Here is part of a hand written thank you note I got in the mail a few weeks back from a gal that came to the workshops about 18 months ago…
I just had to write and thank you for doing the Biomedx classes. Your teachings have been instrumental in helping me achieve my dream of having a healing center and getting my ND **** I frequently read my class notes and I continue to get more and more out of them as I deepen my understanding of the ‘why behind the what’. L.W.
Thank you L.W.
Yep it is oh so important – trying to get to the “why” of the “what” that is going on in the body. And it is not always easy – it requires one to actually think through foundational concepts of biochemistry related to physiology.
The thing is, in order to be able to think through it all, it requires a foundation in certain core areas that in some instances are not taught in traditional or even alternative health courses.
About the same time the above thank you note arrived in the mail, I got the very first negative review – ever – in 14 years of doing workshops in this arena after I sent out the last newsletter.
I took your microscope course last April and have to say it was the worst course that I’ve taken on nutritional microscopy and it concerned me greatly that after doing your 3 day course that people who attended it would be carrying out nutritional microscopy.
I had to chuckle a bit at this, as this particular individual missed probably 30% of the microscope class itself by simply not being there. I think he found what was being said hard to take. When the flow class arrived he sat through the first 3 hours and then left and never returned. That meant he never learned the powerful clinical application of what was being laid down in the first 30 hours of instruction.
This individual was a student of a person that teaches that the root cause of all ill health is an overly “acidic” body.
The idea that all ill health derives from overly “acidic” body is an extreme over-simplification of just one aspect of an individual’s multi-phasic homeostatic control system. It is even at odds with Chinese and Ayurvedic medicine that has an understanding that we have a diphasic nature to our existence and if one can be too acid, then it is equally true one can be too alkaline.
Conceptually the “your too acid” bandwagon is a great concept for selling books, diets and nutritional supplements, but in clinical application if a clinician pursues this line of thinking while ignoring fundamental biochemistry and physiology, it can get them in trouble.
Maybe lay people that are doing “nutritional” microscopy and selling others on these concepts while selling diets and nutritional supplements feel it is okay, but it’s not okay for professional health advocates, doctors or educators.
We have seen far too many professionals taking the over-simplified thinking of “your too acid” and then proceed to put their clients into a critical state and then calling it a “healing crisis”. In most cases this is actually a practitioner crises due to a lack of knowing what they just did.
This raises a comment I have heard – “I thought if I had a microscope I would know what to do?” Well….
Is there such a thing as nutritional microscopy?
That depends on how you define the term. Some would have you believe that by looking at the blood under a microscope, you can tell a person what they need for their nutritional needs. But this is a bit of fiction.
The microscope picture is only a qualitiative reflection of one fluid compartment – the blood – which is a colloidal suspension under the rheological control of known – but mostly untaught – scientific principles.
Yes the picture has much to tell for sure, but to be nutritionally specific for any given individual would require a review of quantitative physiological feedback that would give insights to how an individual is managing homeostasis with their specific biochemistry.
The only way to do that is with quantitiative assessment overlayed on a foundation of verifiable scientific understanding.
Biomedx attempts in our workshops to get across this understanding. Most people get it, some don’t. It has been said that it’s not what you don’t know that can get you into trouble, it’s what you know that just isn’t so that does it.
When it comes down to knowing about physiology in the human body and what is or is not so, the great thing is it can all be quantified and measured. And if it can be measured it can be managed. And you can know. No BS.
Does a microscopic picture of blood quantify anything in this fashion? No, it does not.
To look at a picture of blood and make quantifiable statements like – you are too acid, you have yeast, you have parasites, – well this starts to border on fiction, some would say fraud. Quantifiable statements demand quantifiable and verifiable measures in support – without which it is just blabber.
How many “nutritional microscopists” are out and about making quantifiable statements by looking at a microscope picture without verifiable measures in support of their statements? I would say, a lot.
So what good is a microscope?
The microscope is a premier client engagement tool to kick the client in the butt and show them the dynamic life processes that are going on in their body. It is a look at right now, real time, situational morphology which under guided learned study, connects to much more.
It is a way to visually and vibrantly connect the picture of the clients health to a story that imparts understanding of their active physiology which they are most likely totally ignorant. It is about wellness education. It is about motivation. It is about wow. It is about the client getting ahold of their health and taking responsibility.
Hopefully in the process, the practitioner, the health coach, doctor, wellness educator or whatever who uses the tool, is verifiably and factually correct in what they are saying when they use it.
The Microscope for Education.
I was recently sent an article about the BioBus. This is a used city bus that was bought by a graduate student, a doctor of cellular biology, who gutted it and outfitted it with lab level microscopes – like the ones we have and use at the Biomedx Biotorium.
He travels to schools educating students about science using microscopes as his primary tool for education. Many of those scopes are hooked up to to video monitors. They’ll look at everything under the scopes and the teacher and student response is tremendous.
This should give you some ideas – not the least of which is how to frame what it is that you do if you use a microscope to educate clients.
The newspaper article has since disappeared, but the BioBus website is at biobus.org
The tag line to their YouTube video is “Driving Social Change Through Science Education”
Now, do you think we need “Health Change” in most of the world today?
Do you think you can use a microscope as a tool to effect health change through science education?
Think about it. There are powerful ideas here.
Another article I recently saw in an optical industry trade mag was about the Microscope Imaging Station at the Exploratorium in San Francisco. A place where science comes alive through hands-on use of microscopes. Website version is at exploratorium.edu/imaging_station/index.php
The article I read is not yet on-line, but there was a comment I found interesting about the founding of the exploratorium:
“The mission of the Exploratorium was, in short, to democratize science learning. All of the scientists [who founded the Exploratorium idea] came out of the Manhattan project, and many had fled fascist Europe. They believed that science and technology were far too important to leave only to politicians and scientists, that their future direction belonged to all of us. And they felt that a certain literacy in the sciences was essential to making informed choices in society.”
Maybe that is one of our collective problems. There is so little literacy in science. Who does that leave to make our health choices for us today? Uh, can you say politicians and psuedo-scientists that have something to sell?
Steve