Trying to Help
“I consider pain and suffering to be my own enemies in this world, and , this is how I do battle” -Justin
This intervention may or may not help, but it is safe to try, costs nothing, and is capable, for some patients, of conferring remission.
These videos are my way, of “Trying To Help”.
My name is Justin Bean, and I am here to try and help.
This is the transcript of the first three videos.
Feel free to watch or read, or both!
Please understand where I am coming from. I have nothing to sell to you or anyone else. This is not a bait and switch. It is, really very simple. Over my career, I have come across some information, that for some, when understood, can make a profound impact on the course of their life. It is information that can relieve pain and suffering. My motivation, even though I do not know you, is to try and help.
Many people suffer greatly, often over long periods of time. There is an economy that enriches itself off of human suffering. It is our medical system. It is not evil. It is simply human nature. Everyone is out to make a living. As it turns out, especially for wealthy people, part of being successful, for many, includes the tendency to not want to do anything that does not increase their own, personal wealth. It is not selfishness. It is human nature.
Successful doctors, by and large the use use the tools that they were trained to use. It is as if our education is really a pair of colored glasses through which everything that we see is interpreted. The schools we attend, the explanations that we accept, are all influenced by our education, which is in turn, is influenced by the economy we all rely on to make our living.
Success, is often seen as the ability to make a good living. I know it is at least part of how I measure mine.
The problem, is, that not everything that is good can be bought or sold for profit. Not every medical intervention has the capacity to fit into our economic model of fee-for-service. In fact, it is not uncommon for that economic model to turn on its head, encouraging the use of expensive interventions, in some cases that do not accompany increased benefits for the user.
Most interventions come with a price tag. The more impressive the medical intervention, often the more expensive and in some cases the more dangerous.
There are plenty of practitioners out doing that sort of thing. They are all trying to help, but they are invested in a system that focuses on the economic model of healing. When an intervention cannot generate a fee, it is ignored.
Again, I am not attempting to cast dispersions on what anyone else does. I am merely attempting to explain why any particular patient may not have heard any of these ideas from any other practitioner, even if they have sought help for many years and in many different places.
There are many expensive and relatively dangerous medical interventions available for patients suffering from serious medical conditions. Our medical system is getting better and better at reducing the risk of these interventions but the expenses keep growing.
Now, don’t get me wrong.
These interventions are wonderful inventions and are lifesaving in many cases and I would not want to be without them as options. The march of medical progress is steady and in the right direction. My own intervention, that I am here to share with you, does not take away from any of these others, that are offered by other practitioners. I respect them and what they do.
Mine is just a different way of trying to help. It doesn’t matter what health insurance you have, for this treatment you are all “covered” .
First, I’d like to back up just a little bit and start my explanation of the following.
The immune system is a lot like the Army. Viruses, bacteria and especially funguses are constantly trying to invade. We are warm and moist and delicious, and these microorganisms would feed on us and reproduce themselves. It is our immune system that stops them. Now, we have been battling these bugs, ever since all of us were just different types of slime. We evolved our defenses as they evolved their methods of attack.
Bacteria grow like crazy. They consume our flesh and steal our nutrients. They can kill in hours. Our immune system attacks bacteria just like an army would attack an invading foe. Large cells engulf, and digest the enemy, and once it learns about a specific type of bacteria, our immune system learns how to kill it very efficiently.
Viruses are tricky. They hide inside our own cells. Our immune system has to be very discerning when it attacks a virus. It has to figure out which cells are infected, and which are not.
Funguses are everywhere. They live in us and around us. We need them to function but if they are to many or in the wrong place, we are in big trouble.
Our immune system has to learn. There are always new threats. What doesn’t kill it, makes it stronger.
This is the case with the chickenpox. When I was young, a neighbor came down with the chickenpox. My mom wanted me to go over there and play, while he was still sick. As it turns out, I didn’t really like that kid at all, he used to beat me up. But my mom sent me over there, to play, and to contract chickenpox, on purpose. In those days it was considered a good idea to have your children all get a good strong case of chickenpox while they were young. Young children have fewer complications than either infants or adults, and a good strong case as a child was thought to provide immunity for the rest of one’s life from the virus.
You see once it beats it, the immune system remembers its foe. It creates special cells that are waiting to attack anything that looks even remotely like the chickenpox. This is why a strong case of a childhood illness was likely to confer lifelong immunity, and is the same mechanism by which, in some cases the immune system malfunctions.
The immune system is a lot like the Army. It is a stone, cold killer. If a kid has a immune system problem, an allergy, and then accidentally eats a peanut, he could be killed in less than a minute. It is not the peanut, but the child’s, own, immune system that causes the reaction. It had made cells ready to attack, because it thought that the peanut was a severe threat that required an extreme reaction. That reaction represents a mistake made by the immune system, you see peanut protein is harmless, but the immune system thought it was a threat. The reaction is so strong, it could end up killing the patient as it encourages swelling as part of the inflammatory response.
So, The immune system can be triggered to react by mistake as a result of exposure to a food or ingredient. This is the crux of my message.
You see the immune system is like the Army but it is also like, the Army Corps of Engineers.
If we were to fall and injure ourselves, our tissues would need repair. Even when we exercise moderately, the result is the death of those weakest of our muscle cells. This triggers an inflammatory response that encourages our immune system to replace them with stronger, healthier cells.
It is the same immune system that must protect us from foreign threats that is also tasked with healing our bodies after we injure them.
The immune system can both destroy and heal, and, it is commonly forced to do both simultaneously.
The vast majority of time this occurs without us even noticing. Anyone who slipped and fell on the ice and hurt their back, would expect that to be sore for a while.
Most people who injured themselves mildly, go on to heal on their own and do not seek any sort of medical intervention. For most of us, a little head cold will not encourage us to run to the doctors for medicine.
We expect our immune system to work. We expect it to quickly resolve all of the health problems that we confront. We do not expect to experience any of the symptoms of inflammation for a prolonged period of time. We understand cause-and-effect. We don’t want to over react, but if we are injured or become ill, we expect to get better in short order.
It is only when inflammation becomes perpetual, it is only when symptoms do not resolve, or are unexplained, that we think there may be a problem.
If your back started hurting and you knew you had not fallen, or strained it, you may wish to seek out professional help in order to determine the reason why. It could, in some rare cases, be a kidney problem. If one becomes sick with a simple cold, but continues to experience symptoms for too long, a trip to the doctor is warranted.
And, certainly, chronic back pain or sinus allergies and asthma are medical conditions that require an investigation by a medical professional.
Chronic inflammatory conditions vary widely. They can affect any tissues or organs in the body. They can come and go with little or no warning. They can be extremely debilitating. A malfunctioning immune system can kill a patient. They can be merely annoying. A small patch of itchy skin is a good example of a chronic inflammatory pattern. They usually associate with some or all of the signs of inflammation. These include pain, swelling, contracture of tissues, irritation, in some cases, redness and heat.
When inflammation influences an area, The body reacts by encouraging the tissues in the area to contract and swell. This brings blood to the area and stabilizes the region. Inflammation encourages pain messages to be initiated and propagated. This tells the patient to not use the affected area until it is safe.
These symptoms are a good thing. They are helpful in most cases. When inflammation operates properly, the problem gets fixed. Inflammation as a process can also be described as healing. For most patients, it is not the severity of the infection or injury but the capacity of the body to heal from it that is the most salient feature.
For some, the relatively minor sort of injury that occurs as a result of sitting with imperfect posture can cause more pain and suffering than another patient who was injured as a result of severe trauma like from a car accident.
In the 1st case scenario, the patient continues to experience symptoms of inflammation chronically. They are in agony and seek intervention. All imaging tests may be normal. There was no apparent injury, yet they suffer chronically. Even getting worse over time. In the 2nd case scenario the patient who was badly injured but then goes on to improve and heal completely, doesn’t need any doctor or medicines. They were badly hurt but are getting better every day and expect a full recovery.
So, inflammation is both friend and foe. We wouldn’t survive a day without it, but if it is activated by mistake, it makes our life miserable.
Why the long introduction?
It may be helpful in understanding the next segment of my little presentation, what a patient might be able to do for themselves in order to determine if they are suffering from a chronic inflammatory pattern that has the capacity for being put in remission as a result of a lifestyle intervention. Is it possible for the patient to fix them self?
Just like the little kid who cannot eat peanut without risking his life, some patients are reacting to a food or ingredient, they just don’t know it.
As a practitioner of alternative medicine, I commonly see patients who are in a vulnerable position. Often they are frightened. Maybe they had been experiencing symptoms and, upon consulting with a physician, learned that they are suffering from a disease.
The physician suggests that the patient needs strong medication in order to prevent the disease from progressing. They may recommend surgery, or something the patient finds frightening. The patient may then, seek the advice of a practitioner of alternative medicine in the hopes that there is another way to treat their condition.
These patients are in a vulnerable position. They are ready and willing to hear any advice that allows them to discount the advice of their doctor. There may be a mistrust of the modern, medical system and all of its interventions. There may be fear of medicines and surgeries. Reacting with fear doesn’t predispose most folks toward clear thinking. These patients are commonly taken advantage of.
They can be sold, relatively easily, on unproven therapies. They may be convinced to undergo complicated and expensive testing for which there is no conventional consensus on accuracy. They may be sold dangerous supplements that are untested and prescribed on the thinnest of justification, often, solely on the word of a trusted practitioner.
Understand this, supplements are not tested. They are exempt from, any and all testing. Only in the face of wide spread harm are any supplements even looked at. Those that sell them, to those that take them, do so at their own risk, with no means of evaluating them other then that which comes from the manufacturer.
In the rare cases where they do get tested by an impartial, outside agency, they are commonly found to not contain what is claimed, and, when they are tested against placebo, in patients, are found to cause harm. Common vitamins, taken in common dosages, when they are finally tested, are often found to cause harm. I do not recommend them.
My approach is very different. My approach does not associate with risk, or costs.
For some of these patients, in this large category, a intervention strategy that focuses on lifestyle adjustment can be the most effective.
To be clear, there is no money to be made as a result of this attempt. It is extremely safe to try. It may be a hassle for the patient. Some are unwilling to consider it, others find it too difficult to maintain. But for the majority of patients, this approach represents an attempt to find out why, and they are happy to give it a try.
Why is the immune system malfunctioning? is something stimulating it in the wrong direction? Can that element be identified, and does eliminating it allow the immune system to settle, to recalibrate itself and improve its function?
This approach is not always successful. Sometimes, I am “barking up the wrong tree”. But, considering the potential for improvement, and the other options in front of us, I would consider turning over every rock in order to find a solution. And while some do not, most of my patients agree.
In these cases, of chronic inflammatory patterns with an unclear etiology, I suggest a short experiment.
The patient is both, in charge of conducting the experiment and, is its subject. The approach is simple, it is a question, is a food or ingredient responsible for the problem?
If the answer is yes, then the task is in finding the culprit. If there is no identifiable element, then this intervention is for nought.
I am an acupuncturist. I practise traditional Chinese medicine, and in Chinese medicine the single most common instigator of chronic inflammatory patterns in the body was identified as foods that originate from dairy.
Dairy foods are common in the Western world. We built or diet around it. Dairy is not always the reason why my patient is suffering, but it shows up very commonly. Dairy, like other rich foods, it was alleged, in Chinese medicine, causes phlegm.
The intervention is simple. I have the patient forgo the consumption of all dairy-based foods for a few weeks. This includes milk, cheese, yogurt, ice cream, butter and the like. For our purposes eggs would not be dairy, we are only concerned with foods that contain milk and milk products.
For the vast majority of patients, two weeks is all that is required. Within 2 weeks the patient may notice an improvement in their condition. If that improvement is dramatic, I suggest the patient continue with the experiment for another week or two.
If the patient is finding that the avoidance of the food coincides with an improvement in their symptoms, then another intervention is possible. The patient can set aside one day where they consume a whole bunch of dairy foods, all in one day. It is a test that they conduct on them self. If they feel much better after a couple weeks of being off of the food, and then notice that their symptoms returned precipitously when they returned to consuming it, they have now discovered cause-and-effect. They are now aware of the reason why their immune system is not functioning and are in control of that process. If they continue to consume the offending food, they can assume that they will continue to experience greater levels of symptomology. If they are able to correctly identify and avoid their trigger, they can expect remission.
Unfortunately, not every patient is reacting to the same to the ingredient. There is quite a bit of variation from one individual to another.
Dairy is the most common culprit. Westerners consume a lot of it, almost everyday. Unfortunately other, similar, rather bulky molecules appear in common foods and associate with similar ill effects.
Gluten comes up. Immune systems tend to not like it. For some it wrecks havoc. Gluten is the protein found in wheat, barley and rye. It is a common ingredient, and useful for formulating processed foods. Similar to casein, it is a sticky protein that is large and complicated and well-suited for upsetting our human immune system.
For a subset of patients, it is gluten that is initiating their chronic symptoms, and must be avoided for them to achieve remission.
Cassien and gluten may be the most common culprits in these cases but there are others. Almost any food, ingredient, medication or supplement can influence the immune system to malfunction. I know of no test that is reliable. I know of no method by which the potential culprit can be identified other than through trial and error.
This is what makes this approach difficult. It is up to the patient to figure things out. We are only here to help them on their path,with information, advise and encouragement.
Nightshade vegetables have been identified. The nightshade vegetables are some of our most common. They all derive from the same plant family and contain nutrients that have the potential for creating symptoms.
Nightshade vegetables include potatoes, tomatoes, eggplant and peppers. Also included is tobacco, goji berries and tomatillos. For some sufferers, these are driving their symptoms. They need to avoid all of the foods in this family in order to achieve remission.
Other, potential culprits include wheat, corn, meat, soy, eggs, nuts of various types, additives like sugar, colorings, flavorings or preservatives and wine or beer.
This can get complicated. No-one can easily avoid all these potential culprits, not all at the same time, how does one proceed?
The approach is variable, and the patient may choose.
For symptoms that come and go, mysteriously over time, we may assume the potential for a different set of circumstances then those symptoms that persist, chronically, day in and day out. If the patient suffers for a while and then does not, only to find themselves suffering again, later, for no known reason, we might assume that the potential culprit is something they are consuming relatively rarely.
Patients commonly described experiencing their symptoms as a result of stress, even though they tell me “frankly, I don’t feel stressed”. They may claim that the weather is responsible for increased symptoms even though it doesn’t match our sunny and rainy days, or movements in barometric pressure. The patient claims to have identified stress, or the weather, but they were unaware that it could have been the tomato sauce that they ate that is causing their symptoms to explode the next morning.
In some cases, symptoms are constant and drastic. The patient needs immediate relief. They are highly motivated to try the quickest and most aggressive intervention. This population may wish to forgo many of their common dietary staples. For the patient that experiences consistent symptoms on a regular basis, it might make sense to avoid all of the common triggers in order to determine if any are responsible for their plight.
Maybe they choose, at the same time, to avoid consuming dairy, gluten, corn, soy, sugar and eggs.
If this patient experiences dramatic improvements as a result of their intervention, they may remain ignorant as to the exact reason their system is malfunctioning. They can be happy to experience relief, but not know exactly why, even as they slowly, over time, one by one, add back potential culprits, waiting to see if their system reacts to any one of them.
If the patient experiences symptoms that come and go, maybe week to week or even more rarely, they could start a food diary. This approach has the patient track all food consumption alongside their experience of symptoms. In some cases, they are able to stumble upon a correlation that continued experimentation may or may not prove to be causal.
In other words, just because a patient might have a flareup of symptoms that appears to associate with the consumption of a food or ingredient, does not mean that we are certain that it is causal. The best way to determine that is complete avoidance for a period of time, followed by a test in order to determine, with a greater degree of reliability, if it is truly linked.
So this is my big secret, no longer a secret, hopefully a strategy. I have no idea how many individuals suffer as a result of exposure to a food or ingredient. In my practice I have seen wonderful remissions of everything from extremely serious and debilitating illnesses to symptoms that were merely nuisances.
Patients may have treated with medications for decades, and suffered greatly, only to find complete remission with a relatively simple lifestyle adjustment. This is my motivation, I do not know you, but I want to try and help. I want nothing in return.
It is my hope that this presentation will aid some viewers in improving their lives. I consider pain and suffering to be my own enemies in this world, and , this is my way, of how I do battle.
My name is Justin Bean.
Be Brave.
Be Bold.
Think Like a Scientist, and Good Luck!