How Down to Earth Eating and Movement Medicine Can Empower Your Health
What Is Monotherapy and Why Do We Need Multiple Treatment Modalities? Dr. Levitt Explains
Naturopath and co-founder UpWellness, a company that makes wellness supplements, Dr. Josh Levitt and I spoke about supplements, the need for holistic healing through multiple treatment modalities, and more during the course of our conversation. Josh speaks about how there are merits in each type of healing system and we don’t have to pick one or the other. We speak about the uses of supplements like curcumin, bromelain, quercetin, Boswellia, and more. We also speak about other important but often overlooked aspects of medical practice such as preventive medicine, and using a multimodal approach.
Multimodal approach and preventive medicine.
Mainstream treatment modalities typically employ the monotherapy approach. If X is the problem, Y is the solution. There is also the fact that the double-blind, placebo-controlled trial is thought of as the gold standard and the only way to prove the efficacy of a treatment. However, natural medicine doesn’t work like this. Therapies like Chinese medicine and Ayurveda tend to use a multimodal approach. There are different nutritional ingredients that address each component of the problem. For instance, musculoskeletal problems are best dealt with using a complex multimodal approach in Josh’s experience.
Quercetin is a fabulous, bioflavonoid compound that is almost always a part of my musculoskeletal pain rehabilitation protocols. – Dr. Josh Levitt
Mainstream treatment modalities also tend to overlook preventive therapy and long-term maintenance programs, which can go a long way to creating effective and lasting solutions. Another problem is that if there are some phenomena that medical science cannot yet explain, they are rejected as out of hand – the concept of Qi in Chinese medicine for instance.
Looking at the bigger picture.
When you’re a hammer everything looks like a nail. Josh uses this old saw to illustrate how a lot of mainstream medical practitioners tend to use a heavy-handed approach when treating patients. He tells me that up to about a third of arthroscopic knee surgeries and joint replacements are often unnecessary or inappropriate.
When there is pain, doctors order tests and scans and presume that what they see in the results are the only reason for that pain. This approach ignores the fact that there are several other components contributing to the pain, such as stress, posture, lack of activity, diet, and so on. A lot of doctors tend to miss this bigger picture, which is unfortunate for people who want a lasting solution to their pain.
Since pharmaceutical companies pump in big bucks to fund the R&D they are also looking for a return on their investment. This actually perpetuates this system of overprescribing drugs and surgeries even when not strictly necessary. For instance, vitamin D and C deficiencies can cause a whole host of problems, but the suggested treatments may not be what is actually required, says Josh. He also has an interesting anecdote to share about why women in the Arab world were seen to be vitamin D deficient and hence producing babies with a seizure disorder.
Josh speaks about S U R F, where S stands for stretching exercise, U stands for unlocking techniques, R stands for resistance or weights safely, and F, which stands for functional movement. He also explains the concept of down-to-earth eating and why movement is medicine in the second part of my podcast. Don’t miss this highly educational conversation about various treatment modalities with Dr. Josh Levitt on The Adiel Gorel Show.
