A personal note from Dr. David:

By now I hope we all know that eating locally grown food is good for the planet. It reduces shipping and our dependency on foreign oil and foods flown and shipped in from foreign countries. These foods, grown to be shipped long distances are harvested before peak nutritional value. When we buy them we pay more and get less in the way of critical micronutrients.

Local food, picked ripe, contains greater amounts of the essential critical nutrients, and if the local crop is organically grown, it contains a significantly greater amount of these essentials. Additionally, it has only been since the advent of rail and air travel and refrigeration that foods not indigenous to an area have been available. The human race adapted to eating locally for ten thousand plus years up until the age of refrigeration, and in the opinion of many experts, we have not had time to adapt to eating outside of nature’s plan.

Now, how do we go about eating a more healthy local diet? We stress eating the foods that are indigenous to the area in which we live in the seasons when they are available.

Last month I attended a meeting of the Kansas City Food Circle, a group of area farmers who grow and promote healthy, local, naturally raised, organic foods. This is where you can get information, for example, about where to get organically grown veggies and grass fed and grass finished beef. You can also get information about local restaurants that feature “locally grown” on their menus. There’s information about all the local farmers’ markets with times and dates, and a wealth of other helpful information.

I have learned that by buying direct I seldom pay more because I’ve eliminated the middle man, and I get enhanced nutritional value for my dollar, and that results in improved health and lower medical bills. Go to www.kcfoodcircle.org, for your family’s sake.

Paul Schaal specializes in Network Spinal Analysis.

A personal note from Dr. David:

I was delighted some years ago when I discovered that a dear friend was studying a new wellness technique called NSA, for Network Spinal Analysis. Although developed by a chiropractor, NSA is a departure from chiropractic in that it addresses energetic health at levels beyond spinal integration.

The beauty of NSA is that it results in self adjustment, once it is entrained, and does not rely on physically moving the bones of the back. In fact, in NSA, vertebrae never get physically moved by the practitioner.

I had an airplane injury experience as a teenager, and tried every type of chiropractic available to no avail. With NSA, I correct my own structural problems, and have eliminated over 40 years of pain and discomfort that did not respond to any other therapy.

This treatment is intensive in the beginning, and requires time and dedication, but the payoff is worth the effort for those who are willing and wanting to take responsibility for their own health and well being.

A personal note from Dr. David:

I have had a number of patients refer me to the Noffkes since our old natural meat provider retired, and when I interviewed Sheri Noffke on the phone, it reminded me that farmers who produce naturally grown product are usually alike when it comes to straightforwardness, commitment and integrity.

I think they will carry on splendidly where our old providers left off. I suggest you sign up for their newsletter so you can stay on top of the way they run their business, and when various products are most available.

Grass fed beef and naturally raised chicken is essential to the building of healthy families, and I recommend this type of protein to all my patients. It is what I keep in my own freezer and serve my family and friends.

If you try these products, I believe you will continue to buy them for superior taste and for their health benefits.

Also see my articles on Eating Local, Thinking Global and Protein Is Our Most Misunderstood Food.

Laurie Fickle specializes in Chiropractic, with emphasis on pediatric cranial and spinal manipulation.

A personal note from Dr. David:

It is rare that a chiropractor specializes in child care. Working effectively with infants and children takes a special gift that transcends education and technique and I have seen that gift in action in Dr. Laurie’s practice.

I’ve collaborated with Laurie Fickle since starting my NAET practice and finding my practice so pediatrically oriented.

The patients we refer to her, whether damaged by forceps delivery or immunologically challenged by a toxic environment, always seem to respond with an increased surge in well-being once her care is involved.

Parents are guarded when it comes to chiropractic, and it is always a pleasure to hear from the parents we have referred who are delighted with the gentle and effective measures they have witnessed at her practice.

The local Chapter provides support for the treatment of Chronic Fatigue/Fibromyalgia Syndrome (CFS/FM).

A personal note from Dr. David:

Having practiced as a nutritionist for the past forty plus years, I must admit that few conditions have befuddled me as much as CFS/FM. At first I thought it was just a matter of acquiring more knowledge. Unfortunately, the additional degree’s I acquired didn’t seem to provide that necessary knowledge.

I have, as I have grown older and hopefully wiser, found no solution to CFS/FM. Medicine, as we know it today, needs a consistent symptomatic pattern on which to attach a name. This must occur before a drug is discovered to mitigate that consistent symptomatic pattern. The emphasis here is on the word “consistent.”

With CFS/FM, so many different symptomatic patterns present themselves from patient to patient that the path I have seen produce the most positive outcomes is when a sufferer both self educates and additionally finds a lay adviser who has in most cases experienced CFS/FM themselves. The two then find their way through a maze of specialists who eventually contribute small to medium sized pieces of the therapeutic puzzle.

For a doctor to spend the hours necessary to guide a patient through this maze would be enormously time consuming and financially prohibitive. When I am confronted with a new case of CFS/FM, I refer them to the Fibromyalgia Coalition.

There is, I am pleased to say, an area where my expertise has been helpful as a specialist in Allergy/Nutrition. Allergy/sensitivity often plays a significant role in CFS/FM. Sometimes a really significant role and sometimes a much smaller role, but almost without fail, a sufferer with CFS/FM experiences reactions to foods, supplements, environmental toxins, and airborne irritants.

Contact for support group meeting information and/or referral to a lay advisor.

Chris Jorgensen specializes in Attunement, Reiki, CranioSacral Therapy, and Flower Essence Therapy.

A personal note from Dr. David:

I have had the pleasure of Chris Jorgensen’s friendship since 1997. I became aware of his ability as a healer using the Attunement technique from the positive results accomplished with Tourettes syndrome, a medically unresponsive condition.

As an objective observer, I began to note more and more interesting and positive experiences in our shared patient clientele. Most of these patients were classified as medically untreatable.

Some people have a healing gift, and I believe that Chris is one of these unique people. Both my nurses and myself have been impressed enough with the Attunement process that we have taken his classes.

When asked what Chris does in his practice, my response is, “He’s a healer.”

Advanced Alternatives Wellness Center
6505 E. Frontage Rd. Ste. 28
Merriam KS 66202
Email: Jordan@fibrocoalition.org
Phone: 913-362-4800

Jordan Hunter specializes in colon health care and massage therapy.

A personal note from Dr. David:

I had the good fortune to meet Jordan through my affiliation with the local Physician’s Fibromyalgia Coalition Group. She is one of those people who gets behind a good cause and then runs with it.

My patients, who use her for colonics or massage therapy, comment on the peaceful and professional atmosphere of her Center, and after checking it out I must concur.

We are indeed fortunate to have quality professionals like Jordan in the alternative health field in this area.

A personal note from Dr David:

Technology has created freedoms for those of us living in industrialized nations that would have been impossible to imagine just 50 or 60 years ago. Unfortunately, those freedoms have come with a price. We have created, along with those freedoms, a toxic environment.

We see children every day whose toxic body burden has exceeded what they can handle. Our children and grand children come in contact with over 1000 chemicals a day that didn’t exist on the planet 75 years ago. These are unavoidable chemicals that their immune systems have to detoxify if they are to remain healthy.

We see government warnings about the dangers of environmental lead and mercury on a regular basis, but still allow silver (mercury amalgam) fillings to he placed in our mouths. According to the Kansas City Star, over 300 deaths occur annually in our city due to air pollution. The government tells us that one in ten high school students now carries an inhaler for asthma control, and the list goes on.

Our environment will remain polluted for a long time, even after we get serious about cleaning it up. In the meantime, conscientious families need a way to detoxify. The research is clear on this; far-infrared saunas allow the body to detoxify through sweat. The temperature at which the body best detoxifies is between 120 and 140 degrees Fahrenheit, and even extremely toxic heavy metals like mercury and lead can he eliminated.

I recommend regular saunas for all my cancer patients, as well as my more severe allergy patients, and saunas are good for the whole family.

Saunas have many other benefits. When investigating far-infrared saunas for my patients, I discovered that Sunlight Saunas, a local company, was one of the best in the world at producing a hypo-allergenic sauna. I was sufficiently convinced to promote their products on this site. You can get further information through their website.

Doctor Alexander specializes in Neurofeedback, a breakthrough in self-regulation.

A personal note from Dr. David:

I met Doctor Penny Montgomery, the founder of this clinic, at an NAET conference when I was just beginning to switch my specialty to Allergy. Many of the physicians present were impressed with the way NAET and Neurofeedback worked together, especially with the ADD/ADHD challenged youngster, and encouraged me to look into that methodology. By a great stroke of good fortune, Penny practiced out of the greater Kansas City area, just a few miles from my office.

Doctor Montgomery soon relocated to California, leaving the clinic in the able hands of Doctor Alexander, who she personally trained and certified in the technique.

The results I have observed from the use of Neurofeedback have been positive, and at times truly amazing. Neurofeedback is a leading edge therapy that allows a patient to change unwanted behavior patterns by changing the brainwave patterns associated with that behavior. This, in my opinion, is an absolutely brilliant concept.

It is painless, and actually an enjoyable (do I dare say fun?) experience, that both youngsters and adults find easy to perform. Neurofeedback helps improve functions such as concentration, short term memory, speech, motor skills, sleep, energy level, pain perception, mental clarity and alertness, creativity, and emotional balance.

My personal experience and the experience of my family, as well as the positive experiences of my patients, has placed Neurofeedback high on my list of therapies to include where my allergy/behaviorally challenged patients are concerned.

Unfortunately, the mercury/silver amalgams that dentists have been placing in peoples’ teeth for the last 5 or 6 decades have proven to be a major health hazard for a sizable percentage of those who have these types of fillings. There are numerous sites on the internet that explain the dangers associated with the placement of these amalgams.

The good news is that many dentists around the world are changing their procedures to conform to new and safer guidelines. Unfortunately, change comes slowly, and some dentists are slow to adapt. If your dentist should recommend silver/mercury amalgam, I suggest you request a different type of amalgam or change dentists.

In my opinion, in the greater Kansas City area, one dentist stands out when it comes to mercury amalgam removal. He has actually designed his office to safety standards that are way beyond the norm, to the point of having vacuums present to suck the mercury vapor generated by the removal away from his patients’ nose and mouth.

This extraordinary level of integrity and commitment to protecting his patients has brought him patients from all over the Midwest, and helped contribute to his outstanding reputation in preventive dentistry.