The Nick Delgado Protocol
Medical lectures, even talks by nutritionally based doctors, are typically staid academic discussions peppered with the occasional cartoon and humorous quip. Most speakers seek to get across a number of "pearls," educational nuggets, for the practitioner to take home and study further. The goal for the medical presentation is to establish a "logic paradigm" based on the more mundane scientific information, then introduce new medical research, published and unpublished scientific data, leading to a brand-new insight for understanding a diagnosis or treatment. If the lecturer can inspire such an "aha" moment, when the listener's thinking turns on like a lightbulb, the talk has succeeded brilliantly. When the conference is filled with lightbulb-turning-on lectures, attendees return home invigorated to do more study and modify their practices.

The A4M conference in Las Vegas last December offered illuminating talks that are available for home listening on MP3 and CD recordings. One of the talks in the early hours before 9 a.m. was by Dr. Nick Delgado. Like most speakers, Dr. Delgado presented graphs to show the data providing evidence for therapeutic results. Then I was shocked out of my early-morning somnolence when he jumped away from the podium and continued his presentation by running down from the stage, running away off to the side of the lecture hall, back again to the stage, and back to the podium. And this exhibition of jogging and aplomb was repeated a few times again during the talk, along with a call for everyone to get up, to shout and cheer, and to breathe in and out with vigor. Dr. Nick not only talks the talk, he eats a diet that keeps him vibrant, and he exercises prolifically – his weight-lifting prowess is remarkable. He holds the world strength endurance record for lifting 50,640 pounds in one hour. (Watch Dr. Delgado perform this weight-lifting feat. He is training to set a new world record in the curls this year.)

Dr. Nick has established a plan for diet and exercise known as the Delgado Protocol. It calls for eating vegetables, fruit, barley, more vegetables, and complex carbohydrates. Dr. Nick wants people to get off wheat and dairy foods; he theorizes that eliminating them is a must and that the decision to avoid these foods does not require corroboration first by food-allergy testing. He calls for exercising, if possible, in cooler environments to maximize muscular development and fitness. Dr. Nick is convinced that most older adults can eliminate arthritis symptoms by abiding by such a diet, engaging in vigorous exercise, and judiciously using hormone replacement therapies. He is a big proponent of the newly emerging therapeutics of stem cell therapy, and his clinic focuses on stem cell work for support of injured and degenerated tissues. Dr. Nick also supports the academic work of A4M and participates actively in the education provided by www.worldhealth.net.

Dr. Leigh Erin Connealy, MD
One of the pleasures of vacationing away from home is visiting colleagues and seeing their clinics. I had the pleasure of such a visit last Christmas with Dr. Leigh Erin Connealy at her clinic, the Center for New Medicine, in Irvine, California. Some clinics are large and multidisciplined; Dr. Connealy's clinic is very large and very multidisciplined. Dr. Connealy has a strong academic background in medicine and public health, and her clinic seeks to integrate the best of conventional and integrative medicine.

Like most physicians, Dr. Leigh Erin uses conventional laboratory diagnostics and X-ray. For many patients, she also uses alternative diagnostics, including Ondamed, based on biofeedback; ZYTO, computerized-based diagnostics; and dark field microscopy. With other staff physicians, she evaluates protocols recommending formulations individualized for patients based on their diagnostics. Burton Goldberg, the founding editor of Alternative Medicine: The Definitive Guide, believes that a clinic must substantiate diagnostic recommendations through confirmation by electronic acupuncture, computerized diagnostics, kinesiology, or some other means beyond prescription protocol. Dr. Connealy concurs that many treatment regimens ordered by physicians elsewhere or designed by the patient do not align with the patient's bioenergetics. She recommends quitting such remedies to prevent treatment failures. She also prefers to test new remedies herself or with staff to ensure that new formulations are well tolerated and practical.

Dr. Connealy has had a long-standing practice of prescribing bioidentical hormone therapies. She has a staff pharmacy that compounds bioidentical hormones at the clinic to ensure quality and ef­fec­tiveness. Her clinic offers chelation, intra­venous therapies, hyper­baric oxygen, sauna detoxification, and acu­puncture. The Center for New Medicine offers biological dentistry and aesthetic laser therapies. Dr. Connealy's clinic adjoins the Oasis of Hope (California), a standard-of-care cancer treatment facility. The Oasis of Hope offers conventional cancer treatments that are modified to permit concomitant integrative therapies offered by Dr. Connealy's clinic. At the Oasis of Hope, some patients are offered high-dose intravenous ascorbic acid in lieu of chemotherapy. The integration of cancer care at the Oasis of Hope and nutritional medicine at the Center for New Medicine has resulted in significantly better outcomes for cancer patients.

For those in Southern California, a visit to the Center for New Medicine is highly recommended. I thank Dr. Connealy's director of operations of Perfectly Healthy supplement company, Kitty Smith, for arranging my visit. For more information, visit http://www.cfnmedicine.com/

Swine Flu
By now, swine flu is rarely mentioned on the six o'clock news and is nearly never seen in the newspapers. The long lines to get an H1N1 vaccine are nonexistent, and most pharmacies now have a stockpile of supplies that are going unused. At one point, pharmacies were contacting families to come in for a flu and H1N1 vaccine – now even those calls have stopped. The fatalities from H1N1 have dropped precipitously and are much lower than deaths from seasonal flu. While there is a threat that a second or third phase of H1N1 may transpire, it is hard to imagine that this virus represents a level 6 pandemic. Admittedly, any family who has lost a child or young adult due to this infection worries that we are still vulnerable to H1N1 and strongly supports public health measures to vaccinate. Yet a large group of Americans opted not to vaccinate during the period of time when media reporting of swine flu deaths created massive fear and hysteria. Many of those individuals questioned the safety of the H1N1 vaccine and its effectiveness.

Byron Belitsos and Dr. Len Saputo reported the results of their investigation in Part 1 of the "Infection Deception" in the February/March issue of the Townsend Letter.  In this issue, Belitsos and Saputo conclude their investigation, "Deep Politics, Global Health Policy, and the Swine Flu Debacle." They are concerned that the World Health Organization (WHO) changed the definition of a pandemic to make the labeling of a level 6 pandemic easier. In effect, the H1N1 pandemic enabled authorities to exert martial law policies to control infection. Such policies would permit enforced vaccination and quarantine if needed. The authors report that many representatives of the drug and vaccine industry are members of the WHO governing body that decides the staging of a pandemic. Clearly, drug companies benefit when a pandemic mandates the manufacturing of vaccine. Belitsos and Saputo worry that vaccines are never put through rigorous testing to demonstrate either effectiveness or safety. Of even greater concern is the possibility that a vaccine contains biological materials capable of rendering infection and/or adverse effects.  Finally, the authors remind us also that public health authorities condemn any discussion of using natural health products, such as vitamin D, which may play a role in preventing infection. 

Jonathan Collin, MD