Surviving Healthcare
Surviving Healthcare Podcast
271. TAMARA SANTA ANA, WHOLISTIC PHYSICIAN, DESCRIBES HER PRACTICE
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271. TAMARA SANTA ANA, WHOLISTIC PHYSICIAN, DESCRIBES HER PRACTICE

She has treated and cured cancer, heart disease, thyroid dysfunction, and autoimmune diseases. She is not allowed to say this, so I did.

Here is the Rumble video.

Partial transcript

I want to introduce Dr. Tamara Santa Ana, who practices in Lexington, Virginia. 

She is in her early 60s, has five kids, a successful marriage, and was initially trained as a doctor of chiropractic. However, her practice is now holistic medicine and does not include spinal manipulation. She spent decades studying under the top people in the alternative medical field. These included MDs Thomas Levy and David Perlmutter, the author of the bestseller Grain Brain

In a moment, I will let her tell you what holistic healthcare is and what she does, but first, I will share my biases. You know about my study of healthcare corruption and how painful it was for me. I recently turned 70, and we old dogs have difficulty learning new tricks. 

All my life, I have studied a medical thought process that I now know is wrong. I initially thought the problem was primarily mistakes or financial conflicts. But now I understand that outside interests purposefully warped healthcare to destroy our health. It is a militarized racket. 

Imagine how agonizing it is for me to press another major change into my thinking—that another group of physicians practices better medicine than ours.

I have been hanging out with Dr. Tamara for several weeks, soaking up her knowledge and expertise. She has also been helping me with my approach to Parkinson’s disease. When I started thinking about and studying alternative medicine, I thought I could pick up the basics in a few months. Now, I realize that years of study are required for mastery. 

I have a secret to share—something you should never tell a blue-eyed blonde woman like Tamara. I put her on my autodialer. 

I have been brainwashed to believe that holistic methods are worthless, that chiropractors are dumb as a box of rocks, and that even the language of alternative practice is a marker of fraud. I am transitioning (did I use that word?) away from these beliefs. I am now often forced to admit I am wrong about medical issues, that holistic approaches are mostly right, and that I am sorry. This is not easy, and you may notice my resulting bad attitude. That is my excuse if hostility slips into what I say.

Tamara, take it from here. First, describe your hero’s journey, and then explain the functional or holistic medicine principles you live by. We can spend the rest of the time telling stories about your successful patient treatments. 

Commentary

By state law, chiropractors are prohibited from using needles or doing surgery. They cannot even claim that they diagnose their patients, only that they “support their health.” Despite these limitations, Tamara has many effective therapies available to her. These are my words and opinions, but chiropractors are prohibited from saying this.

She describes how holistic doctors approach their patients. They attempt to strengthen and support the whole body and mind rather than to fix individual systems as if people were a car with a flat tire. She says her patients are not numbers, so her consultations are longer than an MD’s. This is because, as a “functional” physician, she tries to address the entire person including their emotional outlook. She even takes an interest in their family and social setting.

In her office, Dr. T uses blood testing, a traditional history and physical, and sometimes a few expensive diagnostic machines. To treat, one of her major tools is healthy nutrition. Her approach is limited only by her knowledge of how alternative therapies apply to medical conditions, and hundreds of over-the-counter herbs and supplements are available to her. She says she was initially skeptical of many of her current practices, but after exhaustive training, she became more confident.

Despite her accomplishments, Dr. T is modest and unassuming. She tells stories about how she improved or cured many patients with serious or even deadly diseases. These are my words, not her’s—she is not allowed to claim that she heals, cures, or treats. She is only permitted to say that she “supports healthy functioning.” 

Alternative doctors treat conditions that include the following. Tamara describes most of these in the interview. 

  • Stage 4 cancer

  • Rheumatoid and osteoarthritis

  • Heart disease, even after the myocardial infarction

  • Osteoporosis

  • Lupus erythematosus

  • Thyroid disease, including Grave’s

  • Painful peripheral neuropathy

  • Dementia due to a nutritional deficiency

  • Prostate enlargement

  • Urinary tract infections

  • Depression and anxiety

  • Chronic fatigue

  • Heavy metal toxicity

  • Lyme disease and parasitic disorders

  • Digestive disorders

Dr. Tamara emphasizes that inflammation and sometimes emotional issues are at the root of many diseases. Much of the list above has a close relationship to these influences. 

I found, followed up, and made Dr. Santa Ana my friend because I am fascinated with functional and holistic healthcare. She has proven to be a credible source who is always happy to tutor me. She constantly reads and has sped through my books already. Watching her rapidly absorb the few things I teach her makes me feel like a slow learner. 

Contact Dr. Santa Anna at https://www.drsantaana.com

Snarky counterpoint

By now, I have no doubt that holistic doctors are effective, but even traditional practitioners like me know about placebo effects. These are massive and rarely acknowledged by either group. 

The theoretical explanations alternative medicine uses to explain its work are absurdly speculative, and their terminology is pretentious and purposefully obscure. It seems more ridiculous than even conventional medicine’s. But what do I know? I wasted years of my early career memorizing “scientific” medical vocabulary designed to confuse everyone but us in the “priesthood.” We learned those catechisms by heart. 

Traditional docs are taught to discount tales of cure-alls or panaceas, but with all I am unlearning these days, I may also have to forget this rule. Chlorine dioxide and ultraviolet blood irradiation (UBI) sound like universal treatments and are harmless. I am studying these and will report soon.

Holistic doctors are fond of using dozens of therapies simultaneously for a single condition. Which is helping? Is there one active ingredient, or are there several? Occam’s razor is a logical and medical principle that says one or a few causes are more likely than many, and it must apply here. 

To give the naturopaths the benefit of the doubt, they may be trying to improve many systems simultaneously. With a shotgun approach, even if some supplements are nonsense, a few bullets are bound to find the mark. The advantage is that holistic therapies are almost always harmless, unlike “allopathic” medications and procedures.

Lastly, I hate the trademarking of supplement combinations and the creation of proprietary blends under brand names. The companies use this to jack up prices. Tamara counters that supplement quality is variable and that the companies doing quality work should be rewarded. She has found many weak or impure products on the market, so she carefully monitors her suppliers.

Big Pharma’s use of prescription medication patents is analogous but more powerful. Because supplements cannot be patented, trademarks are one of the only marketing options holistic druggists have.

Postscript: Naturopaths call MDs allopathic. A more accurate description, and the way I think about it now, is “Rockefeller medicine.” The video below explains it.

Alternative doctors can heal cancer.

This essential video is about several potent cures and how the mainstream has hidden and maligned them.

Because organized medicine and their lapdog regulators have aggressively attacked these therapies, they are unavailable in the US. But a quick search will show you the clinics using them in Tijuana, Mexico. These are credible, safe, and effective.

Aurelius again

One man after burying another has been laid out dead, and another buries him; and all this in a short time. Hippocrates after curing many diseases himself fell sick and died... and lice killed Socrates... What means all this? ...All human things are smoke, and nothing at all; and it is not for us but for the gods, to settle whether we play the play out, or only a part of it. Pass then through this little space of time conformably to nature, and tend thy journey in content, and just as the olive falls off when it is ripe, blessing nature who produced it, and the tree on which it grew. Do not act as if thou wert going to live 10,000 years. While you can, while you are able, be good.

This post is an introduction to what top functional doctors can do. Few people not working in the field understand any of it. The holistics are not perfect, and, like us, there are bad apples among them who ignore their responsibilities and exploit patients. Please send this to anyone you care about.

Parting shot: alternative health tidbits

Suzanne Somers just died of breast cancer.

From Hormone Secrets:

Suzanne Somers [had] star power. Millions of TV viewers follow and believe in her. Her promotion of human hormones transformed many women’s lives and refuted many of Pharma’s unhealthy but profitable fictions. She is a user and popularizer of the Wiley Protocol.

Sommers advocates estriol, the bio-identical but weak estrogen that might increase the chances of breast cancer. Recall also that progesterone protects against breast cancer and that creams and cycling potentially deliver less total hormone than the oral micronized or troche types taken daily. (Even these may not produce optimal blood levels for progesterone.) It may or may not be coincidental that Somers developed breast cancer a few years ago.

Somers developed relationships with many alternative practitioners and knew hormone expert Neal Rouzier. But she DFL to him and DFR his books or mine. He would likely have saved her life using testosterone therapy. This is from Hormone Secrets:

Can hormones be used to treat cancer? Yes. Testosterone suppresses breast cancer. Oral estradiol is safe and efficacious for treating prostate cancer. Patients using these hormones do not get damaging deficiency syndromes. Whether they work better than industry’s conventional therapies is unknown. Costly studies will never be done because human hormones can rarely be patented—they are unprofitable compared to patent drugs.

Estrogen blockers are conventional therapies for estrogen-sensitive breast tumors. But these cause menopause symptoms and, over time, ruin health. Since testosterone is broken down into estrogen, traditional doctors think using it for these cases is improper, especially if the patients take blockers.

Rebecca Glaser, MD, published her successful experience treating breast cancer using implantable pellets combining testosterone and a blocker drug. She placed these under the skin close to the cancers. Charles Mok, DO, shrank a woman’s breast cancer by 75 percent in six months using testosterone pellets (personal communication. He wrote Testosterone, Strong Enough for a Man, Made for a Woman, 2018). Testosterone shrinks breast cancer in animals as well.

I have heard from Dr. Glaser’s patients that she treats breast cancer patients with about three times the customary menopause testosterone pellet dosage—about three mg per pound. This likely produces blood levels over 600 ng/dl. For reference, postmenopausal women receive a pellet dose of one mg per pound, which produces blood levels of 200 to 300 ng/dl. This makes most women feel great (recall my superwomen). The usual pellet dose for a man is 10 mg per pound. This may produce blood levels of 1500 ng/dl. Weekly injections of inexpensive testosterone cypionate provide similar effects as pellets.

Side effects: Recall that high doses of testosterone for women potentially cause deep voices, enlarged clitorises, and active, possibly overactive sexuality. The women I know who use these doses for athletics do not mind, but they dislike hair growth and acne. These may be treated with laser hair removal and acne medications including spironolactone.

Synthetic progestins such as Provera cause some breast cancer, but bio-identical progesterone is at worst neutral. No published literature recommends against using it for breast cancer patients. One idea favoring it is that young women with high blood levels do not get cancer.

You can find physicians online who treat breast cancer with testosterone. Consult them over the phone if they are distant. Study Glaser’s hormonebalance.org for more—she is a leader.

I saw this work for my friend’s wife, who had stage 4 breast cancer and was down to 95 pounds. She was given high-dose testosterone and progesterone. Within two months, she was texting me from a beach in Mexico. She was up to 114 and had thrown away her walker.

Tony Robbins had mercury toxicity.

He was a vegan for 12 years, then added tuna and swordfish to his diet. Tony does nothing by halves, so he ate these top-of-the-food chain mercury-laden fish three to four meals daily. He developed memory loss and extreme fatigue, and his physician told him he was at risk of cardiac arrest. His mercury levels were 112 when he was diagnosed—the highest his doctor had ever seen. He was chelated and returned to normal.

Vegan factoids

In 1944, Donald Watson watched a pig being slaughtered. This experience convinced him that animal life was sacred and should never be sacrificed for human ends. He decided never to eat animal products again and coined the idea and word “vegan” for his followers. According to prominent plant eater Michael Gregor, these acolytes must eat “nothing with a mother or a face.” Some of them even avoid leather belts—or killing insects. 

It was a seductive new philosophy that had never in history been successfully implemented for large groups. People who solely eat plants universally have trouble with their long-term health. But they never seem to have trouble with the wholesale slaughter of animals like mice and insects by modern agriculture.

There is, of course, an entire subcontinent of “vegetarians” in India who traditionally consume eggs, cheese, milk, and sometimes fish. But modern America is where the vegan fad became rooted deeply. Even here, despite cult members shaming backsliders who are caught buying so much as an egg or two, few can continue the strictest variant of their creed for more than a few years. And although there are claims a few professional athletes can sustain vegan diets, they are rare, possibly mythical animals. Unbekoming presented a convincing argument that the vegan cult was developed or encouraged by globalists trying to emasculate the populace

Mercola discovers the dietary Rosetta Stone.

This is about how seed oils/linoleic acid are damaging. This critical health issue is becoming better recognized over the past decade.

Windows into the keto/carnivore world:

Neurosurgeon Dr. Chaffee claims that plants are trying to kill us, so he eats primarily beef. I plan to model him because diets like this improve Parkinson’s, arthritis, and elevated glycosylated hemoglobin, a pre-diabetic marker. I have all three. I also recommend scanning Greg Dennis’s FitRx podcast for further perspectives about these diets.

Gin Stevens describes intermittent fasting here, and the following link is to Jason Fung’s books about fasting, cancer, and diabetes treatment using a keto diet.

I claim no copyright; you may quote any of my essays or books in part or whole without restriction or permission if you credit me. Also, because I am retired, I never give personal medical advice. Use the information here at your own risk.  

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