Dr. Norm Easley

I just spent a week preparing my 2008 taxes. It is sort of like an exercise in dragging fingernails across a black board. I always think that sooner or later it won’t make sub-dermal colonies of spiders crawl up my back, but it still does! It is a little less traumatic, however, since I have (had) this incredible tax attorney that could really crunch numbers. His presence in my life makes (made) taxes tolerable. At least that was my feeling until I arrived at my appointment with him only to discover he has made the big leap, the final crossover, the great escape. His genetics finally finished his work here on the planet. He will be greatly missed by all the people he helped through the labor of tax preparation. Death is so final, but I am convinced it can be prolonged if we are able to live at our full genetic potential.

The level of health that most of us experience is often way below our genetic limitations. This was never more evident than with my accountant. He appeared to be at least twenty years older than his age, he smoked, alcohol was his meal of choice, and he rarely ate. His health was way below his potential but it is what he chose. He wasn’t into taking pills, exercise, health foods, or any discipline that would improve his health. He had too much fun having fun drinking and “sticking it” to the IRS. What a bummer!! I have never seen anyone run numbers in his head like he could. He was brilliant. Now he is gone and I think if he had only taken care of himself….. You know the drill. We all do it when someone passes unexpectedly. Somehow we feel we could have intervened and improved the outcome. The difficulty for me is that I know from clinical experience something can be done. The gap between our present level of health and our potential can be filled and a healthy life can be extended.

Filling the gap is possible with the proper treatments and lifestyle changes. As long as there is a difference between our level of health and our genetic potential we are able to heal. The only reason anyone responds to the correctly prescribed treatments is because they essentially have ‘room to grow.’ Actually, if the diagnostic procedure is accurate, treatments can only be identified if the genetic potential has not been reached. If someone is at their genetic limitation, no treatments can be identified except for those designed to change or improve the genetic codes. This, for me, is the last great frontier, the frontier where no man has gone before.

An interesting phenomenon occurs when treatments have enabled an individual to reach their ultimate genetic potential. For the first time, the intelligence of the body actually recognizes where the genetic flaws exist! Since the intent of the body is to maintain homeostasis with the least amount of effort, it directs its attention towards making the necessary corrections provided the required support is available. This happens in an interesting sequence. First, the body recognizes the physical flaws. Supporting and treating the flaws then enables the psychological patterns (the way we think) associated with the disorders to become evident. It sort of puts them on the table, so we can experience them in a way that enables us to change them. Changing our minds, improving the way we think, then allows the associated organs to heal beyond their genetic potential. This process makes it possible to correct disorders that were never meant to be successfully treated. I wish my accountant had become involved in this process.

My wife, Michale (pronounced Michelle) just informed me she won’t talk to me until I write a blog. She claims I wanted a blog and now that I have one, I am not blogging. I am not sure why I have a blog. She says it is so I can journal about what is going on in my life and the issues I face in the clinic. Write about getting sick because I ate too many Dagwood sandwiches followed by root beer floats (all organic and no milk), or I should write about various illnesses, children’s health issues, working in the garden, or just random thoughts. I do not need to make it technical, just real! I know at one time I wanted to write articles about the exciting aspects of the body and all the discoveries I have made in the clinic. However, lately something has changed.
I might be burned-out but this goes against everything I have discovered about the body. Being burned-out is the result of adrenal cortical deficiency and is not a negative psychological result. Lately, however, the treatments have reached a plateau and a disturbing one at that. They have done all they can do. I am now left with my maximum genetic potential and I want something better.
The body is supposed to be limited by its genetics. Genetics are thought to be locked in stone. Whatever you are born with is what you will have forever. I have heard from well-educated sources, however, that it is possible to change your genetics by changing the way you think. This sounds easy enough but a major step in the process is being ignored. Body functions determine the way we think and establish the limits of our thoughts. To change our genetics we must first identify the primary weakness giving rise to psychological limitations and then heal it.
The process of changing our genetics involves treating the body until it reaches its full potential. This can take a few months to years depending on how much separation exists between our genetics and our present level of health. The difference between our potential and our health is a gap that is correctible with the proper treatments. Once the gap fills, however, the treatments stop working. Reaching our genetic potential might not be acceptable. I know in my own case, it is very disappointing. I want better genetics.
So now here I am. The majority of my patients and me are as good as we can get. In order to continue, I have no choice but to improve the quality of genetics and raise potentials to a level that is adequate. Over the past forty years, I have hit roadblocks like this and have always managed to move beyond them. This I feel is the biggest roadblock of all. I am certain when this challenge is overcome my enthusiasm will return. I will keep you posted regarding my progress and maybe even have a blog journal like my wife suggested.
OK! Now I am going to load this article and go speak with my gorgeous, drill sergeant wife.

This is a wonderful example of causes, progressions and compensations. I recently evaluated a lady who possesses the genetics that would make most people envious. She grew up with perfect health with vital parents. It wasn’t until she was in her forties she developed a problem.

Four years ago, she ate an oily rich dinner in a restaurant. Two days later, she began feeling nauseated and sick to her stomach. This passed within a day or so. A few days later while eating cherries the nausea returned. During the following month, the symptoms of nausea and feeling sick came and went until they began getting worse. Her stomach was bloated, there was a loss of appetite, and when she did eat, she felt sick for hours. Often, she experienced a gagging even with water. She eventually went to a physician who prescribed a strong antibiotic, which instantly remedied the condition. Her symptoms were gone and she had no problems until four years later.

Without any known provocation, the stomach symptoms returned, but this time they were worse. For the next year, she lost thirty-five pounds from not being able to eat regularly. She kept diet logs and could not find any correlations. She made the rounds with medical specialists who performed every know test for evaluating the digestive tract. The entire series of tests proved she was in perfect health. Finally, she decided to return to the original physician in hopes that the antibiotic she took previously might work again. It did, but only for a few days after which the symptoms reached a higher level of discomfort.

When she came to my clinic, she was taking an anti-inflammatory drug three times a day. Without it, the nausea would be so extreme she would not be able to eat. Even having water in her mouth would activate the gag reflex. The examination revealed a fascinating etiology.

Her initial illness was due to Salmonella, but her quality of health and a stomach compensation allowed her to contain it for a month. During this time, it migrated from her small intestine into her bile duct and eventually settled in her gall bladder.

The chronic infection produced large amounts of exotoxins. Exotoxins are a unique substance produced by bacteria as waste products and for defense. They are also necessary for establishing territory to enable colonization. These exotoxins, during the month before treatment, permeated the lining of the bile duct and the gallbladder. The antibiotics she took then killed the active salmonella but the exotoxins remained. This is common with most infections. The presence of the salmonella exotoxins created a chronic irritation over several years that eventually weakened the function of the gall bladder. To compound matters the antibiotic triggered the growth of an intestinal fungus.

Intestinal fungus creates intestinal acidity that adds to the irritation caused by the salmonella exotoxins. After four years, the combination of the fungal exotoxins and the salmonella exotoxins eventually depleted gall bladder function and the nausea returned. The presence of fungus establishes an acidic environment that increases susceptibility to additional bacterial infections. Consequently, the second round of antibiotics helped for a few days by eliminating a recent infection but promoted additional fungal growth making the intestine more acidic. The combination of these factors eventually took its toll on the liver.

The liver is the primary source of bile production. Between meals, the liver moves bile into the gall bladder where it is refined. During a meal, this bile dumps into the small intestine to promote fat digestion. It is then quickly reabsorbed and returned to the liver. In the average meal, bile will cycle three times! If it does not, the liver must then make up the difference. Eventually, an inadequate supply of raw materials causes the liver to signal the stomach during meals to slow down forcing food to remain in the stomach for abnormal periods. This action causes bloating after meals that can persist for hours. This was the final step to producing her condition.

To summarize; an initial Salmonella infection that lasted over a month produced exotoxins that deposited in the lining of the bile duct and gall bladder. This weakened gall bladder function with a resultant decline in fat digestion. The stomach took over (compensated) for the deficient gall bladder by increasing its lipolytic activity. This caused temporary relief of symptoms, but compensations are meant to be temporary. As the stomach function declined the symptoms returned. Antibiotics produced a fungal infection that contributed to intestinal and bile duct acidity. The combination of these two infections decreased intestinal resistance to additional infections. A second round of antibiotics increased the intensity of the disorder. Deficient bile circulation depleted liver function creating the additional stomach distress of bloating. Finally, prolonged stress depleted adrenal cortical DHEA causing stress intolerance.

This is a brilliant progression of the body’s incredible intelligence in managing illness and a good example of how the body can only take so much. Ideally, the patient should have seen a physician within a few days of symptom onset, but this was a foreign behavior until now.

I was very excited to start my practice in natural medicine. I was confident that with the treatments filling my armory, there was no illness or disease capable of surviving the onslaught of my clinic. Diet therapy, fasting, spinal adjustments, vitamins/minerals, enzymes, cleansing therapies, herbs, protomorphogens, homeopathics, even physiotherapy and a few fringe treatments could dispose of any physical anarchy. I also practiced acupuncture, electric acupuncture and used some Chinese patent formulas and herbal soups. I was extremely well fortified, ready to assist any patient in their mission to restoring peace to their bodies. It did not take long, however, before I recognized the treatment protocols I learned were not as effective as I had been lead to believe.

Patients were not getting well the way I expected. Most were struggles that required multiple treatments with only meager results. Nearly everyone experienced varying degrees of improvement and was content with my enthusiastic efforts, but it was not enough. I wanted faster results that were lasting and results that did not require regular updates to maintain. After several years of struggling with thirty-five to fifty patients a day six days a week, I soon realized, the treatments were not the culprit; it was my process of prescribing them that was the problem. I needed to understand priorities, sequences, timing, and I needed to develop an ability to allow the body to tell me what it wanted. I needed to understand the body’s flow of energy in the process of developing dysfunction and in healing. At the time, however, this task seemed impossible primarily because of my conditioning.

I grew up in a medically oriented society. I was educated and trained with medical textbooks. I learned pathology and the etiology of disease, and I learned to make a diagnosis. I was trained to identify a condition and apply a prescribed protocol of treatment with an intensity sufficient enough to drive the condition away, to pound it with therapeutic weapons into complete submission. Medicine was much like battling an enemy with the appropriate artillery. Even though I used all natural therapies, I still prescribed them in a western, medical fashion. I had essentially become a naturally oriented allopath.

I named this process “Cookbook Medicine.” I even had an instructor who claimed all we require as physicians is the ability to diagnose and a big “bag of tricks” containing all the necessary treatments. I was also taught the Law of Spontaneous Remission, which states in most cases if you palliate long enough the condition might resolve it self! Well, I had my magic (?) bag of tricks and my diagnostic procedures, but they were not serving my patients or me. I was desperate for a different process. To accomplish this I needed to change the way I think.

I realized, from my training in the Chinese Five-Element Theory, the body does not think in terms of a diagnosis. All conditions result from a complex sequence of energetic disturbances and compensations. To make matters more difficult, there can be numerous sequences creating the same condition. In Chinese medicine, diagnosis is the process of identifying the sequence back to the original insult or disturbance. Treatments then re-establish a normal flow of energy thereby eliminating the symptoms caused by the condition. An illness does not result from a deficiency of antibiotics or herbal alkaloids. Mega-doses of vitamins and minerals, fasting, natural antibiotics, stimulating herbs and disciplined lifestyle are not the final resolution for illness. Instead, healing requires the accurate prescribing of a series of progressive treatments designed to advance the body towards health by normalizing each level of energetic disturbance. This is the correct method for helping a patient and I needed to learn it.

For five years, I struggled to re-condition myself to think in terms of energy and not cookbook medicine even when I needed to move quickly on to the next patient. It was stressful, arduous, and frustrating. Even my office manager stressed as she struggled to maintain the patient schedule. It was common for me to be an hour behind, but I persisted. I had no choice. Then suddenly within the span of a few days, it happened. I got it. Somehow, my mind switched over to thinking in terms of the energy of disease. With each patient, I was able to understand the origins and sequences of energetic disturbances and the compensations producing their symptoms. I could see how causes and origins flowed from one body system to the next in an orderly progression to produce the present symptoms and I could see how the correct treatment allowed a progressive elimination in the symptoms. Most importantly, I began to recognize patterns of symptom response that consistently formed reliable identification of specific conditions. It was another twenty-five years before I identified the majority of these patterns, causes, and the necessary treatments by steadily improving my evaluation procedures.

I recently reviewed more of the USDA Organic regulations regarding certified organic farmers. One of the new guidelines is farmers can no longer save their own seed!!! This means they must buy their seeds from a USDA certified supplier. I wonder who is in line for this opportunity. I shall not name any names but I think Darth Vader might have genetically influenced them! Yes! Its true! I am erupting with disgust in saying it is true! This means certified organic farmers now have the opportunity (without knowing since there are no disclosure laws) to purchase and plant GMO seeds! And I do not mean Gone Mucho Organic seeds. I mean Genetically Modified seeds. It is time to start over.

I feel the organic movement has become diluted from the influence of corporate America and government manipulation. It now requires a new start. I suggest we begin a new organization devoted to Heirloom seeds. Truly organic farmers must plant heirloom seeds and to qualify whenever possible they MUST save their seeds! It is the only way to guarantee they are preserving the species. We also need inspectors who are loyal to the original concepts of organic to certify Heirloom Organic Farmers. We really have no choice.

We are presently witness to the diluted extinction of organic foods. We must raise the bar back to a level where we are guaranteed what we are eating is safe for our children and ourselves.