Anarcho-Medicine: Seeking Alternatives to State-Endorsed Medical Care


By: Karen De Coster


Dr. Michael Janson, MD is a general health, nutrition, and alternative medicine specialist in Arlington, Massachusetts. He is one of the best-known holistic physicians in the country.
A pathologist by training, Dr. Janson founded and directed the first complementary alternative medical center in New England, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1976. In addition, he founded the Center for Preventive Medicine in Barnstable, on Cape Cod in Massachusetts, and directed it until 1999. Dr. Janson has a unique background with training in both conventional Western medicine and alternative therapies.
He has hosted a TV show, made various TV and radio appearances, and lectured in a variety of forums. I first heard Dr. Janson on the radio, on the Mark Scott Show in Detroit in the early 90s. Dr. Janson inspires and motivates audiences to change their lifestyles, and focuses on helping individuals to achieve their potential for vitality and longevity. He does consulting in person, by phone, or by e-mail, practicing vitamin and dietary therapy, herbal medicine, stress management, and exercise and lifestyle counseling. Be sure to check out his online monthly newsletter, Healthy Living, which is a great source of info for the layman. You can e-mail Dr. Janson at drjanson@drjanson.com
Can you describe what a holistic medical practice is?

Holistic medicine is a comprehensive health care approach to both prevention and treatment, using lifestyle changes such as diet, exercise, stress management, dietary supplements, and other treatments, including conventional medicine when necessary. It is also a philosophy of patient care that looks at the whole patient and the patient’s lifestyle in deciding on treatment, rather than just the disease or organ involved, with the full understanding and cooperation of the patient.

The focus of holistic medicine is on using the least harmful methods first, and only using more risky interventions if and when the others prove inadequate. Of course, this is not always possible, especially in emergency situations, but most medicine is not crisis intervention.

How did you enter into the alternative medicine field? Is this something you focused on from the beginning of your studies, or was there an identifiable experience that changed your philosophy on medicine?

When I graduated medical school, I had no idea about alternative and complementary medicine, nor much understanding of nutrition and dietary supplements, including herbs. While doing my residency training in pathology, I met someone who convinced me that I should look further into the relationship between nutrition and health care, including treatment with supplements. My investigations were somewhat of a shock, as I had learned nothing of this in medical school. However, there was significant scientific literature to support it. Of course, the scientific support is far greater now.

As I looked into this in detail, I became convinced that the mortality I was seeing in the hospital morgue was mostly due to chronic diseases that resulted from poor health habits rather than genetics or other causes. I was also seeing the overuse and misuse of medical and surgical treatments. I became aware that doctors were so adamantly against the importance of diet and the value of supplements that denying their usefulness became somewhat of a religion for them.

How did your internship and residency in Pathology – both at Mount Auburn Hospital in Cambridge – aid in preparing you for a career in nutrition and alternative medicine?

Pathology training led me to investigate everything I learned with a skeptical mind, but it also gave me some freedom to keep an open mind. Having seen the effects of diet and lack of exercise, the damage from smoking and obesity, and side effects from medications, I became a seeker of information on lifestyle as prevention and treatment.

But still, I opened up to alternatives to conventional care while maintaining a questioning attitude toward those alternatives. While I think the science supports many alternative and complementary treatments, I also see many claims for products and procedures that have no apparent value and no scientific support, and I want to make sure that my patients and readers are aware of the differences.

Your book, Dr. Janson's New Vitamin Revolution is the best “bible” of supplements for the layman who wants to make informed choices. In short, how can an individual enter into and have control over a solid
supplement plan that is suitable to his lifestyle?

It is not too difficult for a relatively healthy person to choose a reasonable lifestyle and a corresponding dietary supplement program. My book describes some basic programs for healthy people of different ages and also discusses treatment programs for common health problems. A small amount of study and review of articles in reliable magazines can help for ongoing information, as well as a review of my newsletters and website.

How about the State’s food pyramid scheme, which some consider to be a special-interest fraud? This so-called nutritional guideline has been built via the political influence of bureaucrats and special interest groups. What’s your analysis of that? Is good nutrition being flung aside in favor of political expediencies?

I think these guidelines are heavily influenced by the meat and dairy industries, putting their products at the top, even though they are smaller portions. Also, other non-scientific issues affected the pyramid development. They do not distinguish between carbohydrates from whole grains and refined grains – a major defect considering the high level of refined carbohydrates in the US diet.
Heavily processed foods are unhealthy, and the industry apologists and lobbyists assured that no distinction was drawn between healthy sources of good nutrition and other sources of calories. With the pyramid, the bun and French fries at a fast junk outlet would be in the carbohydrate section, and the meat and cheese in those groups, and the pickle, catsup, and relish would be in the vegetable group, but this would hardly be a nutritious meal.

In terms of carbohydrates in the diet, I’m a big advocate of controlled carb habits – either low-carb or cycling carbs efficiently. As an athlete, I need carbs to a certain extent, yet in sedentary people especially, I see carbs as being addictive, and of course, leading to obesity. The United States, after all, is a place with enormous obesity problems. What’s your carbohydrate worldview?

I am not a proponent of controlling carbohydrates, other than refined carbohydrates such as sugar, white flour, highly processed potatoes, and white rice. Other sources, such as whole grains, beans, vegetables, fresh fruits, and baked or boiled potatoes are quite healthy, and in cultures where they make up the bulk of the diet, we see very few of the chronic, degenerative diseases that we observe in the US and other industrialized countries. Obesity results from too many calories and too little exercise, and far too much fat and sugar in the diet.

Remember that our animal relatives, such as gorillas, eat lots of carbohydrates and are largely vegetarian. The diets of people in countries such as Japan, rural China, Okinawa, and those around the Mediterranean include relatively high levels of carbohydrates, and they are not obese and have fewer chronic diseases.

Adult Onset Type II diabetes is almost an epidemic in this country, caused mainly by obesity. What is the main cause of this obesity/Type II diabetes explosion?

Type II diabetes was formerly called “adult onset,” but it is increasingly seen in young adults and even in teenagers, largely as a result of sedentary lives and junk in the diet, including large soda portions, increasing sizes of food servings at chain restaurants, and a high percentage of fat and sugar in the diet. Snacking on junk in front of the TV or computer game for hours on end is another contributor. Inactivity and obesity are the leading causes of “insulin resistance,” a condition in which insulin has less ability to move blood glucose into the cells, so the cells starve for energy and sugar is converted to fat.

The most studied solution is the high fiber/high carbohydrate diet (HFC diet) published in numerous scientific articles by James Anderson from the University of Kentucky, and others. Fiber sources are essentially vegetables, fruits, whole grains, and legumes, as well as nuts and seeds.

Dr. Richard Bernstein, in his book Dr. Bernstein’s Diabetes Solution, emphasizes practically no carbohydrates, but instead, recommends high levels of fat and protein in the diet. Is this no-carb philosophy something that can be effective beyond short-run weight loss? What’s your view on the overall effects of no-carb diets for diabetics?

While it is possible to control blood sugar with such a diet, it is more likely to be healthier in the long run by controlling blood sugar with the HFC diet. A diet high in fat and protein is necessarily lower in vegetables, fruits, beans, and whole grains, all of which contain many flavonoids, antioxidants, isoflavones, and other phytochemicals that provide protection against chronic, degenerative diseases, such as heart disease, strokes, hypertension, cancer, eye degeneration, and arthritis.

It is likely that apparent benefits from the Bernstein diet are due to reduced caloric intake overall, and the increased exercise that is recommended. If I see studies relating this diet to lower overall mortality, that might be more impressive than short-term weight loss or sugar control.

How do products like Slim-Fast shakes (with 50-60 grams of sugary carbs) and Healthy Choice frozen dinners, with similar carb content, come off as being “healthy” or “diet” foods? What’s the scam?

Many companies have latched on to the idea that low-fat foods are healthier, and thus have produced junk that has a lower percentage of fat calories, which may give them the appearance of being healthy. High sugar intake is as bad as fat, and while the overall US diet has recently seen a reduced percentage of fat, it is not because of reduced fat intake, but rather, it is due to higher sugar and white flour intake and overall caloric increase. Diet foods do not help people lose weight, and people who want to lose weight simply need to increase their exercise and reduce their caloric intake by choosing healthy foods.

Earlier this year, the State-endorsed American Medical Association published a study (the Calgary PATCH study) – that was apparently unscientific and denunciatory - alleging to disprove benefit from EDTA chelation therapy as a treatment for heart disease. Chelation therapy, something that you make extensive use of, is constantly denounced by the western medical mainstream as being “quackery.” What are the politics and turf struggles of this issue?

Chelation therapy is an effective treatment for heart disease (angina) and hardening of the arteries to the brain and legs. It is a simple, in-office, intravenous treatment with EDTA, a synthetic amino acid that is far safer than bypass surgery or angioplasty, and it has been in safe use for 50 years.

This PATCH study was designed to fail. They used too few subjects to show statistical significance; they excluded those most likely to benefit; and many of the study group patients had no symptoms at all, so it would be impossible to show symptomatic improvement in them. That would be like studying penicillin as a treatment for pneumonia among patients who did not have pneumonia. Nowhere do the authors claim to disprove the benefits of chelation therapy. All they said was they could find no evidence of benefit (because the study was too small and poorly controlled.) They even admitted that larger trials would be needed to assess the value of chelation.

Note that four times as many patients in the control group needed angioplasty within one year compared to the EDTA chelation group. The EDTA group also had better improvement in oxygen consumption than the controls. If this study had been larger, and the relative results were the same, it would have shown a statistically significant improvement in the chelation group compared to the controls.

The safety and potential benefit of chelation therapy is so strong that a new study is underway, with a 30 million dollar grant from the NIH, and it will be supervised by a noted cardiologist who is neither a proponent nor antagonist toward chelation.

Describe the procedures for chelation therapy, and its ultimate benefits. Chelation therapy involves a three-hour intravenous infusion of EDTA, a synthetic amino acid, in addition to some vitamins, magnesium, and other ingredients to assure the safety of the procedure. It is usually done one to three times a week until the patient has had 25 to 40 treatments, depending on the severity of the vascular disease or other indications for treatment. EDTA removes toxic heavy metals from the body and alters the balance of calcium and magnesium temporarily. It also appears to reduce free radical damage to tissues.

Ultimately, patients with heart disease or hardening of the arteries to the brain (stroke victims or candidates) and legs (those with pain in the legs upon walking, or intermittent claudication) see improvement in symptoms and a reduced need for medication or surgical procedures, and they tend toward a better quality of life.

Do you have any comments on the overall aggressiveness of the AMA against holistic practice in general?

The AMA and the State Boards of Registration in Medicine (through the Federation of State Medical Boards) have been making efforts for many years to stifle the growth of complementary and alternative medicine, whether called holistic or other terms. They have been unsuccessful in their efforts to define these practices as “unproven,” “fringe,” and even quackery, however, they are continuing in their efforts to do so. The public wants these treatments to be available, and they often pay out of their own pockets for treatments that insurance companies just will not cover.

This effort by the State Boards is evolving and becoming more subtle and sophisticated, but I am convinced that it will fail to curb the desire for alternatives to excessive drugs and surgery (they are always excessive if there is a safer, more effective nutritional or alternative medicine treatment for the same condition.) I believe that the hostility is largely based on fear of competition and the lack of understanding that most medicine is not as scientific as doctors think, though many alternatives have an excellent scientific basis.

A most basic premise of self-ownership is the ability to choose how and where to treat ones own body in terms of health or birth matters.
Yet the AMA has been petitioning to tighten regulations for chiropractors, as well as midwives and other advance practice nurses (NPs). And when the AMA is not petitioning those they are at odds with philosophically, they are attacking those professions in the journals, and tracking down and threatening the practitioners with its witch hunts. What defense do the practitioners of alternative methods of medicine have for future survival against the brute force of the AMA?

The best defense is scientific and clinical data to support a treatment and public support for the right to choose any alternative that the patient and doctor agree to, within the realm of relative safety. The numerous states that have passed medical freedom of choice bills (usually against the objections and lobbying of mainstream medical organizations) have done so with overwhelming public support. The design of these state laws takes into account the possibility of fraud and potentially dangerous treatments being offered with little scientific basis, and they make every effort to regulate this.

However, much of complementary and alternative medicine has a good scientific basis, and much of conventional medicine is not as well-grounded in science as the medical community would like you to believe (and would like to believe themselves.) Also, fraudulent practice is found within conventional medicine, and we must guard against it on all fronts.

People in my profession are walking balls of stress. What effects does stress have on the body, and how do we combat them if we can’t possibly eliminate the high stress levels?

Stress takes a great toll on health by impairing immune function, altering hormone levels, influencing blood sugar levels, along with assorted other effects. Stress reduction techniques become essential in modern life, and I usually recommend visualization exercises, yoga, meditation, breathing exercises, and other techniques, as well as regular exercise. It is also helpful to take supplements to counteract the effects of stress, including vitamin C, zinc, and B-complex with extra pantothenic acid, (I particularly like a multiple called Ultra Vitality from QCI Nutritionals; they can be reached at 888-922-4848, or on their website at www.qcinutritionals.com.) A number of other supplements may also help, including magnesium, herbal remedies such as valerian, and protective nutrients such as vitamin E, coenzyme Q10, and alpha-lipoic acid. A complete program may need individual variations on these general suggestions.

What does alternative medicine offer that traditional care does not?

Complementary or holistic practitioners offer safe, effective alternatives to drugs and surgery that often are able to replace or reduce the need for other therapies. It is also likely that alternative practitioners will spend more time with patients, listen more carefully to their complaints and needs, and treat them more comprehensively. This is not because traditional doctors don’t care (they often do care quite a bit), but it is the result of their training, and also, a lack of time because of insurance constraints and Medicare controls that don’t allow a doctor to spend as much time as needed with patients.

In the time they can afford to spend, traditional doctors really can’t get to know a patient as a person, evaluate their stress levels, understand family and work situations, and know about their diets and exercise. Doctors who practice complementary and alternative medicine also use traditional drugs, and offer or recommend conventional surgery when necessary, but they try to use the least harmful methods first. This gives the patient the best chance to do well and be in some greater control of his health. In fact, the patient is an important partner in health care, and all doctors should recognize this.

What should be government’s role in medicine, if any?

I have long felt that government and political activity interferes with solutions to human problems, and generally only adds to them, rather than helping to solve them. Pragmatically, government exists and runs a large business that affects our lives, but it does not give us health. In fact, we do not get health from government, insurance companies, or even doctors (from whom we get medical and disease care), but health is something that we can give ourselves by choosing the right lifestyle and supplements.

Conventional medicine and government are intimately entwined, and while conventional medical expenses have increased, partly because of government intervention, it has become almost impossible for ordinary people to afford medical care. Insurance and government payouts are the current “solutions” for some people. However, this question cannot fairly be answered in the context of the current situation because political and government interference have helped to create the problem.

The long-term solution is to educate people to take better care of themselves through diet, exercise, supplements, stress management, and human development/personal growth. This will make the general population healthier and less needy of medical care. With the usual supply-demand influence, the costs will come down. With government taken out of the loop, I believe that those people who are truly needy and unable to afford essential and complex medical procedures and drugs will get help in the same way as in the past — through medical donations and charitable organizations. The key, then, is lower costs from better self-care.

Government, through regulation and enforcement, is trying to replace the traditional ways of helping the needy via forced controls, and inevitably they do a poor job of controlling human behavior and the economics of health care. In fact, Medicare is one of the reasons that health care has become so expensive, as doctors try to make up Medicare shortfalls by increasing rates elsewhere. This drives up the costs even for Medicare, leading to efforts at price controls, and the cycle starts all over again.

What about pharmaceuticals? Is government meddling in the market for prescription drugs warranted? What do you think the result would be if we had a truly free and unregulated market for these drugs?

If you look at the book Our Right to Drugs by Thomas Szasz, he makes an excellent case for elimination of drug regulation of any kind, including prescription or “non-therapeutic” drugs. Regulation of any drugs is an effort to treat all people as though they are children, incapable of making responsible decisions. It is an effort to protect everyone from all possibility of making incorrect or damaging decisions. If someone decides to take valium, alcohol, aspirin, codeine, marijuana, heroin, Prozac, St. John’s wort, or benadryl without proper education and training in the safe and effective use of these items, then they have a right to go forward with those risky decisions.

We have never had a free market for anything, ever since corporate protections have shielded individuals from the results of their actions. As long as corporations eliminate personal responsibility, there is no way to have a completely free market.

However, once again, if people took better care of themselves, the need for drugs would decline, and the costs would also decline. Drug companies already sell medicines for lower amounts in other countries for a variety of reasons. Patent and trademark laws promote research and development, but they also drive up costs to the consumer. Generic manufacturers can make most medications available at a far lower cost, so we could have a totally different situation without any regulation if you include the elimination of patent protection.

My recommendations depend on the education of the public and a more general recognition that we are responsible for solving our own problems. When we abdicate that responsibility to politicians and government, we are bound to get into more trouble than is engendered by the problems we are trying to solve. This is the kind of education that I try to provide in my newsletter, as well as in my other writing and teaching pursuits.

Of course, one other influence driving up health care costs is legal actions against doctors that lead to enormous settlements for results that were unforeseen. Of course, many doctors do things that are wrong, and they need to be accountable for those actions, but in many cases poor outcomes are the result of the imprecise nature of medical science and art. This makes it even more important for individuals to take care of themselves, rather than expecting the medical community to provide magic bullets for every ailment, regardless of the cause or nature of the problem.

As an alternative medicine specialist, would you call yourself a philosophical anarchist of sorts?

Yes, of sorts. I am strongly in favor of promoting education to help people understand how to take care of themselves personally, professionally, and medically. I am not in alternative medicine because of my philosophical views of government, but because of my understanding of health and medicine. In some ways these are intertwined, but not necessarily.

However, there is a lot of political influence in medicine, mostly in conventional practice, but to some extent in complementary and alternative medicine also. As soon as the government allowed for it, I opted out of Medicare, which means that I am not billing or accepting Medicare. I make sure that my advice on diet and lifestyle helps people reduce their health care costs by improving their overall health.

I also think that we can help ourselves financially by reducing our dependence on processed foods, junk, unhealthy snacks, coffee, and other indulgences. In the long run, if people follow my program recommendations they will be able to afford my services and still come out ahead financially. In this way, I am doing what I can to remove government from the loop.