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J**N
Who Should Read This Book?
As someone who has suffered from mold toxemia and multiple chemical sensitivities and whose wife has suffered through chronic Lyme and its coinfectants (with the usual cascade of effects: chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, brain fog, anxiety, etc.), I have a deep stake in the research presented in this book. Most practitioners today have little understanding of chronic/complex illness and the protocols for diagnosis, much less for treatment. Mainstream allopathic medicine has no sure solutions of its own and, worse, remains occasionally suspicious of several of the techniques and technologies outlined herein. After all, these lie for the most part “outside of the paradigm” of mainstream medicine. My wife and I live where some physicians, thankfully, are open to new treatment possibilities; at the very least, they admit that they don’t have all the answers themselves.So, I return to my initial question: Who should read this book? Those who suffer from chronic/complex illness, of course, and those who care for them: that part of the answer is obvious. More importantly, it’s the practitioners across the country who treat you and yours who need this book. I address my fellow sufferers in mold, Lyme, MCS, etc.: give copies of Dr. Nathan’s book to your family physicians and to others who have tried to help but, lacking information on this latest research, have done little more than address symptoms rather than causes. Until the medical community comes to understand what a handful of researcher-physicians have discovered in their joint efforts at diagnoses/treatments, we’re doomed—doomed to an unrelenting suffering and loss of quality of life. And that “we,” those of us who have endured chronic/complex illness, grows with each passing month by the tens of thousands.I am not unfriendly to mainstream medicine, which has its dedicated professionals. What we need, desperately, is to expand the parameters of what is deemed “mainstream,” so that the techniques/technologies outlined in Dr. Nathan’s book become more widely understood and available. Information is key: since most practitioners lack the depth of information presented in Dr. Nathan’s book, how can they be expected to help? Put simply, they need to read this book, and someone has to put it physically in their hands. You should do it, gentle reader.Passivity on the part of patients contributes to the crisis. We need to advocate on behalf of our own medical needs. I suspect that most of us, at some point, came to realize that our family practitioners and even the local specialists were of modest help with our chronic/complex conditions, which caused us to become researchers in our own right. Likely, this urgency to self-research led you to Dr. Nathan’s book. When you read it, you’ll discover that it does not promise an easy fix: months and (for me) years of hard work may lie ahead. What it does promise is a coherent protocol for diagnosis/treatment that has proved capable of curing many who, otherwise, had given up hope.Toxic does not replace Dr. Nathan’s earlier work, Healing Is Possible. That previous book provides a protocol for rebalancing body chemistry in a world of depleted nutrition and environmental degradation/toxicity. Still, this latest book is so far advanced over previous discussions that it inhabits a universe of its own. That’s a bold claim, given that Toxic is a fairly slim volume written for an educated lay audience. (It wears its research lightly, in other words.) And, as Dr. Nathan’s list of “Suggested Reading” shows, most of the protocols were developed independently of each other. But that, in point of fact, is the brilliance of this book: having found a common thread in the dozen or so protocols that successfully treat mold, MCS, fibromyalgia, anxiety disorders, etc., Dr. Nathan demonstrates the underlying neurophysiological processes that each previous protocol addresses, in part, in its own way.The body is a self-regulating system: hence, its aim is homeostasis. But, as Dr. Nathan observes, the body is also self-protective, with specific defensive mechanisms operative in each level of organization, from intracellular to cellular to tissue to glandular to organ/organ systems to the whole organism. The parasympathetic nervous system is implicated in this continuous self-protective activity, which is largely “interpretive”: that is, the body “interprets” some agent or stimulus as invasive or threatening, which elicits a defensive/protective neurophysiological “response.” The body “sounds an alarm,” leading to changes in heart rate/blood pressure, hormonal balance, inflammation, etc. In each chapter within each discussion of specific conditions and treatment protocols, Dr. Nathan asks: What happens when the body can’t “turn off” its defensive “alarm” mechanisms—when a system gets stuck in fight-or-flight mode and can’t relax/restore itself? The first step in each case, as Dr. Nathan argues, is “to reboot” that specific system, restoring its sense of wellbeing—that is, of being “safe from harm.”In this respect, the “complexity” resident in treating chronic/complex conditions rests in retraining each system (neural, endocrine, gastrointestinal, etc.) to stop attacking itself, after which—given the right sorts of help—the body can restore its own healing response. Stress comes in many forms: emotional, nutritional, chemical/environmental, physical/traumatic. An invasion by mold or Lyme can push an overstressed body “over the edge,” from which it cannot restore its natural balances without an initial neurophysiological “reboot.” When you think about it, this concept is elegant in its simplicity. Stealing an Einsteinian phrase, one might call it “the grand unified theory” of chronic/complex illness.Note that Dr. Nathan’s book does not give the various protocols in full: rather, it takes readers through the first stages in gathering these protocols together, in explaining how and why they work, and in giving the resources for further reading and taking action. By the time you’ve worked through the whole of Dr. Nathan’s combined treatments, you’ll own a small library—and, one hopes, you’ll have shared that library with friends, family, and as-yet uninformed practitioners.For the record, I should add that I was under Dr. Nathan’s care more than a decade ago, when he maintained a private practice in Missouri. Several months before the writing of this review, a recurrence of symptoms led me to visit him in his clinic in California, where he gave me my personalized reading list. His book, Toxic, had not yet been released, but now I’ve read it and can give my response. Let me say, finally, that Dr. Nathan speaks and writes in the same voice. What you’ll get in this book will be as good as “a visit to the doc.”James S. Baumlin, Ph.D.
M**E
12 years of clueless doctors and this explained so much
I suffered from mold toxicity for 10 years in a moldy home. The mold was behind my bathroom tile so we did not see it. No leak, just imporper installation of drywall in which was ran all the way to tub (should have a gap to prevent the drywall from soaking up the water) and also reg drywall used. Should be the green one. Anyways, this book will explain things, tell you which labs to run, what has helped his patients, etc. Between this book and break the mold by Jill Christa, these 2 are the books I recommend to anyone dealing with mold toxicity or suffering from chronic illness in theich treatment isn't working. Being a doctor, he focuses primarily on body and how to heal so also have to tackle the environmental side. I can not even begin to explain to most how mold effected my whole family and even my dog. Every doc was absolutely clueless. Even natural docs who truly wanted to help has no clue about mold. I even took the book to a doc and he basically said "I don't know what this guy is doing.... Your focused on this "mold"...." And basically, he thought it was all in my head. I looked at him and said, you may be doc but I KNOW what I've wzperience. 12 years, I didn't have a period. 12 years... they stopped at age 24. 5 months ago, after I got our of mold, they returned. Zearenelone alone can cause reproductive issues. And I have not only high levels of zearenelone but also high levels of trichothecene (the one that comes from the dreaded black mold), alfatoxin, gliotoxin, citrinin, mycophenilic acid. In which, I had labs to prove this in which he still acted like I was dumb all the while repedively reminding me "he was the doc." Saddest part, me and husband reacted in this arrogant docs office. He SHOULD read it but his pride is standing in the way.I saw countless doctors and even chased thyroid problems including STTM. The whole time is was mold. I'm 2 years out of mold and I'm still recovering. But the changes have been undeniable how sick mold made me and family. Oh yeah and top it off, it's in bible that Neil Nathan points out. My mouth dropped when I read this and immediately dug out my bible. Yep. It's there. And so much wisdom in it. Seems crazy when first seeing it but mold is so toxic, it is used in chemical biowarfare. Yellow rain anyone? So yeah, if you suspect mold, buy this book! And get Jill Christa's book. And don't lose hope finding a doc. I finally found one. Took me 2 years out of mold. Don't give up! There is hope and healing!
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