Bell Susan - How to Make Disease Disappear

Photography copyright 2018 by Susan Bell

I was on a skiing vacation with my family in the stunning snowy landscape of Chamonix, France. My son had been a little phlegmy and quiet all day, but I wasnt too worried. It was just a cold and I felt sure it would pass without issue. That evening my wife, Vidh, sat on the sofa watching TV while I was in the kitchen. I was watching the kettle, waiting for the water to boil, when I heard her shout: Rangan! Hes not moving! I rushed in. He must be choking! I said. Its the phlegm. I lifted him out of Vidhs arms, turned him over and slapped him over the back in an attempt to clear his airway. But nothing happened. Rangan, hes not choking, said Vidh. We need to go to the hospital. My sons arms were stretched out, his body was rigid, his eyes stared vacantly.

After a panicked rush down a snowy road that almost ended in my turning the car over, we found ourselves standing in the resuscitation room of the emergency room of the tiny Les Hpitaux du Pays du Mont-Blanc. As I watched the doctors take his temperature and try to get an intravenous line into his neck, I ran through the possibilities of what might be wrong with him. Was it epilepsy? Was it something more serious? I couldnt think. I felt numb. The truth was, I didnt have a clue. In that moment, I was no longer the doctor with nearly ten years experience whod graduated from the prestigious University of Edinburghs medical school. I was a terrified dad.

Five long, agonizing hours later, the doctor came in to see us, waiting by our sons bed. Dr. Chatterjee, we have an update, he said.

What is it? I asked.

Dr. Chatterjee, your sons calcium levels are very low. In fact, he has almost no calcium in his body at all. He experienced a hypocalcemic convulsion. Were going to give him some intravenous calcium.

My reaction was utter confusion. How had this happened? What did it mean? But my confusion in that moment was nothing compared with the shock I felt when I did finally discover the root cause of what happened. It was an entirely preventable vitamin D deficiency. This was as unbelievable as it was serious. Untreatedespecially in childrenvitamin D deficiency can lead to painful and permanent damage including deformities to the bones, a condition known as rickets. I was devastated. And I swore that I would never allow anything like it to happen again.

The crisis of my sons illness forced me to ask some honest and uncomfortable questions. Why had I not been made sufficiently aware of vitamin and other nutritional deficiencies during my supposedly top-of-the-line medical training? And why wasnt that training proving more effective in my practice? As an MD, my days were filled with seeing patients with chronic conditions such as joint pain, headaches, type 2 diabetes, insomnia, depression, weight gain and fatigue. I hated to admit it, but the fact was, I reckoned I was helping maybe 20 percent of these people. The approach to consultations Id been taught in medical school simply wasnt working. And if my medical training was failing me so badly for so many of my patients, what else could I do but embark on my own course of re-education?

And so began an incredible journey through many new worlds of knowledge that, Im sad to say, the majority of doctors still have relatively little idea about. I immersed myself in research, especially around nutrition, movement science, stress reduction, ancestral health and functional medicine. I also came across research that allowed me to see afresh what Id learned while completing my BSc honors degree in immunology, gaining valuable insight into the rapidly developing field of gut health and the microbiome. I started applying the science, first with my family and then with my patients. Do you know what happened? People started getting betterreally better. Id finally learned to resolve the root cause of their problems, rather than simply suppressing their symptoms.

What Id learned, in a way that I hadnt fully grasped before, was that acute disease and chronic disease are entirely different things. Acute disease is something that, as doctors, were pretty good at. Its relatively simple. You have something like pneumonia, a severe lung infectionso in your lung you have the overgrowth of some bugs, typically a type of bacteria. We identify the bacteria and we give you a treatment, typically an antibiotic that kills it. The bacteria die and, hey presto, you no longer have your pneumonia. The problem is, we apply that same thinking to chronic disease, and it simply doesnt work.

Chronic disease doesnt just happen like this. Chronic disease has many different causes. You dont just wake up some day suffering from one; by the time we give you the diagnosis, things have already been going wrong for a long, long time.

Let me tell you about one patient I met whom I found to be struggling with an all-too-common chronic disease. Thirty-five-year-old Mary was struggling with weight problems, joint problems, sleep problems and fatigue. I did some blood tests and diagnosed her with type 2 diabetes. This is one of the most harmful chronic diseases the world is currently facing. One in ten Americans currently has type 2 diabetes, and one in four has its precursor, pre-diabetes. The vast majority of sufferers dont even know theyve got it. Between 1990 and 2013, rates of the disease shot up by an incredible 71 percent in the United Statesone of the most dramatic increases of any nation. It currently costs the US alone more than $245 billion a year. Within thirty days of treating Mary, Id made her diabetes disappear. Two years on, her disease is nowhere to be seen!

Most cases of type 2 diabetes are caused by something called insulin resistance. Insulin is a very important hormone, and one of its key functions is to keep your blood sugar tightly controlled in your body. Say you have a sugary bowl of cereal for breakfast. What happens is your blood sugar goes up, but your body releases a little bit of insulin and that helps it come back down to normal. The problem is, after years of dietary abuse with sugary foods, the insulin begins to lose its power. As you become more insulin resistant, you need more and more insulin to do the same job. You can think of it as a little like alcohol. The very first time you have a drink, what happens? Lets say some wineone or two sips, or maybe half a glassyou feel tipsy, you feel a bit drunk. As you become a more seasoned and accustomed drinker, you need more and more alcohol to have the same effect, and thats whats going on with insulin. You need more and more insulin to have the same effect. When the insulin can no longer keep your sugar under control, despite its best efforts, we say youve got a disease, type 2 diabetes. However, things will have been going wrong in your body for many years before that.