Summary: A patient with debilitating skin rash, abdonimal comfort and fatigue for nearly 1 year, with no improvement from dermatology and family medicine care. The problem: a dermatologist looks at skin rash and doesn’t recognize that her other non skin symptoms are part of her illness, while a family doctor thinks the skin rash is a dermatology problem. This is a typical problem with the current medicine. But Anti-Aging/Functional Medicine practitioner looks at the whole body, a concpet very similar to the ancient traditional Chinese medicine. With our Anti-Aging/Funcitonal Medicine approach, she started feeling better in just days, and all her skin, discomfort and fatigue are gone.
Early June 2019: Out of desperation, Dawn stops by at our clinic, hoping we can offer some “miracle” to her miserable life.
Upper Extremity, Dawn in mid June ‘19,
Dawn stopped by our clinic in mid June 2019, hoping we could offer some solution to her long lasting illness: debilitating skin rash with abdominal pain, fatigue and fogginess for nearly one year! Her skin rash was all over her limbs and her body. (Shown above is skin rash on one of her upper extremities, taken in early June 2019).
She saw a dermatologist, who did skin bipsy and offered some treatments that didn‘t work. The dermatologist told her ”skin rash is a type of the most challenging diseases”.
Dawn also went to see her regular family doctor, who ran some blood tests, did CT and other exams for her abdodominal pain and fatigue. Didn’t find a cause and wasn’t able to help her problems either.
These debilitating itchy skin rash, feeling tired, and belly pain have been really taking a toll on her health, her work and her life. She drives by our clinic regulary and saw often our sign: Cheng Integrative Health Center. She finally, in mid June, 2019, stoppby by at our clinic, hoping that we could offer some “miracle” to her miserable life.
After listening to her story for about 10-15 minutes, I already knew the root cause of her problems. I didscussed the concept of Leaky Gut, Oxidative Stress and bacterial imbalance (dysbiosis) as the root cause and pathology of her disease, and also how I treat these conditions:
1. Strict ketogenic diet
2. Intermittent fasting
3. Vit C 10 g / day, in divided doses
4. Cheng Liver Detox
5. Cheng TotoCell Nutrients
6. Mg Glycine/Citrate
7. MegaSpore Biotics
She left our clinic with hope and uncertainty.
In late June, 2019, I was on a lecturing trip to China, I received Dawn’s email along with some photos, showing her improving skin rash. She excitedly told me that the rash and abdominal pain improved significantly.
Late June ‘19
9/16/19: Dawn‘s rash completely healed and her symptoms of abdominal pain and discomfort, fatigue are gone, with only some residual bowel movement irregularities. But if she eats certain carbs, she would still feel bad.
With Dawn at the office
Dawn, completely healed, 9/16/19
Dawn returned to the clinic today, thrilled, even brought her hsuband to discuss anti-aging/functional medicine. All her skin rash, abdominal pain, fogginess and fatigue are gone. On top of all these, she also lost 8 pounds. And she looks great, very slim and exuberant with energy. Although she still has some residual problems like irregular bowel movements. And in the past 3 months, she has ”cheated“ only three times, ate some bread and some other carbohydrates. Every time she ate these carbs, she‘d immediately feel sick to the stomach with sikin itch, and abdominal discomfort. She said she also “cheated” on some ice cream, but it didn’t seem to bother her.
I told her that these observation is consistent with the mechanism that her main problem is the contaminants (glyphosate being a major culprit) in the carbs (other types of foods are less contaminated by glyphosate). These enviromental toxins (Glyphosate) can tear up our GI tract, and can also enter our body and wreak a havoc. Sugar is not her main problem, which explains why ice cream would induce her symptoms, but carbs would. This also means that her leaky gut and dysbiosis have not healed yet (it takes time for these issues to heal).
Conclusion: Many skin diseases, especially autoimmune skin diseases, are skin manifestations of systemic diseases. When dealing with these skin diseases, we can’t just focus on the skin, but ignore the whole body. Like Dawn, she has skin (rash), gastrointestinal (abdominal pain), and general (weak) symptoms. We can’t separate these disease presentations separately: a dermatolgoest treats the skin while an internist treats the gut. These are the different symptoms of the same disease.
It‘s this “holistic view” that we are missing in our current medicine. With current medicine, we are so specialized, and subspecialized that we begin to only see treats, not the forest.
Our current understanding of these diseases:
Toxins in the diet (such as glyphosate) -> Gastrointestinal barrier destruction (increased permeability, leaky Gut, dysbiosis) -> Exogenous macromolecules (that should not enter the body) enters the body (including the toxin itself) -> immune response (a form of imflammation, or increased oxidative stress) -> various local symptoms (including eczema, psoriasis, Hashimoto’s thyroiditis etc).
