I am a professor of medicine at the University of Iowa and for most of my career, I believed wholeheartedly in the power of modern medicine, in our latest greatest drugs, in our ever more expert procedural interventions. For many years, I focused on treating disease, not on creating health, because that is what I was taught to do. I didn’t know any better, but I was certainly not a “physician of the future.”
(That's the term Thomas Edison used to describe the doctor who "will give no medication, but will interest his patients in the care of the human frame, diet, and in the cause and prevention of disease.”) Now, however, I aspire to a physician of the future. Let me tell you why.

In 2000, I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, an autoimmune disease that damages the brain and spinal cord, and is the most common cause of early disability in the US. I was told that MS was likely due to a prior infection and unknown environmental factors. No one asked me about or mentioned lifestyle, but they did talk to me about drugs.

I was told it was important for me to take one of the A-B-C drugs (Avonex, Betaseron, or Copaxone). These disease-modifying drugs would decrease the likelihood of an acute MS attack or relapse by about a third. This would cost nearly a thousand dollars a month. Today, MS disease-modifying drugs now cost more than $4500 a month! That price tag comes with a long list of potentially dangerous side effects—flu-like body aches, depression, mouth sores, heart problems, a higher risk of life-threatening infections, and even death. Needless to say, an MS diagnosis presents a scary future.

But what choice did I have?

I was scared. I was terrified. How would I support my family, including my wife Jackie and my two kids? I went to the best MS center I could find: the Cleveland Clinic. I saw the best doctors, received the best care possible in the opinion of conventional medicine, and took those latest, greatest drugs.

But the problem was that I continued to decline slowly. I could feel it, and my family could see it. As the years rolled by, I had an increasingly difficult time with fatigue and endurance. When I couldn’t even jog a few steps, I had to quit playing backyard soccer with the kids. Hikes and athletic activities were out as well. Having always been an active, competitive, athletic woman, this was one of the hardest things I had to give up. I watched from the sidelines as the family played without me.
http://www.mindbodygreen.com/0-12809/how-i-beat-progressive-ms-with-a-paleo-diet-functional-medicine.html

Labels: Avonex, Copaxone