The advice and informational content does not necessarily represent the views of mother's market and kitchen mother's recommends consulting your health professional for your personal medical condition.

Hello, I'm Kimberly King, and welcome to the mother's market radio show, the show dedicated to the Truth, Beauty and Goodness of the human condition. On today's show, we'll talk about medications and how we can manage to live a more healthy natural lifestyle, plus later we'll tell you what's going on around town and what's new at mother's market, but first up, we're joined today by another prominent physician when it comes to alternative medicine. Dr. Allan sasson is the founder and medical director of the institute for progressive medicine, and he's been practicing medicine for over 40 years. His Institute treats people of all ages through comprehensive state-of-the-art new medicine techniques, and we welcome him back to the mother's market radio show, Dr. saws on. How are you?

Good, thanks, Kimberly.

Thanks. That's nice to have you here. And before we get to today's topic, please fill us in on your mission and your work... Well, our mission is to help people without hurting them, which basically involves trying to handle their problems without giving them a drug or sending them for an operation that might possibly make them worse, so we always try to utilize lifestyle techniques to help them, so nutritional counseling, nutritional supplements, exercise, stress reduction, those kinds of things, we do a lot of different testing, looking for things that may be off, we look for toxins, we look for imbalances, nutritional deficiencies, we work with all of those things, and at times we do use drugs, but that's not our first choice, very nice.

Well, today we are actually talking about how we can get off medications the natural way, so Dr. Sawan, why get off drugs and... Aren't they good for people?

Well, drugs have been described as toxins with sometimes beneficial side effects, kinda like that way of describing them, because there is no drug that is not a toxin in some way to somebody, and if you look at the physician's desk reference... Or you look it up online, you will see the loads and loads of side effects that occur with drug use, and this is every prescription drug that's there in every non-prescription drug that's there, and now we have no non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs. You just walk in and buy them. You can take all you want, but it's good to keep in mind that they cause high blood pressure, fluid retention, gastrointestinal hemorrhage, liver disease and kidney disease, and they all do that, and they're over the counter, anybody can take them and Tylenol, which I thought once upon a time was completely safe, isn't... At one point, it was the largest cause of suicide deaths and Great Britain on just take an overdose of Tylenol and say bye-bye because it destroys the liver. An aspirin is well known to have toxic effects if you take too much, but even in the therapeutic dosage, it can cause gastrointestinal bleeding and the nine steroidal drugs routinely cause complications in standard dosages, this is not overdose, this is what's prescribed, this is what people are told to take, this is what's on the container, take one of these twice a day and come back when you have leading, because it happens a lot when people should be evaluated, you go into the doctor, you've got high blood pressure, you know, Well, what drugs are you taking?

You're taking a nice to ride on the drug three times a day for the last six years, get off the drug and see what the blood pressure is doing, because it's very likely to come down, and that's not routinely done if the drugs are so dangerous and why do doctors prescribe them? So often... Well, we've been trained, at least in this country, to use drugs to treat problems, a person goes into a doctor with a complaint, then the doctor is often gonna look for what medication will handle that complaint if it's an infection and may be an antibiotic, and it may be an antibiotic, even if it's a virus, which the antibiotic isn't gonna do anything for, you have a tummy ache and they may give you something that blocks as in production, and those are over the counter now also, so it's easy for a doctor to treat a problem quickly with the medication, the fastest way to finish an office visit is to say, Here, take this prescription, and that's what gets done, and a lot of times doctors can't spend more than seven or eight minutes with a patient as a schedule so full. So how do you get through the day? Not spending 30 minutes talking about what they're eating for breakfast, lunch and dinner... That's not gonna do it. Here's a medication. This will do it.

What's the connection between age and drug complications... Well, the older you get, usually the more physical problems you have, and the more times you go to somebody who prescribes drugs and you have a physical problem, you're gonna get a drug, so an 80-year-old person is more likely to have physical problems than a 50 year-old and the 80-year-old is much more likely to be on a coterie of drugs. I see patients who are on five drugs, 10 drugs, 15 drugs, all at the same time, at the age of 80, what are your chances of taking all of that stuff and not having a problem... Hopefully, you'll survive them, maybe not, but there's gonna be side effects, and a lot of times the person doesn't know it, they don't know it's causing a side effect until the drug is stopped and they say, Oh, I'm better now, I guess the drug was doing it...

I had a patient, I've seen so many of these, the guy was on a statin drug 'cause he had heart disease, and he used to play tennis every day and once Ben, I think a professional tennis player or close to it.

And I couldn't get out of bed. His legs were so weak and hurt so much, he stopped playing tennis and he stayed in bed for two weeks, and it may have been me, you know, get off your statin drug, and it all disappeared completely resolved.

He obviously has never taken it again, but this is not uncommon, muscle pain and weakness are very common side effects of statin drugs, and lots of people who have pain in weakness and they may not think this is my statin drug doing that.

What I love about the way you treat people is, again, you are therapeutic in the way that you treat people, because you take the time to listen to what their ailments are, and you are treating them because it's a lifestyle, it's a natural lifestyle that you're listening to them, it's not just five minutes. Here's a drug out the door, I don't have time to listen to what the ailment is, but you're listening to what the problem is, and you take the time to advise them about how to eat right, how to be healthy, what's a better way of treating people as kind of what I'm getting to.

If you look at the cholesterol an example, you can lower most people's cholesterol substantially just by changing their diet, there's books on that have been written for the last 50 years, critical did it or... And I did it all stands doing it now, that movie forks over knives in the book, you can lower cholesterol into a very acceptable range just by changing your diet, and I lowered mine once by 100 points in one month, just by dietary change.

And it would have stayed there if I'd followed the same diet, a lot of us don't stay doing what we're supposed to be doing, and I'm in that group also, but I'm pretty careful these days, and we know... And we've done it many times. You can lower cholesterol with nutritional supplements as well is... And lowers cholesterol very well, there's something called bergamot, which is a plan for mentally lowers cholesterol, and most people... Fish oil is excellent for lowering triglycerides, and there are just other things you can use that are safer than statins that may provide you with the same endpoint or reduce your dose of statins, like I have patients who are taking 40 milligrams and we'll cut them to 10 milligrams and give them some nice and then some fish all along whether didn't get the same result, but if you can reduce the dosage of a drug, you're gonna reduce the risk of side effects and the severity of side effects, so do you find that... Again, your patients that come in and they have this whole cadre of drugs, again, probably the older patients that you're seeing because of all of the ailments that they have, and then you treat them, how fast are these results that you're seeing when you've given them a natural... Change of lifestyle, how faster these results, it can be fast, it really depends on the effort the person puts in to do it, someone comes in and you spend an hour with him and he can't do what you're telling him to do, it's not gonna work. It has to be followed and it's not as easy as taking a pill, the person has to change everything he's eating and do this and do that, and change is sleeping hours. Stop smoking cigarettes. Stop drinking coffee. Stop arguing with your wife.

All of these things, it's a big deal to make a lifestyle change, some people have said it's easier to change your religion, then change your diet, right.

So I know it's not a small thing to try and do that, but that's what should always be attempted first, and a lot of times if a person sees the results, they're more willing to do it because they see it's working and it's not hurting them, and it's helping them get off drugs or stay off drugs, and I saw a girl this morning who was diabetic and we've gone into dietary things, and she lost nine pounds since her last visit, which was three months ago, which may not sound like much, but nine pounds every three months, it's 36 pounds in one year. And if you lose weight as part of a lifestyle change and not as part of a crash diet, which I don't like, you're much more likely to keep it off because you've made those adaptations that you follow and you can keep doing it.

A lot of us will fall off the wagon on Halloween or New Years or whatever, but the next day you can get back on the wagon then just keep it going. My wife lost 25 pounds doing tangle and she hadn't lost 25 pounds for years now, so we just say something that you really are interested in, that you can put structurally into your lifestyle plan can be highly effective.

Right. Yeah, and then it... Everybody's happy doing what they like and following a lifestyle change.

Well, this is all great information and interesting, we have... I have a lot of other questions for you, so stay with us, we're talking about and getting off drugs and making a lifestyle change, so stay with these... Planning more to learn from Dr. sasson, we'll be right back for China.

Welcome back to the mother's market radio show, and we wanna take the time to remind you that if you missed any portion of today's show, you can find us on iTunes by searching mother's market or download from our website, mothers market dot com. Click the link for radio and listen to past shows, plus download healthy recipes and money savings coupons, all available at mother's market dot-com. And now, back to our interview with Dr. sasson, and we're talking about how you can get off medication the natural way, doctor, can people get off the drugs are taking and... Can it be done safely?

Really good question and a pretty complicated answer actually, people can get off drugs a lot of the time, I don't usually recommend that they do it on their own, and it depends what they're being treated for, so in a lot of circumstances, you wanna go really slowly, sometimes they shouldn't get off their drug, someone who's had a kidney transplant or a lung transplant, you don't wanna stop those drugs, you may wanna modify them, and that should be done by the expert who knows exactly what's going on or should know, then you make those changes. But certain people need certain drugs to survive, you know, people with myasthenia gravis and they need the most Gravis drugs, people with hypertension may need anti-hypertensive drugs or those with heart disease may need those drugs, but again, if you can make lifestyle changes that handle the things that those drugs are doing, then you can work on reducing them, but frequently I go slow. You wanna handle the risk factors, if that's what you're dealing with is say, risk factors for heart disease or risk factors for diabetes, before you get these people off their diabetic medications or they're anti-per tens Ive medications, handle the risk factors that you need to handle, so if someone's diabetic and they wanna get off their medications, get the blood sugar under control first, it may already be under control, but you wanna have those parameters in the right place before you work on dosage reduction, 'cause otherwise the sugar may just shoot up because they just stopped the medication that the anthem met form under the glare ride or whatever, the butcher on me go from 13 to 303 and then you really haven't done anything for the patient, they have to have the right diet, they have to have the right activities, they have to do those things that will help control the blood sugar before you take the medication away, and if you're taking it away, do it over a month or two months, or six months or a year. I have a lady I saw this morning who has Crohn's disease and she's been on medication for that, and she wants to get off 'cause it's a immunosuppression drug, and she got... Here she got shingles six months ago, then she's 20 years old, once she get shingles, well, she got it because she's not a immunosuppressive, so we've been working on that, but I've spent a good six months, a part of which we're using ozone 4, 'cause those own works on colitis, and she's almost off and she hasn't had any worsening, but you have to be careful and slow and make sure you've got all the things you need under control, under control while you're doing that, and that takes a lot of experience and a fair amount of skill, I've been working with trying to get people off drugs for over 30 years, and I'm pretty careful with it.

Wow. And of course, yeah, you wanna go the natural way and educate about lifestyle too, and people get off and a depressed and sedatives and sleeping pills.

Those are tough because partly because they're told You need to be on this for the rest of your life, which is a huge mistake, it's not the right thing to tele-patient, and I never say that to anybody, you need it now, and you may need it for a while, but I don't know that you're gonna need it for the rest of your life and we're gonna work on having you learn not to need it, but a lot of those drugs cause a lot of problems, they're addicting. Sleeping pills are predicting, sedatives are addicting. The anti-depressant drugs can make depression worse.

I've seen a number of people with addiction problems, we're using street drugs while they were taking their anti-depressants, so what good is the anti-depressant doing them when they're taking heroin at the same time. I don't think it's really doing much and it may be making them worse, and I've seen people and had patients who someone else gave an anti-depressant too, and they started thinking about suicide now, so they stopped taking the drug because there's no predictability. You do not know, and nobody can say whether an individual drug is going to make that patient better or make them worse.

Yeah, I'm always... When you see those commercials and they have those... This drug could cause its all of those side effects, and it just goes on it, it's like a whole other commercial on the back side of the actual commercial for the drug companies and just list the side effects. Yeah, really, it's really amazing. It's a sweet voice and a happy face, and your nose may follow or you may turn green and talk to your doctor about this drug.

Right, we do you wanna even start something like that, when in fact, in all of those... Yeah, it's amazing. But you know what, you did say something really incredible that... Yeah, people think that you have to take that for the rest of your life. And so it's important to realize that, No, you don't... And you're here to say to dispel those rumors that with doctors, with your help that now you don't have to, but you should be along side with your doctor to get off of them.

Yeah, well, there's a mindset that's been established in American medicine, and I've been watching it in my whole career, and basically is what drugs can we use to handle these problems, the research that's done in medicine is mostly done with drugs, now we see these articles that research medication, nutritional supplement things, we see articles that write about activity levels and dietary change, and there's more and more of those things, but the main mindset has been is What drug do we use for this condition, what drugs can we use, what do we add?

And what surgery do we do when there's new surgical techniques and... Some of these things are great. I think some of the surgical procedures that we have now are incredibly better than what existed 30 years ago, I mean, to do laparoscopic surgery and take out a gall bladder and have a half an inch scar, like, wow, you know, there's so many things that can be done that we didn't have before. So the progress of medicine is great, but we need to have the right philosophy, we need to be thinking about what is the human being and what is a human being need and what happens to a human when you do these particular things to him. And if you give an 85-year-old person 10 drugs to take for their four different medical problems, what are you creating as a consequence, it's going to be rough because the older you are, the greater or the side effects a 10-year-old may be able to take a drug that an 80-year-old can't, but they're the ones who get the drug and not the 10-year-old, and that's a good point that you have right there too, because I feel like so many times that when you go into the mainstream, that the hospitals or the doctor that the 5-year-old, they're not treated the same because they're 85 and they say, Well, here you go, you're at the end of life and we're gonna give you that all of these... And I hope that works for you, but here you are, you're 10 years old, but there's this cadre of drugs and you're here on your own and you can figure all of that out, but they're just treated differently. Yeah, well, no kids in the right family have their defenders.

Miming goes in with the kid, you know, she's gonna be pretty... Ask a lot of questions.

They have an advocate.

Right, and an 80-year-old may not have that... Right.

And they may not be able to fend for themselves.

Right, I'm sorry, I had to say that, but... Yeah, that's exactly what that is. Do you consider any drugs really necessary?

Definitely someone comes in with Lyme disease and we're gonna give an antibiotic if it's acute and it's clearly Lyme disease, that's the treatment. I'm not gonna be giving them fish oil to treat Lyme disease, I'll be giving him an antibiotic that I know is gonna work for it, strip throat it probably the same. Lots of urinary tract infections. Infectious disease is one area where you often need antibiotics, but the other side of that is bronchitis is almost always a viral, and people are going into doctor's office with a cough and a little bit of wheezing, and what are they gonna get an antibiotic, which does nothing.

Except set them up for antibiotic side effects of which we now know there's a lot of them, and now everybody goes into a hospital for an operation that has a testing for... MRSA, Methicillin-Resistant Staph Aureus. They test your nationals, they test your skin, if you're positive, they wanna operate, that kind of thing, it's become a very big deal because we push drugs so hard that we have these complications that we never used to have, so we need to become much more careful about what we're doing, and drugs get taken off the market every year, five or six drugs that were previously approved by the FDA to be used in human beings, get taken off the market because too many people died. They'll accept so many deaths, but not more than that, and then the drug gets taken away, and then you see these enormous lawsuits for some of these, I say drugs that cause heart disease and the company settled for several billion dollars, but they made other billions of dollars.

It's the solidified story from 30 years ago. Back again, the Lindeman was kept out of the United States by a very bright doctor who worked for the FDA and said The drugs not proven, and they were using in Europe, and it was found to cause birth defects and kids with malformed limbs and that kind of stuff and thousands of kids were affected by this, and it should have been kept out of the world market, and so it took for that doctor's research to figure that out because he worked for the FDA, because his knowledge, it was the lady and she was... She had a fight, it was like, Why aren't you approving this drug, the company's waiting, it helps pregnant women with their headaches... No, she did. She stood fast. I never came in.

What's your best recommendation for someone who wants to get off my medications, preferably find a doctor or use your doctor, if he's willing to work with you to make the adjustments that you need to be able to do that.

Go slow, look for... Know What You Need to be Looking For, know the complications of stopping a drug, the anti-depressant medications, also, they have to be done slowly, there's things we can do to replace with nutritional supplements, with lifestyle changes with, etcetera, etcetera, that can allow a person to get off those drugs, but don't drop them.

The person who's getting high doses of four different psychiatric medications who drops them is very likely to get immediately worse and maybe get much worse. So it needs to be done very carefully.

Well, this has been really very interesting and we appreciate your time, doctor, so we look forward to having you on again in the mean time, you can catch more of Dr. sasson on his website, I progressive Med dot com and learn more about his passion for alternative medicine and the other great things he's involved with, we look forward to our next visit.

Thanks.

If you've ever enjoyed the delicious food inside our kitchen, you may have tried this tasty dish, now you can make it yourself, this recipe is for black being chilly with lime cream sauce, the preparation time is about 30 minutes and it makes six servings. You start with a pound of cooked black beans, one half cup wide anion dice, one half cup, green bell pepper diced, one half cup, red bell heads, one cup, fresh diced tomatoes, two tablespoons olive oil, one tablespoon human, three cloves of garlic peeled and missed one teaspoon, chilly powder, one teaspoon, paprika, one teaspoon a regnal, one teaspoon Tabasco sauce, one bunch of fresh cilantro mint and two cups of tomato PRA can.

There's also Limca sauce, which contains one cup of low fat cream, the juice from one line and great iast from half of a lime, so the first step is to clean your black beans and place them on a pot filled three quarters of the way with water and you cook them on the stove over a low fire for approximately one hour or until soft in the middle and drain the water and set your black bean aside and in the pot, you're going to place the olive oil and add the garlic and spices until fragrant at all the vegetables and cook 58 minutes or until tender, then add back in the black beans, the tomato, PRA and Tabasco allow all the ingredients to simmer over low fire for 25 minutes, serve with two table students of the line cream sauce on the top and it goes great with Mexican style rice and a salad. This is black being chilly with lime cream sauce, my mother's marketing kit.

Here's what's happening around town, learn how to go from hot flashes to beauty with nutritional consultant, Valerie hall in our anahim Hill store on January 28th and in costume on the 29th, plus learn how he went from taboo to trendy also in Costa Mesa on the 30th.

All seminars start at 6-30, and please make sure you call 800-595-6667 to reserve a spot for our popular in-store seminars.

Thanks for listening to the mother's market radio show and for shopping at mother's market, the advice and informational content does not necessarily represent the views of mother's market and kitchen, mother's recommends consulting your health professional for your personal medical condition,