to consider the health of 2,000,000+ acres of a national park to see the principle of holism. We can observe the same principle in a single leaf.

When it comes to health, plants are simple. They are not like humans. Plants don’t complain. They don’t forget to eat. They don’t sabotage their health with Oreos and reality television. Plants grow. They add carbon dioxide (CO2) to sunlight to create food. They survive.

Because of this, healing plants is easy.

A healthy plant needs optimum amounts of three things: sunlight, water, and nutrients (found in healthy soil). A sick plant, one with brown leaves, needs optimal amounts of three things: sunlight, water, and nutrients (found in healthy soil). That’s it; that’s the whole list. The presence or absence of disease does not change what the plant needs to create health. It may need more or less of each, but healthy plants are the inevitable result of optimal amounts of these three inputs.

But what if things were different? Let’s imagine we enter a world of plants, a world that, for simplicity, we’ll call Plant World.

Let’s imagine Plant World has advanced well past the antiquated ideas of ensuring plants need optimal amounts of sunlight, water, and nutrients. How old fashioned! How antiquated! Instead, in progressive and innovative Plant World, plants are treated like people, following the three-step allopathic model disease care diagnose disease, treat with drug or surgery, eliminate the symptom or disease.

Step one, diagnose disease.

In plant world, before a sick plant can be helped, it first needs — of course! — a diagnosis. How can you treat a plant if you don’t name the disease? In the allopathic plant disease care, as with humans, the disease is given a name, often with a Greek root. We’ll call it Brown Leafitis.

In this progressive system, researchers and plant doctors search for a cure for Brown Leafitis. Lots of money, public and private, is spent researching pharmaceutical treatments and surgical techniques (step two!) to treat the symptoms of Brown Leafitis.

The allopathic plant disease care system even has teams of molecular biologists searching for a miracle drug that will cause an already sick plant’s leaves to turn from brown back to green. Other promising treatments include, covering the leaves with spray paint and the surgical removal of the brown leaf (a leafectomy, if you will). How progressive! How technologically advanced!

Even better, Plant World elected a government that demands equal access for all diseased plants to essential plant medications and includes a team of lobbyists petitioning Plant Congress and the Federal Plant Drug Administration to have medications approved for the new epidemic of Brown Leafitis.

Luckily — for the plants — Plant World disease care doesn’t exist.

We don’t waste our time and money on pharmaceutical drugs or tiny plant surgeries to treat Brown Leafitis. Instead, we restore health in a plant by ensuring the plant has exactly what it needs to create health (sunlight, water, and nutrients (found in healthy soil)).

By assuring a plant has the nutrients it needs, the plant returns to health and the symptom of brown leaves go away, or, better yet, never appear in the first place. Giving the plant water, sun, and healthy soil is healthcare.

We recognize, intuitively, that a brown leaf is not a disease of the leaf, but rather a sign of a problem within the whole plant. We intuitively provide healthcare to plants, but we disastrously provide disease care to humans.

What the medical idea of health seems to forget is that we humans are not reductionistic machines but instead operate under the principle of holism — like plants!

In the case of my headaches, taking pain relieving medications sometimes helped with the symptom of head pain, but didn’t make me healthier. How could I be healthier taking a chemical that (supposedly) helped pain yet at the same time damaged my liver and kidneys?

Doctors who understood the principles of health would take a different approach.

They would see pain in the head not as an isolated symptom but instead as a sign of dysfunction of the whole, much like we view a brown leaf on a plant. Instead of prescribing a drug to treat the symptom, the treatment might include the human equivalent of water, sunlight, and healthy soil needed to restore health.

So how do we find those basic first principles, the human equivalents of water, sunlight, and healthy soil that create health?

We must begin by seeing a disease of a part as instead a dysfunction of the whole.

Timeless You-th tells the story of my struggle to find a cure for my crippling headaches while navigating the established medical system. My headaches persisted and worsened despite seeking the best medical treatment available, including top doctors and pharmaceutical drugs. The overall goal of my book is to teach you five foundational principles of health so that you, too, can create a lifetime of timeless youth.

Timeless You-th is your go to resource to maximize your health without drugs and surgery. Grab a copy on Amazon and share!

The post Why Holistic Health is Life Changing: New Book by Dr. Crippen appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

Trying so hard to keep him busy! (Thank you for the snowman kit, Amy.)

This week our family is preparing for standardized tests. I can safely tell you one thing that will never ever work at home school. Standardized tests. Oh.my.goodness.

Alan downloaded practice tests and Scantron sheets for the boys to practice with. Here’s an example of why this sort of super official testing would never work at home school, at least not at ours:

“Mom, I’m done! I’m done! I’m done!” Joshua shouted as he finished his math section.

“Yay!! That’s great! You may go have a break.”

Ugh. In hindsight, I SHOULD have said, “Shhhh. When you finish your test, very quietly lay your head down on your desk and wait for the buzzer.”

But no. I haven’t been in a testing room in ….13 years, and that was the GRE, so I forgot that our behavior would be highly distracting for those still working on their tests. Poor Caleb.

Five minutes later, the timer went off, Caleb hopped up and started asking me questions. JD walked in the room, and Joshua walked in behind him.

“Hey, JD, what’s this? Let me see.” Joshua asked him.

JD handed Joshua a round, brown blob.

Joshua held it and said again, “What is this JD?”

“Poop,” JD casually replied.

“Aughhhhh!” Joshua exclaimed and dropped it like, well, poop.

We all died laughing. I ferried JD away to the bathroom. Potty training is not for the faint of heart.

Practicing standardized tests at home has been difficult to say the least. With two preschoolers walking around, the house is never quiet. As the mother and the teacher, I take their scores all kinds of personally, and it’s just another reminder of how happy I will be to send them off to a different teacher next year. The pressure!!!  It’s too much.

But you know we are never all business, no never. Let’s talk about the fun things that have been going on.

How peaceful does this look? Well, I’d love to leave you with that half-truth, but the fact is that peaceful wasn’t quite the word for that morning. I told the boys we’d go on a walk. Only the 2 older boys are so fast on their bicycles, and I am so slow pushing JD in a stroller that we split up. Splitting up left me with a pressing sense of urgency, so I was not free to calmly enjoy letting JD run around in the grass for a few minutes. No, no. I had to eventually chase him down, robbing him of this bliss that he’d found, and belt him back into my jogging stroller.

He screamed. He cried. He protested. There was no longer peace. And then lo and behold, we happened upon an entire flock of wild turkeys. The boys were absolutely delighted, the turkeys, not so much. They made a quick exit into the depths of the woods and far away from little boys and their wheels.

I occasionally buy new art supplies because I have such grand intentions of encouraging my artists, but I admit that I always groan a little when they beg to actually use said art supplies.

Again, if I could only sit and enjoy it with them, but there is always that sense of urgency. Must get to practice at 5. Must make dinner. Must make them do math. Must get kids to nap before my head explodes.

“No,no,no,no,no. Only paint the paper. Okay. Art time is over. Go wash your arms.”

The modern miracle that is paying money for pre-school. He goes to school. Someone besides me coaches him on how to write letters. It’s a new-found freedom for me. But this is actually home work, so I’m not off the hook completely.

Sometimes we bake gluten free cake with chocolate cream cheese frosting. They assured me it was delicious. Oh, who am I kidding? I ate a few pinches.

Happy Aroma Oils, to promote happiness (obviously)

It embarrasses the snot out of me that every single time I go to leave the house my children say things like, “Mom, are you going to the doctor?”

Or as Dan says, “You going to doctor’s ‘pointment? Take me with you. Oh, please, oh, please, Mom, take me with you.”

When it’s the chiropractor’s office that I’m headed to, I do occasionally take them with me. I thought they were adorable in the waiting room.

But here’s a tip: It is always best to take only ONE kid at a time with you to an appointment. That way they stay kind of quiet and in their shell. They sit nicely, they are well behaved, and I get to look like super mom.

But sometimes, when you take two little best buddies together….well, they may or may not have a big ol’ ball at the doctor’s office, playing off of each other’s energy, and you may or may not end up trying to flee the office as quickly as possible.

They started out so sweet and innocent, sitting nicely reading the Diabetic magazines.

hehehe

Okay, the truth is I spoiled it all by taking photos. That switched it from a serious place to a fun place. You gotta be sneakier with the photography.

“This place is fun. Let’s try out ALL the chairs.”

My boys take such good care of me: jewelry, tea, and encouragement to go shopping for my birthday. Happy birthday to me!

I treated them all to Cold Stone Creamery in honor of my birthday. Unfortunately, it turned out to be cold outside too, well, I mean California cold. I know. I’ll hush now.

Physically, mentally, and emotionally it was sort of a rough week, but as always there is still so much to be thankful for.

I did call PA Carlquist, and she changed my medicines for me. The first day on the new one was iffy, but nothing like the Rhythmol. I will definitely be able to function on this new medicine. Hallelujah!!!

And with that, the ventricular tachycardia is under control, and the side effects aren’t bad. My future is looking exciting, and I want to thank you all for your prayers. Our prayers are always answered. God hears our prayers. I have no more pain, no more nausea, and I am so encouraged. I hope that you will be encouraged too. God never ceases to amaze me in the way that he answers our prayers, not just a little, but in bigger ways than we even hoped for.

“Trust in the Lord, and do good; so shalt thou dwell in the land, and verily thou shalt be fed. Delight thyself also in the Lord; and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart. Commit thy way unto the Lord; trust also in him; and he shall bring it to pass.”   Psalm 37:3-6

The post Homeschool Week 64: Peace, Testing, and Toddlers in the Waiting Room appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

Vacation in Boston, Summer 2012, Pain level was way down. Such a fun time!

To read Part I Click here. Again, this is a chronic pain post: feel free to skip this one if it’s not your cup of tea. I promise to not always blog about hip pain y’all…

Now onto Part II of the saga.

So where did we leave off? Oh, yes. I was lying on my bed, probably on a hot pad, staring at the ceiling, praying, and crying.

I prayed for help. It came. God has always been so faithful.

The doorbell rang.

“I’ll just pretend I’m not home,” I thought.

“Mom! Mom! Mom! Someone’s at the door!!!  Mom!! Get up! The doorbell!”

Groan. Obviously, we are at home.

“I’m coming. Okay.” I hobbled down the stairs, keeping my arm tucked in close. I answered the door. Just a nice lady needing to ask me a few questions. I don’t even remember her name.

I apologized for taking so long to answer the door. I explained that I’d been having trouble with my back. (It’s just much quicker than saying hip and shoulder.)

And do you know what she did?? She said she could relate! And then she pulled out her phone, and she said, “I have this chiropractor, his name is Dr. Bodnar. Let me give you his number.”

She assured me he was the best, and then she left. I never saw her before that day, and I never saw her afterwards.

I had only been to a chiropractor one other time, way back in 2005, when I was 8 months pregnant and also desperate for help with the hip.

I called the chiropractor. They got me in the very next day. Take that, physical therapy clinic! They were thorough. As my Granny, a fellow pain sufferer, once said, “They measured every bone in my body.” They also took x-rays.

One visit. One visit was all it took to fix the rib-cage thing. He just crunched my back, and bam! that rib went back to where it belonged. The truly fantabulous part is: It never came back!! Phew!

My neck was also repaired quickly. In only a few appointments, I could back up my car with a clear conscience. Wahoo!

Even the hip and shoulder tapered down to a manageable level. I was sold. I didn’t even bother to go back to the doctor who did the x-rays at my regular clinic. These chiropractor people were helping me, so I’d stick with them. No, my insurance didn’t pay for it, but I was breathing, walking, and sitting! Things were looking up!

They explained to me that my neck was straight rather than curved as it should be, and one side of my pelvis is higher than the other.

That’s when I also began to exercise. Dr. Bodnar gave me a few basic stretches and elbow planks to strengthen my core.

Y’all! When I began to do elbow planks in 2012, I couldn’t hold it for more than 3 seconds! It was so sad!! Now I can do 3 sets of 30 seconds a piece, in a row! I have come so far. At that time, the weak core explanation for my pain was something I could settle for. It was true back then. Not so, these days.

The exercise phase.

I lost 15 pounds. I ran. I swam. I was feeling great.

“Hey! Let’s have another baby!” You know I love babies.

But the truth had sunk in by this point that my hip and shoulder were chronic. This is a pain I will be “managing” for the rest of my life. Sometimes, even with the chiropractic care, my hip would flare up for a few days and then calm back down. The shoulder is more of a steady pinch, but I mostly only notice it when I’m lying down or sitting.

I call it sciatica, a hip problem, or a rear end problem. I know it’s confusing. The thing is that when it’s flared up, it hurts to drive, sit, lay down, or climb stairs. When I touch my foot to the pedals of a car, it hurts in my rear end and lower back, just to the right of my spine and deep into my rear.

But then there’s another aspect beside the sacroiliac pain.  The hip joint itself is also angry, so if the flare up gets bad enough, I have trouble walking. Maybe it’s all part of the same thing, but that’s why I keep saying I don’t know what I have, I just know it hurts.

So I was careful about the fourth pregnancy. I faithfully visited Dr. Bodnar every other week. It was my healthiest pregnancy of all four. The pain still came and went, but no horror stories. It was super mild. The worst problem I had was pregnancy anemia and women in grocery stores asking me if I was sure I wasn’t having twins!

Rudest thing ever people. Just tell pregnant women, “You look great.”

That pregnancy agreed with me.

During that pregnancy, I also finally made it to a dermatologist for several things. I’m supposed to go every year, but I don’t. That was when I learned that I had psoriasis. Phew! What a relief! I was afraid that crazy nail was fungus or something, and oh the public disgrace! But no, just psoriasis. No biggie. I’d had the scalp and nose rash for as long as I could remember, but I’d never bothered to find out what it was. It’s not big or very noticeable, so I don’t worry about it.

From 2012 to Fall 2014, the shoulder and hip would wax and wane in intensity, but it mostly stayed mild and manageable. We moved across country, and I made it–all of that car riding!–with no problem. Those were two happy, fit years, even with the c-section thrown in. I was quick to recover. I worked hard to get my ab muscles back in tact, thanks to my Lindsey Brin fitness DVDs and my yoga instructor, Monica.

But then came the 2014 move. I was good the first few months, but as I began to home school the boys, I could not find time to exercise. Plus, I was so tense and stressed. My old pain came back knocking hard.

Such a beautiful place to move to! Who wouldn’t want to live near the coast of California?

I found a local chiropractor. That helped. Then I went on Christmas vacation. I had a truly happy outlook. For some reason, that seems to make a difference. I had a fun time in Alabama, and when we came back I had my very first 4 completely pain-free months since 2011! I was ecstatic. I’d thought that ache was just part of me. But it disappeared for four whole months!! Wahooooooo!

While the shoulder ache and the hip pain evaporated, a new pain showed up around Fall 2014. Remember the white pinky nail I mentioned in Part I? Well, eventually every single fingernail, save one or two, went white and yellow and pink on me. Toward the tip, it gets super thick and looks like it’s separating from the nail bed. It’s embarrassing.

my fingernail psoriasis: a surprisingly obnoxious condition. This is also called onycholysis.

Also, it hurts. That was when I learned to wash my hair with only whatever one or two fingers was working properly. It wasn’t like the arthritis fingers, where they have swelling in their knuckles. It was just the tips of my fingers that hurt. I still have it in my thumb.

I learned to not even attempt buttons or jars. At least I could walk. Four whole months of no shoulder or hip pain! 2015 was off to a smashing start! I was happy. Home school was going better. I was finally making friends, and suddenly I had offers to make money blogging.

Life was looking up for April. I even began to tell myself that perhaps the shoulder and hip thing was truly over. I even took on a sponsored post with a personal trainer who put me on this Water Challenge that totally fixed most of my nails:

If you look closely, you can still see it in my index finger, but look at my happy, healthy thumb nail! All from drinking tons of water. Thank you, Coach Cox!

We’ll talk about Part III next time: The pain came back, and I finally met a health care professional who questioned my spine theory.

Read Part I here.

Read Part III here.

The post My Battle With Chronic Pain Part II: Tendonitis, Sacroiliac Pain, Muscle Strain, Whatever appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.