I hope that you have come to this site looking for a change.
I am an expert in alternative medicine, a writer, researcher, and health advisor. I attended the National School of Naturopathic Medicine and earned a degree in naturopathic medicine (ND) which qualifies me to practice as a primary care physician in certain states.
My interest in natural health stems from overcoming a serious illness with the aid of natural medicine (see my story below). The human body, I’ve discovered, is designed for health and not for illness. Think about that sentence: your body was designed to heal itself. You know this is true. Whenever you cut your finger, you don’t go running to the doctor and yell “give me something to make this heal.” What you do with a small cut on your finger is put a band-aid on it and stop thinking about it; the body will heal the cut without any help from you.
It is easy for us to trust that a small cut will heal itself; we don’t have that trust when it comes to diabetes, cancer, heart disease, arthritis and a million other diseases. But I’m here to tell you that the same magic that turns your open wound on your finger back into working skin exists for many diseases. There are self-healing mechanisms in the body and health is simply a matter of supporting these mechanisms through diet, proper nutrition, and supplementation. When I am not researching, writing or coaching people on their health, I am outdoors running, riding my bike or taking advantage of the wonderful mountains here in Colorado.
Here is my wish ... you find the health you are looking for,
Dr. Scott Olson
My story and my interest in health began when I was 18 years old. My father had a book called the Pritikin Diet and for some reason I was drawn to it. What interested me while reading the book was that there might be some other way to eat than what I was eating. Didn’t everyone eat the same way? What really intrigued me about the book was the suggestion that what you ate could affect your life. The Pritikin Diet was a mixture of a diet and exercise program and it claimed that people could not only lose weight, but also live longer.
I was intrigued.
Being an active runner, biker, hiker I was interested in what would help me run better and faster. This one book began the search of a lifetime. While in college, I was the weirdo who was always trying a new diet, or out running up a mountain, or experimenting with some herbal remedy for something.
Illness Changes My Life
Following college I met and fell in love with a girl who would later become my wife. We moved to Tennessee. I had been thinking for a while that I wanted to be in the health field. My thoughts at the time were to become a massage therapist, or study a specialized form of massage known as Rolfing. While working, waiting to decide which massage school I might want to attend, I hurt my back. After spending a few days on my back, my wife picked me up, poured me into a car and took me to a chiropractor. It was the first time I had ever been to a chiropractor and I knew 20 minutes after walking in the door that I wanted to be a chiropractor.
Soon my back was healthy and my wife and I were headed West so that I could attend the Chiropractic school in Portland, Oregon. I started taking prerequisites for the chiropractic school at a local community college. I was accepted to chiropractic school and awaited starting in the fall when another illness struck.
Illness Changes My Life… Again
I had long known that I was sensitive to chemicals. There are many people in the world like me who have a hard time dealing with chemical in the environment. The scientific term for it is Multiple Chemical Sensitivities; I didn’t know what it was called, all I knew is that I felt bad whenever I was around any strong smell. Perfumes were often too strong for me to be around; walking into a store like a paint or carpet store was hard from me. I got headaches, felt dizzy, and generally felt bad when I was around chemicals.
Despite knowing this about myself, I took it upon myself to build a bed and stain it (with a supposed natural stain). After sleeping in the bed for a few weeks I got really sick. It was difficult for me to walk around the block (this after being able to ride a bike or run for miles); eventually a large amount of clear vesicles (bumps) broke out on my skin. I wanted to make an appointment to see my local chiropractor, but she was gone on vacation.
Looking through the local yellow pages, I found something called The National College of Naturopathic College. That sounded right up my alley. I went to the clinic at the college. The doctors there tested my blood and found out that I had chemically-induced hepatitis: The chemicals around me were destroying my liver.
On a subsequent visit, my Naturopathic doctor looked at me and asked me if I would consider eating meat again if my life depended on it. Up to this point, all my research supported the idea that eating a diet high in grains was healthy and I had been a vegetarian for about 8 years. I shrugged my shoulders, not ready to give up my “healthy” lifestyle. He leaned over, looked me in the eye and finished his sentence, “…because it does. Your health depends on you changing your diet.”
I was shocked. I had read all the books, followed all the advice, but somehow I had missed something. Reluctantly, I followed the Naturopathic doctor’s advice, changed my diet, took some high-grade supplements, and slowly started to feel better.
Now I was really hooked. Naturopathic doctors are not only trained in adjustment techniques like chiropractors, but they also have extensive training in herbs, vitamins, nutrition, and homeopathy. In certain states Naturopaths are considered primary care physicians and they can prescribe drugs, do PAP smears, inject medicines, and do minor surgery. I applied and was accepted to naturopathic school and spent the next four years learning about how the body worked from a medical perspective, but more importantly, I learned the true source of health and how to support the body’s natural self-healing potential.
Lessons from a Journey
Today I don’t have any problems with chemical sensitivities, I actually can paint a room and have no problems and my liver is in great shape.
What I learned from my journey is two things.
The first is that an illness or a condition is not, necessarily, a bad thing. Illness is usually a sign that something needs to change. That “something” is different for every illness and every person. For me, illness was my guide, it lead me to what I needed to learn. For others an illness may be a message to change what they are eating, improve their nutrition, get off their butt and exercise, get out of a bad job or relationship, or spend more time understanding their connection to spirit.
The second lesson I learned was that optimal human nutrition is quite often not what you might think. We are constantly bombarded by information about what we should eat; even from reputable sources like the government. While our food choices have evolved dramatically in the last thousand years, our bodies still need basic nutrients just to function. Health does not come in a bottle; it comes from a combined effort of the right food choices, the right nutrients, and the right support of your body (which actually may be a pill) and good sleep, exercise, and relaxation.
Health is not some far-off concept that you cannot obtain once you get sick; if you provide your body with what it needs it will automatically heal itself.
©2007 ForgetEverything.com