I was born in Poland and grew up on a farm. When I was 14, I contracted the Asiatic Flu and had a temperature of 40 degrees for several days. I recovered, but only temporarily as the fever kept returning. The doctor assured my mother that I would be all right, but a mother’s instinct often tends to be superior to a doctor’s judgment and she took me to a homeopath. He happened to be trained in iridology. He looked into my eyes and said, “There is something wrong with this boy’s left lung”. My mother took me at once to a tuberculosis hospital, where the diagnosis of pulmonary tuberculosis was confirmed. The recovery took the better part of a year, and during that time I became very impressed with the doctors who took care of me. I promised myself that if I recovered, I would become a doctor.
When I immigrated to Canada in 1972, I needed to re-qualify for my medical credentials. I was able to obtain an internship at Saskatoon City Hospital where I worked from 1975-76. By serendipity, I was assigned to Dr. Abram Hoffer for my rotation in psychiatry. Those 3 months totally transformed my approach to medicine. It was nothing less than a revolution for me. Here I saw people with severe psychiatric disorders being hospitalized and Dr. Hoffer – instead of prescribing tranquilizers and various psychotropic medications – gave them niacin (Vitamin B3) zinc, and various other vitamins and minerals, as well as prescribing fundamental changes to their diets. Their delusions disappeared, and they returned to a normal life.
I could not believe it. Here I saw for the first time orthomolecular medicine in action – a branch of medicine I know nothing about. All my training was completely conventional up until that point.
In 1979 I attended a conference at the recommendation of a colleague for the American Academy of Environmental Medicine. There I saw a presentation from Dr. Rapp where she was testing a child for food sensitivities. When she tested the child for oats, the child had a dramatic reaction – he began to thrash about and scream. When Dr. Rapp established an administered the neutralizing dose, the child rapidly recovered. Then Dr. Rapp asked “Do you remember anything that happened during the last 2 hours?” The child, genuinely bewildered, said, “No, I don’t.”
Well, at that point I got goosebumps and I knew, deep down and without any doubt, that this was the medicine I had to practice. Whatever I had learned in standard medicine did not even consider the toxicity of ordinary food. What’s more, the same approach, I learned, could be taken in treating the toxic effects of environmental chemicals. Standard medicine teaches how to classify symptoms, what drugs to use to control them and how to use them cautiously to prevent their toxicity from killing the patient. The key point I took away from this conference was revolutionary: the offending cause could be found, eliminated if possible and/or treated. I found an entirely new way of what it means to live a clean lifestyle to improve health by lowering the total exposure load of various toxins on the body..
I went back to Toronto and completely turned my practice around to be focused on Environmental Health. Cut to 2010, after decades in alternative health, I retired my medical license. I must like revolutions because I was introduced to energy healing and embarked on a whole new paradigm of healing again with EcoHealth and Wellness. From all my years of learning and seeing clients, I truly believe that healing is possible for everyone.
